#i am rooting for you heterosexuals

[cantpickastruggle]

Just finished binging the whole of Ugly betty cause i needed to know the iconness that is this show and i loved it except that i am so dissapointed on them losing literally one of the best slow burn potential ever that is Daniel and Betty . I have been whining over the ending for so long cause as the show progressed all i could root for ever as a couple was Daniel and Betty and finally when it was implied that they are endgame it just felt so lackluster cause it was such an open ending and i hate open endings, and knowing that they end up married in the og telenovela actually kind of hurt and healed me at the same time. Like i get the point of the open ending being that it would be sudden to have them end up romantically like that but like there were so many times they could've started by implying their feelings for each other but they failed every time and i am very sad over it . This is literally the first time ever i actually want to actively go ,search and read fanfics on a straight ship.

[sciderman]

VENOM IS SONY??? Well, that explains a lot then

disney would NEVER give us this

[henrybelly]

honestly when i tried to figure out why some fans are so mad at ivypool these days i was looking through avos and. the scene where ivypool apologises to twigpaw for not supporting sending a patrol for skyclan is genuinely very sweet??

i actually saw someone characterize this as "ivypool forcing twigpaw to forgive her". is it crack you smoke. is that what you smoke. you smoke crack?

[aromantic-pantyanarchy]

It's me. I'm the cis, heterosexual, aromantic man. I will never marry, I will never be married, I will grow into middle age and elder age and I will die unmarried. I will be forced to support a household of myself on only my wages alone for the rest of my life. I will be asked about women and marriage and children by my family for the rest of my life (or men, the progressive ones might say). I may not ever come out to them. I feel like I burned my coming out on something stupid. I don't want to explain it. I don't want to run them through the definitions and intricacies. I don't want the acceptance without understanding, placating me with ceased questions and poor explanations to other, drunk adults.

I like my hair to be long, I spent a year with it dyed a golden blonde with dark roots because I like the trashy party girl aesthetic. I want to dye it again with pink tips. I like painting my nails, black and blue are my favorite colors. I like wearing chokers. I also like wearing baggy jeans and ratty hoodies. I like having stubble. I like having chest hair. I like having a square jaw and broad shoulders. I wish I had a flatter stomach and a thinner profile frame. I don't know what this makes me, perhaps this is something no more GNC than Machine Gun Kelly. I think about this a lot, how queer my appearance truly is. I should think about it less. I have thought long and hard about if I could be trans or if I could be non-binary or if I could be genderqueer and the conclusion I ultimately came to is that I most enjoy being a man open to whatever self-expression I want.

I don't date, but I've thought about it. I would like to meet people, and I would like to have sex with them. But I don't want to hurt them. I fear if I explain what I am beforehand it'll scare them away. I fear if I explain after they'll feel manipulated or abused. I don't know how many people in the dating scene want what I want. I fear my own lack of experience will make me a bad lay, an embarrassing story to tell to confidants in hindsight. I fear my own virginity, a boundary to those I wish to be like. All of these fears are baseless, as I've not been able to even begin a single relationship in my life. Despite this I still heavily identify with terms like "slut" and "manwhore" and "thot" because my interests lay so deeply within casual sex, sex without great intimacy or emotion. This may be some form of stolen valor. I hope the true sluts are not too mad at me.

I made this blog several years ago because a mutual of mine reblogged memes making fun of aro and ace people, making fun of the concept of aphobia, and in addition well known aphobes. I didn't feel comfortable talking about aro stuff on my main blog, for as little as I talk about it. Living through the ace discourse of the 2016 era has largely caused me to cringe in embarrassment any time I am forced to discuss my orientation with people who aren't aro or ace themselves. I no longer follow this person. I unfollowed many people I was mutuals with from that time, most of them because they posted too often about how much they hated men and I didn't want to see that, some because our interests simply drifted too far apart, only one for explicit aphobia reasons. (Also one because they became a "both sides are bad, any vote is wasted" libertarian, but that's unrelated.)

I guess at this point I don't care deeply about what strangers on the internet think of me. If a trusted friend told me that they don't think I'm truly queer that may hurt. But I am going to continue to use the word for myself. I take up no resources. I go to events that are open to me. If an event was not open to me, I think I'd not want to go anyways. I am not a hypothetical, I am not a strawman, I am a person with lived experiences both within and exterior to the queer community. If you hate me, I will permit you to continue to do so. But ultimately, I am who I am, I cannot change these facts, and I would not choose to do so even if I could.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Do you have a list of good sex ed books to read?

BOY DO I

please bear in mind that some of these books are a little old (10+ years) by research standards now, and that even the newer ones are all flawed in some way. the thing about research on human beings, and especially research on something as nebulous and huge as sex, is that people are Always going to miss something or fail to account for every possible experience, and that's just something that we have to accept in good faith. I think all of these books have something interesting to say, but that doesn't mean any of them are the only book you'll ever need.

related to that: it's been A While since I've read some of these so sorry if anything in them has aged poorly (I don't THINK SO but like, I was not as discerning a reader when I was 19) but I am still including them as books that have been important to my personal journey as a sex educator.

additionally, a caveat that very few of these books are, like, instructional sex ed books in the sense of like "here's how the penis works, here's where the clit is, etc." those books exist and they're great but they're also not very interesting to me; my studies on sex are much more in the social aspect (shout out to my sociology degree) and the way people learn to think about sex and societal factors that shape those trends. these books reflect that. I would genuinely love to have the time to check out some 101 books to see how they fare, but alas - sex ed is not my day job and I don't have the time to dedicate to that, so it happens slowly when it happens at all. I've been meaning to read Dr. Gunter's Vagina Bible since it came out in 2019, for fucks sake.

and finally an acknowledgement that this is a fairly white list, which has as much to do with biases with academia and publishing as my own unchecked biases especially early in my academic career and the limitations of my university library.

ANYWAY here's some books about sex that have been influential/informative to me in one way or another:

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)

Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (Laura M. Carpenter, 2005)

Virgin: The Untouched History (Hanne Blank, 2007)

Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education Before the 1960s (Susan K. Freeman, 2008)

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Mary Roach, 2008)

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (Revised Edition) (Susan Stryker, 2008)

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (Jessica Valenti, 2009)

Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (Amy T. Schalet, 2011)

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Hanne Blank, 2012)

Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships (Meg-John Barker, 2013)

The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Realities (Rachel Hills, 2015)

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Tranform Your Sex Life (Emily Nagoski, 2015)

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (Jane Ward, 2015)

Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education (Jonathan Zimmerman, 2015)

American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus (Lisa Wade, 2017)

Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, 2018)

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights (Juno Mac and Molly Smith, 2018)

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen, 2020)

Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (Kim Gallon, 2020)

A Curious History of Sex (Kate Lister, 2020)

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity (Peggy Orenstein, 2020)

Black Women, Black Love: America's War on Africa American Marriage (Dianne M. Stewart, 2020)

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (Jane Ward, 2020)

Hurts So Good: The Science and Pleasure of Pain on Purpose (Leigh Cowart, 2021)

Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs (Ina Park, 2021)

The Right to Sex: Feminist in the Twenty-First Century (Amia Srinivasan, 2021)

Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (Eric C. Wat, 2021)

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg, 2023)

[hairtusk]

do you have any other reading recommendations? feminist and/or philosophy in general? don't know much about these topics and would love to learn

absolutely, thank you so much for asking! i decided to interpret this as feminist texts, philosophy/political texts by female authors, and a sprinkling of feminist fiction, for ease. in honesty, i am more interested in political and theological philsophy than anything else, so there'll be a lot of that. each text is linked with the appropriate goodreads entry (i don't use the site, but i know lots of people track their reading lists there)

[necessary disclaimer! i do not necessarily agree with all of the ideas posited in these texts! i can't believe i have to reiterate this!]

Feminist Texts:

• Andrea Dworkin: Pornography: Men Possessing Women; Intercourse; Right-Wing Women; Woman Hating

• Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (autobiography)

• Adrienne Rich: Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution; Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence; Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry

• Audre Lorde: Sister Outsider; The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

• Germaine Greer: The Female Eunuch; The Whole Woman; The Change: Women, Ageing, and Menopause

• Angela Davis: Women, Race & Class • Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth

• Betty Freidan: The Feminine Mystique

• bell hooks: Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

• Susan Brownmiller: Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape; Femininity

• Shulasmith Firestone: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

• Marilyn French: The War Against Women; A History of Women in the World (series); Beyond Power: On Women, Men & Morals

Philosophy Focused Texts / Criticism / Other Politics:

• Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil; The Origins of Totalitarianism; The Human Condition

• Simone Weil: Gravity and Grace; Waiting for God; The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind

• Susan Sontag: Illness as Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors; Regarding The Pain of Others

[drdemonprince]

in regards to the concept of abled people not existing/abled folks being expected to do more in relationships with disabled folks... You make some good points about us all being disabled in different ways and not recognizing it, but I still feel that there's quite a vsst gap materially between say, an ADHDer who can lift and push 50lbs easily/without pain and one who can't. And i have run into big roadblocks in relationships with other lefty types as the person who can't! And I think that expectation should be talked about and accepted more because I know a lot of "leftists" who would never think to apply this to stuff like doing the dishes because they're hellbent on everyone doing Equal Amounts. It's all fun and IG graphics about disability justice until they decide that youre Nonbinary roomate named sock who doesnt do the dishes etc etc , then see yourselves to the door!

You're absolutely right that there are differences in what various disabled people can do and the privileges that affords. It's glaringly obvious as a problem in Autism spaces, where people who can mask and speak like me are listened to and trusted and frequently talk over people who are nonverbal and cannot mask.

Even there, though, there are massive problems in attempting to rank-order someone's level of ability rather than just speaking specifically about these things in terms of privileges and oppressions. People assume I'm capable of all kinds of things I am not capable of, for instance, or hold me to ableist standards of productivity and ability because I "seem more capable. And Autistic people whose disabilities are more obvious have the opposite problem -- they are denied agency, presumed to be incompetent, not permitted to take on challenges they could find stimulating and worthwhile, and are dehumanized, etc.

And so where I'm getting with this is that we can't determine from the outside what a person is capable of doing, or what they should be capable of doing. It's not that far of a logical path to go from saying "Oh, this ADHDer is not physically disabled, they can lift 50 pounds, they can do a lot of things that I can't do" to saying "This ADHDer didn't unpack all our luggage for two weeks after our trip, they are lazy and not pulling their weight."

Someone might have the literal physical ability to do something in terms of strength or mobility, but not have the ability to complete a task because of the disabilities they do have (ADHD, in this case), and even if we are disabled ourselves we may be primed to see those people as lazy, uncaring, not pulling their weight, and all kinds of ableist interpretations.

So broadly I get your point, it is undoubtedly true some of us have abilities that others don't. but I think there's no way to put this idea into practice beyond just trusting people when they say they cannot do a thing, and not passing harsh judgement against people we think ought to be able to do a thing but don't (and maybe can't). This goes back to the original point of the discussion -- wondering why so many other people seem to fail disabled people and not show up for them.

To your second point, about a lot of even leftist people bringing therapy and instagram infographic "boundary setting" advice to their relationships and expecting all chores to be divided up equally, yeah that's a big problem and it's been a big problem in interpersonal relationships for many decades at this point. Most people overestimate the portion of the chores that they do, underestimate the work their partners or housemates do, and aspire to "equity" in a way that drives them absolutely crazy with score-keeping and resentment. There's a lot of research on how that outlook absolutely poisons heterosexual relationships and has done so pretty much ever since women started getting the ability to say no to a chore. It's a big problem of individualism under capitalism at its root, I think.

And the social change needed is much the same thing -- people need to learn to actually trust their loved ones when they say they cannot do the dishes, cannot clean the gutters, can't drop off the rent check, etc. I think a disability justice politics of raising everyone's class consciousness regarding their own disabilities and others is the way to go, and a massive strengthening of community ties.

[rollercoasterwords]

hi there! i saw a post you made ages ago about gender not necessarily being a static thing and being something that can change over a person’s lifetime.

excuse my ignorance in this but do you think that is something that applies to a person’s sexual orientation as well? i always appreciate your insight on these topics.

also, apologies if anything is worded strangely. english is not my first language.

no worries, i can understand u perfectly! and my short answer to ur question is yes

longer answer is i don’t think anyone is born w some innate metaphysical identity that they can unearth to discover their True Self; i think sex, gender, and sexuality are largely socially constructed, though obviously materially rooted. the comparison i sometimes make to explain this to students is to think about an accent—certain physical aspects influence accent (mouth shape, vocal chords, etc) but ultimately the accent a person has is almost entirely shaped by the world around them; babies aren’t born with some “true” accent they have to discover about themselves. but that doesn’t make a person’s accent any less real or “natural”!

i think where some people get defensive abt the idea that sexuality isn’t necessarily static or innate is that oftentimes conservative voices have used this specifically to say that being gay is a phase, etc. this is a very clever trick, in which heterosexuality is enshrined as “natural” and any sexuality departing from that is a phase, a choice, etc, such that many queer people have found themselves cornered into arguing that queerness is also natural and innate, just like heterosexuality. but the ‘born this way’ narrative will ultimately not lead to liberation, because it fails to question the basic premise that heterosexuality is natural and innate; in reality heterosexuality is just as constructed and contrived as any other form of sexuality, and in fact we often see the lengths that people must go to in order to hide this fact. kinda like the wizard of oz behind the curtain (the invention of heterosexuality by jonathan ned katz is a great book abt this!)

the other sticking point i think people often have with this concept is that they think saying sexuality isn’t innate means people can just pick & choose who they’re attracted to. but that’s not how social constructs work! again, going back to the example of accents, just because an accent is socially constructed/developed does not mean that people can just snap their fingers and get a new accent. this is because social constructs are grounded in material realities and have material effects; they’re not just playing make-believe. money is another good example of a social construct that has very real and tangible material effects; i can’t just take monopoly money to the store and buy something.

so…yeah. i think sexuality can be just as fluid as gender. maybe you’ll be attracted to something at one point in your life and that’ll change over time, or maybe you’ll identify with one sexuality and then later figure out a different label works better for you. when it comes to queer politics & queer communities, i really don’t see a point in trying to nitpick or analyze whether someone is REALLY x sexuality, or what the “correct” label is for someone to use, bc i find labels more useful for identifying shared struggles than for like. unearthing buried metaphysical truths about identity lol. i also have found that i personally am much happier not worrying about figuring out my “true” sexuality and just using whatever label best fits my experiences & how i’m perceived in the world

[jackwhiteprophetic]

my controversial opinion is that eddie has been much more explicitly queer coded than buck/ his queer coding was rooted in actual repression of his sexuality and emotions whereas most of buck’s queer-coding came as a result of eddie just being all eddie around him and buck being a little freak about it if that makes sense…. i’ve never said that publicly bc i know i would get hate for it but you asked for controversial opinions soooo yeah 🫶

also upon proofreading this i realize this sounds like i don’t view buck’s queerness as valid and that is NOT at all what i am saying, i am so so so so glad we got bi!buck but i definitely think buck’s bi-coding wouldn’t have been as prominent within the fanspace if it weren’t for eddie being there to prompt all of the major bi!buck subtext whereas eddie’s queerness feels much more intrinsic to him aside from buck 🫣🫣🫣 (however i don’t view eddie with anyone other than buck and feel like his journey w his repression would naturally wind up with buck being the only man he ever acts on his feelings with if that makes sense)

Agree agree agreeeee I mean I think Buck's queer codedness has always existed, but Eddie is SO MASSIVELY COMPHET CODED AND IT'S LIKE SO WOVEN INTO HIS CHARACTER. there was no heterosexual explanation for a pan to Hen after "I hate being forced to perform" so so gay he is so gay that is a gay right there if I ever saw one

[sevensoulmates]

Hi I just wanted to say I was on twitter and saw someone discussing and sharing your meta posts and I was genuinely intrigued and curious because you guys are obviously so devoted to the buddie couple and it's really endearing. And I was just really interesed about this perception of the couple you guys seem to have because is so different to the other side of the fandom I'm actively interacting with. I'm obviously a B/T shipper and only got into the fandom because of them but I'm really loving the show (currently I'm on season 5). I'm just curious about how is it that you guys see buddie as romantic when I think their interactions are clearly platonic, they obviously have a deep relationship, an intimate friendship but no more that that.

Again, I'm not trying to hate I just wanted to ask because it looks like the buddie shippers are settling themselves for disappointment just waiting for them to go canon. You all are obviously loyal fans and I think that's lovely but I honestly just don't see the show writing Eddie as queer now and I really think Tommy is here to stay (I think there's too many signs pointing to this fact like the buck actually episode and the old guy named Thomas). Again I'm not here trying to hate because I think you guys love the ship genuinely but I just wonder how is it that after all the things the shows portrays you guys are still rooting for buddie. Please feel free to ignore my question if I'm annoying you, I really don't want to come off as rude I was just really interesed in the topic.

There are a boatload of reasons why I and many other people ship Buddie. Most of them are far too long to get to in one ask like this because Buddie have had 6 years worth of material to sort through and it would just take far too long.

Long story short: in the same way that Buck was confirmed bisexual over the course of a single episode after years of many people saying Buck could never be anything other than straight, Buddie could be made canon in one single episode and it would be accepted just as easily even though it's been years and a lot of people are still saying they could never be together.

It's TV. The writers can do whatever they want. The second they decide to start bringing in more explicitly romantic things, people will suddenly start "getting" it.

To be more precise: I think it's easy for people to see a ship like Bucktommy and latch onto it because it's very clearly, explicitly queer. It's a lot harder for people to believe in or "see" ships where a queer couple hasn't done anything explicitly romantic like kiss or hold hands, etc. It's unfortunately due to heternomativity and the sad death of the slow burn. I can't really do anything about either of those things.

For me, the primary reason I ship buddie is because of the deep special bond and obvious family they've built over the years that feels different from every single other relationship they've had with literally anyone else on the show. That includes Tommy, Shannon, Abby, etc. You can view it as platonic if you want, that's anyone's subjective opinion.

You seem like a sweet person, but you're also coming into the show with a bias towards Bucktommy, which is fine. They're what brought you to the show, they're the ones who initially intrigued you, and they're also the only ones currently explicitly queer. I get it.

I am going to be so honest with you: I think the show has been writing both Buck and Eddie as queer men for many many years. But just like how Buck was only allowed to confirm it this most recent season, they haven't been able to confirm it for Eddie just yet. I could write essays and essays about how Eddie is so obviously deep deep in compulsory heterosexuality and has been almost since the beginning, but it would take too long. There's plenty of posts I and others have made all over tumblr and on my blog.

Slow queer burns featuring characters that aren't introduced in the first 5 seconds as queer are almost non-existent, they very rarely happen in popular media, and because of that it's almost impossible to ship something without someone coming at you saying "they don't see it". Fact of the matter is that Buddie is one of the easiest ships to "see", if you were looking at a man and a woman, but they're not. I can't really convince people to see what they don't want to see.

If you're curious about the specifics, I'd encourage you to go through my blog/meta or other buddie-positive blogs on tumblr to find many talented and intelligent individuals who will have a lot to say on why they believe in buddie.

When it comes down to it, I don't think the fandom at large is ever gonna believe it until they see it. That's kinda just human nature and the state of how we all consume media right now.

But once the show does go there, they're gonna be like damn can't believe I didn't see that until now while the rest of us sit here like "we've been trying to tell you this whole time."

In the meantime, I'm enjoying Bucktommy for what it is, for however long it lasts, and I'm gonna enjoy buddie just the same, regardless of if they go canon or not, or how long it takes.

[heterophobicdyke]

How do you deal with all the homophobia in radical feminism? I can't stand radblr anymore because of the constant lesbian hatred, all the "classic" radfem writers were polilezzes, and even when I try to meet up with feminists irl they are all bihet homophobes. I want to help other lesbians, but every radfem space I check out is just FULL of homophobia. Is there anywhere else for real lesbians to go?

I hate it too. Like I am a radical feminist because I believe in re-ordering society to eliminate male supremacy. That’s why I care less about microanalysing small behaviours like nail polish and dildos, and care more about brainstorming how to overthrow men - I find the navel gazing self-analysis/consciousness among radical feminists a product of our socialisation. It’s not “feminine” to want to rip society down and start again, so we’re expected to internalise - microanalyse how we, personally, are contributing to patriarchy, rather than taking an active role in warring with men who are the root of the issue.

I’m also a radical homosexual rights activist because I believe in re-ordering society to eliminate heterosexual supremacy. So it’s tough being in radical feminist spaces because they aren’t as radical about ending other forms of oppression - and it conflicts sometimes! For example, we should all be anti-gender because it not only affects women but homosexuals. Gender is misogynistic but it’s also homophobic. However, many radical feminists see gender as a solely misogynistic thing, they see homosexual people with a gender identity as the enemy when they’re equally as victim to gender as women with eating disorders are to beauty standards. Heterosexual women are given the most empathy under radical feminism and it’s almost gendery in how it evolved - lesbians are seen as more predatory all because they’re attracted to women… therefore we’re “like men.” To be a perfect female victim to patriarchy you must desire men and have them betray that desire by abusing you once you’re in love. And don’t you dare suggest these women not enter relationships with men at all! Because then you’re victim-blaming as a stranger to the cause, someone who just Doesn’t Understand. While there’s an argument for lack of agency in specific dire situations, like a woman resorting to prostitution to pay off debt or a drug habit, or a woman in a severely abusive relationship to a man not being able to leave, I think radical feminism must get to a stage where we admit we will never overthrow patriarchy while OSA women choose their male partners over the feminist revolution. They’re not compatible. That’s why many turn to liberal feminism and believe they can self-empower while in these close ties to men. As if these men aren’t oppressors living in your home and influencing your daily lives.

Meanwhile, the radical feminist sex wars (ongoing) involved “political lesbians”—some not even attracted to women at all—telling Actual Lesbians that in fact THEY are part of the problem because sexual desire towards women is a Man Thing that can only ever be objectifying unless you’re having sex in “equal ways,” laying side by side and microanalysing any sexual act for “manliness.” I’m kink-critical, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people should be emulating rape or kidnapping or racism or pedophilia in the bedroom. But they went as far as to say strap on or sexy talk or whatever was all off limits if you considered yourself a feminist. But women who are not in an abusive situation marrying whole men? Poor babies.

I think radical feminism ate itself when it became about women checking themselves for “manliness” rather than distancing from Actual Males. Lesbians will always lose that because homophobia suggests any form of sexual desire for women is a man thing. Like throughout the sex wars and beyond, women in relationships with males were seen to be permanent victims unable to possibly live a female-centred life unless they got to appropriate the term lesbian, and be Better Lesbians than Actual Lesbians. We know that not all women are inescapably and powerlessly with men, and can’t leave, especially when you consider the radfem polls showing most are middle class with a university education. Where the attention went, and goes, instead, was towards women policing their own behaviour for evidence of “maleness.” Which is gender! Butches, especially butch/femme relationships, and any lesbian with a sexual appetite, were/are critiqued more than discussing how women can distance from actual males! As if masculine/feminine relationships and penetration are heterosexual, male things, and a woman exhibiting those things are worse than women who refuse to leave men who exhibit those things (because she’s so vulnerable and victimised!). In fact, women who are deemed “manly” for such things are seen as a bigger betrayer than men themselves because they see it as coming from inside the house. They can delude themselves into thinking they’re using men for sex and romance but are still fighting some feminist fight internally, yet actual lesbians with no dependence on men whatsoever are somehow class traitors for *spins wheel* not being feminine enough in how they have or want sex? Make it make sense!

Masculinity and femininity are simply what we associate with men and women. The problem isn’t really masculinity and femininity, it’s that they’re forcefully applied and naturalised to the sexes. Harmful beauty expectations like youthfulness and thinness are a subset of femininity designed entirely to make women small and childlike. In the same way “toxic masculinity” is the sort of masculinity designed to give men more power over women through naturalising aggression among men. But there are plenty of good/neutral things associated with men, therefore “masculinity,” that women can and do possess, such as short hair, desiring to penetrate, being good with money and wanting to protect/defend their partner. And some women (and men!) exhibit what we’d consider good/neutral “femininity”: nurturing, preferring being penetrated, in touch with their emotions, animal-lovers. These two types of women, as lesbians, being in a “butch/femme” relationship is not emulating heterosexuality because there is no male involved. But “political lesbians” and other radfem homophobes believe(d) they were/are the higher form of lesbian (despite being attracted to men) because they don’t engage in feminist-neutral forms of lesbian culture and history.

This distraction from the real issue—women living lives that focus on men including their partners—goes on. I think radical feminists misuse the victim label to apply to things they don’t want to change or address. OSA women “can’t help” focusing their life on men, so do we forfeit the revolution for it?

But I’ve come to terms with being a radical feminist regardless of those who have deluded themselves into thinking they can end patriarchy holding hands with a man, and all the homophobia that comes along with protecting that CHOICE. Because I rest easy knowing the barebones foundation of radical feminism—eliminating male supremacy—is what I believe and live my life doing, along with likeminded lesbians, febfems and celibates. I’m not going to stop identifying as a radical feminist because of fakers, in the same way I’m not going to stop identifying as a radical homosexual rights activist despite the TRAs thinking they, also, can reclaim the system and simply rework it in “self-empowerment.” Both homosexual TRAs and deluded "radical feminists" belong to the oppressed classes I want to be empowered, and that's where the solidarity ends. I don't have to bite my tongue to hold their hand in the path towards overthrowing heteropatriarchy. I won't be guilted into playing nice.

That’s how I deal with it.

[ineffable-doll]

Shipping is so much more FUN when you're aspec.

I'm not super fandom savvy, having only ever been active in one of them in any meaningful way, but I am familiar with the online culture surrounding shipping fictional characters together. Something I've personally witnessed is that the thinking around platonic v.s. romantic is extremely binary; a relationship can be one or the other, and a platonic relationship is the failing outcome if you, as an audience member, preferred the latter. This reflects much broader societal thinking, so it makes sense that most people approach shipping this way.

However, when you're aspec (anywhere on the aromantic and/or asexual spectrums), this idea doesn't necessarily apply. Suddenly, platonic and romantic are not opposing ideas, they're just two potential options on a very, very wide sliding scale / multi-dimensional graph wherein the significance of a relationship is completely disconnected from its label.

A huge part of shipping culture (again, just from what I've witnessed) is that Explicit Confessions and/or an onscreen mouth kiss are necessary to make a ship canon, and that not happening means Your Ship Isn't Canon And Therefore Isn't Important or Valuable (and gets used as a way of invalidating other people's ships). However, for a lot of aspec folks (and others, of course), romance is not automatically more valuable than friendship, and an end goal for a particular character dynamic becomes a lot less about fulfilling A, B, and C to verify the couple as "real" in the eyes of the mainstream or even the fandom as a whole, and instead is more about wanting to see characters happily in one another's presence. Specifics vary wildly case to case, so I'm gonna leave that fairly broad.

Ultimately, I have found myself shipping characters in the usual way less and less as I've learned more about my own aspec identity and experience. I care less if characters kiss; I care less if characters declare three little words...though I also am very familiar with the history of queer erasure and definitely root for explicitly romantic queer rep. And all this doesn't mean I don't have couples I support - I very much do. But whether their relationship is specifically romantic matters very little to me, with rare exceptions. (In fact, I often find myself "shipping" characters platonically - seeing a couple that would make great best friends being forced along standard, heterosexual romantic beats.) Mostly, I want the characters I ship to be around each other, to support each other, and to love each other in whatever capacity is fulfilling to their arcs and to the narrative.

Or, to put this all in a more digestible meme format:

Allos: If the couple doesn't kiss then the ship isn't canon

Me: but have you considered that the real kiss was the friends we made along the way?

[ineffable-opinions]

BL: Romancing in a Bubble?

As always, please let me know if you have suggestions, critiques, comments or corrections.

I will only be discussing BL broadly (here I use BL as an umbrella term) and not just live action. I don’t want to club together BL and GL since in spite of their shared roots they are very different in their genre conventions, target demographics, and history. Also, I am not very familiar with it.

I consider BL a genre in itself – practically well as the way Masala is a cinema genre.

Please check the content/trigger warnings before diving into the works I have mentioned below. Feel free to message or ask.

BL / romance

I don’t think BL is romance or even a sub-genre of romance. A lot of BL is romance. Many more of them have at least a romantic side to them. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is romance. (I remember the discussion Killing Stalking had prompted.)

But there are plenty of BL devoid of romance. Like One Room Angel, Social Reform Season, and The Orc Bride. Similarly, BL is not exactly a porn sub-genre even though there are plenty of ero-BL.

Also, there are plenty of BL where romance takes backseat such as The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Blue Morning, Brother, Lawless Gangster and Thousand Autumns.

BL / queer

Queer – Can I call it a genre the way I call BL a genre? Even if one were to ignore queer as method in academia, it is still so complex.

Let me quote Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) author Chiang-Sheng Kuo:

[W]hat exactly is queer literature? Is it queer literature if queer people like to read it, or is it only queer literature if there are queer characters in the books? Or is it an appendage of the queer movement? If a queer author writes a book without queer characters, does that represent a certain aspect of queer culture?

(You can find the whole interview here.)

I think the problem persist even when I think of queer as a label.

Then there is the issue with conception of “queerness” itself. Like, in a way it is a limiting term. Is it fair to call normative or customary male-male erotic practices such as masti and Launda Naach, “queer” just because that’s how it is perceived elsewhere now?

To quote what Kaustav Bakshi wrote in Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla:

In the last decade, the question of decolonizing queer epistemologies was being raised periodically, whereby queer politics, despite having a shared agenda of toppling heteronormativity, and queer culture, albeit having a shared aesthetics, became more and more regionalist – not in a negative sense – but, with implications of difference, which can be interpreted and understood only when one subjectively experiences the ‘region’ with respect to gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical and intellectual ability, access to education, metropolitan cultures, and most importantly, the internet.

[T]he attraction towards the launda is not understood as ‘queer’ – non-normative or out of the ordinary – but, as an integral part of sexual life, which is not always compulsively alert to the heterosexual-homosexual binary.

Imo, decolonizing queer epistemologies comes in handy when discussing BL since there are plenty of BL dealing with:

Historical BL set in eras and locations that had customary male-male sexualities and practices.

BL with special settings, like omegaverse, with different (if any) idea of queerness.

BL / other queer content

Just as Japan has gei-comi, and other manga like Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out, and Kieta Hatsukoi (shoujo), What Did You Eat Yesterday and My Brother's Husband (seinen) beside BL manga, different countries offer diversity in queer content with noticeable overlap. But clubbing them together would not be easy. Moreover, this diversity is as much cross-sectional as it is temporal (tanbi, JUNE, shonen ai, yaoi, BL in Japan).

BL the main difference between BL and other queer genres is BL’s focus on moe (affect). Anyway, BL predates LGBTQ+ acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people (BL fans) were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL is commercialized and we get mostly feel-good content. But that is capitalism (and the State) reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people’s labor of love.

I wonder if it is apt to consider BL the way western queer shows (such Verbotene Liebe, Queer as Folks, Os Nossos Dias and SKAM) as benchmark when discussing BL? Won’t it be better to evaluate consider BL in relation to local non-BL queer content in BL producing countries? But then, there are BL inspired by western queer culture such as Partners by Tamaki Yura.

Here are three gei-comi that I recommend for BL audience, through which they can get an insight into non-BL queer manga from Japan (created with androphilic men as target audience) :

Fire Code by Ichikawa Kazuhide

Fisherman's Lodge by Gengoroh Tagame

Coming Home by Go Fujimoto

Here is my BL versus gei-comi list which I think highlights their differences and similarities (I have included only Gengoroh Tagame’s works since they are probably the easiest to access/buy/borrow):

Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? by Gengoroh Tagame || Hitori de Yoru wa Koerarenai by Matsumoto Yoh

Arena by Gengoroh Tagame || Jinx by Mingwa

Cretian Cow by Gengoroh Tagame || The Orc Bride by Madobuchiya (Nishin)

Uo to Mizu by Gengoroh Tagame || Terpenoid by Okadaya Tetuzoh

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame || The Story of My Brother by Ike Reibun

There is lot of overlap between BL and gei-comi. Gengoroh Tagame first published in JUNE (a magazine that contributed to BL we know now). There are magazines and anthologies (Nikutaiha BL) that offer crossover between different streams of queer content.

Similarly, there are danmei (Chinese BL) novel written by queer men such as the autobiographical works: Six Records of a Floating Life and Waiting Until 35 Years Old by NanKang BaiQi and Bei Cheng Tian Jie (北城天街) by FeiTian YeXiang.

BL / Queerness - exploration and conflict

Here are some live action BL (I’m not including some of the more famous ones like TharnType and Wedding Plan) where plot is rooted in character’s queerness and its exploration or implications:

Lan Yu – first danmei to get live action adaptation. The central conflict is rooted in the queerness of its characters, particularly Chen HanDong.

A Round Trip to Love and Irresistible Love – based on danmei by Lan Lin. These are part of a shared universe. The former has both ‘coming out’ (Cheng Yichen) and ‘leaving home’ (Lu Feng). In the latter, all the conflict is rooted in compulsory heterosexuality and we get the perspective of not only an amphiphilic (bisexual) man (Xie Yan) but also an amphiphilic woman (Xia Jun) of the same social class.

Boys Love: The Movie

No Touching At All (2014)

Udagawachou de Matteteyo (2015)

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Sing in Love (2022) – Queerness is part of the main conflict.

Mood Indigo

Life: Senjou no Bokura

Light on Me

I don’t keep track of these things usually, so this is based off memory.

In Japan, most BL has dealt with the struggles of being queer in a largely heterosexist society since the days of tanbi and shonen-ai (such as Zankoku Na Kami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto). JUNE gained notoriety for focusing on it and yaoi boom was movement away from that. Then yaoi gained notoriety for existing in a bubble. When BL started to treat heterosexism in society as a part of the narrative, it garnered praise for being ‘transformative’.

BL has managed to carry within it different modes of identity and queerness.

Take Okane ga Nai (No Money) by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Toru Kousaka for example.

It is often held up as the epitome of all that is wrong with BL (or yaoi as anglophone fandom calls it). What’s less talked about is the main character, Ayase Yukiya’s queer angst and his exploration of identity that spans several volumes of the manga series. Kano on the other hand doesn’t struggle with his identity at all since his attraction to Ayase is driven by a very strong, initially unreciprocated emotional connection dependency (formed when his father died and he was at his lowest). For him, sexuality is merely a form of expression of his attraction for Ayase. Therefore, it does not inform his identity in anyway.

Within cannon, Someya and Honda’s pairing offer contrast to Ayase and Kano’s pairing. In a way, Kano and Someya have post-queer and pre-queer identities, respectively. Someya is a self-actualized person who mentors other queer characters (club staff, Ayase, Honda, Kano). There is a lot of give and take that happens between Ayase and all the queer people he meets at Someya’s club. Ayase's and Honda’s struggles with identity and sexuality are juxtaposed with Kano's and Someya's self-assured disposition.

That is also why I don’t think I Told Sunset About You stands out much. It can easily fit into the BL fold because there are plenty of BL that approached the same theme as I Told Sunset About You in a similar fashion (including these live action BL: His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta, Life: Senjou no Bokura and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese).  

I recommend the danmei novel Sissy by Shui QianCheng, the author of the works Beloved Enemy, My Stand-In and Meet You at the Blossom are based on, for a more detailed exploration of heterosexism, including femmephobia and homophobia.

Sissy, Beloved Enemy and Professional Body Double (the novel My Stand-in is based on) are all part of 188 group (a shared universe of novels).

There are plenty of other BL from other region that are focus on themes such as heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality. Here is such a one-shot: Romantic by Motoni Modoru (part of the anthology Tanbishugi).

BL / terms

I like BL and associated terms like danmei because of the culture and the history associated with those terms. Tanbi and danmei are different readings of same characters 耽美 but they represent very different things. Shonen-ai literally translate to boy(s) love but that term (or BRM (boys’ romantic manga) as Emiko Nozawa puts it) carries within it so much history and specific artistic styles and sensibilities. Waai is derived from yaoi/yuri but there are fu-cultural processes, very different from that of yaoi creation, behind the production of Y-novels. I learned a lot from exploring these words alone.

[mumblingsage]

Semi-baked thought but recently I have read 3 different professionally published gay romances that were...fine...some more satisfying than others, but what stuck out to me was the extent to which the characterization and dialogue lacked surprises. A bi guy in an M/M romance recommendation thread on reddit pointed out the extent to which published romances gravitate toward a particular flavor of feminine man paired with a particular flavor of masculine man and it's hard not to keep seeing once it's pointed out. In each of the three books the more 'masculine' guy was bisexual. I love bisexuals (it's self-love), I love characters with differing relationships to their gender, but I'm also fighting down thoughts of a drinking game.

It's not the exact same flavor as the original Fandom Ghost but it is a Ghost. [And specific enough that it is a Ghost, not an archetype.]

Perhaps the bigger lacking-surprises issue is a craft one where everyone just Says What They Mean too often, and in rather bland ways. I don't mind the occasional revelation of Truth from the Heart; I am reading romance! But how you do it matters, points can be won for style; there's a low quotability quotient and less satisfaction because, again, it's romance, we know they're going to communicate these particular ideas, we're here to be charmed and surprised by how they do it. (In parallel to the romances, I'm reading Robin Hobb's character-driven fantasy novels, and one thing I will say for her, the characters' dialogue + narrative is a firehose of surprises in a way that often reads as more truly romantic.)

If this was fanfiction of my Blorbos I would be more easily satisfied, or perhaps the generic-ness would be less noticeable because I'd be backfilling richer details from canon. When it's happening to original characters, it leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction.

There's also a thing where the side characters root for the relationship in rather flat/uninteresting ways; I'm willing to admit some of this is Just Me having a higher angst preference than the target audience, but at the same time I've read older romances (old enough that they're standardly heterosexual) which, for all their myriad other sins, give side characters much richer and more complex emotional affects and roles. And I think some of it is approach/style more than content: if I summarize various side characters, they sound perfectly interesting, but on the page they fall flat because they just Say What They Mean in polite and generic ways. [This a flaw that annoys me in fanfiction too. Once you've read enough, you already know what they're going to say, usually, but you want the way they say it to make some impression. "Say" can be broadly construed to include body language and symbolic action - my kingdom for an extravagant gesture.]

[animentality]

Futanari and omegaverse are like literary cousins.

Honestly, you could almost call them symbolic pornographic sisters.

Women want men to have pussies, men want women to have cocks. Both ideas are inescapably homosexual, queer in some way, defying what could be considered the natural order of things, despite being rooted in heterosexual ideals. They seem very popular on the internet, but when explained aloud, to anyone, would only invite shame and unwelcome speculation. And yet, I am sure they're more popular than we know.

The key difference though, is that Omegaverse extends an olive branch by actually having women with dicks too, where futanari is regrettably favored by straight men, and thus does not extend the same emotional intelligence, although I will say this. femboys are on the rise. And the word bussy, linguistically or biologically determined, has exploded in the past two years.

These two are like yin and yang. Water and fire. Earth and air.

Dark and light.

It's not so simple as, they cannot exist without one another, but rather that they are one another. They exist on opposite sides of the same coin and cannot be seen together unless that coin is spinning, and then, only in glimpses of post nut clarity.

Please don't report me to Tumblr staff for putting this on your dash. It can stay our little secret.

No one reblog this. No one see it either, for that matter.

[charmac]

hey so just curious, i'm asking this as someone who pretty strongly believes that dennis is gay, but wants to understand other perspectives. so it seems like the common consensus of a lot of sunnyblr is that dennis is bisexual but dee is a lesbian. so i was just wondering about those headcanons, since it seems like lesbian dee and gay dennis have sort of similar trains of logic behind them (heterosexuality = societal power). just need to let you know that i love your blog and i didn't mean for this to come across as confrontational, but i just wanted to explore ideas which are different from my own. thank you xoxo

For sure, and this doesn't come across as controversial at all lol I love discussing this stuff and that you're interested in hearing my perspective means a lot tbh

(Just to preface, I wrote most of this while high and watching baseball, but that's when my brain works best so not to worry)

So as for the common consensus of "Bi Dennis, Lesbian Dee" in the wider Fandom, I think a lot of that is rooted in the idea that the Gang are the "letters" of LGBT, so to speak. Not to say that's a bad thing, but just that a lot of people kinda like that "headcanon" as, for as far as canon is concerned, both of their sexualities are currently still ambiguous and this works and makes sense, so I think a lot of the fan-art and text posts/tweets/whatever veer that way.

Past that idea, I'm not actually sure what the majority of the Fandom thinks of Dee's canon sexuality? While right now I assume lesbian Dee would win, I am actually kinda surprised how few people voted gay Dennis (so far) in his canon sexuality poll, so I think a Dee version of that poll might be a good follow up to answer this...

Though the difference in what we see in Dee and Dennis' portrayals of their sex lives is what I think leans people more toward Bi Dennis and Lesbian Dee:

On Dennis: There's a point we're at with him where he.. has a system for men. He's not in denial about fucking guys, he's probably currently having sex with men (well clearly he's having (e)sex with one), he might have been sleeping with men the entire goddamn time, but he's still been pursuing women and drooling over breasts. He finds women (their bodies, really) sexually attractive. And for as much as the idea of inherently having power over women drives him, it's well established that the use of his Systems is what really gets him off, and he has one to manipulate and control men (and he's had it for awhile)... I think if Dennis wasn't sexually attracted to women, he would have just stopped—because he's clearly had no romantic interest in a woman ever in his life (briefly mistaking Maureen for something along those lines and realising he doesn't want it). I think there's a complete absence of romance in his sex life, full stop, and his life almost completely... with the exception of the fact that he has a life partner (whom he goes on dates with, financially supports, apparently now shares a bed with, etc)... But he's still gets off to and/or with women (at least that's what RCG write every now and then).

(And on the topic of writing, I think maybe in some ways for me, Bi Dennis over gay Dennis theory is due to the coding just being more obvious?... If an Italian man wants to eat a sandwich... to the paralleled Systems being the reverse of each other, giving prostate orgasms to Mac one episode and then desperate to see huge fake tits the next...)

On Dee: Season 6 made it pretty clear she's duping men into sex, and her relationship with Bill Ponderosa speaks volumes. But while she was sleeping with men just to give them low ratings in Group Dates, she was only spurred to that point because she was rejected by a guy she thought she was seeing. Then Goes to Hell reestablishes Dee is pressuring men into sex using insinuations, clearly devoid of romance. PTSDee is interesting, because Dee is acting on scorn, but it's not that the guy she slept with didn't want to see her again, but that he insulted her game. Then, Time's Up says a lot more, because it's quite literally telling you Dee slept with her (arguably best) friend, this guy she does love as a friend, and still ended up doing what she does to all the men she sleeps with (and destroying their relationship), using them. By Season 16, she hasn't had a care for a boyfriend in years, but she's sleeping with men if there's date-rape drugs in the picture. I think it's made clear she has no romantic interest in men, this is pure (fucked up) sexual pleasure.

The difference with Dee in canon (which I think is pretty clear) is that she doesn't have the "other sex option" that Dennis canonically explores. There's nothing to show us that she's even entertaining the idea of sleeping with women, so it's easily interpreted that she's a repressed lesbian experiencing comphet. Once she has sex with a woman for the first time, men will be completely gone from the picture. As an interpretation and hope for Dee's character, I would be inclined to agree, but honestly I don't believe RCG have been/are writing Dee's sexuality as a lesbian, but as Dennis' parallel. So if they're going to keep giving her plots and writing that she's interested in men the way Dennis is interested in women, I'm personally inclined to believe she's canonically sexually interested in men (as objects? lol).

I 100% agree with your idea that their heterosexuality comes from this place of "sex with (control over) the opposite sex gives me power," but I don't necessarily see it devoid of sexual attraction (as they love to hammer that stuff in), just romance (for as surface level as "empathy" would be)

For me, the intention of the writing holds a lot of weight (and maybe I should loosen up a little lol), which is why I'm parked where I am, but if the majority of people in the Fandom do see Dee as a lesbian while still believing Dennis is sexually interested in women in some way, I think it's because, while Dennis and Dee are shown to experience sexual attraction (and hetero sex) in similar ways, they don't exhibit homosexual attraction the same way, and the interpretation of that in their plots and characterisation leads to more people seeing Dennis as bi and Dee as a lesbian.

But honestly I'm just speaking on my own thoughts, idk how many people would agree, will def run a poll on Dee's sexuality tomorrow.

Let me know your thoughts. I'm really interested in hearing back on this!