#exorsexism tw

[uncanny-tranny]

from one nonbinary person to another, i’m so sorry about that ask. some people really just can’t seem to be fucking normal abt nonbinary people for some reason and it’s horrible. wishing you the best, and i hope you have a good day/night/whatever time it currently is for you. ^_^

I appreciate your words, and I want to assure people that, while unfortunately, I am accustomed to this sort of stuff, I still appreciate the community outreach.

I don't typically post that sort of stuff, but it's important to me that we recognize, address, and combat all forms of transphobia. While trans people as a whole are in an often unfortunate circumstance, there are still hurt people who perpetuate supremacist ideas about transness. Lateral aggression isn't just bad because it is bigotry done unto another, but also because you separate yourself from any other community and help. You hurt yourself just as badly as the people you seek to hurt.

I need fellow trans people to never tolerate any lateral aggression in any form. It will never serve you. It will never serve the trans community. You are doing the dividing and conquering for the people who want to see our demise.

I know you, anon, didn't come for me to write you an essay, but it's important that people don't just dunk on the previous anon and learn nothing from it. We need to learn how to be in community with each other.

[oh-my-im-ply]

This is another post which isn't completely ply focused, but I want to take a second to point out the overlap between people who are transmisic and people who exclude/invalidate mspec lesbians.

Last week, I made a post where I mentioned being a polysexual lesbian, and I made a few mspec lesbian pride flags. Yesterday, someone asked if I was polysexual or a lesbian.

On this blog, we have rules for interaction, as well as rules for mods to follow. At the very top, we have a rule against exclusion and invalidation towards good faith identities, and a rule against bigotry and dogwhistles. However, we will answer questions when they may have been asked in good faith.

So, I answered with this:

Both. I'm attracted to many genders, but not binary men, so I find that polysexual and lesbian both describe my orientation well. Other people may identify as a polysexual lesbian for other reasons.

After I answered, the mask came off, and they started being transmisogynistic and nonbinary-exclusionary, and weaponized the existence of bimisia against me. I deleted their comments and blocked them last night, so I can't copy what they said word for word, but I will repeat their key notes under the cut.

CW: bi erasure, exorsexism/nonbinary-erasure, transmisogyny, mentions of genitalia

"This is what people mean when they talk about bi erasure. You're erasing bi people."

This is a complete misunderstanding of what bi erasure even means. Bi erasure is when you ignore (the existence of) bi people, or outright deny their existence. These are some examples of bi erasure:

Erasing or ignoring bi history.

Saying that bi people need to just "pick a side."

Saying that bi people are secretly straight/secretly gay.

Saying that bi is just "a transitional orientation" or "a phase."

Redefining the broad definition of bisexuality without the consent of the bi community, especially with the intent of telling people that they "aren't really bisexual" or replacing the bi label.

Saying that "everyone is a little bit bisexual," especially with the intent of erasing bisexuality as a distinct category. This can also be a form of erasure against people who aren't bisexual.

Note that "identifying as something other than bi" is not a form of bi erasure, even if you might "technically" fit the definition... Because that is a matter of personal identity.

But do you know what is a form of bi erasure? Erasing bi history. Mspec lesbians (particularly bi lesbians), have existed for decades. It is not a new identity, and bi women and enbies have a right to identify their attractions to women as lesbian attraction if they wish to. The exclusion of bi people from the lesbian label began as a form of bi erasure. It happened because of separatism and political lesbianism, and an idea that attraction to men "tainted" people, or was a "betrayal" to feminism. It happened because of bimisia.

The word "lesbian" has served as an umbrella term synonymous to "sapphic" for over half a century. You want sources? Here you go.

Miller, Trish. Lavender Woman, Vol. 2, No. 5. Lavender Woman Magazine, 1973. "What is a lesbian? To me, a lesbian is a woman-oriented woman; bisexuals can be lesbians. A lesbian does not have to be exclusively woman-oriented, she does not have to prove herself in bed, she does not have to hate men, she does not have to be sexually active at all times, she does not have to be a radical feminist." Ferguson, Ann. Patriarchy, Sexual Identity, and the Sexual Revolution. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1981. "Lesbian is a woman who has sexual and erotic-emotional ties primarily with women or who sees herself as centrally involved with a community of self-identified lesbians whose sexual and erotic-emotional ties are primarily with women; and who is herself a self-identified lesbian."....."[My definition] defines both bisexual and celibate women as lesbians as long as they identify themselves as such and have their primary emotional identification with a community of self-defined lesbians." Kafele, Dajenya Shoshanna (1991). Bisexual Lesbian. Archived from the original on July 25, 2022. Queen, Carol A.. Strangers at Home: Bisexuals in the queer movement,. 1992. "A great many bisexual women, particularly those who are feminist and lesbian-identified, have felt both personally and politically rejected and judged by the separatist sisters." Kafele, Dajenya Shoshanna. "Which Part of Me Deserves to Be Free?". Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions. New York : Haworth Press, 1995. ISBN 9781560249504. "Personally, I am unable to separate out the various ways that I am oppressed (as a woman, as an African American, as a bisexual lesbian, as an impoverished single mother) and say that one oppression is worse than the other, or that I desire one form of liberation more than another." Wyeth, Amy. "Don't Assume Anything". Bi Women: The Newsletter of the Boston Bisexual Women's Network. Vol. 5, No. 2, 1995. "Unfortunately, many of my experiences as a lesbian-identified bisexual woman have said to me that having an appearance or demeanor that diverges from the expected means I will not be accepted as truly belonging in the lesbian community. Despite my attendance at gay pride parades, dollars spent at gay resorts and in support of gay causes, and numerous attempts to participate in gay and/or lesbian groups and volunteer events, I have often felt unaccepted by this community." Holleb, Morgan Lev Edward. The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019. ISBN 9781784506636. "LESBIAN — A woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to women. Lesbian can mean women who are attracted exclusively to other women, but it is also a broader term for women and femmes who are attracted to other women and femmes. This includes bisexual and pansexual women, asexual women who are romantically attracted to women, and non-binary people who identify with womanhood." Lesbian. The Trans Language Primer. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021.

Does this mean bi people have to identify as lesbians, or "aren't actually" bi, or can't just identify as bi? Obviously not, and I never said that was the case. That would be bi erasure, because that's policing bi people's identities and forcing them under labels that they may not want to be included under. But in the circumstance that a bi person also identifies as a lesbian, they have every right to do so. Bi-inclusive definitions of lesbianism have existed for at least 51 years, and still exist today.

"Attraction to men, binary or not, means you're not a lesbian."

See above for why the lesbian identity is not always dependent on a lack of attraction to men, binary or not. But lets focus on the nonbinary part specifically:

Nonbinary people can people included in lesbianism and lesbian attraction if they want to be. Yes, that includes all nonbinary genders. Even if attraction to men inherently disqualified a person from lesbianism, nonbinary genders cannot be confined to binary gender rules (even when they're aligned with binary genders) because they're nonbinary. Treating nonbinary genders like they're "functionally the same as binary genders" is a form of nonbinary erasure, regardless of gender alignment.

Whether nonbinary people are included in lesbianism or not is entirely up to each individual nonbinary person regarding their own identity. It is not dependent on the gender label used; it is dependent on how each nonbinary person feels about it on an individual level.

The implication that manhood inherently dominates and erases the rest of a person's identity is also troubling. If you accept that nonbinary people can be included in lesbianism, you must also accept that nonbinary men can be included in lesbianism. A nonbinary man is still nonbinary; their manhood doesn't erase that.

As a pangender lesbian, I've had to deal with the experience of people not only erasing my enbyhood, but my womanhood as well, because they think my manhood is the only relevant aspect of my identity. This is misogynistic and exorsexist, plain and simple, and people use this misogyny/exorsexism to tell me that I'm not a lesbian.

With all of that said, nonbinary people (of any gender alignment) are not always comfortable being included in lesbianism. This is why I describe myself as both polysexual and a lesbian; the polysexual part of my orientation acknowledges that my attraction to enbies can't always be described with my more binary-aligned labels.

And funnily enough, while some people tell me that I can't be a lesbian and can only be polysexual, other people tell me the opposite. So clearly, there isn't a consensus on which label is "correct" for me.

"If it has a dick, you can't be a lesbian."

This is just blatant mask off transmisogyny, and it's the main reason I blocked them. Do I even need to explain what's wrong with this? Even under a strictly monosexual definition of lesbianism, this statement is just false. Being attracted to people with penises does not equal being attracted to men. If a lesbian is exclusively attracted to women, including women with penises, that lesbian is attracted to only one gender and is not bisexual or mspec.

Any gender can have a dick. Lesbians can have dicks. Women can have dicks. The presence of a penis or lack thereof is not a defining trait of lesbianism, nor monosexuality. And for fuck's sake, maybe don't call your hypothetical trans woman "it"??

"Mspec lesbian" does not mean "lesbian who is attracted to vaginas and penises," and if you think that's what it means, you need to educate yourself. Yes, this includes any people who might identify as an mspec lesbian because of that transmisogynistic definition.

This blog is an inclusive space. If you come in here to spew bigoted or exclusionary nonsense, expect to be blocked. Think before you speak, and please read our rules.

[thedepressedweasel]

Gender reaffirming healthcare is NOT child abuse; y'all are just a bunch of transphobic and enbyphobic idiots!

[mathsbian]

Nothing worse than a woman and a man in a het relationship pretending to be gay together qweers set the whole movement back

Grade: F

You did not read or understand the post that prompted this; this ask is entirely unoriginal; misgendering two people back-to-back is not the look you think it is; misspelled the term ‘queer’ (probably in a weird bid at self-censorship, so you’re not the kind of person I want on my blog anyways)

[communistkenobi]

fucking hysterical. we’re still going to enforce a system that categorises people by binary birth sex we just won’t do anything with that information socially or politically or economically or culturally I pinky promise

[brettdoesdiscourse]

And to be truly intersex, which is a third category separate from male and female, you need to be born with both a penis and a vagina at the same time.

Oh so you just have 0 clue about biology and how society works. Okay, got it.

[dysphoric-culture-is]

Nonbinary dysphoric culture is being told that wanting bottom surgery to get both sets is not only impossible, but also "degrading, fetishistic, and offensive." I didn't come out here today ASKING for my bottom dysphoria to be policed and dismissed as a thing to be disgusted by but here we are.

Dysphoric culture is!

Also, what a horrible thing to be told. While yes bottom surgery to get a penis, testicles, and a vagina isn't currently available as far as mod knows, you're definetly not fetishzing anyone by wanting it!

The worst part of exorsexist comments like this is that there are bottom surgeries other than traditional vaginoplasty and phalloplasty that are appealing to many nonbinary people (orchiectomy, vulvoplasty, metoidioplasty or simple meta, nullification, etc). Hopefully you can find an gender-affirming procedure that works for you anon!

[trucksquared]

for the anti-honesty hour, deltarune opinions?

As with all sequels, Deltarune is SUCH a downgrade

The characters are so boring and one-dimensional 😒 Take Susie, for example. She is. SO annoying and rude, she literally tried to eat Topchef's cake, moss and also Kris' face I guess, and somehow everybody LOVES her? She doesn't even get better in chapter 2! And the way Noelle obsesses over is so creepy, and yet the fandom goes APESHIT everytime they interact because "ma sapphic gaybies uwu"... like, ew, mean lesbian stereotype? I'm half convinced yall are abuse apologists in disguise

Plus, toby fox left the protag's gender up to the player to decide?? Like, god, how lazy can you get? This isn't a fucking Y/A novel, just make kris a man like he obviously is (toby didn't even bother making him feminine or anything, how on earth are people convinced that kris is a woman or "nonbinary")

Overall, pretty shit game. They don't even have Sans!

[genderkoolaid]

(Source)

On February 8th, this nonbinary child was violently beaten by three cis girls. The school did not call them an ambulance after the beating was stopped, and they later died in the hospital from head trauma. They have also been deadnamed and misgendered in their obituary and in the news. As the author of the article puts it:

How is that not national news? A 16 year old beaten to death in a public school bathroom? By other students. All these unanswered seemingly obvious questions about what transpired, and how the adults involved acted. That should be every headline. In fact, almost every local outlet covering the story misgender and deadnames Nex, using their same assigned at birth. The indignities pile on. We don’t yet know if Nex’s nonbinary identity is directly tied to this incident. But, my God, it sure matters to me that this would happen to any child. A nonbinary kid assaulted in a girl’s bathroom. That outcome from the narrative of anti-trans rhetoric these past years. Still why wasn’t this story breaking news? It involves a nonbinary student in a public school. And school violence and school police resource officers. It involves the deep fear so many trans youth have shared with me about their schools.

[arlens-entries]

I need other non-binary ppl, especially folks who aren't interested in medical transition, to understand we don't all have the same experience as 'they thems' who only get misgendered according to our agab in public.

I'm a short genderqueer ftm with long hair and a deep voice, I get gendered every way possible. Any pronouns work for me, so misgendering isn't typically on my radar. However, I often experience transmisogyny when I'm read as mtf or transfemme by strangers, and explicit homophobia when I am read as an effeminate cis man. I think some fellow trans people find this 'misplaced' transphobia funny, I have had friends literally laugh in public situations where I’ve become unsafe. And I think allyship of other trans ppl isn’t just acknowledging each other as trans, but considering the safety of certain settings and knowing when not to acknowledge weird comments.

It's not some hilarious moment when someone calls me a woman and 'corrects' themselves when they hear me speak, or a giggly bit when I'm asked to leave for answering a question out loud in a women's bathroom. It's not funny when I get backhanded compliments about being a man and braiding my hair or suprised comments about my choice of formalwear.

These moments aren't affirmations of my masculinizing transition, and strangers being 'wrong' about my presentation and gendering me as a trans woman is not the funniest fucking thing, especially in the presence of my transfemme friends who experience the same backhanded shit I do.

My experience can't be chalked up to binary transphobia because I very much present as a multi-gendered person. I suffer transphobia not because I am androgynous, but because I'm not sometimes.

[uncanny-tranny]

I wish I was binary because at least binary people have the option to assimilate and pass and stealth and be common people. I always have to be an abnormal whether I like it or not, always an incorrect. Do you think I should just suck it up and try pretending to be binary cis or trans? :(

I'm going to be really honest: you have to weigh your options a lot, but it's not as simple as binary people being able to assimilate. I know it's really, really hard to be able to live truly as yourself and to have people... almost assume correctly, or respect who you are automatically. This is something binary people also tend to experience, and I would hope that people won't shun your experiences with exorsexism because of the weird idea that assimilation into cishet standards matters more than who you are.

I think it's best to be honest about who you are and your intentions. Would you want to assimilate completely, or do you want to actually, truly be respected? I used to want to completely assimilate because I saw it as people would miraculously start respecting me without question or condition. You deserve the chance to not sacrifice any part of yourself, though.

I would also want to encourage you to find solidarity with binary people because many of us can't assimilate in one way or another. While there are so many exorsexism problems in binary spaces, we can only start to combat and defeat them by actually challenging them. I also encourage binary people to be part of this effort, to make active effort in addition - I'm not saying that it's only "up to" nonbinary people to defeat a bigotry that they aren't responding for holding.

I relate with you, anon. In many ways, I can presume that I have a wildly different experience. My nonbinary-binaryness isn't something I put on the table in my real life by choice, but I also am not assimilated completely into cishet standards. I never will have that "privilege," which, to be clear isn't a privilege in the traditional sense, more of a very conditional type of thing. We need to remember that assimilation and disassimilation for any reasons aren't necessarily privileges when we talk about marginalized people, and you are not more or less worthy of a voice to have at the table because of an arbitrary sliding scale about how much your voice matters.

Anon, I won't tell you what to do, but I think you deserve the chance to... I guess reckon with what you want. That's easier said than done, and believe me, I know that intimately. I don't want you to feel like you must sacrifice any aspect of who you are in order to have the chance of being respected and seen as an equal person, and I also don't want you to have unrealistic, unfair, and unreasonable standards that you need to adhere to because of... Who You Are.

[aholotte]

“if you have no connection to womanhood at all and you're a man/man aligned claiming lesbianism is creepy and frankly fetishistic of you”

[thedepressedweasel]

"Save the children" my ass. I bet the same TERFs who killed poor Nex Benedict must've supported priests and pastors actually raping innocent kids; those same TERFS must've also supported an angry mob of bigots who harass drag queens who just want to read books to kids in the libraries (yes, I'm looking at you, Chaya Raichik).

Those are also the same TERFs who might've been brutally radicalized by so many TikTok videos made by Libs of TikTok.

[mathsbian]

Dude you're straight with a boyfriend and the fact that you're already 27 is embarrassing as fuck. A funny post about ridiculous people is not about you... Wait a minute

Grade: D

More original than the last few, but still not saying anything I haven’t heard before. Come back after doing the reading! (And misgendering people you haven’t even met because you disagree with me is more embarrassing!)

[transmascissues]

i absolutely cannot believe people are trying to start discourse about whether nex benedict was actually nonbinary / whether it was okay for him to describe himself as nonbinary to some people if he didn’t actually identify that way as if he isn’t literally DEAD because he was KILLED. this is a MURDERED CHILD and these monsters are so busy getting mad at the possibility that he might have been a trans boy who described himself as nonbinary to his family because that was easier for them to take that they’re turning a CHILD who was MURDERED into fucking discourse. even when we die at the hands of cis people’s violence, our own community finds a way to make us the villains of the story.

and all of this bullshit on top of the ways that cis people are already trying to say our grief over his death is unjustified. all of this on top of people claiming he wasn’t murdered and speculating on other causes of death (i literally saw someone say he “clearly went home and took the coward’s way out” and i have never been more disgusted) or claiming that he started the fight as if any action on his part could’ve been enough to justify his death. i am haunted by the sound of his father screaming that his child was not filth because that is what people have been saying about this poor kid, that’s how cruelly his memory is being treated, and even the trans community can’t get it’s shit together enough to look past the stupid discourse and see the tragedy in front of us. did you all forget that it was supposed to be up to us to grieve him in the way he deserves when the rest of the world fails to care if people like him live or die? did you all forget that this child was our sibling, the future of our community, a life that we should have had the chance to know and treasure while he was still here but that we now have a responsibility to hold close to our hearts in his absence? nex’s life was precious and it was ended far too soon and if you truly believe that anything is more important than mourning his life and fighting for a world where no more trans people have to meet such an awful fate, you’re a traitor to this community and you do not deserve the place you occupy within it.

i’m so tired. i can’t even imagine how tired his family must be, to see the public treat the child they’re grieving so horribly, to see the world fail their baby again. leave him alone. he was already robbed of peace in life; the least you can do is let him finally have it in death.

[thehealingsystem]

Hey, can we talk about the violence against queer natives for a second?

Nex Benedict was a 16 year old nonbinary student who was brutally murdered by three of their female classmates. Not only that, they were a Native American living on a Cherokee reservation, though not enrolled in the tribe, and their actual heritage is that of Choctaw.

Their death was not properly reported on until the blog post that genderkoolaid shared was made. Their nonbinary identity had remained unacknowledged, and it took even longer for their native one to be.

They were a victim of the rising anti-trans rhetoric spreading throughout places like the US. They were beaten in a bathroom after Oklahoma had banned trans people from restrooms, designating them to only use that of their assigned sex. Nex was attacked in the girls bathroom.

A native, two-sprit, nonbinary teenager. Whose identity and the actual circumstances behind the incident, a hate crime, wasn't even published beforehand. They died tragically, a death that could've been easily prevented.

Do you know how scary that is? I'm just like them. A native, two-spirit, nonbinary teenager. I have to keep on hearing stories of people my age, who live in the same country, who share my identity, getting murdered. Not even just murdered, but erased.

I know for an absolute fact that if I died tragically, who I am will not be remembered. My deadname will be on everything. I would not be counted in trans statistics, nonetheless statistics on transmascs. My identity would not be respected. My native heritage wouldn't matter. I didn't get to be enrolled. And Nex had supportive family and friends, people who stood up for them. Not all trans kids get to have that.

I've had to think about this before many times. From the other trans youth deaths I've seen. From nearly becoming one of them. When is it enough? Why do the people in power do nothing to stop kids like me from being killed? Why do they only want to make our lives worse?

I'm very lucky to live in a state that has not wavered on it's protections on LGBTQ+ residents. Though I am reminded often that that can easily change, if things keep going like this.

I could've easily been them. I can still easily be them. There are many other kids who can be them. Everyone should be doing more to protect trans youth, and protect queer natives. We're so often forgotten about. I'm part of small tribes, and tribes who barely even exist anymore. My elders desperately trying to keep it alive. Please do not erase us. I'm queer, I'm native. Nex Benedict should have been protected, youth like me should be protected. I wish the best for their family and I hope their memory is never forgotten.