#but i tried anyways i was like ‘well trans folks are affected by this too so it’s important that we’re included in the language’ right

[mars-ipan]

y’know i think the most annoying thing about trying to discuss reproductive rights with cis people is the complete and utter refusal to include trans people in the discussion. like they will only ever say “women” and if you dare to point it out it’s “well this is all being done to control women” or “‘people with vaginas’/‘people assigned female at birth’ is way too wordy” it drives me fucking crazy

like first off do you seriously think that the people who seek to remove bodily autonomy from women have nothing against trans people. do you think they hold zero ill will towards us. also do you think they view trans afabs as anything other than women.

secondly. NOBODY IS ASKING YOU TO USE BIG WORDY PHRASES LITERALLY JUST SAY “PEOPLE” INSTEAD OF “WOMEN.” WE LITERALLY JUST DON’T WANT TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THIS BECAUSE WE ARE ALSO BEING HURT WE JUST WANT SOME GODDAMN SOLIDARITY IN THIS BITCH. LIKE ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING SAY “PEOPLE” IT SAVES EVERYONE FROM WEIRD LOOPHOLES AND ALSO ENFORCES THAT WOMEN ARE PEOPLE FOR FUCK’S SAKEEEEE

[tirfpikachu]

sometimes i feel like, in certain cases, "detrans woman" and "nonbinary woman" ain't too different. and could even be used simultaneously by the same person without much issue. after all, isn't processing internalized misogyny and escaping the gender roles box for womanhood also a way someone can at the same time not feel like a binary man, not feel like a binary woman, but not feel like a not-woman either? after unlearning all the bullshit male society taught us, it can be destabilizing and create distance between us and other women. we might no longer feel like a normie woman. we've been awakened. we're no longer a gender roled woman, rolled up in everything she was taught she needed to be or she would fail at womanhood. we're an unfailible woman, we can't get a bad grade in womanhood bc we don't care about gender grades. we know it's all bullshit. we took back the power patriarchal society had over us. in that sense, we're not willingly binary anymore. and i think, over time, it's only going to get harder and harder to find women who are happily into the gender roles, the gender box assigned to them.

people fucking hate that, ofc. especially male people, and doubly so cis/bio men. they hate that we're awakened women. they hate that we found feminism and sisterhood and go detrans or use nonbinary in addition to woman, bc we reconnect with our body type and our upbringing. and by they, i mean both sides btw. the patriarchy hates that we found our power, of course. non-feminists scoff at us.

and... mainstream trans activists hate that our journey got us here, and hate how we make dysphoria seem curable in unmedical ways and transness more complex than they like to think. we complicate things. they hate that they found power in changing themselves (whatever makes them feel at peace ofc), while we tried to as well, but in the process we found our power was within us all along. we found that just being neutrally sexed animals, just female humans, female animals, girls the way that one calls a cat a sweet girl, cat first girl second, human first girl second... our bodies, our gender category, don't define us. anymore, anyways. anyone who defines us by our womanhood is a bigot, and we scrubbed our brains free of all the shit patriarchal brainwashing left in us. and for us, personally, it was enough to free us. that's not the case for anymore. some folks need more than that. some folks need to modify themselves beyond recognition to feel at peace with themselves. but i do hope they know that deep down, they were always good beings all along. i hope they know that gender is bullshit and sex says nothing about anyone's worth, personality, goals, interests, etc. it says fuckall about any of that. i don't care if i get a male or female rabbit. a rabbit is a rabbit. if i feel affection for a new pet, our connection is what matters [*]. i would never assign someone gender roles based on their sex. but it's sadly done way too often by parents and male society. if you're trans, temporarily or forever, you gotta clean up all your internalized misogyny and sexism/gncphobia. find kinship with other female people, or male gnc people if you're male. just check off some boxes. clean everything up. deep-clean your mind and your heart first.

[*] insert tras here being like, "why can't you be like that about dating? you dirty close-minded terfy homo dyke? why can't you love beyond genitals? beyond just bodies?" and these days i laugh and laugh and laugh at that shit because wow they have zero clue!! they don't know the sense of peace at having my female/afab body against another female/afab body, at knowing we were born the same, at knowing we went thru the same growing up, at knowing we understand eachother so, so deeply without saying a word bc she is what i am, she is where i have been, and i have suffered as she has suffered, and we are a love born of the connection all female beings share, the connection of bio dick havers treating us as prey. not knowing we're more powerful than they could ever dream of. do bodies like ours not hold the godly powers of creation itself? are we not gods in the literal sense, born creators, who get to choose if a new life should be made? do we not hold the future in the palm of our hand? to the dismay of penised beings? and do me and my beloved not love eachother only the way two gods could love one another, knowing the struggle, knowing the power? is the patriarchy not fighting tooth and nail to control us, wrestle us into submission before their phallic altar? do they not know it's impossible, for everything in us would dry up at the sight? do they not know that we can rely on sisterhood to get us through fucking anything? do they not know we masculinized ourselves and found ourselves happily female anyway? do they not know that i'd love her with a beard and five eyes, but if she was reborn male we would not be the same people to begin with (tho ofc i like to think the bodyswapped versions of us would have a love story too, we would not be us anymore, not this timeline's love story, she would be a different version of her and i would miss our og love)? because what is anyone without memories, and aren't childhood memories, puberty memories, some of the experiences most affected by one's body type (under the patriarchy), some of the most developmentally significant memories of all? is female just genitalia and estrogen puberty to tras, to "hearts not parts" type folks?

is female just a meat suit and not also the life experiences linked to it, our upbringing, a rich female culture one is born into? trans women might be immigrants into this female culture if they pass post-transition, they might get the exact body, but they just don't know the culture the way born into it do. any transfem will admit being transfem is hard, it's hard to merge into female culture when they self-admittedly don't know much about it. anyone not having been born into this culture, not being fluent the way only a native resident of femaleness can be, will show signs of it even if it's been 50+ years. you can't just wipe someone's upbringing clean, your past always leaves traces, and a transfem wouldn't be able to bond with other female4female lesbians on basic female upbringing things... when those are the things that make being into other female ppl so attractive for many of us! we just get eachother. we understand without even saying anything. we understand female body issues. there's a warm sense of peace emanating from that knowledge in my heart, knowing me and my girlfriend were born the same. we went through so many of the same things, all the good and the bad sides of growing up female. and i find that attractive as hell, and it brings me immense joy in life. there's so many inside jokes a transfem just wouldn't get the way my gf can. and i unfortunately need to add, since people get defensive, that this isn't shaming the transfem for not having those experiences. i hope the transfem will come to terms with not being female too. she can be a woman in society, but she's not born this way, she's an immigrant into womanhood, and that's okay. she still needs to let lesbians who are only into people raised female enjoy our unique sexuality that she just can't understand. i can't understand the transfem4transfem experience either. so what? isn't lgbt or 2slgbtqia+ or whatever culture all about inclusion and diversity in sexuality and gender expression? what about those who are girls the way animals are girls? we hate gender roles but we're personally definining cis womanhood as being female animals, female humans? what's so twisted about that? what about female4female lesbians? transmasc4transmasc can exist, why not us? why make everything so stupidly complicated for no reason? why shame us for how we were born, for being into others like ourselves?

i pity them, honestly. watch them bring girldick and male upbringing experiences to female4female lesbians, watch as we'll all dry up like the dying succulents on our windowsills and sip drinks laughing at the naked male bodies before us because they're so unsexual to us homodykes. watch as we raise eyebrows at the male's lack of misogyny in her upbringing, her lack of expertise on female culture, and just... everything that's so fundamentally unappealing to us. we can be friends. we can be allies. thankfully though, sex and marriage isn't activism. you can't play woke in the sheets. if you do, that's honestly sad. love isn't political. heteros made it political, but love is just love. and the love between two female people is normal. boring at times, even. we're normies. and if mainstream tras can't see that, well, maybe they have issues to work through in therapy. idk.

if two dysphoric ppl working through really hard shit end up feeling at peace with being female animals, female humans, and loving one another, if that's threatening, if that's bigoted, if that's twisted, well...

we detrans chicks and homodykes will find our own place to hangout. and we'll be nice to your faces, of course, but behind doors we're having a blast with others like ourselves. people like us have done this for as long as humanity has been alive, anyways. we always go underground and make it work anyhow. radblr is proof of that. idc if i have to go door to door checking if any homodyke is there, or if i have to comb thru tra spaces to find cool detrans folks, i will find others like me. that's what the marginalized have always done.

we're like lizards. we'll just find a cooler rock to party under🦎✌️

[theywontletmebeprincipal]

can you give me drowsy headcanons, ramble, or anything please, i am so deprived. do not be afraid to make it super long, the more the better, i just love drowsy chaperone and love to hear other people (plus you’re one of the only people i’ve seen who knows a lot abt it)

ASK AND YE SHALL RECIEVE

I’ll divide this into a few different parts, going from least to most excruciatingly sad :)

1. general headcanons

2. in canon things i noticed and think about daily

3. a full analysis of man in chair’s connections with the drowsy chaperone as an in universe show (trigger warning for abuse ment, alcoholism ment, suicide ment)

SECTION ONE: HEADCANONS

- okay the chaperone is trans I don’t make the rules

- also her name is ambrosia :) she forsook her last name :)

- she’s about 12 years older than janet and kinda hung with janet’s family after leaving her own for a while . essentially she’s a big sister to janet

- aldolpho has some lines where he asks if the bride is big and/or burly and while in canon this is supposed to show he’s kind of a womanizer I like to believe it’s because he was fully prepared to fight her if needed

- speaking of which Of Course janet is ripped she does gymnastics

- my batshit crazy headcanon for this show is that dee dee allen from the prom is a descendant of roman bartelli no I will not elaborate

- is aldolpho one of those bitches with pets that definitely shouldn’t be legal? yessir

- post show kitty becomes a star okay I just want her to be happy

- the “pastry chefs” do discover a love of baking post show and now run a shop along with performing in feldzeig’s follies which might maybe be a front for some crime too

- TRIX DROWSY AND ALDOLPHO WORLD TRAVELING POLYCULE CAUSING PROBLEMS ON PURPOSE

- underling’s name is james I will not elaborate on this either

- show never says what trix does so I’ve decided she’s an explorer. she charts maps and punches colonialists and drags her stupid friends along with her, the only bitch in the show with a braincell

- drowsy was a former vaudeville child star pre transition - she left the business but was a mentor to janet

- I do have a headcanon for mic’s name but in the spirit of every actor who’s ever played him I won’t fucking tell

SECTION TWO: SHIT I NOTICED

- robert refers to himself by full name a lot of the time which is v interesting given he’s named after the writer, bob martin (whose wife is also named janet van de graaf). the real bob martin is like five feet away at all times playing mic

- idk how to describe it but the dynamic kitty and feldzeig (VICTOR felgzeig. we have a name from one (1) line) have when talking to each other is so snappy and funny and good

- aldolpho’s lines in spanish are mostly romantic bullshit but his first one hints that he has/had a wife who, if we’re taking the translation literally, refused to touch him. yeah I’ll bring this up in analysis

- the “pastry chefs” provide liquor for the wedding even though it has absolutely no relevance to their mission of stopping it :)

- drowsy is like. SUPER endearing towards janet and despite her bad social skills it’s super clear she cares a lot about her

- robert speaks fluent french apparently

- everyone says “ew” after aldolpho reveals his affair with drowsy despite her being a certified milf

- the body language of drowsy in the end of the show where she takes mic’s hands and breaks the barrier between reality and fiction is just so good. she was iconic the whole show but I honestly think this final bit is what won beth leavel the Tony in the end

SECTION THREE: OH NO

before diving into the way the drowsy chaperone affects his character, we need to understand what exactly it’s playing off of. to fully understand mic’s attachment to the drowsy chaperone, we need to outline what led him to isolating himself and living in fiction to the extent that he does.

mic’s father left his family at an early age and his semi estranged alcoholic mother was the one who began his love for theatre. mic grew up in a broken household and eventually moved on to land in a one sided marriage, which lasted a few months until he slipped up and expressed his discomfort with the situation, after which he and his wife split. nowadays, he lives alone in his apartment surrounded by records he uses to escape to a better life - his favorite of which being the one his mother gave him, the drowsy chaperone.

symbolism in the drowsy chaperone regarding mic’s life can be split into two main categories - mommy issues and internalized homophobia. there isn’t nearly as much mom symbolism as there is the latter, so I’ll cover that first.

drowsy covers both bases, but she definitely has some undeniable mom symbolism going on. drowsy marries aldolpho and mom dreams of being swept off her feet by a latin lover, both feel they’ve wasted their chances at love, both drink to forget, etc. this is where the idea of the drowsy chaperone being mic’s ideal way for things to work out, a positive parallel, comes into play. given that we don’t hear too much about mic’s mom other than her connections to major life events and the record itself, we can assume they grew apart in one way or another. the key difference is that drowsy finds a happy relationship for herself and retains her bond with janet, unlike what we’re led to assume mom was like.

further elaborating on the drowsy chaperone representing mic’s ideal fantasy version of events is the wedding the drowsy chaperone’s plot centers around. here’s a list of the things that didn’t stop that damn wedding:

- a minister not showing up

- the groom cheating on the bride with the bride

- the bride having a complete mental breakdown

- indirect mafia interference

- direct mafia interference

on the flip side, what little mic says about his wedding indicates it sucked absolute ass. he spent the entire ceremony in internal distress as he went through with a life changing event he, at that point, knew at least a bit that he didn’t want. I think he also implies he had severe diarrhea on the wedding day? it gets worse when you realize mic’s relationship before the wedding wasn’t any good for him either - he was playing along the whole time because it would be cruel not to, right?

throughout the show, mic is pretty clearly shown as an extremely repressed gay man. there are five specific instances that point at romantic and/or sexual attraction to men directly and another moment outside of his commentary that pretty much confirms it if you look a little bit deeper. thus, here is what I propose - to mic, the drowsy chaperone’s wedding plot represents a world where he was able to ignore that part of himself and have a happy marriage with his wife despite all the overwhelming obstacles thrown at him. however, bits and pieces of that internalized homophobia manage to show themselves throughout the drowsy chaperone anyway despite its happy ending. here’s a rundown on a few significant instances:

- by the end of the show, the “pastry chefs”, who had literally been planning to kill feldzeig, have left their life of crime to perform with him. this symbolizes how in mic’s ideal world he would have been able to turn away from what he perceived at the time as living wrongly - his homosexuality

- at the same time, the “pastry chefs” have this line, spoken in regards to janet: “if she gets married and leaves the show... there ain’t no show.” this is a take on mic’s subconscious concern that he might lose himself if he goes on with his marriage pretending everything is alright - of course, as we already know, he doesn’t listen

- “cold feets” is a pretty obvious instance of mic’s hesitation

- aldolpho’s line in spanish regarding the wife who won’t touch him flips to reflect on mic’s treatment of his own ex wife - she was alien to him as a lover, just as aldolpho was to this woman

- janet recalls her meeting robert at a point in the show and states “we spooned, briefly, then he proposed.” though mic’s relationship pre marriage was much longer than that, it must have felt that way to him - just as quick and nonsensical as janet describes

- just as janet is caught in showbiz but has a toxic love for it, so does mic with his own repressed life

- janet has a line in “show off” that alludes to her experiencing harassment/assault: “I don’t wanna be cheered no more/ praised no more/ grabbed no more/ touched no more/ loved no more” , which I believe represents the way mic perceived his intimacy with his wife - labeled as love yet unenjoyable for him

- “I look into his eyes... I get all woozy. and that’s... love, isn’t it?” is another very clear nod to mic’s misconception of love based off the only thing he’s ever experienced, relationships with women he’s had to fake

- this is the part where I tell you the lyrics to toledo surprise are a metaphor for actively suppressing gay thoughts. I’ll just leave you with “if it tries to rise; don’t let it”. these lyrics are not comprehensive enough to make a dish - trust me, I have tried. it’s also notable that they serve a double entendre as instructions on how to beat the shit out of someone, but several lyrics are also directed towards the singer/audience. for example: “it’s a snap/ try it folks/ whip your whites/ split your yolks” is an easy metaphor for the unhealthy mental gymnastics required to repress oneself so wholeheartedly

it’s also worth noting the obvious just for the sake of it - mic copes with all this by isolating himself in a safe spot where he can use musicals to escape and live his ideal fantasy, even if it’s only for a short time. there are plenty of nods to this throughout the drowsy chaperone as well. in “as we stumble along” drowsy notes that “the best that we can do is hope a bluebird/ will sing a song/ as we stumble along” - to mic, musicals are his bluebird. while mic mostly indulges in these fantasies, he knows to a certain extent the sheer amount of time he’s spending in them is unhealthy. the first line of the show is “I hate theatre” and I think that to an extent? he does. obviously mic loves theatre as a concept, that can’t be denied. what he hates is the way he’s allowed it to confine him.

with all that out of the way, let’s move on to the most important moment of the show. if you’ve ever seen the show, you’ll know exactly which scene I’m talking about immediately. I’m referring to, of course, the infamous “l-ve while you can” scene. as janet stands at the alter she asks drowsy for one final word of advice, which is partially obscured by aldolpho dropping his cane. “l-ve while you can.” it’s a simple moment, but mic reveals to us that he’s been agonizing over it for years - did drowsy say “live” or “leave”? it occurs to everyone eventually, whether a couple days after the show like with me, or years after like with bob martin’s replacement on broadway that the most likely answer is that she had said “love while you can”. it’s this moment, when you realize why mic had never seen that as an option, that the drowsy chaperone’s status as a musical within a comedy within a tragedy is solidified. mic had no love in his life - his parents hated each other and he was forcing himself into relationships in which he felt nothing. to him, living and leaving were options, but loving never was. so he locked himself away.

as the final note on the record is playing, all power in mic’s apartment shuts down and the fantasy is ruined. the superintendent arrives and further invades his space, breaking the private sanctity he had built up for so long. she fixes the power and before mic can stop it from happening, the final note of the record plays. and the super recognizes it as a musical. she makes a remark about how much her wife loves musicals and leaves, completely unaware of what she’s just done.

mic sits in silence for a while. and then he begins to sing. gradually, the cast members begin to echo their songs, dancing around him but never touching him. then drowsy appears and sings harmony to mic. and she takes his hands. the show ends with the entire cast, including mic, taking off on trix’s airplane as the curtain falls, drowsy handing mic his record as the plane takes off.

some people interpret the ending as mic committing suicide, finally deciding between live and leave. I don’t personally believe that and neither does writer and original mic bob martin, but it’s still a valid interpretation. the drowsy chaperone’s ending is ambiguous, yes, but not to that extent. no matter what you believe the ending means, it was brought on not by the interruption of the fantasy, but by whatever realization the super’s remark about her wife triggered. as I see it, there are two main options here.

option one - mic realizes he still has time to live and to love. when he was younger the prospect of living as himself was unthinkable to him, yet now he sees that while he was spending countless years alone the world grew. drowsy offers mic her hand, an invitation to finally become what he had admired in her - someone who isn’t anywhere near perfect, but is damn well trying and living life without regret. he accepts.

option two - mic realizes that while he spent years alone the world moved on without him and he’s isolated himself so much from social interaction that he’d no longer be able to make a meaningful connection with anyone outside. so he stays inside instead, never trying, always trapped between live and leave. drowsy offers mic her hand - at least he’ll have a tune to carry with him.

I really want to believe we got option one. I think option one is the intended, really, given mic ends the show with a joyful goodbye to the audience. but the way that the ending is still left open for interpretation makes it so that we can never really know - we as the audience only get to be privy to a small part of mic’s life, and we don’t get the answers we want because at the end of the day they’re irrelevant to us - all we can do is make our own choice.

[voxofthevoid]

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.  

[supergay-supergirl]

why supergirl season 5 was actually good: sort of an essay

This has been sitting in my sticky notes for months and I figured now that I have a Supergirl blog, I can actually post it.

People love hating on Supergirl Season 5. And I get it. I admit that it had a lot of problems. But I did like the season overall, and there's enough out there about Season 5’s problems, so here is a post about some things that were great about Season 5!

1. Lena’s Arc

Apparently everyone hates how this was executed, but I really liked it. I like how 5A allows her to scheme and lie and altogether explore the darker (Luthor) side of herself, because only after experiencing what she’s been afraid of becoming can she fully come to know herself. I like how in 5x07, she gets to scream and cry, to express to Supergirl how much she’s hurting, and how betrayed she feels. I like how in 5x13, Kara finally accepts that Lena joining Lex was not her fault, and that she didn’t deserve to be manipulated (“From now on, you’re accountable for your own actions.”). I like Lena’s growing obsession with erasing human pain through 5B and the fact that we know exactly where her motivations come from, and we feel for her because we’ve seen how much pain she’s in herself -- but at the same time, we can still oppose her ultimately villainous actions, which leads us to hope for her redemption. (A lot of this is due to Katie McGrath’s stellar acting as well.)

I love how the season shows just how much Lex’s continual abuse and manipulation affects her, and shows her standing up to him at the end. I wish they had focused more on Lena instead of pushing her aside in favor of Lex in 5B, but overall I liked how they expanded on the Luthor sibling relationship from Season 4, even if it was missing some of the complexity of the previous season. And finally, I love the way Lena fights so hard to regain Kara’s trust in 5x19 (and succeeds!). It felt like there was more of a balance between the two starting from 5x13, where previously it had always been Kara apologizing and trying to gain Lena’s trust.

2. Supergirl’s New Look

PANTS. PANTS. PANTS. PANTS.

For Season 4, Kara the Reporter got a more professional wardrobe as she began to mentor Nia, and the switch to pants feels like the same thing for Supergirl. It completes the transition from “young adult” to just “adult.” It may have been reasonable to call Kara a “girl” in Season 1, but by now, she is an adult woman, and I’m glad that her wardrobe reflects that.

I was opposed to Kara’s bangs at the beginning of the season, but they have definitely grown on me. Like the pants, I think they mark an important change in Supergirl’s character, one that is better appreciated by the audience than the characters. Now, when I rewatch previous seasons, I think, “Wow, Kara looks so different now.” I didn’t think that when I rewatched episodes after Season 4. The bangs are a way to identify Adult Kara as having changed a lot from how she was at the beginning, and like the pants, I feel like they complete her transition into adulthood.

(But are the writers expecting us to believe that nobody who knows Kara would be suspicious that Kara and Supergirl got bangs on the exact same day? Seriously.)

3. Eve Teschmacher

In Season 4, Eve Teschmacher was a brilliant, eager-to-please young woman who (whoops) turned out to be evil. And she was great. But I was dissatisfied with her betrayal because it came so out of the blue, and it was a complete 180 without much buildup at all. Season 5 gave her the humanity that she was lacking, first with her mom, then with her desperation not to have to kill. Not to mention, some pretty badass fight scenes.

4. J’onn’s Swagger

J’onn’s storyline in Season 5 is not nearly as deep as in Season 4, and I see that as a good thing. Season 4 J’onn was wonderful and necessary, but in a season that has a lot of strong development for Kara and Lena, it was nice to have a relatively static character who’s at a good place in his life. Season 4 let J’onn discover the man he wanted to be, and David Harewood brings a new confidence to Season 5 as a result of that. It’s fun to watch him strut around in his supersuit and say normal things as if they’re great proclamations. It’s nice to see the happy, healthy adult relationship between him and M’gann. The easy trust they have with each other causes them to act more like they’re married than dating, as opposed to the younger characters who are often caught up in relationship drama.

5. Kelly Therapy Face

All the characters need a therapist, and they finally got one! Well, Kelly is technically a psychologist, which I believe means she could be a therapist but is not necessarily? I don’t know things. Anyway, it’s nice to have a calm, supportive presence in the group, and this effect is helped by Kelly Therapy Face. Kelly Therapy Face is the face Kelly makes when she’s listening to you talk about your problems. Kelly Therapy Face and her generally calm presence bring down the interpersonal drama of the group and solidify the idea that all these people are growing into full adults, with adult relationships and adult responses to issues. Their emotions are stabilizing, they’re building stronger support systems, and they’re gaining a better understanding of how the world works and their places in it.

This is more of a Season 4 thing -- this season really didn’t give Kelly the screentime she deserved -- but I also love how even though Kelly acts as a source of support for others, her own fear and trauma are rarely glossed over (see: the end of 5x05). This gives Kelly a humanity and realistic quality that many emotional-support characters don’t get. It also shows the key difference between Dansen and Sanvers: whenever Alex and Maggie had conflict, they swept it aside rather than working through it, leading to their eventual breakup, but when Alex and Kelly have conflict, they listen to each other and try to fix it. In accordance with their adult-ness, Alex and Kelly also seem to be in agreement that it’s okay to have conflict in their relationship (“And I might not know every little detail about you yet, but I know you,” 5x02).

6. Reality Bytes

Calling attention to violence against trans folk, exploring Dreamer’s dark side, and showing the strength of Kara and Nia’s mentor-student relationship in one episode? Just. Yes. Either Nicole Maines was projecting a lot or she’s a really good actor (probably both), but either way, as a trans person, I felt this episode on a personal level: the anger, fear, and frustration at knowing that your community is being targeted and the people you’re supposed to trust (i.e. the police) are probably not going to do anything about it. Additionally, Kara and Nia’s conflict in 5x15, and the fact that Kara compares Nia’s experience to her own, is a great marker of how far Kara has come. In Season 1, Supergirl felt a similar anger and hurt when villains sought her out, but by now, she’s more at peace and can offer Dreamer reassurance and comfort.

7. Brainy’s Plot

Brainy’s storyline in Season 5 is nice because it manages to remain stable as an important, but secondary, plot. It enhances the sense that there’s more going on than we realize and gives us a view into the scheming of the villains, while not taking over too much screentime or audience brainspace.

8. Jon Cryer

As annoying as it is that the writers gave up a lot of Lena’s screentime to Lex, Jon Cryer’s performance in Season 5 is just wonderful. He can go from acting totally in control to screaming in a matter of seconds. Lex Luthor is witty, assured, and charming in a weird way. On the other side of his personality, he is a madman who cares about no one’s interests but his own. Jon Cryer’s acting manages to package all this great but conflicting writing into a brilliant, awful, occasionally sympathetic villain who has more than his share of awesome (and terrifying) scenes.

9. Alex’s Grief

I like that Alex gets to let go of her emotions a little this season and express herself. Especially when Jeremiah dies before 5x16, Alex has a really tough time (and a mention of her possibly drinking problem! Expand, please!). She tries to escape from the pain of real life through virtual reality, but eventually realizes that she has to face her pain rather than avoid it, which is a major theme of the season. What’s great about 5x16 and the next couple episodes is that the other characters allow her to grieve. They could have told her to get over it and see all the happiness in the real world — it would have fit with the theme — but instead, they support Alex as she grieves. They listen without judgement when she expresses her anger that Jeremiah left and forced her to take care of Kara. Kara and Kelly are (mostly) understanding when Alex doesn’t want to go to Jeremiah’s funeral, and when Alex arrives late at the end of the episode, Kara lets her know how much she appreciates that Alex came at all. Throughout her life, Alex hasn’t had much opportunity to be herself and express her emotions, an idea that’s repeated over and over again starting from her coming-out arc in Season 2 or even earlier. Now that Kara can for the most part take care of herself and Alex has a good support system, she finally gets the opportunity to be vulnerable.

10. Andrea Rojas’s Moral Ambiguity

Is Andrea good or bad? Neither. She’s a person who wants love, success, and money, who does sketchy things to promote her company but also fights fiercely for her father and cares about the safety of her technology. Before Andrea, Lena was the main morally ambiguous character, and she could be categorized as “playing for her own team.” However, Andrea goes a step further, crossing into a territory I would call “not playing a game at all.” She’s just a human being trying to have a good life, and that causes her to do good things, bad things, and everything in between. In a show that often accentuates the difference between heroes and villains (“Don’t let them down by stooping to his level,” 5x15), Andrea is a reminder that most people aren’t good or bad -- they’re just living their lives.

TL;DR: They’re all adults now and Lena needs a hug.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Summer 2019 Anime Overview: Carole and Tuesday (final episodes)

I ended up having a lot more to say about Carole and Tuesday’s second season than I thought I did! It delved into some pretty varied and complex issues, after all. I did an EXTREMELY brief review/reaction( to the first half/season of the show you can see here. This review continues from that but is much more involved.

Carole and Tuesday (second half/ episodes 13-24)

Carole and Tuesday’s second half really expands its scope and goes all-out into the zone of social commentary in a way that I didn’t expect. Dang. I’m definitely impressed. There were hints of this in the first part, with Carole being a refugee from Earth who had very limited means and opportunities, while Tuesday came from a privileged background but ran away to escape a mother who cared more about her political career and public approval than her children’s well-being.

The second half delves into this much more, and condemns the policies of deportation and general public attitudes towards refugees and undocumented immigrants. Since the part of Mars our protagonists live inhabit pretty clearly meant to be analogous to New York, the plotline definitely meant to be a criticism of what’s going on in American politics right now. Of course Japan also notoriously has a lot of problems accepting immigrants and I think Watanabe and the rest of the staff probably wanted to say something about that too. 

Tuesday’s mom is able to climb the political ranks by calling for deportation of refugees on Mars- and in a chillingly accurate bit of commentary, she does this  solely to gain popularity with the public, and an even richer white man who has a corporate monopoly easily flouts laws and ethics to push her campaign. Black people are shown to be the first ones targeted for deportation and the black men who speak out are “made an example of”. The show doesn’t go so far to have anyone be killed (which is for the best, it’s unnecessary to go that far to make the point), police brutality is depicted and condemned, one man is targeted and beaten a bit despite not physically resisting, and a pair of men simply walking on the street are manhandled and arrested for “obstructing officers” despite doing absolutely nothing illegal. These marginalized folks continue to bravely fight back, even releasing protest raps from jail. And it’s pointed out to Tuesday that her mom is targeting people who are like her best friend and maybe she should step up and do something about it.

All of that is really good, and the show is firmly on the side of the minorities fighting back, and is all about how art should be used to challenge and reject oppression. It encourages diversity, unity, and takes a stand against persecution of immigrants, forced deportation and censorship. And how the show does this witha multi-cultural cast and a lot of developed characters from different backgrounds is great- there’s a love for all different kinds of music and acknowledgement that music owes everything to people of color. I especially appreciated the show going out of it’s way to depict how rap is often a tool for resistance.

That said, while the show’s message is positive and I appreciate its optimism and good intentions, the ending felt a little too neat and overly simplistic.It might be reductive to say the show goes so far to say racism can be solved if you sing a song, it’s more like “yeah use music to resist!” but the way the police are SO EASILY talked out of violence when they come to shut things down, the neat and simple way the political situation is resolved, and ALL the prison guards being willing to help out minorities in jail with no argument- yeah, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t go that smoothly in real life. However, the show seems to sincerely trying to send a message of hope, even if the execution is a little simplistic and lacking. 

The show is just sort of messy when it comes to its plot, themes and issues in general- I’d say it tries to do a little too much, so every arc is left feeling kind of underdeveloped and a lot of things are just...dropped. There are several examples of this.

Two mothers are both major characters in the show, and the show tries to make a connection there and say something about motherhood at the last second, but it’s muddled and contradictory. It’s stated that mothers can either chain you down or give you guidance and freedom, which is true, but we’re ONLY shown awful moms throughout the show, who have a large negative impact on their childrens’ life and hardly any positive impact, so celebrating motherhood at all feels bizarre. 

And the idea that this one mom isn’t all bad and maybe can be reasoned with is jarring since there aren’t any examples in the show of her postively affecting her child or being a good mom in the past. It’s so muddled I don’t know if I can say the show crosses over into abuse apologism (it’s at least made clear that if that mom doesn’t take her one chance to start to make amends, the kids will step aside and let her be taken down) but it really edges on it, and this is definitely something the show should have developed more and executed better

Another really muddled plot element with a lot of weird implications was the whole “martian androgyny syndrome” thing. It didn’t tun out as badly as I feared it might, but it was really hard to say why it was even there or what the show was trying to do with it. 

Basically, being on Mars can lead to some sort of vague condition where your sex changes I guess? And maybe it’s eventually fatal for some reason? And maybe the medication that treats it (by trying to stop the change? by addressing side effects? it’s not clear what it even does) causes uncontrollable anger??? That last part is especially uncertain because it’s only stated once by a person who might be trying to justify their abusive behavior BUT it’s also true that out of the three groups introduced in the show who have the syndrome, the people who (probably) take the meds have explosive tempers while the person who explicitly doesn’t is calm so????

 Anyway, the syndrome isn’t presented as uniformly negative, the calm person who doesn’t take the meds is a good person who is okay with their condition and they identify as non-binary and make a nice speech about it. But they’re also, y’know, dying, so. Again, it’s really unclear why this is even a plot element since it goes nowhere and gets explored so little and what is actually even going on with the syndrome and the medication is SO VAGUE. It doesn’t help that 2/3 of the people afflicted look like stereotypical anime caricatures of trans women. The idea that being intersex/getting a sex change/whatever is supposed to be happening is a death sentence isn’t great either.

And that kind of extends to the character arcs, relationships and plot in general a bit- there were a lot of things that were underdeveloped and muddled, which made the characters a little hard to connect to. Even the sci-fi aesthetic felt a little half-baked- I guess it’s a alternate history because we’re in Mars but Instagram is still a thing and modern singers are being referenced, but exactly how this world works went pretty underexplored. At least the text at the encourages viewers to use their creativity and continue the story themselves, so even the show itself is telling ficcers to get on it and make sense of this mess, okay. (Seriously though, I always enjoy seeing pro writers inviting the viewers to continue their story. Let those fic flags fly!)

Carole and Tuesday is definitely not perfect, but it’s entertaining, warm, visually beautiful and bursting with a love and respect for music. It’s features awesome tunes and varied and intriguing characters. The pro-diversity message that extends support for the marginalized and especially immigrants and refugees is very needed in these troubled times, and it’s theme of unity is very sweet

It’s an thought-provoking show clearly made with a lot love and largely positive intentions, so if you can handle the mixed and concerning implications of some of the more muddled bits, I encourage checking it out. 

[oliverpdaniel]

Let’s talk about casual homophobia.

I wanted to share a transcript of a TikTok video by a minor celebrity (I won't do them the honour of identifying them, but suffice it to say that this individual thrives mostly on controversy and poor publicity), to demonstrate what day-to-day homophobic language looks like. Many of these questions have been asked to me, or tell of real things that I've experienced, due to a generally callous view of queer folks. The quoted parts are the actual video, the unquoted responses mine.

Note in advance that some of these questions are clearly oriented towards gay men, but I am responding from the perspective of a bisexual man. Anyway...

"Okay, these are my questions for the gays – sorry, I was on Straight TikTok for a minute; what?"

Or, as you might like to call it, TikTok. For those unfamiliar, "Gay TikTok" is a small subset of the TikTok community that makes videos primarily revolving around in-jokes and shared experiences of the queer community. Thus, "Straight TikTok" is only extant in contrast, a joking reference to certain, overwhelmingly heteronormative parts of the TikTok community. While I'm not a big fan of the idea of 'ownership' or deciding who's allowed to say what, this (obnoxiously straight, in every sense of the word 'obnoxious') celebrity is trying somewhat unceremoniously to insert themselves into a narrative not their own here. Not off to a great start.

(1) "Would you care if your partner was bisexual?"

Whelp, this is one I can't really answer, can I? But, this still does lean into the old "gold-star" ideology of homosexuality, which makes it off-putting from the jump. For those unfamiliar, a "gold star" gay/lesbian is one who has never had sex with the opposite gender. This is a completely silly distinction, that fails to take into account personal circumstances, as well as – y'know – the fluid nature of human sexuality. TL;DR, even if you're exclusively into one gender, you shouldn't care about your partner's sexual orientation (other than, y'know, making sure it includes your gender) because, leaving aside the absolutely rad underworld of polyamory, they're only going to be into you while they're with you.

(2) "Have you ever been with someone of the opposite gender?"

Ah, more gold-starring! A great way to start. "You're trans? What's your deadname?"

(3) "Do you take offence when a girl calls you her Gay Best Friend?"

The Gay Best Friend is an expendable, non-threatening fount of femininity in masculine form, someone to go clothes-shopping with and who will give you sassy advice on boys. God forbid, however, that the Gay Best Friend try to be vulnerable with you about the difficulties of LGBTQIA+ life; they're only there for sashaying and making out with at parties, right? The Gay Best Friend is an incredibly harmful notion to men on both sides of the sexuality spectrum. Gay (and ESPECIALLY bi/pan/poly) men already know to fear the label, because of the dismissive treatment and expectation of performative homosexuality that comes along with it. Straight men should fight against it, too, because it's a symptom of the present hegemony of heterosexual relationships, which revolves around sexual transactionalism and a healthy dose of gender-role-fuelled intimidation[1]. (If you've never heard any of those words, you're probably the target audience here.)

(4) "Be honest – how many times has a straight person tried to hook you up with a gay person based solely on the fact that they're gay and no other compatibility requirements?" (with a devilish smile, into full blown "oh guuuuuurl" laughter)

This is a real thing that happens to people, myself included, all too frequently. It tells us that when you look at me, you don't think "Oliver", you think "Gay", and next time you meet another gay guy, that's the word ringing through your head. It's not funny. It's hurtful. If you're going to recommend a partner to me, make sure you actually have faith in a connection forming. As someone who ended up in an abusive relationship as a result of overzealous matchmaking, it's not something to be taken lightly; relationships, especially gay relationships and all the societal friction they inevitably entail, are not here for your endearment.

(5) "Are you down to hook up with someone who's 'just curious'?"

MORE gold-starring! God, could you imagine the uproar if a lesbian approached a straight person and said that they "missed dick" and/or wanted to experiment!? Oh, wait, that's already common in straight porn to the point of cliché. Gag; and not the good kind of gag.

(6) "Do you proudly wear the rainbow flag, or are you kinda against it because it kinda segregates?"

...what? When I first found this video, it was being duetted (TikTok's side-by-side video response) by a queer person, and at this point they took the opportunity to say, "I don't like you." I echo the sentiment.

(7) "Are you a 'yaaaaaas kweeeeen' gay or are you, like, 'fuck that shit what the fuck?'"

WE ARE NOT HERE TO PERFORM QUEERNESS FOR YOU. Leaving aside the sociolinguistic aspects of queer language and its intersection with (read: theft from) African-American Vernacular English, if people want to act flamboyantly gay, THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If people want to act "normal" (read: heteronormatively!!!), that's NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS. Queer people are fucking people, they act differently in different scenarios, and it's not for you to fetishize or to find "too much sometimes". When you accept a queer person into your life, you're accepting every facet of them into your life, for them to live and love unapologetically – not just the parts you find entertaining.

(8) "This might be a dealbreaker for me: do you like musical theatre?"

Yes. But even if I didn't – if I liked drinking beer and watching Nascar (sorry dad), but wish I had a boyfriend to do that with, guess what? That's my own fucking business. And, again, if your idea of a "dealbreaker" when engaging with a gay person is whether or not they like musical theatre – probably one of the most tired stereotypes about gay folks – and not, I dunno, if they're fun to be around and respect your boundaries and opinions, then maybe you're not looking for a gay friend for the right reason.

(9) "Be honest – do you still go through the Chick-Fil-A drivethrough and get that spicy chicken sandwich or those nuggies?" (big, face-scrunching smile.)

This is the one that REALLY got me. This displays just how tone-deaf this person is and how deeply they've objectified the concept of homosexuality for themselves. Chick-Fil-A is a massively homophobic organization from the top down, and they donate millions to organizations that want to bring into question my very right to exist, morally and legally.

As a straight person not affected by these issues, it's easy to say "well, I know I /shouldn't/ go to Chick-Fil-A because of the 'gay stuff', but oh IT'S SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD!". It's easy to momentarily forget one's morality because hey, it's not like you're directly hurting anyone, right? But, as a queer person who has to walk by the brand-new Chick-Fil-A at Yonge and Bloor every day on my walk to class, seeing the lines wrapping around the block lets me take direct measure of who, and how many, are willing to forget about me for just long enough to enjoy a fucking chicken sandwich. Go literally anywhere else. Eating at Chick-Fil-A is a choice, and it's a choice that informs me that you care less about my right to live than your own personal enjoyment.

(10) "Do you get upset when they have straight actors portray gay characters?"

This is a whole other debate, so I'm not going to get into the actual subject matter of this question. But hey – maybe, in an industry literally overrun with queer people, maybe we can stop converting a significant and pernicious problem in entertainment into a cutesy debate topic? Something really tells me that this person isn't going to start whipping out the intersectional feminist literature to explain their argument here. In all likelihood, it'll sound more along the lines of "but Eddie Redmayne looked so GOOD in that dress!"

(11) "And what's the GAYEST thing about you?'

Nope. Shut up and choke. I hate you.

Never tell me for a second that homophobia is "over" in Canada/the West/wherever. Never tell me that it's a distant issue, remaining only in far-off religious backwaters. This is what it can look like. Fetishization; dismissal; turning struggles for human dignity into pseudo-intellectual debates.

I'm not here to be your Gay Best Friend.

I'm not here to date your new gay acquaintance.

I'm not here to repeatedly explain to you my need to have rights.

I'm here for the same reasons you are.

I want to live and love, not to be treated like a toy.

Footnotes

[1] Okay, I'm obviously not saying that all straight relationships are built around sexual transactionalism and intimidation, nor am I saying that non-comphet relationships are not. But, in my experience as a reformed Gay Best Friend who has had to provide counsel to cishet friends over some INFURIATINGLY stupid relationship/courting issues, I would argue that a full ninety percent of them could be resolved if the experiencer simply viewed their partner/interlocutor/'tyng' as another human being, rather than being from the mysterious species that is The Opposite Gender.

[portable-wing-wang]

Gender, Sexuality & Me

Right, here goes.

I've never properly talked about my gender or sexuality on here and feel as if I need to clear things up for friends, family and even myself.

Of course I'm very gender positive, I think everyone should explore themselves thoroughly in order to better understand their place in this world. What I experience will be different from other people and I may even disagree with others who share my experience as everyone is different. Just good to clear the air before we continue.

My name is Will(iam) Kirton. I was born at 1:04 AM on the 10th of April 2000. I was born with male attributes and was such designated a "boy". I have little problem with this. A baby knows itself very little and cannot comprehend itself properly and so adults assign labels which, for the most part, do help with development as a child is introduced to social spaces (schools etc.).

When young, gender means little and so I thought little of it. I never felt apart or different from my schoolmates. I did however feel uncomfortable and didn't know why. Constantly feeling as if I wasn't explaining myself properly and getting confused easily. I was bullied for this by many of the other boys and when trying to defend myself, I was made an outcast. This led to me to very female dominated spaces.

I tried my hardest to join the other boys (as I thought I was supposed to) but time and time again, I'd be pushed away. I did, however, make good friends with a few boys a couple of which I'm still friends with today. But my fondest memories come from my friendships with the girls and how they shaped me as a person.

I didn't know it then but through them I began to question myself, sub-conciously at first but very soon after it started to dominate my thinking. By the age of 14 I knew something was off for sure, but I didn't know what, so I started researching to find an answer.

First, I started to look at trans-folk and see how they saw it."Trans," Such an illusive word. To me it seemed so simple to begin with. Someone wanted to be something else because they felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. "Maybe there's something in this?" I thought, so I kept digging here and there with little motivation until I was about 15 when GCSEs took over and I didn't have time to think about it much until the summer of 2016. The thoughts came back in a big way. Why? I started going to parties.

Now it may seem a little silly but getting drunk and forgetting to hide myself allowed me to express myself in ways I'd never had the chance to before. Mannerisms began to appear that I wasn't controlling intentionally. I started speaking differently, stopped feeling like I had to explain myself and started having fun. This was the next big step of my self-discovery.

I then started playing DnD. Now, laugh if you wish but I had a human bard character names Steve who I categorized as a projection of myself if a little exaggerated. While playing as Steve, those mannerisms I gained started to take over even when sober. This was the last proof I needed to know I was queer but I didn't know what labels to use. I settled with saying I just had "queer tendencies" and left it at that but I still felt uncomfortable when I wasn't playing Steve.

So, I'm definitely queer, that's for sure but what kind?

I'm researching properly now. And not just gender, but sexuality as well. Bi, pan, gay, ace, etc.. I looked up everything and kept finding new labels. To help ease my brain, I focused on sexuality first. I knew I liked girls but I also liked boys however both in different ways. I timidly said I was bi for a couple years and then came out properly soon after my 18th birthday. I felt comfortable. For now . . .

I was still, however, confused. I couldn't work out whether I was a boy or a girl and it kept making everything else seem so confusing. At this point (16 or so) most of my good friends were male, I was decent at sports and I had a big ol' bass voice. BOY, right?

But there was something still bugging me.

I couldn't figure it out. Not until the summer before Uni, something slipped into place. I had completed my A Levels, I was out as bi, my shitty friends had left me, all was good. Wrong. I was more tense than ever. All I could think about was gender. Gender this, gender that. Constantly thinking, even with the distraction of the Edinburgh Fringe. I was also listening to a lot of Steam Powered Giraffe who, of course, have a trans woman playing the "Rabbit" character. I was obsessed. I wanted to find out everything about her and luckily, she posted a whole set of videos cataloguing her transition and thoughts all the way through. Finally, someone was essentially saying to me clearly what "trans" actually meant. Things began to make sense. I knew then that I was probably not cis but i didn't really feel comfortable saying I was "fully" trans, if you get my meaning.

But then I went to Uni. I finally had a chance to express myself freely and boy oh boy, did I do just that. I became so much more feminine than I ever had been in my life. It was so freeing. But I still didn't feel trans.

Then, someone introduced me to the concept of being "non-binary". A new term. I hadn't heard of it before. Is it like being trans? Or something completely different. I dived in head-first and came out the other end with even more answers but so many more questions.

Finally, I took the plunge (I'm sorry for so many swimming metaphors).

One evening in February 2019 after Uni I was in the loo before a musicals rehearsal. I hadn't felt well all day and was wearing something particularly feminine and caught myself in the mirror. I studied myself for a good few minutes. Each detail, each curve, how my body felt and looked in the clothes I was wearing. I stood there staring. Luckily no one walked in on me.

And something just clicked. After so many years of worrying and tensing, I finally understood. I was genderqueer.

Now, I should explain (here I go again), I didn't just decide then and there. I few months prior, my new uni friend "tom" (she goes by a different name now) had introduced me to a youtuber called Contrapoints. Before anyone says anything, I know she's caused a lot of discourse but I don't feel as if this is the right time to make any cases. Anyway, she didn't used to be openly trans and used to go by the label genderqueer. At the time, she made a very comprehensive video explaining what is and what it meant for her.

It intrigued me so, naturally, I did some more research and found that it fit my situation quite adequately but I didn't feel comfortable falling myself "genderqueer" yet either.

For those who don't know, genderqueer is an umbrella term for a wide range of traits which are either predominantly female, male or androgynous. It doesn't necessarily have a perfect definition and can be different for anybody who identify themselves as such.

My own genderqueerness could be described as a complete rejection of the male binary and so I carry more female and androgynous traits. This affects the way I speak, move my body, dress and my perspective on greater society. I also experience gender dysphoria. Now, to some, this would mean I was most likely just trans and using this a stopping-point before going further. This I feel is not the case. Whilst I am made uncomfortable by my flat chest, copious hair and broad shoulders, I do not feel the same about my genitalia or Adam's apple.

There are also more political connotations with the term genderqueer over non-binary. Genderqueer is a lot more aggressive but it gets the point across more clearly but I wouldn't say I wasn't non-binary. In fact, I think they're one and the same in practice but I do use my identity as a statement and so the genderqueer label feels more appropriate.

So yeah, I came out as genderqueer that February evening. First to my partner, then my friends and only now, almost a year later, am I attempting with my family.

I am so much happier for it too. I kept myself hidden for so long and have only now started to just accept myself and give in to the voice in my head telling me to let go. I'm much more relaxed too. Since coming out and using more neutral and even feminine pronouns, my dysphoria has become less of an issue. I still get it and I have bad days of course but for the first time in a long time, things are looking up.

I can't change the world, but I've been able to find myself in it more clearly and that helps a bunch.

TL;DR: I'm genderqueer. I'm bisexual. I've been out for a considerable time now and feeling better because of it.

Anyway, if you did read the whole thing, thank you. I'm not saying this'll be the same forever but this is me now and I'm still breathing so come get me world!

Feel free to reblog this, I hope it helps others realise themselves too.

[cannibalhabits]

I have no idea if someone's done this, but I was struck with inspiration literally like a minute ago while I was walking my dog so here, have a hastily scribbled down sanders sides divergent au that I'm never gonna do anything with because 1. am lazy and 2. no way for all them to interact soo... (warning, this is gonna be kinda angsty, guilt tripping (himself i guess) and emotional trauma(?) and a slight mention of anxiety)

here we go, we'll start with the factions they were born into:

Deceit (who I'm gonna call Ethan like Ethos cause I like that name and since it's one of the method's of persuasion I think it'd fit well with this faction) - Candor

At first it was just irony, most deceit(>:D)ful side being born in the most truthful faction, but then I had a thought that I can't really put to words but basically, issues with how they're run, maybe some angst(tm) and other things that I really have no fucking clue how to write out, could make him fit into (and fear >:3) this faction.

Patton - Abnegation

Do I really have to explain this one? With the way he acts in canon, repeatedly trying to give away his very soul to others, how could I not have him here. (and how could I not make him leave?)

Logan - Dauntless

This one may be confusing but I think I love it the most. I know being a stereotypical 'stuck-up nerd' he may not fit in here, but consider this; his bluntness, his refusal to be unrationally afraid of just about anything, his fucking temper! All shit you'd expect from someone raised dauntless. Though he probably didn't get along well with his peers... *eyes*

Virgil - Abnegation

Another one that may not seem quite right, but like hogwarts houses it's quite hard to place virgil into any one faction, so I've chosen this one. The whole 'blend in, don't let people see you or give attention to you or you're selfish' dealio, has been something my anxiety likes to fuck me over with fairly often, and (this is where the guilt tripping warning takes affect folks) I've always thought that the Abnegation faction had such potential for emotional abuse, specifically things like guilt tripping. Imagine Virgil, trying his damnedest to not be selfish, but all he ever hears is that he's a horrible selfish brat and that he'll never be selfless and everyone will hate him and when other people get mad at him he starts to think that it's his fault and basically, it sucks. Also, Virgil and Patton are best friends, with Patton accidentally lending a bit to the emotional trauma just by being incredibly selfless (it's not good for patton either trust me) and trying to encourage Virgil to do the same. (He's trying to be a good friend, he tries to help when Virgil is sad, but he doesn't know why Virgil is sad cause Virgil's scared Patton'll be mad at him too. :// so yeah, everything sucks)

Roman & Remus - Dauntless

The amount of confidence these two fucking excude with every goddamn action they take, the violence, their love for weaponry, do I even have to explain this one. Jeez, just imagine these two covered in tattoos, it'd be so great man I'm freakin out, anyway, yeah. Just, perfection.

NOW FOR THE GOOD SHIT!!!

But first, I like to imagine they all have the same last name (no they're not related, aside from roman and remus) just cause that's fun and also they'll have a chance to meet and because im a basic hoe who wants them all to communicate, boom, cell phones are a thing, sold by the Erudite, and they all trade info, except for Patton and Virgil because having phones is selfish(tm). Patton just memorizes the numbers given and promises to call if he ever gets the chance. Virgil acts like he doesn't care. (but he does)

Ethan transfers to Erudite. Philosophy, psychology, no more fearing every little secret being found!!! what more could a man ask for!!!

Logan also transfers to Erudite, cause all of his prick friends constantly bothered him for wanting to fukcing know shit goddamn why is it so bad to just wanna not be fucking stupid. (also, i've made the executive decision that Logan has a face tattoo and maybe others but I'm not going back to edit that shit so have it now, it's on his left cheekbone and i dont know what it is yet but it's gonna be good.)

Patton transfers to Amity, after being convinced by Roman, Logan, and Ethan who can all clearly see he's working himself to the bone and is not healthy at all. He is scared, but he knows being scared is selfish and being kind doesn't mean not being selfless and if these lovely people want him to join Amity than he should do it. (oof im hurting myself) (also, maybe patton is trans ftm and logan and ethan are like, wow this kids got big dyshporia and does not know it we need to get them somewhere they can figure this crap out. i like this idea it's canon now)

Roman chooses to transfer to Amity as well, just cause of that one scene in Insurgent (i think) where the Amity kids in the back of the truck play guitar and sing songs and Roman's always loved performing, and if generally a lot softer than his love for swordfighting lets on and just wants to spend his days singing and writing and reading stories for and to little kids and im making myself soft fuck lets move on

Remus sticks in Dauntless cause why would the trashman wanna leave?!?!?!

And Virgil, after being basically claimed by Remus as his new best friend, and being (semi) convinced of the idea that he could learn to defend himself and be confident by Roman and Logan (while managing to convince himself that he could do that and still blend in, and also being supremely scared of ending up factionless and i've now once again made an executive decision, Logan went the whole time weighing the pros and cons of being factionless the entire transfer ceremony)

Now that I've gotten all this down, I'm considering actually doing something with this. It would be completely plotless cause i hate plots, but it'd be something. maybe.

[polyrolemodels]

Mx Nillin

1. How long have you been polyamorous or been practicing polyamory?

Personally? Less than 5 years. I’ve been non-monogamous with my nesting partner, Falon, for about 4 years now, but neither of us explicitly identified as polyamorous until we started seeing our best friend Kate about a year ago. 

2. What does your relationship dynamic look like?

Falon and I are legally married and live together in a tiny apartment with a cat and two guinea pigs. We’re in a romantic, sexual, and emotional relationship with our best friend, Kate, who lives on her own a short drive across town.

Kate doesn’t want to ever get married or live with anybody else. She really values having her own place to herself and so do we, so, it just works out for everybody really well! We all see each other multiple times a week, binge watching Netflix shows, playing nerdy tabletop games, going on date nights, checking out local events, or trying out threesome positions for ourselves and then blogging about them [http://mxnillin.com/will-it-threesome-double-dip/] LOL

Though Fal, Kate, and I are in a closed polyamorous triad together, we’re all still non-monogamous to a degree. Each of us has a friend or two we sometimes share nudes and flirt with outside of our relationship, but the three of us are all romantically committed to each other.

3. What aspect of polyamory do you excel at?

Ugh, honestly, I wouldn’t say that I “excel” at anything so much as I’m just doing the best I can to look after my own health and wellness while also striving to be the best partner I can be to Kate and Falon.

I used to be REALLY bad at the whole self-care thing and it lead to a lot of fear, anxiety, insecurities, and jealousy in my past relationships. I almost exclusively relied on those who I was intimate with to just comfort me until I felt better. In some cases, I put the entire onus of my mental and emotional health onto my past partners. Unsurprisingly, that created some incredibly fucking unhealthy behaviors as I sought out a pretty constant supply of comfort, validation, and assurance from them in order for me to feel happy and secure in those relationships.

That’s not so much an issue for me anymore, and I’m really proud of that because it has taken a lot of hard work to unlearn those toxic behaviors, develop healthier personal habits, and overall better communicate with the people who I love. I’m also much more on top of taking my anti-depressant pills, and going in to see my counsellor, when necessary.

That’s not to say I’m some stoic, chill master of my emotions or anything. Insecurities still crop up, jealousy sometimes rears its head, and on occasion a little validation is appreciated, but I think all of that is pretty natural

4. What aspect of polyamory do you struggle with?

The stigma. Holy shit, the stigma

I‘ve never loved two people at the same time, and in the same ways, before. I’ve never been committed to two partners at once before. Like, it’s no exaggeration when I say that my relationship with Falon and Kate has shattered my entire perspective of life, love, family, the institution of marriage, identity, politics, and so much more.

And all for the better, I might add!

But polyamory isn’t something you see reflected back at you by society, especially not in any sort of positive, judgement-free way. It’s not a relationship structure that’s even sorta socially, politically, governmentally, or economically accepted, let alone widely acknowledged, talked about, written about, ore seen out in public. And it sure as shit isn’t represented in a lot in literature, or art, or media of any kind… at least not in ways that don’t tend to be fetishizing or tragic. 

I mean, when’s the last time you’ve seen any sort of show about an everyday non-binary queer navigating life with their poly family? Never? Yeah, me neither.

All of this has led to us having to pretty regularly endure super shitty, awkward situations of us having to be in the closet depending on who we’re interacting with at any given time. Trying to remember who you’re out to, and who is SAFE to be out to, is exhausting and stressful for us all.

And that fucking blows. Yet it’s oftentimes necessary for all our safety.

5. How do you address and/or overcome those struggles?

I talk about it with my partners. A lot. We check in with each other pretty often and we don’t let difficult discussions go undiscussed for long. 

And I write about it too! Maybe too much at times haha.

I find that by putting myself out there, speaking up about my experiences and relationships, it has helped me empower others in their poly relationships while offering me the opportunity to learn from them as well. Especially other sex bloggers, writers, and workers.

I’ve also surrounded myself with a pretty amazing little family of queer and trans folks who have been wonderful supports in my life.

6. In terms of risk-aware/safer sex, what do you and your partners do to protect one another?

Clear, concise, honest communication has been key. Fal, Kate, and I are all aware of each other’s past partners and we’ve all tested ourselves for STI’s. Currently, we’re all fluid-bonded together, so, condom usage isn’t really there like it used to be. However, we still make sure to boil any sex toys that are shared (between uses), keep our nails trimmed, use lube as needed, and generally make sure that we’re listening to and respecting each other’s boundaries.

7. What is the worst mistake you've ever made in your polyamorous history and how did you rebound from that? 

Not sure if this is really a polyamory mistake so much as it is a boundaries issue. A couple years ago, shortly after Falon and I were married, I had JUST started blogging about how non-monogamy worked for us when we became good friends with somebody we had met through our local LGBTQ+ community. Early on in the friendship, the three of us mutually masturbated together, but we were very explicit in expressing that we were not looking for a relationship of any kind and that the three-way ‘bating was just for fun and probably not a regular thing. 

End of story, right?

Not so much. While Fal and I felt that we were very clear, and that our friend had understood, he instead doubled down. Over the months that followed, he ended up inserting himself into our relationship in a lot of invasive ways that on their own looked innocent enough, but when considered all at once were actually quite manipulative. Then one day he tries to show up at our house to talk with Falon, and when they said they weren’t feeling comfortable taking right now (he was being very pushy) he just forced the conversation anyway by professing his love to them. Oh, and me too, but only as an afterthought when Falon made it clear they were NOT interested.

Things went downhill from there really fast as we started to realize the real degree of his intrusiveness, complete with finding out he had been self-sabotaging opportunities for himself because he had this thought in his head that we’d all live up living together.

Anyway, it’s a long story overall but Fal and I learned a lot about what we were and weren’t comfortable with and set even cleared boundaries with others. That whole thing was bad enough that it almost turned us off from non-monogamy and polyamory altogether though. Luckily, we worked through it because several months after that gong show things started up with Kate, which has been amazing!

8. What self-identities are important to you? How do you feel like polyamory intersects with or affects those identities?

I am a fat, queer, non-binary, loud, foul-mouthed sex blogger with hairy tits, a girl cock, and a full-on fetish for actively subverting social roles and expectations… so of course I’m also polyamorous haha. Seriously though, over the last several years I’ve radically transformed myself as a person, to better reflect who I’ve always been but didn’t feel safe or confident being until my late twenties. I had to, because if I didn’t I was on the fast track to self-destruction [but that’s another story entirely]. 

Now, for the first time ever, I feel empowered to live my life as my authentic self and it turns out that a big part of that has included being polyamorous. Monogamy, at least in how it exists in our culture, has always felt incredibly restrictive, uncomfortable, and toxic to me personally; whereas falling in love with Falon and Kate, opening myself up to them both and forming our queer little polycule, has felt like the most natural thing in the world to me since I came out as queer and trans.

(Bonus: Do you have any groups, projects, websites, blogs, etc. that you are involved with that you would like to promote?)

You can find the vast majority of my work on my blog at www.mxnillin.com. One of the most popular features there is "Mx Nillin Fucks", a blog post series in which I stick my girl cock in a wide variety of inanimate objects, mostly foods so far,  as makeshift masturbation sleeves and write about how good or bad it is. This year is themed "Back to Basics" and has focused on classic masturbation items (banana peels, socks, DIY penetrables, melons, etc.). Outside of this you can also find me regularly participating in #SexEdPornReviews tweets for The Crash Pad Series.

---

Support Inclusive Polyamorous Representation at  https://www.patreon.com/PolyRoleModels

[yaminerua]

can't sleep... The stress of everything today has just hit me all at once in a really bad wave and I hate it... Today was a nightmare.... And it's almost worse that it was different from how I'd expected it to go. I was prepared for a more antagonistic interaction.... The same old venom and snappiness... The same old quotes.  Her manipulative quips. And those were there. The guilt tripping was well in place. But also it was masked in completely different ways. And the frank way she spoke about things was like stabbing me in the chest with knives..

The way she talks about the past had me so close to breaking down right there in front of her. I wasn't prepared for her to just. Start talking about how she'd hide the alcohol bottles throughout the house as a secret stash. I wasn't prepared for any kind of conversation on that topic at all. And it just brought the past into vivid clear focus as if it hasn't been as long ago as it has. My hands were shaking.

Sometimes I feel like I've tried to box it all away to keep it from affecting me any more than it already has and does. But the effect has resulted in my own life feeling alien. Like it almost feels like that was someone else's life and memories that I just. Have. And then the rush of No that was real and you lived it and these are your memories and here they are in vivid perfect detail all comes in an overwhelming flood...

So much of what happened then has its effects still tight in a chokehold on me today.... There's deep trauma in there and today she was just speaking about it so casually. 

As if it was Nothing more than drinking too much and getting a bit mopey and depressed. As if the curtains were never set on fire, Windows and mirrors and ornaments were never broken, knives and forks and plates and glasses and pots were never thrown at anyone, stabbing and suicide threats were never made. As if all those violent fights and arguments and the police involvement weren't reality. As if I didn't curl up crying so many nights wishing the next night wouldn't be more of the same. As if I didn't sleep in the fucking dog hut some nights just to not be in the same house as her. As if I didn't come home from school dreading the moment I'd round the corner to see my dads car wasn't there and I'd have to enter the house expecting the worst. As if the sound of certain songs doesn't still trigger an immediately negative and aggressively upsetting emotional response because of the associations of violence they carry... As if nothing ever happened that would leave an effect on a child that would linger into adulthood and be deeply embedded. As if the mere thought alone of having to see her at all doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach...

She speaks about it so casually like it was merely an obstacle she overcame like stepping over a moderately sized but easily crossable puddle. As if it was a minor thing and not something that shook my brother and I's lives. It's like she's blissfully unaware of what she's done. As if she actually doesn't think she's had any negative effect at all on us. And I hadn't the composure nor did I feel safe enough to even remotely try to fill her in... Not that she would believe it...

She just. Trivialised things that are.... Not trivial to me. It's us that hurt her in her mind. Not the other way round. That we cut her off, as if there wasn't plenty of reason to do so...

I was relieved when the topic shifted.... I wasn't sure how I'd hold together.... But then later she just. Hit me with some shit straight out of left field that just. Hit home that I'll.... Never be able to connect with her ever. All this shit about her wanting to 'reconnect' with me. It'll never be able to happen. And I'll never know if this is something that was always in her or if it is a part of this new her that she has been for the last 10 or so years.... I'd known my dads side were... Ok. Like. Older folk who don't get it and won't ever get it but aren't going to like. Hate you for any LGBT stuff.. My dad is. Awkward and would probably have preferred I was just a 'normal' hettie Betty but it's... Better than it could have been.

But today I found out something I'd assumed but didn't ever want to have confirmed for real. But quite without prompting she just came out with it anyway. Talking about a gay coworker she calls a pal but like. They're definitely not pals. She said the sight of him and his boyfriend makes her stomach turn, makes her feel ill. The idea of two people of the same gender makes her feel sick. The idea of something not straight makes her uncomfortable. And she said immediately after 'you better not be gay or anything' and in classic panicked mode I had to laugh it off and be like yep I sure am a cis straighty like you mum and she said 'good, cos I'd kill ya' and laughed..... And like........ Her tone was jokey but I felt ice in my veins and acid in my lungs.

I'll probably never figure out the specifics of my orientation. I'm asexual yeah but I'm not at all straight in the romance department. Plus my relationship with my gender alone is something she would never understand or be able to accept, especially considering her comments on trans people that immediately followed this conversation following the same line of chaotic thought she was on. Expecting me to agree with her. my  Agender and definitely not straight ass standing right there and she makes a joke like 'I'll kill ya' and I have to laugh it off as if the idea of being anything other than cis or straight was laughable and try not to visibly look panicked when I have vivid memories of how terrifying and violent and destructive she could be when she got angry....... I thought I was going to be sick...

It's all just been flooding me over the last hour after I've tried to just forget it and be thankful the day is over..... And there was just. So much more but I'm so exhausted and I'm just not ready to relive the entire 4 hours I was stuck with her.

I don't want to reestablish contact with her at all. But my grandpas cancers progression is going to force it to happen anyway. I wish I could cut her off for good..... But guilt grips me anyway and I hate it. Like part of me wants to cling to the tiny time in my life where she seemed alright... When I can't even remember any of that without watching it in old home movies, where it feels like I'm watching a strangers life. Like I'm watching a kid who looks like me, with a mum who looks like my mum but is nicer. Someone who must have existed once but is long gone and faded from my memory because I was too young to be able to really remember it.. The more I think about it the worse it gets. Like my brain is just a Pandora's box of more memories that I wish I could lock away and just. Never have to access again. God........ I'm so exhausted. I wish I never had to see her again for the rest of my life....

[margot-bargot]

Listen, fam. I'm coming out.

Look, I've been working on the best way to do this for a while. I had a whole long thing typed up & I kept re-writing it for months. But I think I'm just gonna get to the point. I'm coming out. I identify as pansexual. What is pansexuality, you ask? Well, it basically means that I feel attraction to anyone, regardless of their gender. Cis men & women, trans men & women, agender folks, demigender folks, etc. If you've never heard of pansexuality before, lemme hit you with that Wikipedia link real quick to help you out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality . Pansexuality is pretty adjacent to bisexuality & often gets confused for it. However, the two are slightly different in that bisexuality is attraction to two or more genders & pansexuality is attraction to anyone of any gender. A couple things to note real quick before we continue: 1. Pansexuality doesn't mean that you're attracted to EVERYONE you see. It simply means that your capacity to feel attraction isn't primarily based on gender. 2. If you make any jokes about having sex with pans, you're officially a cornball. I'm just giving you a heads up, is all. Sorry but I don't make the rules. So the thing you might be wondering is how I figured this out. To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out how I could go 29 years without knowing this about myself. But every time I think back, there is one element of my past that explains why it took so long. Growing up in a predominantly conservative christian home, the idea of being gay or anything close to it was a non-starter. It was a sin & a heavily condemned one, at that. As a result, any time a "gay thought" would pop up in my head, I tried to get it out of there as quick as possible. It became an instant reflex to keep that kind of thought out of my head. But I still would feel guilt for the thought, as well as guilt from "lusting" for women. My teens were a confusion time where I was discouraged from even considering an attraction for another gender while also being told I was TOO attracted to the "right" gender. Not a great situation, emotionally. Unfortunately, I suspect it's not an uncommon occurrence for kids growing up in strict christian homes. That said, I felt more comfortable exploring attraction & affection towards cisgendered women (even if it led to "sin" or whatever ugh) mainly because it was instilled in me by conservative christian culture that being gay was worse in the eyes of both God & the church congregation than sleeping with a woman before marriage. If you did that, the church congregation would murmur about you for a bit & engage in some form of slut-shaming hidden under the guise of "asking god for forgiveness." If you were gay? That was a disease. A sinful disease. You'd be quarantined, or ostracized, from that community unless they had the "grace" to help you get therapy to pray the gay away. So, being a massively horny but perpetually nervous teen, I chose to guiltily explore attraction to cis women & push everything else out. In college, my views on both religion & sexuality became more liberal. I no longer thought of being gay as a sin disease (although Sin Disease is a good name for a metal band, now that I think about it). This trend continued after college & beyond, to the point of total acceptance & support for the LGBTQIA community. Folks were gay (including several friends of mine) & that's cool. But I never thought about it for myself. I never allowed myself to really consider the possibility that I could be attracted to anyone else because I always struck the thought down when it popped up in my head. Even though I was no longer religious, I still carried that reflex I learned as a child years ago. The reflex that conservative Christianity taught & encouraged within me. I guess what I'm saying is that religious suppression is a powerful thing. And that only started to unravel for me late last year. I can't point to one thing that started the unraveling process because it really was a culmination of a bunch of different things (such as talking with some cool queer folks about their experiences & finally allowing myself to let in/process non-heteronormative thoughts). It was in late January where I first admitted out loud to one of my roommates that I was beginning to think that I wasn't actually straight. It was really hard for me to find the words for how I felt. None of the established labels (gay, bi, etc) felt 100 percent accurate for me. She actually helped point me toward the idea of pansexuality, which seemed closer to how I felt (I would later talk to some cool queer folks who helped verify some information about pansexuality, where it fit in the rainbow, etc). And a weird thing happened that night. I felt a weight lift off of me. It happened almost instantly. It was like a weight that I never knew was there. And I started crying. Was this what I was carrying with me for 29 years? Was that reflex to kick the idea of anything queer out of my head keeping this weight on me? Even now, with the large amounts of stress/worry that I feel on a day-to-day basis, I think about all of this & it feels like a bright spot in an otherwise dark world for me. Like, the world is going to shit, but I finally figured out this important truth about myself. Anyway, that's a lot of words up there. And I'm not done! I still need to tell you why I'm saying all of this! But I know this has been a long read, so feel free to run to the bathroom if you need to. It occurred to me that I might not be the only one in this situation. If conservative christian culture was able to burrow that repressive reflex that deep into me (so deep that it lasted years after I left the church), it had to do the same to other folks. Maybe there's someone reading this that hasn't even allowed themselves to consider their sexual identity. Maybe someone's reading that's just starting to ask some questions about their identity. If so, I want to tell you that it's okay to question & explore that side of yourself, even if you don't really have a name for it yet. I certainly didn't know what to call myself at first, other than "not straight". You're 100% not alone in this. I'm out here with you, grasping at bits of truth, filling in the gaps, & trying to find answers but feeling so much more free in the journey than I ever did in the comfort of what I knew. If you are in that situation, there are a lot of good resources to help you fill in the gaps & answer some of those lingering questions. If you have a friend in the LGBTQIA community, don't be afraid to ask them about their own experience. Talking with folks who had an experience coming to grips with their own queerness helped me quite a bit, even when our experiences were different. It's just nice to know you're not some unsolvable mystery & that this this thing (whatever you end up calling it) is a very positive thing. If you live in a big enough city, you probably have an equality center that provides resources, access to affordable counseling, support groups, & social events (where you can meet other folks within the community). If your city doesn't have something like that, there are online resources that can help as well. Here's a link for the GLBT National Help Center, in case you're in that situation: http://glbtnationalhelpcenter.org . Hopefully that ends up being helpful to anyone who needs it. It's 2018 & while there have been massive strides in LGBTQIA rights/visibility, there are still many ways in which members of the community are harmed & discriminated against (spearheaded largely by our current administration). We're not in a time where everyone everywhere can feel 100% safe openly exploring their sexual and/or gender identity. I'm a huge dummy in many respects, but if some of the information in this post helps someone feel less alone or points them in the right direction, then it'll be worth it. I realize that there are folks I know who hold more conservative views. They'll probably read all of this (or like, just the first two paragraphs lol) & decide I'm heading straight to hell. If they're being generous, they'll say that they're "praying for me" & pity me as another lost soul. Which, whatever. I'll be fine. If anything, I feel more free than I ever did repressing such a big part of myself. Plus, these are people who voted for Trump (& if they didn't, they are still largely okay with the gay-hating coward Mike Pence). So we're not gonna see eye-to-eye on this no matter what. 🤷‍♂️ Also they can fuck off. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ I guess that's all I have to say. If you stuck around & read all of this, I appreciate you indulging me as I tried to fumble around explaining myself. It's been about 5 months since I first came out to my roommate & I'm happy to finally share the good news with y'all. I'm going to my first ever Pride parade soon. It'll be my first time around a large gathering of queer folk. I normally don't really like being out in large groups (nor do I love highly corporate-sponsored events, which this surely will be). That being said, I'm really excited! I seriously can't wait for this. Probably because it feels like finally being united with a group you never knew you were a part of. It's an event specifically celebrating the idea that it's cool & good to be queer, to be part of this rainbow. For the first time in a long time, it feels like I'm moving in the right direction.

[polyputthekettleon]

Having feels about medication, and how the fuck am I feeling, anyway?

I had a good chat with a girlfriend of mine last night (but not one of my *girlfriends*, oh goodness, #queerpolyamproblems). She happened to message me about exactly the same thing I was planning to journal about, so I ended up basically just journaling to her.

She asked me how my medications are going -- it's officially been three weeks since I started the guanfacine, 2 weeks since I started the methylphenidate. I told her, my meds are "physically fine," and how this week I did indeed step up my methylphenidate dose (with my provider's consent) from 18mg daily to 36mg daily. I meant to journal about that here, but c'est la vie. Perhaps it is a good thing that that has been a lower priority to me this week; maybe this is the saner, less anxious approach?

To that point, I *think* (big emphasis on the "think", there) that the higher dose is working better for me. I've been more capable of accomplishing tasks I've been avoiding this week, and I've felt more motivation and capacity in general. That said, this could also be due to the thing that prompted me to have fucking feels about my medication regimen in the first place, so... (more on that in a lower paragraph!)

As far as if things are actually better... I don't know. I've read a bunch of different articles trying to parse out what shift in my experience I'm trying to achieve. D describes the experience of her medication taking effect as her brain coming out of a fog, and that's something I've seen described by other people too. But I don't (and haven't) experienced anything I would call a "fog" at all related to the methylphenidate outside of literally two incidences where I felt rather disconnected from my body about an hour after I took it, and then that faded away again within the next hour.

When she asked me if I was still dealing with daily "crying attacks" (her words), I said that the guanfacine seems to be doing a good job on that front. And it really is -- that, or I've somehow gotten over what I was dealing with before. I honestly can't tell. It sounds like there have been some studies showing it's effective at treating anxiety in children and teens, so I guess we'll assume it's working for me too (::shrugs::).

Let me be clear: I am rather fucking displeased about the guanfacine being effective at calming the anxiety cycle that I was in. I was working to reply to people who had commented on my post about grief on the partners of trans folks Reddit board (another one of the "maybe I have more spoons now?" activities I've engaged in this past week), and while was doing that, I just had this flash of recognition of how utterly fucked up I was basically all of December and January, even with the occasional moments of not so fucked up... I was a sobbing mess. I was a crazy mess. And now, I'm not. In fact, I'm feeling more "normal" than I have in a long time, and when I recognized that, I had a glimmer of feeling proud of myself for the fact that I'm doing better, and then I tried to for transparency in one of my replies and mentioned that I was grateful that my anxiety medication was helping me not be trapped in the anxiety spirals that I had been in... and sometime after that my fragile sense of pride and pretend 'okayness' about the situation crumbled. Because I've been doing better since I started taking the guanfacine.

Yes, I felt mildly sedated for the first couple days, and felt like I was accessing too small a range of emotions for the first 3 or 4 days, and wanted to take a nap every single afternoon for the first week, until I started taking the methylphenidate (which could just be a coincidence), BUT I wasn't bursting into tears on a daily basis. I wasn't spiraling up. For the record, I'm still feeling weirdly held back from my full range of emotional experience: there have been multiple occasions the last couple of days where I've been wanting to cry but haven't reached a level of emotional intensity to be able to do so, and I don't know how I feel about that (generally I'm grumpy about it) -- and I am not getting as instantly fired up in response to either D or J saying stupid shit (which is probably a good thing, honestly).

I'm not thrilled about my no longer being so fucked up being so very suggestively tied to me starting psychiatric treatment.

My friend summed it up well: "That’s a hard moment to pass through where you realize how bad things were."

Yeah. If this is that moment, then yeah. This is a hard moment.

She said that she's glad I'm feeling better, that there was "a legit lot going on for you." I felt just as bitter reading her saying it as I did when I hear D say how she's glad to see me doing better, that she's happy to see me more at peace.

I don't feel happy about it. I feel fucking pissed off.

Again, girlfriend hit the nail on the head: "Yeah, I know it feels all really fraught. And you want the meds to work, but the meds working means you worry something is wrong with your brain and you’re broken, which makes you judge yourself really harshly."

Yeah ... I don't want the meds to work, I want my brain to fucking work.

I've been trying to figure out since my initial realization- is this a new thing in my life, then? Is this going to be my always thing? Am I always going to be taking fucking brain meds? Because I don't normally cry every day and break down on doorsteps -- or at least, I didn't. But I did in December and January.

I'm trying to figure out how much anxiety has been in my life prior to this most recent mess. I was trying to sort things out with J's help last night -- is this new? Has my brain changed since when I was younger? Or is it my social environment that's changed and this is how it's affecting me to live in so much flux? Did the fairly frequent freakouts of the last three years (thanks polyamory) finally just break my brain and give me permanent anxiety??

J shared that he remembers early in our relationship, people in his life who would, after getting to know me a bit, say things like that I seem to be my own harshest critic, and that he views that externalized critic that people can see as a manifestation of my anxiety.

So basically, that he can see it having been around for a long time

But then in the stuff about ADHD, it talks about how anxiety is one of those things that can can result from undiagnosed and untreated ADHD.

The question I'm ultimately trying to answer is if in the future I stop taking guanfacine, will I just go back to spiraling up? I have no fucking idea, *but* this has led to me starting to learn a bunch more about anxiety disorders as well as starting to chew through studies like this one (linked below) that talk about the treatment combo I'm following.

I feel frustrated and like I'm grasping, and I don't know what's going to allow me to feel a sense of peace and acceptance around this. Ugh.

[theexpandedmediaempire]

So yesterday I went out of town with my grandma and dad and his girlfriend so I could buy some new wool (I needlefelt and I’m taking up spinning), and the trip was really fun.

Until we ended up stuck in a bakery for an hour long debate on whether “they” was a valid singular pronoun, and whether ace-spec identities exist or are “just kids wanting to be special”.  Where I was the “LGBT+ spokesperson” or whatever.  So it was basically me uncomfortable, not knowing if I was out as a lesbian to my dad’s gf or my grandma because he told some people but I don’t really know who, and already tired from crowding, unfamiliar environs, and not having a safety rope when dealing with my dad.  

(Basically he used to have a habit of not backing down when upsetting me badly, even in public.  Aaaaaand is the source of my fear of drunk people, yay.)

Anyways, tried to argue on the reasonable (compassionate and not trying to manage other people’s lives) side of stuff, untiiil I was just shutting down from social fatigue, noise, and a moderate danger scenario and going like, “well you say that” and pushing around my crumbs.

Then got trapped fighting brain static to try and explain “cis” “trans” and “nonbinary” to my grandma on the ride back...  Think I got it across functionally?  Awkward when folks try to make me act like Doctor Gender when I’m cis and my credentials consist of “You Know, In The Community”.  Especially when it was me trying to defend a kid I don’t even know from misgendering because my folks were complaining how ~~~haaaaard~~~ it is to use “they” for them.

Or how demisexuality is sooo faaake kiddies being special because the kid’s using it.  Instead of actually thinking about how much value our society places on the “normal” and having a label.  And how our culture is obsessed iwth sex, and insist that it’s expected for everyone, even folks too young, to take part.  And how someone who’s alienated by the standard would probably be excited to learn there’s a name for it.  Aaaaand even if they move away from the identity later there’s literally no harm in them living their peace right now.  But none of that means ace spec stuff doesn’t exist, jsut that people who take that particular angle are pointing at something, and instead of tackling the root problem, they just attack bystanders and affected folks Dealing The Wrong Way.

....Oooooof coooouuurse I can only say that now because I had time to actually gather my thoughts and type shit out, when in person I was trying to figure out how to make my mouth work right and staring out the window repeatedly slipping into daydreams to keep from completely shutting down in public.

[bitchcraftmagic]

I do not think it is a particularly hot take to declare, unequivocally, that the discourse around Pride this year has been, how do you say, rancid. It’s been month old eggs, solid milk, wilted lettuce rancid, baby. Between the unilateral dismissal of all things rainbow to no sexy sex in front of the precious children it’s just been a real mess. And all this messiness had me thinking about my own relationship to Pride and queerness and our history and I have come to some conclusions I would like to scream out into the void, if you don’t mind.

I like to call myself a historian because I got a useless degree in it and it makes me feel good. I am not a professional by any stretch of the imagination unless there is someone who can pay me to talk out of my ass, but alas, there is not. Instead I must deliver my missives for free here on this hellsite and pretend my $320,000 financial mistake gives me any authority on the subject . With that being said I have noticed, with alarming clarity, that people don’t know fucking shit about the past. Everyone just thinks the people of the past were dumbfucks who couldn’t wipe their ass and died at the ripe old age of thirty with twenty seven kids surrounding them. Critical fucking thinking be damned. Part of this is a shitty education system and the other part is rampant incuriosity. Some motherfuckers don’t care and it shows. Others just walk around with unearned confidence thinking they know all there is to know about history. It is an epidemic that will lead to our downfall, for this I am sure. But I digress. I say all of this to illustrate that so many queer people nowadays do not have a single clue where we came from and thus our discourse has become a hell from which we cannot escape.

Every year during pride month I watch the documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” It came out in 2012, same year I did, and I have gone out of my way to watch it every year. I own it, which says something in this age of streaming. And every year as I sit and sob, heart aching, eyes swollen, despair settled into my fragile bones I ask myself why? Why do I do this? It’s not a fun watch. It’s painful. But I watch it anyways. I watch it because it humbles me. I watch it because it hurts. I watch it because I see the anger and pain of a community that was so reviled by society it was left to die. And yet they screamed so loud that they could not be ignored. I watch with awe and reverence for the people who made it a fucking point to not die in vain but to go out with such force and righteous anger that no one could look away. To see what ACT UP did, to see what just average every day people did to make sure everyone understood that this was murder by neglect is something to be proud of. The fact that we as a community survived, that we as a community did not go quietly into that good night, the fact that we still created beautiful things and had beautiful lives despite the horror and vitriol that was laid at our feet is something to be infinitely proud of. It is why we celebrate Pride. We have Pride because every time they tried to shame us, to kill us, we said fuck you. It is pain and it is beauty. That’s our history. It behooves us not to lose sight of that.

The arbiters of discourse right now, I think, are rather young queer folk. I’ve seen a stat that says a 3rd of Gen Z identify as queer and I think because they have the numbers they have a pretty loud voice within in the community. I believe, for the most part, that this is a positive. The children are the future, etc. But I think a lot of Gen Z folks have lived in a world where queer acceptance is something that is rather commonplace. It is not really and truly, of course, and there are many things that still need to change but society at large is okay with queerness. To verbally come out against the LGBTQIA+ community is seen, at the very least, as “uncool” and you will be roundly mocked for your rather regressive stance on sexuality. This doesn’t have that much substantial advantage when we are systematically oppressed but the more privileged among us don’t feel the sting of it. I think this allows many people to live in the fantasy that expressions of queerness must adhere to a new set of rules devoid of historical context.

Rainbow capitalism is the buzz word de jour. It lives in the pantheon of misunderstood terms the internet has gobbled up. Gaslighting, normalize, cancel and rainbow capitalism exist in this pseudo-leftist hellscape where annoying people with internet access wax poetic about how ‘problematic’ Rugrats actually was because Deedee didn’t seem to have a life outside of the Pickle’s offspring (I made this up for comedic affect. If it exists in reality please do not tell me about it). Rainbow capitalism started off as an intelligent critique on the way in which corporations utilized queer imagery during Pride month to seem inclusive when in fact they were part of a the very structure that oppressed us. Wells Fargo, McDonalds, Unilever, shit corporations like this that slap a rainbow on something stupid and float down some Main Street in a liberal city claiming altruism when not a penny of their massive profits went into a queer person’s pocket. What it has been reduced to is a tool to make fun of any rainbow themed thing and any corny fool who dares dawn a pair of colorful shoes. We live in a society, baby, and it’s the nasty beast of capitalism. And in the confines of that society when you are a viable consumer you have value. Capitalism recognizes profit loss and gain not humanity. You earn humanity through market value and rainbow capitalism shows us, in the most twisted way possible, we have gained cultural capital. Is it perfect or even something we should actively desire? No, not really, but it says something about the way things have changed. I’m in my late twenties and when I was a closeted queer teen there was barely any acknowledgment of Pride month. Now I get emails weeks ahead of time telling me about the Big Gay Sale that Anthropologie is going to have or whatever. Sure I roll my eyes and as a big fat commie I do not engage with it but it does say something about our shifting societal acceptance. Oreos said trans rights which is…whatever, but it is also kind of amazing when you remember that not so long ago most of our culture liked to pretend that trans people did not actually exist. For our elders they saw a world that wanted them dead and now see a world that actually wants to cater to them even if it’s only for one profitable month. It isn’t perfect but it’s something. Your problem is not the rainbow part it’s the capitalism part. You hate being reduced to a consumer instead of, say, a human fucking being with a soul. We all have to participate in this nightmare but at least we can eek out a small modicum of joy when we rub our rotting bodies down with a rainbow themed soap bar. If you truly hate rainbow capitalism so much consider celebrating Pride a month early, on May 1st, with workers around the world and strike, baby. Use that queer anger and fuck capitalism right up the ass.

This brings me to my next point. Sex belongs at pride. End of story. Kids do too. And there are ways in which kink and sex can be separated from children and families at pride. I’m as sexually repressed as any former Catholic can be but I recognize that the fact that I am uncomfortable with some kink shit is on me and no one else. Queer people have been demonized for our sexuality, for being too sexual, for being ‘deviantly’ sexual. Flaunting our sexuality is and act of defiance. Don’t get it twisted. Also, kids seeing non-explicit sexual expression is not the end of the world. Human bodies and sexuality are not inherently bad or predatory and should not radically traumatize a person, minor or otherwise. I’m not saying go to bone town in public, I’m just saying a leather harness will not make a child weep in terror. Y’all have to be smarter than this.

The discourse is bad but what is worse is that no one seems to be listening. Queer history, in all its pain and glory, is forgotten or ignored. We can’t do that. We cannot allow our stories, our lives, our pain to mean nothing. Fucking learn about our struggles and our triumphs. Don’t fucking forget this all can go away in a blink of an eye and we have to fucking fight tooth and nail to be heard and respected. A don’t forget how far we have come. Our ancestors did not fight and die for us to forget them. And our community, around the world, still suffers and cries out for us. Remember that the next time you clown on some rainbow sneakers that at least they want your money and not your fucking life.*

*this was good line to end on but I do want to acknowledge that here, in these United States, black trans women are still fighting for their lives daily. I just liked the, uh, semi-poetic nature of the sentence. Thankyousomuch.

[stvlti]

my mother’s friend just sent me a transphobic psa video on WhatsApp

i grew some figurative spine and for the first time told an elder to back off. (it’s been trained in me by my culture to show deference to an elder member of society, so that really did take guts.) still, i wanted to see what the other side’s arguments are for opposing legal recognition of the gender identities of transgender individuals, so i gave the video a watch. 

i have liveblogged my thoughts:

(tw for transphobic language in Chinese)

“一向以來，我哋既社會都係按照人出世時既性徵將人分成男同埋女既兩種性別。社會上設施既使用、團體既會員制度、甚至係婚姻制度，都會參照生理性別既分類來運作。”

omg the more i hear rhetoric like this the more i find Heteros(tm) to be this weird, bizarre cult with the need to categorise everyone by their genitals and organise their social activities around that. why the fuck?? and do people not see how absurdly rigid that is???

“近年有人提出社會要顧及嗰哋唔接受原生性別[既人]"

okay so it’s already very clear that the other side never even bothered to listen in the first place. “ 唔接受原生性別 ”?? nah mate, that’s not their “original” gender/sex, it’s what’s been assigned to them at birth. plus it’s not like they chose to reject their assigned gender on a whim, there’s this thing called psychology? and gender dysphoria?? do some research and we’ll talk.

hmm, well, in the same breath the narrator then brings up gender dysphoria, but clearly they see it as nothing but a medical condition. how else can you put that forward matter-of-factly and still oppose the tried and successful measures now suggested to be put in place in order to alleviate the gender dysphoria of trans folks here? (simply because those measures infringe upon your rigid social views about what’s useful in organising the population by binary sex categories?) yeah sure of course you can’t put yourself in the shoes of those that do suffer from gender dysphoria, you think it’s as simple as ‘getting rid’ of it like a common cold, don’t you, Karen?

so now they’re listing some negative-outcome scenarios should the government legalise gender recognition for transgender individuals. okay, let’s hear them:

hah, of-fucking-course the first case they present is set in an ~Extreme Religious Environment. i’m kinda kidding, kinda not. 

(i’m gonna stop quoting directly because typing full sentences of Cantonese on PC is a pain, so i’m just going to paraphrase the narrator:)

in this scenario, the narrator introduces a boy(*) struggling with gender dysphoria, who has lived many years wearing feminine clothing and hairstyles to help mask the dysphoria. finally, he(*) decides to transition, all while attending a religious (probably Catholic/Christian lbr here) school.

not likely considering our sociopolitical climate, but i’ll bite. 

(*) what the narrator really meant is an amab transgirl that had been suffering from gender dysphoria pre-transition, right?? but then i wouldn’t expect them to understand what constitutes as transphobic language and what doesn’t - not like they cared to begin with, smdh

Ah Mei has her reassigned gender affirmed on her ID. now, due to the school’s stringent religious and moral views that have always taught their students the differences between men and women--

ugh, there it is again, being so damn fixated on binary sex differences. and i see they’re pulling the moral card too, how typical

--the school cannot not obey their own teachings. therefore, under the government’s ruling, they relent and recognise Ah Mei as a girl, letting her wear her hair long, and the girl’s uniform, in accordance to their dress codes.

well, so far so good, even though there’s a ridiculous presumption there that girls must wear long hair... (whatever would someone like me do in a school like that??)

this affects the school’s 辦學自由and宗教自由.

ope, there it is!! agreeing to respect and recognise an individual’s identity is somehow an infringement on your rights - but you never think about how everyday you misgender someone like Ah Mei, or suppress her right to identify the way she needs to, is also a form of freedom infringement? i’m drained,, we’re only 1:39 into the video guys

學校課程亦因性別承認發而修改 ...... 除了教生理性別，亦要教心理性別，話人有選擇性別的自由。咁樣，所有學生都要接受這種跨性別概念的教育。

um?? again it’s not a choice, the choice to transition is a choice yeah, but being transgender and having gender dysphoria is not a fucking choice

also, it’s high time we teach the kids here the differences between sex and gender. why would you want to stay ass-backwards when it’s something that’s been clearly defined in psych circles for years now? just because our education system is lacking and doesn’t match up with international standards doesn’t mean the international standards is,, “morally corrupt”?? (i’m afraid you’ve shown your hand there, my conservative opponent.)

嚴重衝擊嗰哋不認同的家長的教育自由

again, respecting rights/freedom is a two way street, so how about you shut the fuck up and listen to our narrative for once? you are welcome to voice your dissent and debate us, but shutting us down before we even start... that’s a low blow, my guy.

they’re still going on about Ah Mei, but now they’ve opened a whole new can of worms on the locker room issue. and why, of course they’ve honed in on the detail of her pre-op genitalia. 

first of all, rude. why are you discussing an underaged girl’s body? do you even understand how creepy and invasive that is? 

secondly, what are the chances that another 泳客 will actually get a glimpse of Ah Mei’s genitals? you think transwomen really be out there flinging their junk around? they’re probably more afraid of bigots like you and have already been bolting themselves into cubicles to change.

thirdly, why do cis people always assume that all transwomen aren’t getting themselves GRS? in all their proposed scenarios they always imagine a transwoman, regardless of age, flashing ciswomen in locker rooms and exposing pre-op genitals. oh my god. setting aside the problematic as hell assumption that transwomen are somehow inherently sexually deviant (christ), what you gonna do about those that do transition surgically? your argument’s gotta account for all of them or none of them, Harold.

still going on about Ah Mei’s life in sports, and now they’re talking about hormonal differences between an amab person like Ah Mei and cis women, and how it’s unfair for women in sports. i understand this is a hot button issue right now, so i really don’t have a straight and simple answer for it either, but hey maybe we should really stop basing social activities like sports registers around sex differences? not like i’ve been dropping hints for this all throughout this post lol. 

(but for real, we already have cis women weightlifters and fighters taking T to enhance their performances anyway, so why not just start categorising sports players by their hormonal levels instead of their assigned gender at birth? sigh)

i started this thread out wanting to rebut the video point by point, but honestly, i don’t think i have the strength to today (or ever). i’m only at the 2:37 mark, but if i have to sit through another 4 minutes of this bullcrap i think i’m gonna smash something. maybe another time, satan.

(TBC?)