#can you be lesbian and non-binary? I never got a proper answer-

[bruja1837]

Spanish Lessons

Me: *trying to learn how to roll my Rs so I can speak Spanish like a proper Dominican*

dad: you need to learn this if you wanna like women

step-mom: yep

Me: 😀!!!?!!?

[maldito-arbol]

Sexuality and/or gender head canons for the calamity trio in ibybf? (Sorry for all the asks,,)

No no I’m having the time of my life answering :3 and because I feel like Neurodivergently Rambling currently this post is about to be kinda Long

SCREECH OKAU OKAY SO THIS IS HOW I HEADCANON EVERYONE IN CANON

Anne

Sexuality: lesbian

Gender: trans girl she/her OR she/they both good

Marcy

Sexuality: lesbian (my irl friends insist she’s pan but i know her personally ok)

Gender: literally any flavor of non-binary, tho I’m biased towards it/they pronouns for our Marbles

Sasha

Sexuality: bisexual (it’s the VIBE idk how else to explain it)

Gender: Genderfluid and/or transmasc headcanons are all very big brain, tho im biased towards she/he pronouns for our Sashy

+They’re all poly too sorry I don’t make the rules

+I like the headcanons where when Sasha and Anne figure out their Genders they swap any and all gendered clothing

+Sasha and Marcy help each other bind cause god knows it is Difficult sometimes

+the fact that short hair Sasha has become a Phenomenon in the fandom will never cease to amaze and enchant me but I like to think Marcy helped her and/or went with him to Do the Deed and they both got nailed with Gender Euphoria all at once

+this is entirely off topic but the very first character I headcanoned as trans was Sprig he just gives off VIBES aGAIN and I think he’s pansexual too. But Anne was my immediate second she is so trans i can’t function wndjwksks

Now for IBYBF in particular, I don’t know. Their sexuality headcanons still apply but I’m not sure what to do about genders. It really never crossed my mind to do anything Gender related with the trio especially since I was still grappling with my own gender identity when I started off with PMIT and I most certainly was not Out to anyone at that point, which means the series started and has continued with everyone being cis. HOWEVER,,,, you can tell my Gender influence has started bleeding in with the Gems having blue hair and pronouns. Heart being they/them, Wit being she/her, and Strength being it/its. This was largely because I started off using it/its on all of them but then I was like ‘no no, give them some flavor✨’ so here we are now. A large part of this decision also has to do with the emphasis I’m placing on the Gems being People, which, going forward, you’re going to see a lot more of. (One of the major threads of fic 3 is going to revolve around the dynamics between the gems and their previous vessels and how it’s impacted who they are now.)

Will I touch Gender territory with the calamity trio in the future? I don’t know. I talked about the question in a reply to a comment on the fic proper too but basically most of what holds me back is the fear that I might portray something inaccurately at best or straight up offensive at worst. I know very little about the experience of mtfs because I’m afab and while I am Genderfluid, I’ve come to understand my experience is hardly universal and Gender is experienced very differently by different people. I could write it In Theory, I’m just terrified of doing so sndjeksksk. It’s in a similar vein to my fear of how I’m portraying polyam relationships too—which I went on that terribly disjointed rant about in my last post. Its a topic that gives me Anxiety and I don’t know if I wanna tackle another when I’m already freaking out about writing poly relationships even tho I AM POLY. We’ll see how I feel in the future tho—after all, I was worried I’d be too uncomfortable portraying Anne’s self-destruction arc too and yet i did it anyway.

But anyway if you would like to read the characters as Gender regardless feel free to do so in fact I encourage you to do so cause damn sis those girls ain’t cis 🧐 thank u for coming to my Ted talk 💜

[natkat-140]

National Coming Out Day

I’ve always known that I was attracted to women. I grew up with a lot of my girlfriends saying things like “omg I would become lesbian for Angelina Jolie” or like “that girl in our math class is so hot, if I was into girls I’d date her.” As a teen, I heard about girls making out with other girls, and it was just a thing that happened. Like, straight girls making out with other straight girls. It felt like it was commonplace for straight women to be sexually attracted to women. (What?) Five, ten, and fifteen years later, I found out that most of those friends of mine who said those things ended up coming out as lesbian or bisexual. Haha. Anyways, at the time though, even though I was attracted to women, I saw my “straight” friends saying that they were attracted to women, and I was like oh ok, I guess I’m straight too.

Additionally, most of the time I wasn’t as attracted to women as I was to men, so I felt like I couldn’t rightfully claim to be bisexual. Some days I liked women more than men, some days I didn’t like women at all. I thought that it had to be fifty/fifty or nothing. I didn’t want to say I was bisexual when those feelings towards women were often less-than, and sometimes absent.

Over the last year or so, I had done a lot more research about the queer community and what different labels meant and how I could be a better ally, because, you know, I was straight. I found myself closely identifying with certain descriptions, and light bulbs popped up when I read about how sexuality is a spectrum, and that sexual attraction can be fluid. And while I mostly have been attracted to cis men and women, I’ve also found myself being attracted to transgender actors - both male-to-female and female-to-male - and people who identify as non-binary or gender fluid. I’m still figuring out what the proper labels would be for how I identify, and experience will help with that. I’ve never had a relationship with a person that wasn’t a cis male, so I’m open to learning more about myself. But for now, I say that I am bi+ / pansexual (TL;DR description is basically that I don’t discriminate romantic, emotional, or sexual attraction based on what body parts a person was born with or what gender, if any, they identify as.)

I had really, really wanted to go to Pride events this past summer. I wanted to be a part of all the joy and love and support and wonderful togetherness of the queer community. I even showed up to a couple of them, but because I wasn’t fully “out,” I felt like a fraud. My guilt and anxiety and shame got the best of me so I left the events after only 20 minutes or so of being there. How can I be proud when I’m not out? How can I claim that I have pride when I’m too scared to tell my parents? How can I come to this kind of event and disrespect all these wonderful humans who ARE out, who DID face their fears, who CAN be proud of their actions; how can I stand beside them and pretend that I’m one of them?

Elana Rubin wrote a lovely little piece on celebrating when you’re not out, which you can read in its entirety here, but I’m including this excerpt now:

“You should remember that just because you're not "out," you're no less queer or no less deserving of a space in the community. If you identify somewhere along the LGBTQ+ spectrum, Pride Month is just as much yours as anyone else's – there are no certifications to prove your queerness to gain celebrating a month that is simply yours. So don't feel pressured or the need to come out in order to be "validated" to celebrate Pride Month. Just being yourself warrants celebration enough during this monthlong appreciation of queer folk, so you should join in however feels comfortable to you.”

I wish I had read that before today!

My coming out experience has been over a long time. First, I casually came out to some of my friends here and there over the last year or so.

A friend would ask “So, have you met any guys lately?” referring to my dating life.

I’d answer “No, I haven’t met any guys, no ladies either.”

“Hah… wait so you like girls?”

“Yeah. And guys too.”

“Oh. Cool. Where do you wanna get lunch?”

I was glad that it didn’t have to always be this big spectacle. Not to say that my sexual identity wasn’t important to me, but it took a lot of pressure off of me to be able to just mention it rather than have like a formal meeting with people individually or to come out to everyone all at once over Facebook.

I came out to both of my brothers a few weeks ago. Honest to goodness, I thought they both already knew or at least had some inclination that I wasn’t entirely straight. I was nervous to tell them. Not because of fear that they wouldn’t accept me or love me; I knew for a damned fact that they would fully, unequivocally support me and love me, just as I would them. I was probably nervous because it meant that I was one step closer to telling my parents, which I actually was scared to do. Telling my brothers went just as well as expected and they expressed their love and support and it was wonderful and they are wonderful.

I shared this information on a Saturday night in-person with one brother, and on Sunday afternoon with the other over the phone because he lives far away. When I was done with the phone call, I was at home reflecting on how well the interactions went with both of them and how excited I was to tell my therapist that I came out to them and then I was suddenly overcome with a fucking weird-ass mix of panic and relief and regret. Yeah, I was really confused about what I was feeling. I sobbed and sobbed and screamed into my pillow and I got up and grabbed my keys to leave and then realized I shouldn’t drive so I threw my keys across the room and I cried more and I stood there alone in my room, frantically looking around for help, and actually yellied out-loud “help me!”

I don’t know who the fuck I thought I was talking to or what kind of help I needed, but I was freaking out. I thought about calling some of my queer friends and asking them for help, but again, I didn’t know what the fuck I needed. Like what would I say? “I had a really positive and personal experience with two of the four people in my life who love me the very most and they still love me the very most and it was awesome and nothing bad happened! Wahh!” Hahah, yeah. Basically. I dunno. Anyways I cried for like 2 hours and then I was fine. I can’t even imagine what I would have felt if it hadn’t gone well.

Coming out to my parents was something I had talked to my therapist about, and he helped me feel comfortable about not telling them until I was really ready. I had also considered not coming out to them unless I became seriously involved with someone who didn’t identify as a cis-man. After a little while, though, I realized that I want to continue having a close relationship with my parents, and that I wanted to be able to be my full, true self with them, so I decided that I would tell them, at some point, soonish. I had planned on having a session with my therapist where we talked about how I should approach it and what kind of steps I should take to prepare for it and what positive coping strategies I should have in place in case it didn’t go well and it was going to be this whole, well-thought-out production. That didn’t end up happening at all!

Yesterday I picked up my dad from the airport. When I dropped him off at home, we were about to hug goodbye, and I felt this strong urge to blurt out “I’M BISEXUAL!” Fortunately, I had the self-restraint to NOT do that, lol. I told him there was something I wanted to talk to him about and then I felt like I had to vomit and then I started back-peddling and thinking of other things I could talk to him about that would warrant me saying that I wanted to talk to him about it so that I wouldn’t have to talk to him about me being bisexual. I had considered how I thought he might react. I thought that most likely, he would just say “ok,” not be able to look me in the eye, tell me he would pray for me, and then maybe avoid talking about it ever again. I thought maybe, maybe, it would be possible that he would get mad and disappointed and ask God why and ask me how I could do this do him and at the end he’d tell me it was ok because he knew it was just a phase and that I’d come to my senses soon enough. I dunno, I had never really talked to my dad about how he felt about queer people. I’ve never heard him explicitly condemn that lifestyle, but he is Catholic, and I used to be Catholic, and I know what the Catholic church teaches about queer lifestyles.

He invited me into his house and told me to have a seat while he put some things away. I walked in and looked at the chair which was way too far away from the door that I thought I’d have to bolt out of when he didn’t take the news well. I didn’t sit down. He put some things away, came back out, and again said “have a seat.” I didn’t, and I walked closer to the door. I told him, “I thought you should know, I’m not entirely straight.” He nodded his head and said gently and sweetly, “Okay.” I kept going, trying to do prophylactic damage control, explaining how I’ve known this for a long time and it doesn’t change who I am and I still feel the same about relationships and love and intimacy and it doesn’t make me a bad person and - before I could even get like, halfway through what I was going to say, I’m guessing he saw my eyes constantly shifting and avoiding his gaze and he heard my voice starting to tremble and that I was tripping over my words and he placed his hand on my shoulder and said very reassuringly, “nana, it’s okay, God made you the way you’re supposed to be, and I love you for being you.”  wHAT! Oh. OH! He hugged me and said “I love you” and I was overwhelmed with pleasant surprise and relief that he not only still loved me but also accepted that this was a part of who I am and I started crying and I said “thank you” and he said “no, you never need to thank me for loving you.” Which totally didn’t make me cry more.

I figured since I came out to my dad unexpectedly, I should probably tell my mom too. I went over to her house and I told her there was something I wanted to talk to her about. She told me this worried her. I assured her everything was fine and we could talk about it later. We chatted and laughed and she gave me some pumpkin spiced rum and a pair of shoes (thanks mom!). We both had appointments that we had to leave for, so it was a little bit rushed, but when we were hugging goodbye I told her, “Mom, I’m bisexual. I thought you should know.” She looked at me blankly for about 2 seconds, then her face lit up, and she said “you like girls?!?” I laughed, said “yeah, and guys.” She frowned, and said, “isn’t that too much?” I laughed again, and then she laughed, and said “Okay banano, you can’t change who you are and I still love you. Just don’t date anyone shitty, I don’t want to see you crying unless they’re tears of joy. Does your dad know?” I told her about our interaction and she was stoked just like I was.

I wasn’t as nervous about telling my mom because she’s always had gay and lesbian friends, and I was living with her back when Prop 8 was a thing, and we talked about gay rights when she had seen me gearing up with “NO on 8” signs to go protest it. I still certainly felt like I should prepare for her to not be stoked, though, because like my dad, she is also Catholic. Both of my parents probably grew up being taught that being anything but straight was wrong and punishable by an eternity in hell. I figured my mom would likely accept it, but that there still might be the possibility of her being like “yeah I’m okay with my friends being queer, but not my own daughter.” But like my dad, my mom is rad. And I am stoked.

However, I completely recognize how unbelievably fortunate I am to have such loving and supportive family and friends. So, SO many people are not anywhere near as fortunate. Not everyone who wants to come out can do so safely. Not everyone who does come out is welcomed with love and support. Which is why visibility and community and allies are so important. Sharing intimate details may not be for everyone, and that’s completely fine. But, I will say, that when I’ve learned about others’ personal lives and certain details about them (most relevantly, regarding sexual orientation and mental health issues), it has helped me. It helped me feel less alone and more empowered, which is why I’ve been sharing about mine these past two days. It’s a funny coincidence that yesterday was mental health day and today was coming out day, and those two have played a large part in my life lately.

Anyways, the following websites / accounts may be helpful for those queer people who feel isolated or unsafe or who need assistance after coming out.

<3

https://www.thetrevorproject.org

https://www.pride.com/

https://www.hrc.org/

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.glaad.org/

http://www.pflag.org/

http://www.noh8campaign.com/

https://itgetsbetter.org/

Instagram:

@queertraffic

@operationwarmwishes