#even when i was objectively a lesbian i never liked that term for myself. but i think if i had known about reclaiming dyke back then

[foldingfittedsheets]

A basic human skill that people usually lock down around the age of three or four is impulse control. To conceptualize an action and it’s consequences before taking it. Maybe considering how that action affects other people. We then refine it through most of our childhood.

When I was a teenager my hold on this ability became… tenuous. I became a volatile and dangerous creature.

It’s probably not unique to me, but I had a perfect storm in terms of mental upsets. I had just mastered enough basic social skills, so I finally had a strong group of friends when my dad suddenly needed to move for work. Ripped away from my support network, blooming with hormones, I was dragged to Arizona. I was always a child of forests and mist and suddenly everything was hot, dry, and extremely pointy and aggressive.

Additionally to being abruptly transplanted I found myself an object of affection in a way I’d never been before. Lonely and desperate to make friends the only people who wanted to spend time with me had romantic designs. I just wanted to figure out my shit but I had a baby lesbian flirting with increasing aggression in art, a soft boy making heart eyes at me in biology, a senior nerd asking if I wanted to play Halo at his house and could he hold my hand?

Reader, I snapped. I didn’t want this romantic attention but I also didn’t want to be alone. My brain coped the only way it knew how, by simply cutting out decision making. Any action was the right action to take.

It started with the boy in biology. I’d stolen his pencil out of mischief and to my overwhelming fury instead of trying to steal it back he just softened his eyes and chucked me gently under my chin, a gesture so overtly sweet and romantic that I saw red.

I stabbed him with his own pencil.

I honestly and truly have no memory of it. It happened as fast as a snake striking and I was instantly filled with terrified remorse. Unfortunately that manifested as psychotic giggling.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t- I don’t know why- I’m so sorry!” I said, while hysterically laughing. I ended up having lodged some graphite in his palm and had to tweeze it out with my nails while apologizing furiously. (It’s very important to note here that he forgave me and we’re still friends)

That was weird, I thought. Why didn’t I think before I stabbed someone?

The next event was equally catastrophic, and I had even less reason to do it. In gym with two girls I was tentatively befriending, we were warming up running laps. I started racing one of them. At breakneck speed we were sprinting around the gym.

This time, there was a blip of thought before I fucked up. I should get the other girl! I have no idea why or what the plan was but I turned on a swivel and body checked the other girl. We both fell down in immense pain. I think that’s the moment I broke my tailbone. Her knees were horribly bruised and she looked at me in bewildered pain. “Why did you do that?!”

I had no idea. I apologized and helped her up, both of us hobbling like newborn horses, bruised and hurting.

By this time there’d been enough social upheavals that I was reduced to spending time with some girls I had nothing in common with and low key disliked. Sat at a table listening to this girl talk about how she wanted to be a stripper when she grew up I thought, You’d better put the cap on before you throw it.

I then chucked my empty water bottle directly at her face. It bounced off her forehead with a bop! that would have made a sound mixer weep at its perfection.

All eyes turned to me is startlement. I stared back at her, stunned by my own action, just as confused as everyone else at the table as to why I’d done that. One of the girls to my right said, “Were you trying to hit that fly?”

“Yes!” I lied, “I’m sorry, I thought I could hit the fly!”

Everyone laughed at my antics and I joined in rather than admit I had just chucked something at her for no reason.

Things did start to improve after that. I solidified a friendship with the girl I’d raced (who I developed a massive crush on and ten years later would go on to date). My outbursts turned more whimsical rather than aggressive. Like accosting a girl leaving the cafeteria to look deeply into her eyes and say with great compassion, “It’s going to be alright.”

My new friend and I snuck into the van that delivered our cafeterias baked goods and lay giggling in the back. When I’d impulsively hopped in she’d joined me and made it a game.

After a year in Arizona I broke down crying to my mother, an act of great desperation, and we ended up moving back home. My impulse control returned to normal teenage levels and life resumed in a happier state of mind.

[lickthatbattery]

gender is fucked up. it's like. i'm a trans man. i'm multigender. femaleness or whatever is definitely part of my gender identity and experience, an important part at that, but to refer to me in 99.9% of ways that would be indicative of such would be misgendering. i don't even self-refer that way. but it's still relevant and important to my gender experience even if it's not verbalized and as a result, largely internal

[sammy--moh]

A random ramble about my identity, modern queer community and queer history bc I'm hyperfixated

(I don't want slur discourse under my post. I reclaim words that have been directly used to oppress me only and only towards myself, that's where the conversation ends)

(Cis/Hets don't touch this post

Terfs especially don't even look at this post

Anti kink fuckers don't look at this post, kink and LGBT are separate things but you cannot untangle kink history from queer/LGBT history

If your against the use of the word queer, don't clown on this post

Queer cis people are free to interact and add their opinions but don't clown on this post

Trans people and queer punks and activists please interact <3

Any corrections are welcomed as long as their constructive)

So you could probably find a few posts of me talking about some of my more modern and neo/xeno identity labels, its something I'm fairly proud of I'm a neo pronoun user and have been out as a nonbinary man for a long time

But I don't think I talk about my more, I guess classical and older queer labels and that feels disingenuous because I do still love queer history and have a lot of what would be considered ""outdated"" identieies

Yeah I'm a neo user and have some xeno gender labels, and I'm T4T which as far as I know is a label thats been around a long time but its still common and normally used today

But im also just a gender nonconformist(sometimes i use and reclaim the words transexual and transvestite just to piss off cis people who say i cant), i unapolgetically reclaim the word f4g, im in the leather community, I'm a fem man, im a cub, all things that have been around maybe since the 60s - 70s that I/still/ find connection to, comfort and community in

I mean hell I usually consider myself to currently be in a masc 4 fem relationship which you'd probably never guess by just looking at me

Which is another thing! Why is it always assumed that cubs and bears are the mascs?? I think I have more traditionally feminine clothing and presentation then most of my twink friends, I am a big, fat, extroverted, hairy cub and I am still the fem in one of my relationships and very feminine and fem presenting in general

Obviously masc 4 fem is not the only kind of mlm and wlm relationship that's stupid sndnd and expecting it is heteronormative, some people are masc 4 masc,fem 4 fem, heck not everyone /likes/ traditional masc fem labels and that's awesome!

Another thing I don't see a lot of people talk about is the fact that the bear and cub community is objectively a body positivity movement, that's what it started as that's what it always will be

Bear culture was a reaction to the beauty standards of gay culture at the time, when the ideal in gay relationships were young, thin, conventionally attractive gay and bi/multisexual men

Bear culture was specifically made to appreciate, lift up, and love large, hairy,sometimes older gay and bi/multsexual men and cub culture branched off from bears

I'm gonna be honest, I am recovering from a few body image issues and disorders that I wont go in depth on, and bear + cub culture has helped me to love myself and my body and find myself attractive more than any other body positivity space! Not to say other body positvity spaces arent important and needed, but that as a queer trans man this one has been the space I felt the most welcomed in

I wish there were a few expectations we could leave behind, like the idea that bears and cubs only date other bears and cubs, that terms like bear, twink, otter, leather gay, ect are gay exclusive and not just mlm and nwlnw terms, that fem and masc culture are gay and lesbian exclusive (dont come at me there are several moments in history we see these terms used by bi and generally queer men and that show masc and fem culture in bi and generally queer spaces)

I wish I could find more people like me in history, trans men who weren't masc, transmen and transmascs that were unapologetically feminine, I want to find transman queens in history, trans gay and mlm men, it's hard to find.. but I'm almost positive there has to be at least some people like me in queer history

But in general there's so much we can learn and keep from older queer culture that I feel has been lost a lot with younger generations

I love modern queer culture and neo/xeno labels and communities ans MOGAI and the breakdown of gender norms and sexual expectations

But im also unapolgetically a fem, leather loving, kinkster, trans fucking, fat cub, cross dressing faggot

All of these things are me

You cannot untangle or separate these identieies and labels from /me/

There are riots and loss in my history, and there is raw, unapolgetic queer beauty as well. there is pride in my veins, and fight in my lungs, and I wouldn't trade any of it for shit

[katy-l-wood]

Who wants spoilers?

My new book comes out on October 31st, and I know some people prefer having more of a heads up about what happens in books than others, so this post shall be full of spoilery details below the cut, for those who want them!

You can find all the places to purchase the book on my website.

Main Characters:

Royal is genderfluid and queer and in their early 20s. Uses they/them pronouns. Appears as both a man, woman, and ??? at varying times throughout the story. Royal also suffers from chronic pain, something that plays a crucial role in the plot due to the fact they use magic to deal with it, but the problem with that is sometimes it works a little TOO good. Royal is obsessed with the magic of the Pits.

Clarabella is lesbian, is 17 (almost 18), and has a girlfriend named Emilia. She is Royal's younger sister. She does not believe in magic at the start of the book. She's considered the Good Sibling of her family, but only because she was always compared to Royal who was much louder in their nonsense so Clarabella seemed fine by comparison. She is not fine.

Shiloh is gay, in his mid 20s, and dating Royal. He is a VERY large Irish man with wild curly red hair and a beard that comes to a point, along with a twirled mustache. When Clarabella meets him she thinks he has a face the devil would steal. He is actually a teddybear, and worked as a teacher for a short time. His mother died when he was young in a house fire. He rides a semi-magical horse that is about twice the size of a regular horse. Said horse bites.

Akhíta is in her early 20s and 1/2 Lakota, 1/2 Black. Her father was a former slave who died in the Civil War when Akhíta was a toddler. She's loosely the leader of the little outlaw gang, but only in a vague sense. Her mother is a nurse and has so far managed to escape getting rounded up onto a reservation because she's been useful in the rural area she lives. It's implied that Akhíta frequently leaves the group to free people still being held in slavery/slavery like conditions and smuggles them to safety.

Other Characters:

Little Mountain is a Ute woman in her mid 20s and is completely deaf.

Emilia is 18, a lesbian, and Clarabella's girlfriend. Her father tries to marry her off to a rich Duke in California, which is what kicks off the plot of the book as Clarabella tries to go and rescue her. Emilia ends up getting corrupted by the magic of the Pits.

Fox is a 16ish trans man who ran away with Royal after Royal robbed his parents' house and Fox realized "hey, this person is genderweird, which sure does explain some things about myself, and I wanna know more."

The Preachers are a group of magical women who roam the Pits making deals. It is rumored they are women who ran away from abusive husbands and died in the Pits, but no one is entirely sure.

Plot Details:

No characters die. Royal is believed to have died at the end of the book, but in the epilogue it is revealed they are not actually dead, but some weird shit has certainly happened.

There are several gunfights throughout the book, and some do result in injuries of main characters and the death of NPC type characters.

The Pits, as they're known, are essentially inside-out mountains and the deeper you go the weirder the magic gets. Because of this, people do not go into the Pits, and those who do never come out for reasons unknown. If manmade objects get left in the Pits for long enough, they start to get imbued with unpredictable magical properties. Royal's gang goes into the shallow areas of the Pits--deep enough for objects to turn magical, but not so deep they're in much danger by doing so--and retrieves these objects, selling them to random rich people.

Some animals are implied to be killed during a big fight with fantasy creatures. Also the expected mentions of hunting and fishing for a story like this. Shiloh is injured in this attack.

There are a lot of discussions about racist/neglectful parents and coming to terms that even if they were good to YOU, that doesn't mean they were good people (and maybe they weren't all that good to you either).

There's no major on page racism and homophobia as part of the plot. These things are acknowledged, but only tangentially. Sometimes you just need a weird, fun fantasy story, ya know?

There is a scene where Clarabella nearly falls to her death when her rope snaps as the group is climbing down a cliff.

There's a scene where the characters are in a strange cavern full of huge crystals that show them visions of loved ones--dead and alive--telling them to turn around and go home.

I think that covers most of it? If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

You can find all the places to purchase the book on my website.

[radish64]

putting dumb feelings under read more as is tradition

anyways nothing will upset me more than people being like, idk, “you can transition at any time” or whatever because like objectively, sure. obviously you can. there’s not an expiration date on transitioning. but what upsets me is kind of this refusal to see that for some people it is too late. and im not saying that of other people im saying that of myself. its too late for me. and it bothers me when people tell me it isnt.

if i had known what transness was, if i had known anything beyond cishet conservative monoculture than yeah, i fully believed i would have transitioned as a child. if id been born like five years later, absolutely. i have no doubt. but i wasnt.

its too gd late now. theres nothing that transitioning will do to this fucking meatsuit that will improve literally anything in the slightest. it will just give me more shit to worry about. like, im a literal dwarf whose fat with big femmy features. all that fucking around with that is going to do is make it even more difficult for me to have people take me seriously as an adult.

I don’t think younger queer people understand how quickly it changed. I was extremely active in the queer community as a highschooler, and I had never heard the term asexual until I was 22. It was just you were gay or you were a lesbian or you were lying to yourself that was it those were your options. Like, I missed the boat. By the time I had even learned about it, it already had sailed away.

[lily-orchard-gossip-blog]

On the topic of EoT’s suspension and whether or not that’s a self ask anon, it’s very much likely bc I’ve never really seen any of LO’s fans use her exact name calls for anything or think they’re being creative by coming up with a clever insult for something she doesn’t like, or copy her exact phrasing word for word, not that I’ve really paid much attention to that anyway, however….I was once a LO fan, and my ex as far as I know, most likely still is. Even when we were still together, they sometimes threw around specific terms LO uses when talking about stuff ie “white favoritism” in terms of writing characters, shipping and character lineup, “Poe faced” about a mobile game we played together coming out with a new season at the time and their ‘concern’? over it being unnecessarily ‘edgy’, “gay reylo” about catradora, and “nazi/fascism/abuse apologist” about making their main villain oc irredeemable and making sure not to write them like rebecca sugar would,etc and i hate to say it but they’re a pretty good example of a sheep and not even just when it comes to Lilian. I think what started to have me go down this rabbit hole of how problematic and awful LO really is, is how I kept getting this vibe/fear of accidentally offending her, if I were to interact with her, basically walking on eggshells, which is not good, and brings me back to my own past traumas with toxic abusive assholes I’ve dealt with. If anything I still kind of enjoy MO’s art and videos, but I’ll have to watch in a way that doesn’t go straight to LO’s pocket.

And I kind of have the feeling LO’s influence may have also contributed to even my friendship ending with my ex too, bc even when we broke up as a couple, we were still okay with being friends, and even while I thought things were fine between us after awhile, apparently things weren’t on their end bc they pulled away from me completely over how similar our coming outs were; they told me after reflecting on it, they noticed this pattern of similarities between them and their timings, basically accusing me of copying them and tacking on their labels just so they could notice me? I’m sorry but don’t flatter yourself. Because that is farrrrrrrr from the truth and it literally took me over 6 yrs to come to terms with being gay, going back n forth on whether I was actually bi or lesbian, and even with my pronouns, I am comfortable with going by she/they, and even with those I still contemplated over for awhile bc I always had this fear of ‘faking’, so I made sure to take my time in figuring these things out, regardless whom I was interested in, not letting anyone define me and they knew that. While they said I never did anything objectively wrong, it’s like they just picked apart any “questionable” thing about me and used it as a reason to drop me when she/they were never like that at allllll, more so the opposite, and seeing them act this way felt like such a betrayal because I never saw it coming from someone I considered one of my best friends, we literally started dating on our 7th friendship anniversary the year before. We almost made it to a year and despite their hectic work schedule, I knew they still did their best and I was nothing but understanding and supportive and loved them no matter what…I just..feel like it could have been handled so much better and that we could have come to some sort of understanding. I made it clear that I wanted to hold myself accountable for any flaws and mistakes I may have made throughout our relationship and apologizing for my timings coming off a certain way that offended them…taking responsibility for myself, my actions, any misunderstandings, open to having a civil conversation, call things out and clear up any confusion, but they just weren’t here for it and I don’t think it would have mattered what I had or hadn’t explained at that point, not if they were just going to pick it apart in a black and white/all or nothing way like a certain youtuber they sheep over. Shortly after Christmas, I found they had me blocked/removed on everything… Also they didn’t know I was getting those walking on eggshell vibes from LO either, I never told them, mostly bc they seemed to be defensive of her and I was still trying to figure out my feelings on that, not knowing if it was intuition or just me being paranoid. I’m so sorry if this is all over the place, but I also recall seeing an ask here about friendships falling apart bc of LO’s influence and I felt I may as well work that in and vent a little. If LO encourages questioning the validity of someone’s labels and cutting them off over it, that is truly fucked up, considering she said that if someone identifies a certain way, you don’t question it unless you want your teeth knocked out, yet she also misgenders those she doesn’t like… those inconsistencies alone, among many, are a red flag.

.

[iratesherlock]

* ENOLA HOLMES / ENGLISH / 2H 3M / 2020

— Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson does not appear. — Millie Bobby Brown as Enola Holmes, Helena Bonham Carter as Eudoria Holmes, Sam Claflin as Mycroft Holmes, and Louis Partridge as Tewkesbury. — Directed by Harry Bradbeer and distributed by Netflix. — Favorite Quality: I loved Enola more than I was expecting to, Millie did a fantastic job in this role.

I will begin by admitting that I may be slightly biased in my review, as I don’t like Henry Cavill. I will not be overly negative concerning his portrayal of Sherlock (as he did an okay job), but I wanted to say it to be as honest as possible. Watching this is the third time I have attempted to get through this movie, and the only time I have ever completed it; however, I am disappointed in myself for never getting through the first half of this movie before now. The fourth wall breaking is something I do not usually enjoy, nor quirky main characters, but I absolutely loved Enola; she was so entertaining. I had a hard time watching this movie whenever Mycroft “women don’t deserve rights” Holmes and Sherlock were on screen, but whenever they disappeared, I was having the time of my life watching Enola traverse London. It did fall into the modern demand for action, which took away from the mystery; however, it did actually feel like Enola was using her intelligence to figure things out instead of fumbling into every answer without doing any work. As a lesbian, I am not overly fond of awkward teenage relationships with heterosexual couples, but God, her relationship with Tewkesbury was cute. I think I enjoyed it more than usual because they did not officially end up together, which bugs me in almost all television series and movies I watch. I liked watching them develop feelings for each other but not immediately fall into “die-for-you” love. It might also be a small note, but I appreciate the acknowledgment of choice (and force) in corsetry instead of just being demonized; it was a nice nod toward the history and discussion behind the practice. This movie was aesthetically gorgeous and fulfilled my constant demands for a film set in Victorian England that isn’t just so dark you can’t see anything. The colors were rich throughout and only suffered through the end sequence, which made sense for what was happening. The plot was interesting, and I liked how they changed tracks (in terms of the main focus) early but still managed to make everything come together satisfyingly. I will be honest and say I just could not stand Sherlock or Mycroft; I thought they were both awful and just didn’t fit the characterizations (well, maybe Mycroft did), and I often got so mad when they were on screen I was tempted to fast forward through their parts. I don’t know if we were supposed to come to love Sherlock, but I just felt he was continuously awful and did very little to aid Enola throughout the movie. Mycroft, I just wanted to push him into a puddle and beat him with a blunt object. I think I was supposed to feel that way about him, so I’m not upset; I just felt like I shouldn’t have hated Sherlock as much as I did. That was just a high-class British man with an ego and nothing underneath; at the end of the movie, I still wasn’t sure if he even cared about Enola as much as they wanted me to believe he did. The acting was not bad; I just think I did not enjoy how he was portrayed. Despite those complaints, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and started the sequel immediately after finishing it because I wanted to watch more of Enola. As a Sherlock adaptation, I don’t think it holds up as Sherlock Holmes was unbearable, but as an adjacent media, it was one of my favorites. I haven’t cried because I felt as helpless as the characters in so long, Enola’s experiences made me so emotional throughout that I just loved her. Finally, I am proud to announce I will now be the Holmes’ stepmother because I will marry their mother if it’s the last thing I ever do. The women in this movie were all fantastic; I loved them all.

[lente-ment]

Sorry if this is too personal, but I read on your AO3 that you went from being a fujo to a lesbian. I've heard of that happening before, and I just don't get how someone goes from being into media all about the attractiveness of males and males alone to realizing they are only attracted to females and females alone. Would you mind offering any insight into that process?

See, I'm a cis bi guy who started off straight, but women have remained just as attractive to me as I became more interested in men. I can't imagine being no longer attracted to women because they're hot for different reasons than men and vice versa.

I hope this doesn't come off weird! I just find gender/orientation stuff like this really interesting.

Oh hey, this isn't weird at all! Thank you for asking about a genuinely interesting topic, at least for me. (And sorry for the late reply, what little time I had last week I focused on editing ch13 and getting it ready for publishing... almost there...)

Relating to your question, I'm not even sure where to start, except by acknowledging that, yes, it probably is weird to go from being super into m/m and the whole culture that focuses on men, to being a lesbian who cares little for men (as objects of romantic or sexual desire, I didn't turn into a misandrist, just to clarify). It didn't happen over night, of course. And I do have to say that I had always been a little bit queer to begin with.

Fujoshi, or perhaps simply "readers of yaoi" (since fujoshi is a really derogatory term from what I gathered), are usually women. It is safe to assume that most of those women are straight, or at least attracted to real men in some way. However, men portrayed in yaoi works are rarely reflections of how real men look and behave. That's further supported by the fact that very little gay men read regular yaoi. Some read bara. In regular yaoi, male characters are very "sanitized" versions of men, made for women who only want the emotional side of the whole affair. They want to see the men show their feelings and be vulnerable. But not with them (they want strong men IRL), or other women (jealousy). But with other men? That's okay. Because those stories are always under their control (unlike real life is, for a lot of women). Most of these women also like real men (actors, guys in their school/workplace), and end up dating them/married. I'd like to point out that I haven't read any scientific research, or psychology papers. These are my personal observations and things I discussed with friends in the past regarding this topic.

Anyhow, to get back to my experience, I got into yaoi because these stories were fun. I gotta admit, I'm not sure how I found out about yaoi to begin with. I don't remember anyone around me being particularly vocal about it. I dug that stuff out from the depths of the late 2000s/early 2010s internet all by myself. Anyway, IRL, I was never particularly interested in men. Or anyone, until high school. Shows like Junjou Romantica or Ai no Kusabi were just interesting stories to me. And when I think back on yaoi anime and doujinshis that I consumed religiously in my teenage years, I mostly remember liking the themes they worked with, such as non-con sex, power play, bondage, humiliation etc. I cared little for the physical side of things. What little arousal I felt I connected with my own physiology, not with male genitalia. Meanwhile, yuri never had the same appeal. Those girls were always soft and gentle and shy. I think you know by now that that's not how I roll with my (vamp) lesbians.

After high school, during college, my love for m/m stuff waned. I guess my worldview expanded, and I mulled over being bi so I started considering women as well. The fact that I also never managed to have a relationship with a man longer than a week should've spoken louder volumes to me. As I grew as a person, I realized a lot of yaoi that I was reading was really immature, too. There are still a few works I'd recommend, but everything else doesn't do it for me anymore. Unfortunately, the same thing could be said about f/f stuff. Not just yuri (that is to say, works coming from Japan), but fanfics as well. There aren't really any f/f ships, even today, that I'd root for as hard as I did for some m/m ships. Because of that, I didn't know where I stood for the longest time.

At the end of college/beginning of my adult life, I finally started accepting some things about myself. One of them was that calling myself a lesbian was a completely valid thing to do. It felt a bit weird at the beginning. I come from a somewhat traditional surrounding so I didn't know too many queer people during that process. There was nobody to validate my feelings externally. That extended the self-realization process. Yet, slowly, I understood that I was finally doing myself a proper service by focusing on women.

To be honest, I still find some men attractive, but that's more of an exception than a rule. And it's pretty random. And I never act on it because I'm not interested in them sexually, and only like... 5% romantically. So, uh, maybe that's just like seeing someone outside on the street and thinking "huh, this guy looks cool, hope he has a nice day".

Uhh, okay, that's a wall of text. Hope it illuminates some things for you, anon? If you're comfortable sharing, I wouldn't mind hearing about your own self-discovery process. Thank you for checking out my fic and hopping into this inbox. Have a nice day! 💙

[waylaidbyspectres]

Femcel is a bit less of an incendiary term than its male counterpart, but it still gets you weird looks if you identify with it, even jokingly. I'd argue that it's a bit of a false equivalence to compare the two, given the roles that men and women typically are expected to fulfill in the proverbial sexual marketplace.

Men are expected to be promiscuous, to conquer as many bodies as they can come across. They're entitled to sex by the nature of their social position. We all know this. So when a man isn't getting laid on the regular, whether or not he's in a committed monogamous relationship, he's a failure, unmanly, a pussy, etc. So the more desperate a man is for sex, the more he's willing to do to get it.

Women, as society sees it, exist in a horrid catch-22 as far as sexuality goes. Some of us are expected to exist as semi-promiscuous sex object for men to use for their own relief and conquest. Some of us are expected to be pure, virginal, unspoiled, innocent maidens who are saving our first time for when we're married. It's an infuriating double bind wherein if we do engage in open and enthusiastic sexuality, we're sluts who will never amount to anything, and if we assert our purity in the wrong situation, we're frigid bitches who need to be taught a lesson. This is feminism 101.

So when a woman is in a position where they want to be having sex, or dating, or having friends with benefits or anything like that and we don't, it's frustrating in a way that we haven't really formed the vocabulary for yet. Female sexual liberation is a bit of a new concept in the Western mainstream, so we tend to just categorize the problems that arise within it into the structures that already exist. It's not a great fit, but it's better than not talking about it at all.

Me? I'm a lesbian. I'm also a trans woman. I exist in a limbo, as far as society is concerned, between masculinity and feminity. I'd phrase it more along the lines of having seen both sides of the matter, but transphobia is the law of the land, so... Yeah. If I openly call myself a femcel, the "fem" part is going to dissappear in a lot of people's minds, and they're going to lump me in with the violent male incels ("male socialization" and all that sort of hogwash). I don't want sex because it's expected of me to. I want to have sex because it looks like fun. I want to date because I enjoy the emotional intimacy of being in a relationship with someone else. I want other girls to think I'm sexy because it boosts my self-esteem. Sometimes sex and sexuality are not a core aspect of your existence. Sometimes, it's just a thing you do from time to time. But because it's such a big deal for everyone in the society in which we currently exist, you end up getting caught in the self-defeating whirlpool that is liberal politics.

Am I a femcel? Yeah, probably. I've never had sex. I don't have any plans to, despite my desire to. It bums me out sometimes. Should I identify as one? Well... I guess the question is, are you going to be normal about it?

[talkorsomething]

I'm just up too late, for some reason. (Keep getting really tired at the end of the day, so... no sense in it.)

That being said.

Surgery, the idea of change is terrifying, somehow. I hold the conviction that this is what i want, have wanted for almost as long as i've known i was trans, and yet...

I don't see a world where i wake up from surgery and say that it was all some... delusion. Something not real. That my discomfort never existed.

I do exist in a world, where, the first time i had my sibling cut my hair, i cried my eyes out half the night. That shit was NOT pretty. But then, i got it fixed (shorter) and I loved it. I felt so much more like myself.

and now, any subsequent time i want to do the same sort of thing, i have a heightened sense of trepidation. It's not a fear of looking bad, per se, but of having the same reaction. God knows why it affected me so much. [I do know why. A holdover from the classic child's experiment with scissors treated, perhaps, a little unfairly.]

It's not enough that i feel uncomfortable at the way i see myself in the third person, mirrors, pictures, whatever. I've tried my best to minimize my chest without being able to bind, and in the process have learned an extreme discomfort of going without an extra protective layer against the world.

(Dysphoria hoodies don't exist without reason, of course.)

Is it enough? Will this mean enough to who i am in the future?

Being out scares me. It's - as with everything in my life - the fear of the unknown, the fear of change. Acknowledge me on my own terms — but am I right? How can I know, for certain? What's the one truth that will tell me, for real this time?

On the flipside, I'm resigned to being in the closet forever/as long as i need to be. But everyone knows. They can tell there's something different about me. This is not unique to the now - I certainly passed, as long as I never talked, when I was younger, had shorter hair. I experienced this.

... and with the same, difficult to grasp sort of shame I feel now. Strangers have no reason to simply humor me; and yet they're awfully quick to laugh at the fact that i could be anything but.

If I know anything, it's that the most I can hope for is too be percieved, maybe, as a slightly butch lesbian.

If I kniw anything, it's that I'm already visibly queer; no hormones added or suppressed, but facial hair that everyone sees, comments on.

Because it's funny that a woman can have a beard. Because there's something wrong with my hormones as they stand. Because I, clearly, have been taught to hate my body and what it stands for. Because society has been telling me this entire time that I must be a hairless, skinny sex object, and I've clearly internalized that message.

I haven't.

Is that so hard to believe? That I was raised with just the right amount of dis-care that it all passed me by? That the only thing passed down to me, by virtue of always being different, was an ED?

It would be hard to say I've never hated myself for being fat, but only in the way that it's hard to say I've never been suicidal. Textual evidence says the opposite, but I've always known just the right/wrong things to tell myself. Living through the tail-end of the "glory days" (so to say) of tumblr meant all the posts of positive self-talk, being mindful, being kind to yourself - I internalized those. And at the same time, I was wildly depressed. At the same time, I was completely fine. I learned a better way of being and dug myself out of the shallow pit I found myself in.

And then, knowing what to do right, I turned around and went right back in. Further, even.

I'm too self aware now. I find myself at odds with how I'm living. I know I need to give myself more grace, more room to recover, but i just...... don't. It's all too easy to throw myself into something, to desparately want to get better at it, but ignore all signs pointing to burnout.

... i forgot what the point was.

I just need to complete one more form, and I should be clear to schedule my consult. I was going to do it today, even. ...and then, i got stuck, because of [redacted].

It's getting better. She seems to have, at least a little, understood what I was trying to say. The future, my future, is still uncertain, built on unstable ground, but I'm not completely lost in the woods. There's a light, however small, to guide me home.

I don't know what that's going to mean for me.

Maybe surgery will happen and she'll cry about losing her daughter. Maybe she won't even know. As long as I have the space and time to recover, I can do this.

I just don't want to prove her right.

[newyorkkiss]

long ramble on gay 👇

over the last year or so that i've spent reconciling w my femininity (still a work in progress), i've for lack of better term "come to terms" with being a majority woman attracted person. and with time i've sort of remembered some of the things that now make sense. i would say the veronicas were like the first introduction to lesbianism. can still kind of rememb when jess (i think?) was linked to a woman in the mid oughts bc there was like a kind of outrage about it. then them saying i wanna kiss a girl in take me on the floor was another one. and i'm just taking this in like yep. and even tho at that time i hadn't acknowledged anything and would sometimes call other girls gay as a derogatory thing which retrospectively upsets me but i think it was probably self hatred and my own unacknowledged insecurity w being attracted to women. and i was a kid saying this! like 7!! i didn't stop doing it until i was 12 and even that is mortifying. i rememb calling two ppl in my class lesbians bc of how close they were and it's like holy fuck the insecurity... and i only stopped and re-evaluated after one of them gave me a handwritten letter asking me to not do that and whatever. i still have that letter. feel extra bad about it now that the person who gave me it since came out as trans and whatever. hope i see them in passing one day as i'd really like to sincerely say sorry for what i did then. they were a lovely person too – the both of them were. they did not deserve an ounce of what i said to them. but yeah. even as a child i was enamored by the female form in ways. like i would love trying to sneak a look at boobs in the softcore porno mags they had where my mother worked. straight up loved doing that. seeing lesbianism in music is truly what like made it click tho. so many pretty women and lesbianism but for the male gaze unfortunately in that. and i even think now my very, very loose "attraction" to men is weird bc i think a lot of them were and are.. feminine or femme-coded. soft. pliable. ever so slightly girlish in conduction. BUT i never rly held attraction to real life men and they all hated or held me in extremely low regard because i'm peculiar in a way that legitimately frightens them (was basically seen as low hanging fruit and frequently a bullied target by them – i do not ever recall once being bullied by a girl) and because i never fit the mold of a conventional woman which later caused a lot of dysphoria and extreme self hatred as a female body and i had no female figures in my life so it just kind of ruined me for a very long time. admitting attraction to women really did help me heal a bit though. even my first like real love was towards a girl when i was 13 who basically dragged me around like a dead animal to her heel – yet i still didn't acknowledge anything. like i remember one of my peers asking me what my sexuality was and i was like "idk pan or something i like all people :)" like lol but i guess that was a start. but yeah. it's just something i've been working on finding solace with but i still don't feel comfortable with the term lesbian in reference to myself bc i see that as a very... icky term? which in itself is angering as i don't want to reduce myself or be reduced to being a porn category and seen as some kind of sex object by calling myself that. i don't want to appeal to men in any way possible. which then sort of sets of a spiral of self hatred on itself. but yeah. that's that.

[seaottersandstrings]

something lgbt just happened to me (extreme emotional pain edition)

(ignore me I just need an internet void to scream in where she wont see it or read if you’re nosy and willing to be nice about it)

(also if anyone has any advice for how to not be so fucked up about the girl who is kinda your ex but not really (in the “never actually dated but we both had feelings and acted like it a lot” way) officially dating a new person for the first time since she shattered your heart into a million tiny pieces please dm me said advice this is 100% serious)

like we have all the same friends and it’s been over half a year so I feel weird talking to irl people about it. even I am surprised at how intensely the emotions punched me in the lungs when she told us she has a bf now. like cmon brain I knew we weren’t over this but I thought we were at least getting better. 

also there’s the added fun layer of “her own internalized biphobia and biphobic family members made it so our connection was always laced with shame and repression and suffering anyway.” and now she gets to celebrate this moment with friends and family and do boy talk with her mom and ask her parents for advice about this guy she’s known for a couple months and have an easy friends to lovers arc with him. while I was stuck listening to her family coo over how she should get back with her ex bf once he transferred to our college while she and I were literally sleeping in the same bed the night before. but bc I’m not a guy ofc nothing could possibly have been going on there. 

like you’re telling me I was in a years-long, will-they-won’t-they sufferfest where I was embarrassingly emotionally devoted to this person only for npc #3 to crawl out of the woodwork and get the instant stamp of approval for wanting to get to know her better and giving it the old college try? 

and to be clear I’m not blaming her she feels how she feels and obviously the bi/homophobia is a societal/community level issue. it just sucks so bad to fall so deeply in love with someone over such a long time and have those feelings be treated less seriously because of things we can’t control. like just on top of the regular heartbreak of it all. and believe me the regular heartbreak of it all is more than enough for my little eggshell heart to handle. 

and on a regular heartbreak level it also sucks because she’s a good person that I genuinely care about on a non-romantic level and still think very highly of. like our relationship wasn’t and still isn’t perfect but she’s one of the best people in my life and an objectively decent human being. so it’s not like I can even rationalize to myself “well it was toxic” (actually maybe the dynamic was but like SHE wasn’t a toxic person y’know) or “she treated me badly” or “she sucks so I’m better off now anyway.” like no she’s wonderful and her new bf is very lucky life just sucks sometimes. 

did I mention she and I are still best friends and even though we live in different cities now which helps I still have to pretend to be totally 100% excited about this for the sake of being a good bestie? like god I love being a lesbian if I had to do life all over again and got a choice I would choose to be queer every single goddamn time. but this is the most painful shit I’ve ever felt in my life and that’s a pretty high bar at this point. especially since this is technically not my first heartbreak but it’s my first one since realizing I’m a lesbian and not bi and started having a lot of The Piercing Loneliness of Breaking Every Societal Expectation feelings about it. like I think my brain was unintentionally pulling a “maybe I’ll turn out normal-passing” on itself (which is total bullshit) for a while there. and even though I know that was bullshit coming to terms with being a lesbian was so much harder for me than coming to terms with being queer at all and everything related to it has just felt so much more intense since. 

and on some level I’m also jealous bc she got out and can have a relationship she can celebrate and talk about with her family without fear and I can never have that. like bi people obviously go through so much shit and have a hard time getting both straight and gay people to take them seriously and as someone who lived that (in the “other people treated me like I was bi bc we all thought I was” sense) and thought that was who I was for 7 years I would never want to diminish that but oh my god being on the other side now I can understand how easy it is to let yourself get bitter. And I never want to be that person but at the same time speaking purely of my own experience it didn’t take me so long (2+ years) to figure out I was a lesbian because I just didn’t know like at some point deep down I knew especially near the end of my questioning era but I kept asking myself “well are you SURE?” because didn’t want to face the loneliness of it. Of closing the door on the last possible chance I had for my family and I to bond over something in a normal way for once. And coming out again was incredibly freeing but I also had to be willing to break my own heart to do it and the compounding heartbreak is just so much. 

anyway if anyone is reading this I love you and I hope you’re having a better day than me. happy new year. 

[southbound-in-the-sky]

ON HEARTSTOPPER

Ever since the show's release, there are memes going around on Twitter, with queer people assigning a piece of LGBTQ+ media they grew up with as their Heartstopper. Luckily for me, and for other queer kids and teenagers, my Heartstopper is, well, Heartstopper. 

The comic was first published on Tumblr back in 2016 but the characters of Nick and Charlie were much, much older, appearing in Alice Oseman's debut YA novel Solitaire. I didn't know why and how I stumbled upon Heartstopper, but I have been reading a lot of LGBTQ-themed young adult novels at that point and my then-newfound love of graphic novels was already introduced by N.D. Stevenson's Nimona. It had a lot of things that appealed to me – teenage kids, a sensetive look at queerness, fast-paced plot and dialogue – and so I downloaded it and read it. It was a moment of a lifetime. 

By then, I probably never realized that it was integral to my discovery of my identity. I was only at Volume 1, just a short narrative of Nick and Charlie's friendship until they inevitably kissed at the end. But it made me feel warm and happy. I never really knew exactly when I started reading it. I looked through the downloaded files on my phone and discovered I saved the first volume just a week before my fifteenth birthday. 

At that point, I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I liked girls. I had a crush on this girl a year or so before I started reading Heartstopper, but I never realized what the feeling was until the new school year came. It was terrifying – it kept me up at night, it made me wonder if the signs have been there all along, it made me realize that the fluttering heat in your stomach and the sheer willingness to make your friend happy are not normal experiences of a stone-cold heterosexual.

I found company in books (I was always a massive bookworm). I watched coming-out videos on YouTube. I talked, in some depth, about queerness with my friends. I listened to Hayley Kiyoko, Troye Sivan, King Princess. I had a standard queer realization – cute girl sits next to me, I realize that my identity wasn't I thought it was, I blast Girls Like Girls to myself when I'm alone. 

And Heartstopper showed all of that -- all the messy, confusing, and hopeful parts of queer discovery.

Nick thought he was straight his whole life – until he got sat next to openly gay, anxious Charlie. He took 'Am I Gay?' quizzes in the darkness of his bedroom. Nick struggled to fit in his idea of what queerness is until he managed to find his place and label his identity. 

I admit, I have only recently gotten aware of the parallels between my life and Heartstopper. I just realized how Heartstopper has been pivotal to my own coming-of-age, to my own anxieties about my identity, to my own Nick-like moments of discovering my sexuality. 

Heartstopper transcends beyond the 'boy-meets-boy' narrative that most YA queer novels have, even though the comic is marketed as such. I'm not saying that cute budding gay relationships are not important -- they are and more should be made -- but Heartstopper simply touched on many things and issues that I never anticipated. This was probably the first time I read about a non-white trans girl whose story is not marred by trauma and despair. There is a steady, lesbian couple who, although facing homophobia from peers and classmates, stood strong by each other until the very end. There are accepting teachers and parents and siblings. There is a nuanced discussion about mental health and eating disorders as the comic progresses. There are wholesome, fluffy plotlines -- I do, in fact, think that those are the lifeblood of the comic -- interpersed with realistic, hurtful scenarios, like an abusive closeted boyfriend, school bullies, homophobic family members, and struggles with one's own mental and physical health.

Heartstopper is brilliant, from an objective, comic-making perspective, but it's also emotionally impactful to the people who read it, especially LGBTQ+ children who are still having a difficult time in finding their own place in the world.

For something that tells experiences that are so specific -- Oseman grew up in southeast England, and Heartstopper is set in the same town, schools, and environment -- Heartstopper is massively relatable. I was -- still am -- a teenage kid who moved to a bustling city and studied in a large public high school in the Philippines. The Heartstopper kids studied in same-gendered private grammar schools in a relatively small town in England. Still, Tao's words to Charlie at the beginning of the comic and the show, telling him that Nick is straight and should let go of his hopeless crush on him, mirrored the same speech one of my friends gave to me when I told them of my own hopeless crush on another girl. Despite of the fact that our reasons of changing schools are obviously different, I empathized with Elle and the difficulty she faced in finding friends in a new environment. I found kinship in Nick in regards to working on his sexuality. I felt my feelings echoed when Darcy said she "liked girls a bit more than she's supposed to". Tara's feelings after coming out was painful and heart-achingly relatable. I even found Isaac's (one of the new characters Oseman made for the Netflix adaptation) occassional disinterest hilarious and 'me-coded', as the "kids" on Twitter would say.

Tao spoke to me the most, however. For someone who is the only cisgender and heterosexual member of their immediate friend group, Tao's uneasiness towards change and his brash overprotectiveness over his friends resonated to me a lot.

I think that's part of the beauty and charm of Heartstopper. Sometimes you directly related to one of the characters and the struggles they faced and the happiness they earned, but I personally found bits of myself scattered throughout the comic, the show, and the characters. It's oftentimes funny and, in a few moments, gutting -- I have heard homophobic tirades from older schoolmates against a friend of mine, and I had no idea what to do or what to say. Classic, Catholic homophobia still resides within our school, a different flavor than what was shown in Heartstopper, but still, as usual, brings the same element of hate and incites a wavering feeling of guilt and anger within queer students. Only just recently, I've read a homophobic speech from a batchmate of mine, hidden under the guise of preserving the sanctity of marriage.

Queerness can feel isolating. I have spoken about crushes and attractions on other girls with friends -- I even alluded to those on my own Twitter posts as I had gotten more comfortable -- but I have never really said anything about how alienating it is to be young and Filipino and queer. I'm sure a lot of my friends relate, but these discussions of our intermingling identities are a bit too deep for a bunch of kids who haven't even graduated high school yet. I went on a panic when my father was moments away on discovering that Girls Like Girls was playing on my phone. I felt a deep sense of melancholy as I watched my straight classmates just openly declare their crushes out loud, with no fear of weird stares from onlookers. Just around a year ago, I became withdrawn when a friend mentioned briefly that I liked girls online to complete strangers, when I was still insecure about my identity. And I had no one to talk to about those things.

Heartstopper is one of things that could save people from the feeling of loneliness. Authentic queer media is already so rare, and optimistic, teen-focused narratives are even rarer. It provides a grounded look on what it means to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, where kids find strength within themselves and amongst their friends. 'Heartstopper' doesn't have a grandiose coming-out-moment with Nick. It doesn't have romantic gestures as big as the Eiffel Tower. It doesn't wallow in gritty events and let the characters be unnecessarily traumatized and hurt. Despite the fact that Heartstopper feels "smaller" than most teenage-oriented media, it still captures the overwhelming feeling of "every little thing is important when you're a teenager". Nick coming out to his mother as bisexual is a quiet and peaceful and loving affair, but it's also freeing and liberating and an important step into his acceptance of himself. Even quaint milkshake triple-dates are crucial events, especially when five out of the six attendees are not completely cis and heterosexual. Queer people being allowed to live silent, tranquil lives is, personally, one of the biggest and powerful statements Heartstopper has to offer.

I'm just idly waiting for the announcement of the season two renewal of 'Heartstopper', rewatching my favorite bits of the show. I am but a simple Heartstopper fan, anyway, and there are people who can provide more impactful analyses and anecdotes about the show and the comic. Still, it's a bit of a relief to talk about these feelings for a while, like I finally let myself exhale for a long, long time. Perhaps I needed a show like Heartstopper to finally accept these emotions within myself, to process the experiences that made me me these past few years.

Heartstopper is not the end-all, be-all beacon of queer representation in media -- it still centers around two British middle-class cis white boys -- but it definitely is a step in the right direction. There are still more stories to mold, to tell, to take flight. Positively speaking, we can only really go up from here -- and I hope those stories become the Heartstopper of other, younger queer kids.

I wrote this months ago (probably obvious because of the "season 2 waiting" bit LMAO since Heartstopper has been renewed for two more seasons) but I think it deserves to be posted!

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

[cuntess-carmilla]

hi, i’m really sorry for asking such a weird and potentially hard to answer question, but. how do you know when you’re a lesbian? i identified strongly as bisexual for multiple years, but i realized my attraction to men was tenuous at best and even now i have no idea if it’s genuine? i kinda feel like im going insane

There's many reasons why a woman could feel tension regarding their (potential) attraction to men, even cishet ones, but TO ME these things boil down to what makes you happy and to what/who you desire.

(I acknowledge that for all women who like men, but especially bi and trans ones, being able to accept an active desire for men can be complicated because of trauma, slut shaming type of sentiments, biphobia and transmisogyny, so do take that into account when exploring your feelings.)

What I would have to ask myself is, do I actively desire men? Because I feel that I actively desire women, that's unquestionable to me (that being unquestionable while being uncertain about men doesn't necessarily make someone not bi but it happens to a lot of unrealized lesbians). I have always felt that natural pull towards women/girls even when I was a little girl and it wasn't sexual at all. Even when I'm in the mood to be alone or when my sex drive is dead I feel that active desire. When I think of A Sexy Human, I think of a woman, always, in the diversity that encompasses women. As a little kid, when I thought of a pretty human, I also thought of girls only.

But men? Nope. Even when I find one attractive, I still don't want him. At my "happiest" being with men I felt like "this is tolerable and if I pretend we're just friends I actually like being with him", and at worst it felt like overwhelming death. It took me a long time to realize that even as a kid I never considered boys as belonging to the category of "pretty" or "cute" or even interesting tbh like I decidedly did with girls. At most I saw them as a girly status object like the Disney princesses I was obsessed with had their princes as an accessory in my eyes.

Maybe this isn't at all like your experience, and in that case that doesn't mean anything in either direction, both bi and lesbian experiences are tremendously diverse, but MY exeprience when I was still identifying as bi is that I would find myself always performing. Always checking in silently with my female peers to see what was it that they found attractive in guys so I could mirror them. I was always a sensible but hopeless romantic, so as a kid whenever I felt lonely and wanted to fall in love I would scan around coldly to see if there was any boy I could "decide" to have a crush on.

Back in the days before the Tumblr porn ban I had a nsfw sideblog that was just reblogs. When I wasn't policing myself I would end up only reblogging women and sapphic sex, or shots of cishet sex in which the man was cropped out. Then I'd catch myself doing that, I'd panic out of my ass, and forced myself to find stuff with men to reblog so I could keep desperately telling myself that I was not a lesbian. This happened as I was dating a man long term. I would have to train myself to find men attractive, including them. Which is not how it's supposed to work. Sex with them felt a little like sleeping with a dildo attached to a mannequin. I was in it either out of pressure or for the physical sensations, that's it. A toy could've done the same and better.

Attraction is an active desire and when you're attracted to someone it's not supposed to feel like you're tolerating being with them, you're supposed to feel joy and comfort even if it's not always perfect.

It can happen that with some men it has felt like a chore you're tolerating without that necessarily meaning you're not bi because comp het is a bitch and it affects ALL women, but if being with Men like, As A Whole, feels that way... You're probably not bi.

Try to think; if you were free of all expectations, both yours and other people's, who would you want? If there weren't labels for any of this, if there were no consequences for either option, if you could have the life that'd make you happiest and feel the most authentic, who could you see yourself with? Not necessarily like, married, but just enjoying romance and/or (if you're old enough) sex with, be it serious or uncommitted.

Whatever turns out to be, don't rush yourself, love. No community or label owns you. Labels are descriptors and we exist before them. We're not meant to make ourselves fit labels, the labels are supposed to fit or not fit us. If you have to spend a while without a label more specific than "gay", "queer", "sapphic", "wlw" or what have you, that's fine. If you spend the rest of your life like that, that's okay too as long as you're okay with it. There's no time limit. Feel free to explore however you feel safest and most comfortable, and don't be afraid of your feelings. They're not wrong, they just are, whichever they are.

I hope this was helpful, feel free to keep sending me messages if you want to.

[rantingcrocodile]

"Everyone else wants us to always hate each other, separate the “good” and the “bad” in different ways to have us at each other’s throats," you have literally been shitting on febfems for the past month and NOW you want to come along singing kumbaya and shit? and claim we can find SOLIDARITY with you? you never took even a second to see things from our perspective or understand anything about us. what the absolute fuck are you ON girl

I haven't been "shitting on febfems," I've been critiquing the biphobia now inherent to the label, the same way that anyone can critique the biphobia inherent to the TRA "pansexual"/"omnisexual"/"m-spec"/etc labels designed to promote biphobia.

The point is that whether a "febfem" is just an individual bisexual woman who doesn't see the problems with the label yet, or she's a "I'm not like other bisexuals, I hate bisexuals too unlike us pure and wonderful almost-lesbian febfems," whether you love or loathe me, if you need support with your bisexuality or help dealing with biphobia, I'm still there for you.

I've had multiple discussions with "febfems" that have devolved into nothing more than what boils down to, primarily:

"But bisexual women who are partnered with men are automatically male-obsessed and louder than other bisexual women," which is misogynistic biphobia promoting the idea that bisexual women are merely objects that mirror their current/preferred partner

"But mostly-SSA bisexual women deserve to be able to come together," which is pointless because: a) "Febfem" isn't "a mostly SSA-bisexual woman," it's "a bisexual woman who is only interested in looking for a female partner for a myriad of reasons" (of which I am one myself!) b) The implication is that somehow, a mostly-SSA bisexual woman with a wife who grew up thinking she was a lesbian has much more in common with a mostly-OSA bisexual woman who has never had a partner but calls herself "febfem" to fit in more in a radfem space than a mostly-SSA bisexual woman who grew up thinking that she was a lesbian who currently happens to have a boyfriend, which is just absurd

and the whole thing undermines bisexual solidarity.

The fact that you came here presuming that I didn't know or understand anything about you when the fact is that if I didn't acknowledge the issues with the term, I could quite happily label myself as a "febfem" and fit perfectly in your community proves just how much internalised biphobia is loaded into the label, with your belief that there's an "us vs them" situation going on here, which is exactly the same kind of thing that happens in TRA circles with "bisexuals vs pansexuals."

You ladies have mogai-style pride flags separating yourselves from your bisexuality, even, trying to place yourself in a special spot between bisexual and lesbian. Come on now.

Criticism isn't hatred, it's criticism, and if you personally feel stung by me critiquing a label and what that label both promotes and implies, then doesn't that suggest that some of those critiques resonate in you, but you'd rather have the conditional, thinnest-of-ice solidarity with lesbians against the "evil bisexuals" so you can pretend that all of the biphobia in this space isn't against you personally?

If it was just a neutral descriptor that had nothing to do with why you personally adopted the label, then none of the criticisms would affect you, because they wouldn't apply.

And... it’s also not “bad faith” from me critiquing you. It’s anger that I listen to what you have to say and then break it down to what’s actually being said, and you just don’t like it.

Sorry, but I’m not going to stop being honest because it makes you feel uncomfortable.