#happy pride f*ck your discourse :)

[pansexual-pied-piper]

*logs off tumblr*

*goes to a CSD parade*

*listens as somebody addresses their group as "Liebe Tunten, Tunteriche und Tuntösen" via microphone*

*is handed an informative flyer on puppy play by a guy in leather and a pup mask*

*grabs a Queer-Referat sticker reading "QUEER, PERVERS & ARBEITSSCHEU"*

*talks to two 50+yo ace drag queens who are dating*

*chats with a cis heterosexual arospec woman*

*buys a pan pride flag*

*compliments somebody on their polysexual pride flag*

*buys a group of teenagers coffee, including an it/its enby and a pre-HRT trans girl with a lesbian pride flag*

*eventually goes home, logs onto tumblr and is hit by discourse about whether any of this should be allowed at a pride parade*

[abbyfreemansmind]

Hey sooo "queer" has been a slur for homosexual people long before "terf" was made up. Things like "smear the queer" were shouted as (mostly) gay men were beaten to a pulp and/or violently killed. Please learn more about gay history before ever saying something so ignorant, homophobic, and frankly hateful again. You're 22 and old enough to know better. Queer is not a catch-all term for babies that want to feel special, its still used today by homophobes. Or maybe youre homophobic already??

You can not like being called queer and still accept that it’s not actually a slur anymore. Fun fact: Gay was a slur. Lesbian was a slur. Homosexual was a slur. Every word we as a community use to describe ourselves was a slur at some point and is still frequently used as a slur by cishets. Queer was an openly used and inclusive term by so much of the community, outside of people who personally didn’t like it, until very recently. Around the same time that TERF stuff began to spread, along with “you’re not trans enough” discourse, bi/pan discourse and aspec discourse, among other hateful things made to tear our community apart and divide us.

I don’t know who you are, since you weren’t brave enough to come off anon and tell me this with your already anonymous online account, but I would suggest your same advice. Learn about gay history before sending things like this to me. Also, no, I don’t call people I disagree with TERFs, I said it was from TERF ideology. Please get some reading comprehension and maybe some critical thinking skills. There’s a reason there are phrases like, “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in f*ck you!” and “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Same reason there’s also a show called Queer Eye/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, although I’ve never seen it.

I’m 22 and old enough to know better. I also know LGBTQ+ people offline. Off the internet, I’ve never encountered such widely accepted rhetoric formulated to tear the community apart. Ace/aro/agen people, nonbinary people, GNC people, all types of trans people (dysphoric and not, binary and not) are accepted, people know their history, it’s a nice place. I’m even gonna plan to help set up my town’s first Pride! It’ll be a socially distanced thing, but it’s still a Pride. I think you and so many others could use some time offline and away from discourse.

If you don’t like queer, that’s fine, but unless you plan on going around saying literally every other word we use to describe ourselves is a slur, don’t say it’s a slur. While hatred has boiled for certain groups within the LGBTQ+ community, the “queer is a slur” and related discourses were started by TERFs, who wanted us to be less inclusive so they could more easily target trans people.

This is the 17th anonymous message I’ve gotten that’s rehashed your point. Given the fact that numerous other anons sought to turn the fact that I’m bi, ace, arospec, nonbinary and reclaim queer as a label for myself (much like how most LGBTQ+ people reclaim gay!) into a point about how people “like me” are a problem in the community, I’m willing to bet that you, just like them, have already decided I’m wrong based on various things about me and that you have some problem or another with my identity. I won’t let it bother me. There’s no point in being bothered by anonymous people on the internet who don’t even know me, especially ones who don’t even have the courage to be even slightly less anonymous about it and use their actual account to say such things to me.

Anyway, I hope you’re well. I hope you prosper in life. I hope you get everything you ever wanted in life. Dream job, dream house, dream car, dream partner(s) or QPP(s), dream pet(s), etc. I have no animosity towards you. I wish only the best life has to offer for you. Good luck with your endeavors! I believe in you! You’ve got this!

EDIT: I've been told the last paragraph comes off as sarcastic. I meant it genuinely. I really do wish the best for you.

[caemec]

All sexualities are valid - I need to tell you something

Hi guys ! How are you today ? I hope you’re all okay ! For once, I’m not here to speak about the fandom, but about something so much more private. I make it for a few reasons, even if I’m totally scared about it. To write down my story, because I feel like it is the moment for me to be completely transparent, and I am at a step where I need to say things. Secondly, because some of you are maybe in doubts too, no matter your age, and you deserve to know that you’re not alone. Finally, because I actually have to face difficult speeches, yet from nice and well-meaning people, but who don’t realize what they really say and how hurtful they can be. 

I am not heterosexual, but pansexual. I have absolutely no problem with that, I accept myself and I am proud of who I am, don’t worry. For those who didn’t know the term, the pansexuality is the attraction for people in general. The gender is not a border to feelings. I am not attracted by a man or a woman, I am attracted by the individual he/she is. The whole package, if you want. 

I always thought this way, since I am a teenager, when I really began to questioning myself. But I didn’t know yet about all those sexual orientations. Basically, for me, there were only heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Like a lot of kids and adults, in short. In retrospect, four years after finishing my schooling, I wish I could have the information sooner, because now I live it like if a whole part of me had been hidden to myself, when I was in the right to receive a complete information. Not just the conventional one. I don’t know what they say or not to teenagers in your country, but in mine, things could be so much better. And yet, we are one of the precursors in the LGBTQ cause...

I lived during years with the feeling that I wasn’t in a case. Actually, in my daily life, I am for being outside the box, if you want to, even the society shouldn’t have the power to maintain you in something which is not you. But about that specific box, I needed it. I was lost, I tried to speak about my way of thinking to people, but no one understood what I was saying. So I just closed my mouth and pretended I was completely focused on boys, when I wasn’t. The worst of it, was that when I was seventeen, until maybe nineteen, I even start to believe in it. I was an heterosexual girl with really weird thoughts. Not the best way to be self-confident.

At this period, I had that friend, who is still a really good friend today, who once asked me to go with her to a party, to find a guy. Or a girl, she said when she saw how uncomfortable I was (it wasn’t even about that, but about the fact that people always need to see you interested by love stories, it’s socially appreciated, and if you have the misfortune to don’t care or not being comfortable at this moment, about that part of your life, you are seen as too shy, too weird, sexually indecisive). 

Guys, please, if one day you have doubts about one of your friend’s sexuality, don’t say that. Or at least, not like that. It was the first time someone asked me about my sexual orientation, I wasn’t ready at all, I couldn’t even be sure myself about who I was, who I liked. To hear that from someone else had been one of the most violent moments of my life. It seems nothing, but I was destroyed. I was practically sure I was heterosexual (a weird one), and I put all my efforts to make everyone believe in it. And then, with a single sentence, years of persuasion were suppressed. But not at my rhythm. If she asked me now, if she had waited, my answer would be so different than before. 

High school wasn’t a great period in my life, it was hell, honestly. That’s why, when I began the university, I was so excited to start from scratch. I studied to become a social worker, I am a graduate since one year, and I love my job so much. But the people with whom I had to study... Damn. Of course, it was not everyone, I met my closest friends during those three years, and so many other beautiful persons I am so glad to have in my life. But there was the sad majority of the students who were absolutely closed-minded (and yet, they are social workers now, I will never understand that).

I had to hear so many homophobic speeches, a lot about men, because, of course, women’s sexuality is resumed to nothing. When I defended the subject, I received a lot of “If you defend them, you have to be a lesbian”. For the first time, I had to face a really aggressive homophobia. I let rumours exist, I was proud to let them think that maybe, when I kissed them on the cheek to say hello, I could have something else in my mind. It was my way to provoke them, and also to say f*ck to a whole mentality. 

This year, I started a master, in a new school, known to be open-minded, to defend a lot of people. I was in a universe where having an interesting love/sex life to tell is the basis of every friendship. A universe where people are completely open to the LGBTQ community, but still talk to you like if you were automatically heterosexual. I don’t say you need to have doubts about everyone, because that behaviour could also hurt a lot, I really can imagine how hard it can be for heterosexuals who are seen as gay, just because they don’t act enough like the social image of the heterosexuality. But just, don’t presume anything, let people inform you about themselves when they are ready. 

This year, for the first time, I have also discovered the word “pansexuality”. Now I am ashamed I didn’t search for information sooner, because I waited 21 years for that, 21 years to lie to myself. I think I was afraid of what I could read. There is a moment for everything, mine was there. At the moment I read the definition, I thought “It is me. Damn of shit, it is me. I think like that, I am like that. There are other people like me.” I thought I was alone, weird, but I wasn’t. It was only a few seconds, but things completely changed at this moment. I was, like, in shock, but also happy, and terrorized. I past my evening to think about it, to read everything I could to be sure I wasn’t wrong, that I didn’t pretend I was pansexual when I wasn’t, I was afraid to be in doubt again, to use a word and a reality which wasn’t mine. It was really hard, honestly. 

I needed to tell it to someone, immediately. I couldn’t keep it for myself, I had to explode, to make it real. I did my first coming out the same day, to two close friends that I saw like those “I don’t care and I don’t judge you, I love you for who you are” persons. One of them is also concerned, so it was even easier, and I wish to everyone friends like them, they had the most amazing reaction. They helped me to be sure that I found my box. 

If some of you are not heterosexual and already made a coming out, did you also wanted to tell it to the entire world ? I was like that. But I had to contain myself because I wasn’t totally ready yet. I mean, the first time I told it, it was only by messages. A few days later, I told it to another close friend, but by vocal messages. Hard, really, really hard. I couldn’t stop crying. The fourth one, only by messages too. I was maybe too quick, but I needed to tell it to a few persons of trust. I needed to make it real.                                                       

At the same time, I started to accept myself and my attraction for everyone, it was really fast. Without knowing it, I was already okay with my way of thinking, the only thing I needed was to put a word on it and understand I wasn’t alone, that a whole community was there. It relaxed me so much. I wish you to find your words too, because it feels so good, you discover yourself, and you are in the right to be proud of you, no matter what people and society say.

For the fifth and sixth persons, I was able to tell it in face-to-face, and it was easier to say. There are six friends who know it right now. They react perfectly, they support me, even if five of them didn’t know what pansexuality means. They accepted it, they asked questions, but not to challenge me, just to understand. 

If only everyone could react like that. If you are not concerned with a subject, it doesn’t mean it is not a reality for other people. Please, please, understand that. Because at the same time, after I discovered about my sexual orientation, I had to face to new homophobic speeches, but this time, from my own friends. And this is now that I really need to tell you serious things. Because maybe that some people around you, or even you, had tell homophobic sentences, without even want it and realize it. There are people who defend the LGBTQ community, but at the same time, have hostile discourses, when they think they do it well. It is not a judgment, it is a personal observation, I wish you will never have to make it too. 

This year, I met some great mates at the university, I still talk to them today, we frequently go out together. During a party, we were speaking, and I don’t remember how, we began to speak about sexual orientations (no one there knew about me). I explained there wasn’t only the three “big sexualities” that we know, but so many others too. I maybe made the mistake to say, for example, the pansexuality. They didn’t know what it was, so I tried to define it. Reactions? “Okay, so they like no one”,”They just like to rub against a tree” and “It is a really weird philosophy”.

I couldn’t say more, because I was about to cry, but I wish I could. I wish I could tell them that first, it is not a philosophy, it is not a choice. Secondly, society is so accustomed to think into the gender barrier, but maybe some people suffer about that (in their sexuality or individuality). Those friends go every year to the Gay Pride, they could fight if they heard a hate speech about a lesbian/gay couple. But at the same time, they had a homophobic reaction. To defend the LGBTQ community doesn’t only mean defending a homosexual couple. It means protecting everyone (including heterosexuals, sometimes I feel like we forget them and we can have rude words about them and all those “facilities” we presume they have, without knowing their life). 

Speaking about the pansexuality without telling I am concerned, let me know what people really think about it. They don’t have to tell me something wrong because they don’t want to hurt me. It helped me to understand that I have to be careful, at least until I am completely okay with myself. It is why I tried to speak about it with two other friends, important to me. But it was easier to try with the bisexuality, because now the majority of people know what it is. I had to face to new homophobic speeches. Even against the bisexuality, too “indecisive and abnormal”. Homosexuality is good, but bisexuality is strange. Okay so.

We come back to the same problem. Those friends don’t defend the LGBTQ cause, they defend homosexual people, because others did it before and let them grow in a society where this specific sexual orientation is already known and quite protected (even if we could do so much better, of course). But when it is their turn to make it for others, who also need to be protected and listened, when they have to start a peaceful fight with them, they screw up. They reproduce a behaviour they condemn. 

But people from the LGBTQ community itself can sometimes also be hard with other sexual orientations. One of my best friends is gay. He announced it to me a few months before I discover about myself. He is also really rude about the bisexuality, the asexuality and the transidentity. I wish I could count on his help right now, because I really would need him to prepare my coming out to my mother (I know she will be totally okay with it by the way, she will cry of joy, will read during days about the pansexuality, but yes, it is still the hardest thing to say to her). The day I will have the courage to tell it to that friend, I want to ask him why he is so trash with those realities, when he knows better than anyone how much it is hard to accept yourself and how much the society can hurt you about that. 

I mean, all sexualities are valid, every feeling is valid, every story is valid, everyone is valid. I still have a lot of work to do about myself, I have to learn to protect myself, but I wanted to tell you those things. It is the first time I write about it, it is hard, I will not deny it. Maybe no one will read it, but if one day you arrive until the end, I hope you understood how important you are, you have so much value for the world. If one day someone tells you something violent, about any subject, remember that you are valid. Just that. There will always be people to think you are. Starting with yourself. Be proud, please. And don’t condemn too quickly things which could seem strange for you, because sometimes, a single word can break a whole person.