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a-dragons-journal · 3 years

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i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

#probably should've put this under a cut but oh well #otherkin #kin for fun #kinnie #kinning #rani talks #asked and answered #anonymous #rani talks A LOT apparently sbfldkngjlksdf #i have a lot of feelings on this #long post

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menalez · 2 years

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[literally have boyfriends]

stuff like this physically hurts me. There’s absolutely no reason to do this. ppl can call me a boot licker or a self hating bi but I just don't like lesbophobia. Lesbians have always let us into their spaces and supported us, I'm talking about the majority lesbian community and organizations not the one lesbian that was mean to you in high school. so when stuff like this happens it's just feels like we're backstabbing them. we’re a big group and when we never call out the lesbophobia from our own it makes us seem like we: don’t care, we support it, or we don’t listen to lesbians. I just don’t get why some of us act like letting this happen won’t ever affect us. It’s also just wrong to do this or never do anything about it. We can blame it on not having a community but that doesn’t stop you from saying homophobia is wrong. Bisexuals during the gay rights movement were even more opressed than most of us today but they still spoke out against it. You can blame it on fake bis and yeah they are homophobic but the bi community isn’t just fake bis.

I relate more with lesbians because I’m like 90% woman attracted. Even though I relate to them more I'd never call myself a lesbian because that isn’t right. Lesbians don't like men that’s it there’s no debate.

Lesbians spaces are the only places were u can escape men, and express ur attraction to women, bi spaces always turn into porny sites or center around men ahem shybi. I don’t know why but even though we’re a bigger demographic we can never create our own spaces and keep them together. A lot of bi women rely on the lesbian community. so if lesbians do decide they’re fed up with us and kick us out bi women are we’re left with bi men who are still men and are sexists and misogynistic, they also tend to be annoying edge lords. Straight people don’t care about us and even at worst hate us. The trans community is well you know. There are the mogais or queers and no thank you. OSA leaning bi women for the most part don’t care about LGB topics because it doesn’t really affect them. So now we have the smaller and much more marginalized SSA leaning bis that are on their own.

It just seems like we’re dead set on ruining our relationship with the only other group of women that understands us. I see all the mspec lesbians, polilez and how so many bi women talk about how lesbians are opressors even though it’s impossible for them to oppress us. If you ever try to call out a lesbophobic bi other bis will jump on you call you a “pick me” and blame lesbians for them being lesbophobic and I just don’t get why some of us are like this. Bi women can cope all you want but we all see lesbians getting tired of this. Being bi is already isolating but if this keeps going on it’s going to get worse.

Sorry for the rambling I just needed to vent to someone.

i agree on not understanding why many bi people don't see how this also can negatively impact bi people. i mean for one, isnt that an example of bi erasure!? i hear the term used a lot by bi ppl when it comes to like fictional lesbian characters who had any kind of past with a man, or women like sappho who some argue is bi because she wrote that shes dating a man with a name thats basically "ActualMan BigDick" or sth, among other arguments... but when it comes to actual bi people, who are saying theyre literally into the opposite sex but have a strong preference for the same sex, its just... radio silence? when frankly thats one of the biggest and most prevalent examples of bi erasure i can think of!

idk anything about shybi so i cant comment on it, but thats unfortunate if bi spaces do often turn into that. i hope that changes one day because i can't imagine such spaces feel welcoming to many bi women.

i do hope one day this lesbophobia will be a thing of the past and that we can truly group together and be allies to each other.. but honestly at this point im quite hopeless on any of it. i cant imagine reaching a solid common ground :/

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2-bdamned · 3 years

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in regards to the aoex pride post i made last month, here are my personal headcanons as to why i think those are their sexuality’s! ( also thank you to @johnannepeterric for asking about this as i’ve been waiting to share these for a hot minute!!)

rin:

sexuality + gender identity:gay and trans(ftm)

reason: i don’t think he exactly cares for the concept of gender and sexuality but just thinks people should be allowed to like and be whoever they want. he knew he was in the wrong body since he was a little kid but never knew how to phrase it till later on in life. as for on screen reasons, he tends to cover up quite a bit before and after becoming a demon as well as tending to wear baggy clothes to hid his form. not to mention he has very poor posture which most transmasc people (myself included) tend to do when we can’t bind or don’t feel masculine enough. and i think he’s gay mostly due to the fact that he’s never really shown to have any friendships outside of the exwires and tends to get his platonic and romantic affections mixed up quite a bit (as to explain why i still headcanon this after the manga and his confirmed feelings towards shiemi)

yukio:

sexuality: bisexual

reasoning: he seems to show and equal amount of emotions to his colleagues and to the exwires and im like 90% sure he doesn’t really talk about romantic through the manga/anime at all. i think he’s always known he’s liked both genders since he was young. shiro seems like he was very accepting and i honestly think he would’ve helped both the boys with their sexuality’s and gender since he didn’t get the freedom to express that stuff when he was younger due to you know ‼️‼️(SPOILERS) ‼️‼️ literally being a clone made in a lab. yukio seems the type to not really care about gender when it comes to romance and instead look for traits like personality and motivations. his friendships are most based on him genuinely liking the person rather than keeping up with his appearance as someone who’s quite popular. this could possibly lead to the same being transferred over to his romantic bonds.

shiemi:

sexuality: lesbian

reason: like rin, she tends to get romantic and platonic affection mixed up from not having friends till high school. there’s a bit in the manga where izumo brings over some romance novels to try and help shiemi out with figuring out her feelings. we all know most romance novels don’t exactly have the best explanation for feeling so i think that’s where shiemi got mixed up. she gets her admiration for rin mixed up with romantic feelings when in reality, she’s not into him. we can also use the garden scene from kyoto arc as some reasoning to this headcanon. izumo called shiemi a weed and she surprisingly takes this “insult” very well and even thanks izumo for the interaction. even later in kyoto saga, we see shiemi use even more of her power to save izumo from the miasma. she clearly cared a lot about izumo and basically wore herself down to the the brink of exhaustion trying to dave izumo herself when she could have easily run and got help from another exorcist. sheimi seems to care deeply about her friends but shows more concern to izumo than any other exwire (minus rin and yukio).

shima: ‼️‼️ HIS WHOLE HEADCANON REVOLVES AROUND MANGA SPOILERS SO THATS A HEADS UP‼️‼️

sexuality: gay

since he found out about izumo from the illuminati, he never really had a “crush” on her per say, but showed an unromantic interest in her due to her past and just wanted to know more about her. since he had kinzou around him as a kid, i think that played a huge part in him hiding that he was gay (just bc kinzou is a huge perv and probably pushed some of that onto him). that could also lead to the reasoning as to why he’s so pushy with izumo. he’s trying to convince himself he liked women by trying his hardest to like izumo. the kinzou thing is the only thing really leading to me believing this but an alternative reason could also be a fear of changing his personality this late on when both suguro and koneko have known him to be a certain way since he was young. he’s shown to have this perverted personality since he was quite young and it’s even mentioned in an extra concerning why suguro and koneko use his last name and not his first. these two factors lead me to believe his attraction to izumo and subsequently, his attraction to women, is just a lie he’s putting on.

koneko:

sexuality + gender identity: pansexual and genderfluid

reason: koneko is shown to have a deep love and care for the people around him and i think that not only applies to him with friendship, but with romance as well. like yukio, he tends not to focus on the gender of the person perusing him, but rather their intention, personally, and motivations. he wants to know if his partner is a good person rather than their gender. gender wise, i just don’t think he cares. it’s not explicitly shown but it can be heavily implied when he talks to rin about why he has a hard time trusting him after the “son of satan “ reveil happens. for gender identity, i think i as a kid, he was commonly referred to by most pronouns since he wasn’t exactly the most “boy looking” when he was young. later on he learned he didn’t exactly mind what gender people perceived him as but rather how they perceived him as a person. there’s no canon information for the genderfluid headcanon but again, these are my personal headcanon, they don’t exactly have to make sense.

suguro:

sexuality + gender identity: gay and trans (ftm)

reason: this one is mostly me projecting onto this man so if it doesn’t exactly make sense, y’all know why! but he’s shown to be quite affectionate to rin in both the manga and the anime. he doesn’t really tend to do that too much to other people, especially the women that are around him. he probably has some sort of crush on rin or at least some form of admiration to him. as for his gender identity, this is literally just me projecting. that’s it. but i think he does show some signs that i tend to show as a trans person ( the one example i can name off the top of my head is that he seems pretty insecure when shima and koneko brought up his body before he started working out and hates mentions of his body in general ). like rin, he tends to have very poor posture and also doesn’t wear form fitting clothes and this is especially prominent in official art.

izumo:

sexuality: lesbian

reason: she has a very deep relationship with paku and shiemi after the events of the manga take place. she never shows this same connection with any one else throughout the series. she gets severely worried once paku leave cram school and is shown to be quite empty after this happens. ‼️‼️SPOILERS‼️‼️ the same thing happens once shiemi leaves cram school as well and is taken by her family to go train. she seems to be deeply affected by these two events and even goes as far as to show the others her concerns after the thing with shiemi happens. after she ‼️SPOILERS‼️ gets kidnapped by the illuminati and winds up the the hospital, shimei is the first person she lets see her true emotions and feelings and doesn’t once make a comment on her being some kind of hindrance. we also see her show quite a bit of empathy towards shiemi when in kyoto. there’s a scene where they two are gardening and she calls shiemi a weed. she’s very much plays into a tsudere type roll in the beginning but this seems more like a backhanded compliment rather than trying to be a jerk to her. both of the girls receive this interaction in a positive way. we also can use the scene where shiemi saves izumo as a reason for this as well. izumo shows a genuine concern for shiemi both during and after her being stuck in the miasma. even when they go to the hot springs, she seems to have this perpetual blush while looking at shiemi. these all lead me to think she has some sort of feelings toward both paku and shiemi, leading me to headcanon her as a lesbian.

shura:

sexuality: lesbian

she was basically born just so she could produce a child to fuel some demons deep desires. her unhealthy attachment to shiro can be explained by this. i think this is the case for all the “attraction” she showed towards him as a young girl. all her life she’s been told she has to have kids with a man and that’s was her purpose for a long time. thus why i think she’s a lesbian. she never shows any real attraction to a man throughout the entire series besides the man who saved her as a child. she never talks about men till after her character arc in the manga and even then, it seems she just wants to live the rest of her life differently than before and doesn’t exactly seem too enthusiastic about finding a husband as it’s never mentioned again after that point. she really only seems to show an “attraction” to men when it’s useful to her. she uses her looks and charm to get what she wants when it comes to men. she has this facade she puts on where she acts innocent and cute and uses her looks to her advantage. she never truly shows an actual attraction to a man.

mephisto:

sexuality + gender identity: gay and genderfluid

reason: i don’t think any of the demon kings are cis. like not even remotely. they all have to take on different forms and have taken on many in the past. as long as it’s a body, they’re basically fine with whatever. mephs past forms are never shown but we can assume he’s taken on many different body’s in the past as well. after all this body hopping and the fact that gender is literally a thing made up by humans, i don’t think meph really cares about the forms he takes and how his gender is perceived. he knows he’s a powerful demon and could easily destroy the knights of the true cross if he wanted too so gender is the last thing he really cares about. as for sexuality, nothing on screen really points to anything but he tends to show more affection to the men on screen than the women. in fact, the only women we see him really interact with (that i can remember) is shura and we all know how they feel about each other. even though those two both “flirt” with one another, these seem to be more so parts of their personality’s rather than them both having an interest in each other. his “flirting” with shura seems to be more taunting her and displaying his absolute discard for human problems.

amaimon:

gender identity: agender

reason: just like meph, amimon had possessed(?) many different forms over the course of their existence. we even see him take on a rather feminine presenting form when they were destroying the earth. but unlike meph, he is less fluid in terms of gender and instead, prefers to not identify with one. she does use all pronouns and doesn’t exactly care on that front but i think there’s certain terms and compliments they don’t exactly like. meph does use gendered terms with amimon, but these two seem to be very close and have probably communicated this before as well. like koneko being genderfluid, there’s no definitive evidence to support this claim other than these are my own headcanons and i can do what i want.

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soulvomit · 3 years

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stuff with gender anguish about not fitting in with today’s current gender constructions

From another post I made: I need to talk about 20th century gender norms at some point as a living breathing 20th century fossil and how different it was. To most straight people, being gender non conforming meant gay, trans was on the far end of the gay spectrum, and gay was associated with being socially Not Normal at a time when you had to be Normal to get a white collar job. (The whole Normalhood thing im gonna talk about is VERY connected to mid-late 20th century construction of the white middle class.) Apropos of gender specifically... I’m not sure how 90s/00s genderfluid/genderqueer map to NB, or whether they do. It’s a big reason I am weird about IDing as NB - because it seems to mean something else than my particular understanding of my identity as it was formed in the 1990s. (Another thing is my social world being more people over 45 at this point and also I’m in a hetero relationship.) Part of 90s GQ stuff was that you could identify as a man part time, a woman part time, you could contain multitudes. “Woman-identified person with a male side” was a legit identity within that, so was “man-identified person with a female side.” You could be one person in the streets and another in the sheets. You could be several people in the sheets, especially if you were aligned with kinky culture. (And for a long time... I was.) There was a greater sense in the 90s and early 00s in genderqueerness culture that you could be GQ for no other reason than wanting to be and it wasn’t assumed to be bundled with physical dysphoria or even desire to change your public social identity. Some spaces - like West Coast geek culture and goth culture - had enough flexibility baked in that we didn’t really need to go to LGBTQ culture to explore our identities, and there was a whole geek queer sensibility that was evolving alongside of the broader LGBTQ culture that was definitely its own... thing. And while people *say* that NB doesn’t mean any one particular thing or any of these things, that’s not always the message I get when visible NBs on TV/in film are almost always at present one very specific image or “type” of person, and that doesn’t resemble me. NB representation on TV amounts to presenting NB as a third gender with very specific codified behaviors (androgynous AFAB person who binds and has body dysphoria). The message I get is that whatever my experience is, is better described some other way. Also the discourse around relationships with NBs is that a relationship with an NB is necessarily a queer relationship yet having been in relationships in and out of LGBTQ culture, I’m not really sure how to distinguish “a queer relationship.” My relationship is non-traditional in lots of ways and we’re both gender non-conforming in lots of ways though it doesn’t parse to most people because it’s along the lines of stuff that shouldn’t have ever been gendered in the first place. What my partner does not ever question however is his actual gender identity. The thing is, actually publicly identifying as anything but a woman would create weird problems in my life in terms of social dynamics, and other stuff, and probably an unpredictable series of ripple effects downstream. But - that... just means I’m closeted, right? And closeted doesn’t mean your identity doesn’t exist or isn’t as unreal as someone who isn’t? And what if - as a “shapeshifter” - my relationship to myself within my relationship *is* part of that shapeshifting? One of the things is that I’m in a heterosexual relationship. My relationship *is* one of my few spots where I’m happy in my skin, let alone happy in the world and I have no complaints with how I’m perceived in this relationship, and part of it is that practically every assumption about my gender is true, or has been true at some point, including the fact that I’m fine with being seen as a woman in the context of my relationship. It’s in other spaces besides the intimate, that gender stuff makes my skin crawl. My deep interior gender identity is “pixels floating in the ether, which can assume any shape or form.” My gender identity among other people in non sexual friend spaces is “friend.” My partner identifies as a cis het man. I don’t feel like my relationship has any special quality that’s different from queer relationships I’ve been in, other than identities people have. If my partner doesn’t feel our relationship is queer then I don’t feel it is, either... though it’s not exactly *traditional.* I don’t feel like our relationship is different from our hetero neighbors’ relationships regardless of whatever history I have. I have no way of knowing what my ostensibly-female ostensibly-heterosexual neighbors’ interior identities really are, or what their history is. And because we’re monogamous, it just never ever comes up. Our social world is about half queer and half not so nothing has changed. After decades of only dating people who had LGBTQ identities, and having a particular social world, now I’m with a cis het man from that same social world and nothing really has changed about the shape of my life. I’ve moved between different spaces my entire life, sometimes I perceived myself as a boy in a girl’s body, but sometimes I didn’t, and don’t. And gender is one of the spaces in which I feel like a chameleon. There seem to be a ton of gender expression based communities that disappeared since the 90s that either disappeared or were erased from discourse and that makes this weirder/harder to talk about. Another thing is that a lot of the discourse around pronouns (if pushed I’ll say I’m she/they but I am literally comfortable in anything, depending upon context) makes me really uncomfortable. Even in LGBTQ spaces it makes me uncomfortable. There’s the me that my friends know, and some of my family knows, and it’s a big enough world to contain that part of me at this point. I would rather not put my identity under a microscope in any space that matters. It’s weird but I wish I could just be “they” in the work, creative, etc, spaces, without the loading of what “they” means. I wish it meant nothing about the people who love me, or who I love, or how I love, or how I live my life, besides what pronoun I use. But it doesn’t mean nothing. That is why I hope more cis identified people will actually identify as they in the public sphere. There are plenty of spaces in the public sphere that I don’t think should be gendered at ALL. My wanting to be a “they” is in some ways more about wanting public anonymity and having formed my sense of self - at a tender time - online, than about my gender identity. Which means I’d be potentially appropriating “they” from people for whom it IS a deep identity, and yet... haven’t I spent half of my blog talking about how I’m not exactly the gender identity I advertise?? Haven’t I spent a long time up to now advocating for “they?” Isn’t feeling like a they, evidence that I’m a they? And the thing is, this is such a YMMV issue and the problem is that EVERYONE has competing access needs with EVERYONE ELSE. Anything one queer person wants or needs seems to oppress some other queer person, and it sucks. But sometimes I wonder if I even need to just recognize how cis het passing my life is and acknowledge my privilege. The thing is though at that point... is it how much oppression we’ve experienced or are currently experiencing, that alone makes our identity? That’s as silly an idea as saying I’m less of a Jew because I haven’t personally experienced a hate crime. And yes there’s a lot to shared oppression experiences forming group identities, but I’m not talking about group identity. I’m talking about personal feelings of identity.

#My chest stopped bothering me after my reduction #like - the relief was profound and being a size where I could go toward any expression I wanted based on a change of clothes - was enough

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vampireqrow-moved · 3 years

Note

hey so I agree with a lot of the stuff in your post about the transphobia involved in the origin of the pansexual label, but I just have one question: what are the actual impacts of people with good intentions calling themselves pan? If you don't hate pansexuals and consider them bi, why type up a paragraphs long manifesto on the harms of the origin of the label if it means the same thing in the way that most non transphobic people (your audience) use it? a lot of identities can be used in transphobic ways (like bi and lesbian and anything really) and plenty of valid identities from problematic roots and evolve over time as people use them differently (queer, transsexual). so how is a person with good intentions using a not-perfect label in a way you don't like a threat to the community? if someone is using the label pan transphobically, wouldn't their bigotry exist independently? if pan people do not act in transphobic ways besides using the label pansexual, realistically what is changing if they call themselves bi beyond holier-than-thou aesthetic activism? plus, a blog on the internet isn't going to get everyone to stop identifying as pansexual, especially considering multiple prominent celebrities ID as pan. so why spend all that energy quibbling on semantics because some bi people use a slightly different word when you could be worrying about Literally anything else? just feels like you want to find something to argue about lol. extremely disappointed that I had to break a mutual

im going to respond to each thing you bring up chronologically- im not trying to nitpick or prioritize certain things you say ill just forget things if i go out of order and i dont want to miss something important. ALSO! i will be typing less formally (like keysmashes and shortening words n stuff) in this response than my og post bc its 1am as im starting to type this so im tired but i want to be clear that i am like. taking this seriously and im not like. mocking u in anyway if it could read that way?? i hope not but just in case anyways here it goes!

in terms of actual impact people with good intentions identifying as pan: honestly im not sure the full scope of the impact this has, so ill only be speaking to what ive personally seen which might not be all. but like... id argue my younger self has good intentionals iding as pan. i wanted to support trans people, even if i didnt understand a lot of the nuance involved. as a result of this, i developed a sense of superiority over other bisexuals and a mentality that bisexuality was a primitive and lesser sexuality. that mentality is harmful, and although im not sure if it affected bisexuals around me (of which there are many most of my friends are bi ajfjfjf) its still a harmful mentality and can easily hurt people even if i specifically didnt. also using it even with good intentions, which i know many people have, still spreads and further normalizes a label that imo can not be separated from its transphobic origins. this effect is not as extreme as other forms of transphobia and biphobia by A LONG SHOT. the bi community faces a lot of other issues but that doesnt mean this one isnt worth addressing if that makes sense?

if i dont hate pansexuals: ik this is part of a larger point which i will adress but i specified this in my post bc i see a lot of other posts that are negative towards pansexuality have "i hate pan ppl" somewhere in it or a close equivalent. i do not shame these ppl for their anger, i just wanted to be clear i think a lot of pan ppl are bi ppl with good intentions choosing a label they dont fully understand based on a misunderstanding of bisexuality.

why write a paragraphs long manifesto on the harms of pansexuals origin: ok 😭😭 the real reason here is that im literally just bad at summarizing. like thats literally it. i also like talking, its a bad combination. plus ive been thinking abt this for like. over a year im not even kidding and just like i have a lot of thoughts and figured if i was going to bother making my own post instead of rbing someone elses that i might as well get everything i wanted to say off my chest. ALSO BTW i literally got an ask like a week ago that was several paragraphs long asking me to explain my thoughts on why pan was harmful and some other stuff so like. this is partially responding to that and partially just me wanting to air my grievances ? idk if thats the right expression 😔😔

why write the post if my audience of people who identify as pan arent doing it in a transphobic way ? again sorry i didnt really understand the phrasing so i hope this is a vaguely correct summary!! um but like... again imo i think pan cant be separated from its transphobia and like. again imo iding as pan is like. a transphobic action/choice? obviously one transphobic thing does mean someone necessarily is like officially a Transphobe (it CAN be depending on the action but i dont think that applies here) but that doesnt mean there arent problems with what they did. this is like very complicated, but like. someone doing something harmful without the knowlege that its harmful doesnt make that person a bigot by any means it just means they didnt know. and i feel thats the case here? a lot of ppl (myself included until recently) know next to nothing abt pansexualitys origins so a trans inclusve sexuality might seem like a safe and good bet just because they dont know too much abt it, and like? i cant hate those people cause that was me for 5+ years and djgjfjdj you just dont know what you dont know!

basically i think iding with a transphobic label is inherently a singular transphobic action that doesnt make the person transphobic by itself, but is still a transphobic instance.

a lot of identities can be used in transphobic ways like bi, lesbian, etc.: this is true and a point i attempted to make on my original post, but i might not have clear enough. my issue with pan is specifically that it is a transphobic response to a preexisting identity. lesbian isnt an attempted trans inclusive indentity that replaced an identity that already existed (which have many trans ppl identifying with the og label). transphobes can use whatever labels they want, but transphobes using a label vs a label having a transphobic origin is very different. bigots use inclusive and supporting language for their bigotry all the time but language that originated with that bigotry is worse.

many valid identities stem from problemstic origins (like transsexual and queer) but the words evolve: ok my paraphrasing is a little weird there. anyways. the thing here is that. those are slurs. reclaimed slurs that can be empowering to many people, yes, but slurs nonetheless. reclaiming a slur is taking a harmful word and wearing it as a badge of pride. first off, pansexual is not a slur (ur not implying that in anyway just. saying) and it isnt being reclaimed when people dont treat it as having harmful origins. transsexual is the way some people identify but ppl acknowlege its a slur and originates from transphobia. ppl love to act like queer isnt a slur, which is an issue in and of itself, but just. factually it has historically and is currently being used against ppl with the intent to hurt them. pansexual isnt on the same level as these and other words like the f slur, d slur, etc. pansexual originates from trans and biphobia WITHIN the community and not outside of it, and most pansexuals dont see themselves as reclaiming the title because they dont think anythings wrong with it in the first place. and reclaiming it just seems unnecessary considering its history? theres no empowerment from using pan as a label as opposed to queer or transsexual, and it just divides the bisexual community for no reason.

how is a person using a not-perfect label a threat to the community? ok i dont think its a threat but still an issue if that difference makes sense? id like to reiterate a few things ive said before, but for me personally, it made me look down on bisexuals and see them as lesser, and it made people around me see pan as the "trans inclusive" sexuality as opposed to bisexuality, and basically its usage just leads to further biphobia. is this the worst of biphobia? no!!! but its still biphobia and why not attempt to target and minimize that? i have no way to singlehandedly stop biphobia, but my post might get through to my friends who id as pan and that small thing is better than nothing.

if someone used the pan label in a transphobic way, wouldnt that bigotry be different from people using it not transphobically?: someone claiming all bi ppl are transphobic and only pan is the acceptable label is obviously a lot worse than someone iding as pan and saying bi/pan solidarity but again, the second isnt not an issue because the first one is a bigger issue, its just a smaller issue in comparison. i wouldnt say the bigotry is different, one is just worse than the other, but it still has the same problems.

if pan people dont do anything transphobic other than id as pan then what changes with iding as bi over pan other holier-than-thou activism: its just one less person using a transphobic label? which isnt that big but it might lead to their friends stopping iding as pan and cause fewer people around them to see bi as a transphobic identity. which is small scale stuff, i wont try to blow it out of proportion, but thats still a step in the right direction and hopefully more people follow with it. its not terribly huge or lifechanging but something small that may only affect the people close to you is still something rather than nothing.

a blog the internet isnt going to get people to stop iding as pan: oh absolutely not. honestly i expected to get unfollowed/blocked more than change peoples minds regarding the pan label (im surprised i only lost two followers so far honestly) but again, someone literally asked me to do this and i wanted to be clear on my stance on the label, since in the past ive been supportive of it. im not expecting the post to get more than five likes, its more directed to my followers rather than the internet as a whole. im not expecting a large impact, im hoping to change the minds of my followers and friends who id as and support the pan label. thats it. if something bigger comes from it- great! but thats not what im aiming to do.

prev point + many prominent celebrities id as pan: the first name that comes to mind is someone im not a fan of for separate reasons but thats irrelevant. i mean im repeating myself a bit but some celebrities in the past validated and made me feel excited abt my identity as a pan person when they came out, and it justified the label to me, even when i had doubts. i have never interacted with a celebrity and do not plan to change their minds abt their identity. again, my post was for my friends and followers and maybe who ever was scrolling through the biphobia tag and decided to read my post.

why spend that much energy worrying abt the pan label instead of something else: ive spent waaaaay more energy thinking abt a singular meme i didnt like regarding my favourite rwby character so like. maybe i just overreact to things lol. maybe i have a lot of energy and since i cant talk my friends ears off abt my favourite fruits or the different voting methods i learned in my math class or what would dreams taste like, then i gotta put my energy into something. idk. i have a lot of energy and honestly? this didnt take that much. but i felt it weighing on me as my friends talked positively abt the pan label, when i felt guilty for the superiority i felt over my bi friends INCLUDING my best friend and favourite person in the world so like. i spent enough energy worrying abt it, and like. in hindsight since its been over 12 hours since posting it, im thinking abt it less. i was more worried abt feeling dishonest with my friends than actually worrying abt pansexuality, but i figured i owed them an explanation for why my feelings around it had changed.

just feels like you want to find something to argue about: okay i DO love arguing but im not pulling this out of my ass for fun. its in response to posts ive seen on my dash, asks i recieved abt pansexuality, and my way of letting people know my views have changed and why since i know at least some people are curious.

i am sorry to lose a mutual as well, and i genuinely hope things go well for you, but uh yeah thats that.

again, if people have further questions im willing to answer them i just might take a while bc i have school and other stuff 2 do but uhhh yea sorry if im clogging ur dash sjfjfkkf

#asks #long post #anonymous #pansexuality #biphobia #transphobia #my post

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strangeknight · 3 years

Note

Hello again, anon from before! heres some reciepts and a quote.

https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/1373692140153364482

https://mobile.twitter.com/lucaseverafter/status/1340291311086256128?lang=en

"Schlatt has been outed as a racist before, not only has he said racial slurs without apologising he never said anything about BLM/ACAB and his Youtooz originally had a racist symbol on it until someone pointed it out to the company. He also is abliest and has made fun of disabilities and neurodivergent people. He has said homophobic things as a cishet and has made jokes about being a paedophile. I know his humor is supposed to be offensive, but some of these things really aren't okay"

This is pretty common knowledge! I am black and have noticed that you are white and just to tell you since you seem quite young that his apologies aren't yours to accept. This isn't meant to be mean, or meant to be hate or anything! Just trying to educate 😊

ok.......... and youre free to unf/block me btw idc

lets pick this apart 2gether

ive seen that video. its the jackbox video i was talkin abt. its bad. but it was Bait to get twitter mad. this is something we decided back then LOL

rape jokes rnt funny we get it we know he makes bad jokes and we all have to go "wow. .... i really didnt appreciate this" and then move on because m8....m8 it was a Joke it was a bad one but it causes v little damage especially since it was on the Community Tab of all places

i dont remember ever seein that tweet debunked it might've been real but tbh @ this point in my life on mcyt tumblr ive started to not trust something unless provided actually genuine proof other than a twitter screenshot lolz.

we know hes a pdp stannie tho. we all bregrudginly sigh and move tf on (IM JEWISH BTW I CAN COMMENT ON PDP STANNIES LOL)

that discord screenshot isnt real!!!! ive literally seen that bitch like 600 times and half the time its people pointing out that it was faked

also never seen that last one debunked that but seeing as it was written when i was VERY active in mcytblr im sure i wouldve actually heard abt that xD

NOTCH REPLYING TO HIS TWEET MEANS NOTHING (STILL JEWISH & TRANS BTW) also hes friends w trans people

twomad ...... makes those jokes With Him? twomad was probably there WITH him when he wrote that tweet & laughed at it

why does a youtuber have to say stuff abt a complex issue. he makes funny gaming videos. its NICE when they do but it doesnt mean theyre a fucking douche when they dont??

need proof about the youtooz thing

im nd & have mild chronic pain. friends w disabled people who still support his content.

as a faggot myself. i could care less about him saying it three years ago while playing city skylines. ive expressed this before

what jokes about being a pedo bcs people tried to frame dream as a pedo because of one shitty joke that didnt land that he made

#[asks]#anon #save #<- to show this whenever i need to

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illusionlockarchive · 5 years

Text

pazam: a mess, truly a mess

so i usually dont do these kind of posts, i guess you could say its a call out of some sort? but i never liked that word, i prefer rather to just compile sources on WHY people would believe that a certain person is not truly as nice and understanding as they seem. consider this more of a psa post, detailing on whats going on with pazam on the sfm community, why so many people are against them.

So, a while back, tumblr user jymble made a post on the main tag stating that pazam was transphobic. they linked back to this post, which contains screenshots of pazam in a group chat stating that they do not feel comfortable with the idea of trans people. now, this did happen 9 months ago, true. however, for the record, pazam is already an adult, 24 years old, so they should have some tact. and as further and more recent events will show, they actually havent changed that much at all, at least not as they claim.

the screenshots should be in the post, but here is a transcript

[Screenshot one]

Pazam:

What????? Why?????

I literally HAVE NOT been doing ANYTHING malicious to them

And if it did I apologized

Yes I do have discomfort about them but I keep it to myself

Why are you doing this????

[End screenshot one]

‘Them’ here refers to trans people in general. Notice the defensive and victimizing stance they almost immediately take upon being confronted about their feelings on trans people.

[Screenshot two]

elliott:

of COURSE you dont

sammaku:

Like specifically

Elliott hush

Pazam:

This whole concept of transness and changing your gender physically

I hate to say it again but it weirds me out and it makes me question my own gender which flings me into anxiety, depression, and obsession

sammaku:

Its fine to not understand but are you willing to learn about it

Pazam:

I don’t want to talk about this anymore

sammaku:

That depression anxiety and obsession just comes with gender issues

(the rest of the text is cut off)

[End Screenshot two]

notice once summaku asks them if they would at least be willing to learn about it, pazam immediately deflects it by saying they dont want to talk about it anymore.

[Screenshot three]

Pazam:

Seriously??? That’s all it takes????

Wow I’m a moron

I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused to you

@.aziraphale @.elliott @.sammaku

I just don’t get this stuff period

And I’ve gotten into trouble with this stuff before

I’ll probably never understand it for the rest of my life but I’ll try to be more tactful around y’all

Especially since you’re all young

And I’m like an adult

[End screenshot three]

While at first this would seem like they had finally learned their lesson and apologized, the things they add on after the @s become quickly worrying. Not only do they admit to ‘have gotten into trouble with this stuff before’, meaning they have probably shown their transphobia in other places and been called out, but they also stand firmly on the fact that they will never understand it or ‘get’ it.

And of course, as jymble points out, the implication that the people they were talking to were only acting like that because they were young.

A while after this post was made, Pazam had posted an apology, and went onto contact jymble asking for the post with the evidence of their transphobic to be taken down. The reason? They were afraid people would see it and think they were still transphobic and not give them a chance.

In this more recent post, you can see the conversation play out between Pazam and jymbles. Long story short, Pazam feels that it’s unfair that that post is still up after they apologized, and jymble of course said they would rather not take it down, people deserve to know what they did and take their own conclusions, even if that involves avoiding them. How does Pazam respond? By flat out deleting the apology post. I’d love to show the apology post to give you both sides of the story but I cannot anymore, because Pazam in a very bizarre move just deleted it because they got mad a trans blogger wouldn’t take down their post with proof.

Here’s the transcript of the screenshots:

[Begin Conversation]

rebloggidy (Pazam’s personal):

I’m by no means transphobia-free after learning what I’ve done but at least I know my actions and am making an effort to be a better person towards trans people.

rebloggidy:

Hi again. So I hate to be that person but would it be ok if you took down that post about the transphobia claims? I know it took me 9 months to apologize but if people only see your side of the story and not realize the post I saw they’ll take it out of context and still think I’m transphobic. Do you understand?

jymble:

... i already told you im not taking down the post.

[jymble sends a screenshot of her own message in a previous conversation, the screenshot reads as follows:

however, i dont think im taking the post down, nor am i entirely comfortable with you interacting with me either. people deserve to know how you acted with this stuff, until youre really and truly *better* with it instead of just trying, and i was a direct target of it]

jymble:

you oughright told me "im by no means transphobia-free", word for word sorry, but i told you before. im not taking the post down.

rebloggidy:

I remember that. But what I'm trying to say to you is that if people who read it out of context will immediately think I'm still transphobic without the other side of it (my comment)

And I don't want people to think that in the future

jymble:

if people make assumptions without looking at the entire situation, thats on them

i am not deleting the post and thats final. people have a right to know what youve done, and they have a right to be uncomfortable

rebloggidy:

I'm ready to take down my post because frankly, I'm sick and tired of having to justifiy something that I did 9 months ago, and that people grow and learn even not 100% during that time and I'm ready to move on.

I'm still into smile for me and feel free to make a blacklist of my name so anybody who rbs my work on your dash can have it hidden or something.

Take care.

[End conversation]

a lot to unpack here, but perhaps most notable is when jymble simply stands her ground and tells pazam she wont take down the post, pazam straight up decides, without being told to or anything, that they should take down their apology. later on, they made a post stating why they deleted the post, and saying they had ‘been forced to’.

I also would love to link it here, but as of now of writing this, like, not even an hour or so after I had seen that post, it got deleted. The only memory I have of it is a conversation I had with my boyfriend about Pazam, in which I copypasted a fragment from that post that read:

“ So for those wondering where the apology post went, I was forced to delete it. I wanted to archive it in some way so I could pull it up for reference, but there was no way I could. Also I didn’t really want to see it every time on my blog because quite honestly it’s upsetting to look at.”

There are some lies and twisting of truths here. Pazam wasn’t forced to delete it, they decided they should do it as a way to somehow get back at jymble. And the excuse that it was upsetting for them to look at is just inexcusable, what matters most, letting people know of what youve done and that youre sorry, or just never addressing the situation?

But, well, I’m just hoping you’ll take my word for it. As you see, Pazam has officially deleted ANY traces of acknowledging this situation on their blog.

This worries me. If Pazam is truly as concerned that they will be seen as transphobic as they claim, why are they deleting anything that could give them a chance of showing their own side of the story?

Now, that is the end, for now, of Pazam’s history with transphobia. However! It is not the end for some other very shady things.

Namely, Pazam has consistently whitewashed characters from Smile For Me, specially Kamal, and when called out on it, simply deletes the asks.

Want to know how I know this?

I sent them an ask myself. I had come across this picture of Boris and Kamal:

And I knew that this wasn’t right. I can understand using light colors and doing watercolor, but if they can make Boris’ hair brown and vivid enough, why not Kamal? He looks like another character completely, or like he’s deathly sick!

So I sent them an anonymous ask, perhaps a bit exhasperated, true, and my wording could be better. It went something like: “i am begging you to draw kamal with darker skin”.

I waited, checked. But nothing came of it. They never answered it.

Pazam flat out ignored when they were told they had drawn a canonically brown man with skin way too light. Not even a lone text post saying ‘hey anon, i dont agree with you’ or ‘hey anon im sorry it wont happen again’. Nothing. No word, no opinion.

And with this situation going on with them evading responsibility, I can’t say I’m fully surprised.

And, yet another thing. People had expressed concern over the fact they had drawn their Flower Kid, who is 17, in very intimate and close positions with Dr. Habit. It included nuzzling faces, cuddling in bed together, wearing his coat...

And they did hear the claims this time. As of now, their Flower Kid is 24, according to them.

Except... They do not look 24. At. All.

this is a 12 year old. at best. short body, stubby legs, big head. those are all attributes of a very young character, usually children. like, legitimately, thats how childrens anatomy is in real life. the younger the person, the bigger their head is in proportion to their body.

We have already had an adult trying to justify drawing their flower kid who barely looked like an adult if at all in intimate situations with Habit. Let’s not let it slide by again.

And yes, I’m aware Pazam claims that those pictures were not supposed to be interpreted as romantic, ‘only platonic fluff’ and that they intend to keep it that way, but I have talked to my boyfriend who is a survivor and he said it very well could be a case of someone just trying to cover their tracks.

BUT, all that being said, maybe this one particular instance could be just us being wary. Still, it does not diminish all that they have done, specially ignoring the whitewashing claims.

What you are going to do with this information, I do not know. Maybe you don’t care and will keep reblogging their content. Maybe you’re disgusted by them. But I’m just here to give you the facts. Personally though, I’m not willing to give them much of a chance after the way they’ve behaved. They are 24 years old, three years older than me, and I think I could do a better job of handling a situation like this, frankly.

#don't be scared. i am here with you.#smile for me #smile for me game

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obeymematches · 4 years

Text

can i get a match up? i don't know how long this'll be but here goes.

im dante. im a trans man, 18, panro ace, puerto rican/japanese/black mix. im 5'3, petite, slim thick body type, pretty pale for my race, and i have black, short curly hair with straight bangs that cover one eye. im selectively mute, only talking when needed to or when im really close to someone, like family or friends. im blunt, monotone, and have a hard time expressing my emotions, so positive emotions seem fake when i express them. im goth but not, ya feel? like id describe myself as goth, i wear a lot of dark colors and i have an interest in dark things, my friends jokingly call me an eboy. i wear a lot of crop tops, leggings, over sized hoodies and sweaters, and shorts. im a very easily cold person, so, no matter where i go, i have to have on atleast 2 layers. i have anxiety, depression, and ptsd. i don't like to be touched without my permission or by people im not close to.

i love reading, drawing, anime, horror movies, and video games. i have a tendency to hyperfixate and infodump, but i've been brushed off a lot so im more likely to stop and apologize if i notice im doing it. i love playing my flute, i find it very calming when im anxious. i also dance! im very interested in true crime and i watch a lot of documentaries. i also have an interest in args and i watch a lot of videos about them. i was in marching band in highschool, so it isn't out of place to see me looking at videos of college bands performing. i love sweets and baking, mainly brownies and cookies.

i think that's it for me. sorry for how long this is.

-----------------

Hello Dante! 💎

Don’t feel bad about it being long, it is perfectly informative! Thank you for sending it, I really enjoyed writing your result. I hope you like it too!

So after I’ve done my thinking, I matched you with Simeon! (i hope you don’t mind that not one of the brothers, feel free to tell me if you would rather one of them!)

So I know that this is not canon but something tells me that Simeon is ace.

You two could bond over that after some time spent together!

Absolutely not the one to judge you for anything. If it takes time for you to open up, that is totally reasonable. After you can finally open up, Simeon would really enjoy that you talk so often now!!

He would be the first to help you express your feelings. Even if you struggle, he is patient enough to not give up any time soon!

Your fashion senses are just a bit different, but that would give some extra cuteness to the relationship! Especially when it comes to clothing/accessory shopping!

I mean the idea of him, in bright white clothes, shopping in the goth/eboy section of a store. Like what is he doing there- why does he need chains- isn’t he an angel or someth-- oooh it’s a gift! And it’s for your Birthday! 🥺

Him being him, would pay so much attention to not crossing any line with you. He would much rather not have any conflict, besides he likes you so much, so what would be the point of making you uncomfortable.

He respects you and your space!

We don’t really know that much about him which is a real shame but I think he is into reading also? Like not as much as a blonde someone, but Simeon likes his own pick of books too! He would read for you sometimes for fun! Even if you can’t care less what the book is about... how could you possibly say no to his literally angelic charm and voice...

Oh he would absolutely love you playing the flute!!

Some evenings you could just go on and on and he would sing along! (idk if it’s canon but you can not convince me that he can not sing.) From the combination of your flute and his voice, the Sun would come out and start shining!

He would totally adore your dancing!

I think he does too, but i’m not sure how much? like for fun, sure!

You could really teach him a few moves from the human world though! He learns fast!

((Oh I think he is into baking? idk if i hallucinated that part but didn’t he make cookies or something at some point of the story? ))

Well anyway, he would be nobody if he wouldn’t enjoy spending time baking with you!

You could teach him some recipes that you really like!

He would also teach you what he likes!

You could definitely surprise him with his favourite sweet one day!!

Imagine the pure joy on his face!!!

#obey me #obey me!#obey me shall we date #obey me matchup #obey me simeon #mintybunnii #submission

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normal-thoughts-official · 5 years

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I love your Magnus responses! Some have brought me to tears :') hopwfully you haven't answered this yet. I always see fics/ metas on how Alec came to terms about his sexuality, but never on Magnus (or just a selecative few). In your opinion how did he come to terms with his bisexuality? - luxxmagnus

okay first of all I LOVE UR BLOG im so glad u like my shit omg fajsfoamsa and second of all BOY DO I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW MAGNUS CAME TO TERMS WITH HIS SEXUALI-

okay SO. your relationship with sexuality is deeply influenced by your early years, as is, well, most aspects of your personality lol. so i think it’s fascinating to think about magnus’ relationship with his gender identity and sexuality considering he was born in early-1600s indonesia, aka right when the colonization started. meaning, a lot of their customs and views on gender and sexuality couldn’t have possibly been erased yet, but they were being very violently and aggressively repressed. and then he finished his growing-up years with asmodeus, a demon, who can’t really give much of a fuck about gender identity and sexuality. so this means a very complicated relationship is bound to develop, and i love it.

unfortunately, magnus’ exact ethnic background isn’t specified in SH (nor tsc, i believe) which makes the whole discussion a lot harder because there are hundreds of native peoples in indonesia. however, they were very much in contact with each other both before and after the dutch invasion and subsequent colonisation, so what i’m gonna do here is talk a little bit about the views on the subject magnus was definitely aware of, and go from there

i know this specifically asked about his bisexuality so i will refrain from shitting my trans magnus headcanon all over the place but i will say that the Bugis people recognised five genders, including one for AFAB people who identified as neither male nor female, and one that embodied both female and male identities

anyway, queerphobia is, in fact, a very recent and very european thing, and most indonesian people, like most asian people and most non-modern-western peoples, were actually A-okay with what we view today as homosexuality. there were even many rituals centered around men-on-men and women-on-women practices. they were also pretty open with sexuality as a whole; there’s even a mountain with a shrine where people have sex with strangers as part of their religious worship.

but, as we know, the european colonizers were very intent on killing off and erasing all records of their dominated cultures, particularly the aspects that directly challenged the european model of gender, sexuality and relationships, to the point where we, ppl born in previously colonised countries, don’t even know about our culture’s views on gender and sexuality. in indonesia, the dutch criminalised homosexuality and we can’t forget that magnus’ stepfather was dutch, and that magnus was born after the colonisation.

so here’s the context: since it was very early in the colonisation days, there is no way that magnus didn’t know about the very rich and diverse gender and sexuality practices in his own country. there’s just no way. it takes decades to completely erase that shit. and we can’t forget that all indonesian peoples resisted colonisation, a lot. we don’t know the exact nature of magnus’ mother’s relationship with his stepfather, but it is very likely that he either enslaved or forced her to be in a relationship with him, because - well, because that’s colonisation, folks. it’s what these guys do. this is also supported by the way his stepfather treated magnus, because i mean, what the fuck. it was extremely rare that native colonised ppls would willingly be with their coloniser, particularly considering how the dutch were just, like, casually deporting and starving indonesian native ppls and ppl in java had been at war with the portuguese would-be settlers (would-be because they lost amazingly lmao get rekt) since the beginning of the 1500s. so im gonna go out on a limb here and say that magnus’ “stepfather” was, in fact, an abusive piece of shit coloniser who probably mistreated magnus’ mother and was probably a huge reason why she killed herself - i mean, your people are dying, and you’re bound to this guy who abuses and rapes you and keeps telling you everything about you and the way you live and was raised is demonic, that’s just bound to mess with you. actually, the religious aspect of colonisation that taught ppl that their cultures and religious were demonic and immoral and that they either had to repent for that and submit to the colonisers or be killed slash go to hell, hmmm…… well, is probably related to the fact that the idea that magnus was demon-related was repulsive enough to her that she killed herself? and that’s if we go with the interpretation that magnus was the main reason, which isn’t really reliable because 1- magnus clearly thinks he needs to Save Everyone and is bound to think that if anyone gets hurt it’s his fault; 2- canonically, it was magnus’ stepfather who told magnus that the reason she killed herself was magnus’ heritage. i mean i find it hard to believe personally that magnus’ mom didn’t know she was fucking a demon or at least a supernatural entity of some sort, and the whole angel-demon division is a christianity thing anyway, so what the fuck does this mean to magnus’ mom, really? especially considering that, unlike magnus, she probably was alive before the settlers arrived, so it’s even harder to believe that she would just uncritically believe everything about good and evil she was being taught by the guys that were, you know, committing mass genocide. i personally think that if magnus’ eyes were related to her killing herself at all (which makes less and less sense the more i think about it. i mean, what, was he born glamoured? surely she knew about this before he was like 11 or something) it would be because, in a way, this proved that everything she was being told about herself was true. she was demonic, her culture was demonic, and they deserved the absolutely horrific and traumatic things that were happening to them, and her son’s eyes proved it. so it’s not really about magnus as it is about, like, the entire continent of Europe’s bullshit. and anyway, again, everything she was going through was extremely traumatic - i think magnus’ eyes would be almost an afterthought, if considered at all.

anyway, sorry, went on a huge tangent here, i have no self control whatsoever. what i’m trying to say is that magnus grew up in an environment where expressions of different gender and sexuality were very repressed, but he was born in the heart of the very resistance. he was a native man (or, well, boy) and he knew for a fact that most people lived outside of the constricting western gender and sexuality binary, and he lived in a time where the europeans hadn’t really managed to dominate and erase their culture - of course, they never truly did, but the differences were way more latent. so magnus’ views on the whole thing were probably among the lines of “the asshole white people think the way we live is bad and are trying to kill us and that’s why they’re assholes and we’re trying to kick them out, but currently me and my mom are on their hands so i’m gonna have to behave like they expect me to”. so, lots of abuse, a very complicated relationship, but i do believe that magnus wouldn’t have internalised the european bullshit because, well, he was seeing the counterpoint and the resistance and he certainly knew which side was “his”. also in his flashbacks he’s wearing traditional indonesian clothing so there’s that - proof that he wasn’t completely assimilated to european views and culture.

and then he killed the stepfather (good riddance, rot in hell) and went to live his final teenage years with asmodeus. i mean, more like was found by asmodeus and forced to be with him by both the circumstances and asmodeus himself, but you get what i’m saying.

here’s the thing: asmodeus is definitely an asshole and an abuser, but i can’t bring myself to believe he gave a good fuck about modern-western gender roles and sexuality. he is older than them. by a lot. and he doesn’t even care about the earth realm that much, his whole thing is that he wants to rule edom, so i’m not even sure if he knows about them beyond the, like, very very basics. maybe not even that. so during the rest of magnus’ formative years, and probably the time he figured out what exactly his sexuality was anyway, he was in a pretty open environment when it came to that.

so with that we’ve reached the first conclusion of this huge-ass essay that you probably didn’t sign up for: up until he went to England, Magnus was probably pretty comfortable when it came to his sexuality. like, shit, he was fucked up about everything else, but this one thing i can’t see him internalising a lot of.

i’m gonna fast forward the asmodeus years because i don’t have a lot to say beyond that and also i have no fucking clue what the fuck was going on during that time????????? like it ended when magnus banished him to edom, so i can only assume they were on the earth realm the whole time, but what exactly were they doing???? no clue. i am gonna say, tho, that i think one of the reasons why magnus managed to break out of asmodeus’ shitty “be evil” conditioning is precisely because he had been on the other side before?? like obviously magnus must have been an extremely compassionate kid (which again makes absolute sense in the context of him being part of an oppressed people that were trying their hardest to fight together. you learn a few things about community-building and taking care of others in that context, lemme tell you) since he was out there blaming himself for his mom’s death and also for killing his literal piece of shit stepfather who also tried to kill him as well, but i think it’s just that much harder to help your dad commit mass murder when you’ve been on the receiving end of it. obviously he was probably around asmodeus for a while (i’m thinking until he was like, 18? you know, enough to be an adult), especially considering how he needed the help to learn how to master his magic and also he had nowhere else to go, and also asmodeus was all over the place with “they will always think you’re an abomination, i’m the only one who understands you” and he had eyes like him and all. but still. he knew that he didn’t want that, he knew that he liked earth and didn’t like edom at all and he knew that in order to be himself he’d need to get rid of asmodeus. so he did.

anyway, after the First Great Yeeting Of Asmodeus (second yeeting was when he sent him to limbo so he would never be able to come back. ugh we stan) Magnus went to England. I’m guessing that somehow he met other warlocks during his time with asmodeus (which actually makes sense, i mean, asmodeus must have been wanting ppl to join forces with so he could defeat lilith? or something like that idk they never said anything about what they were doing with their time magnus’ backstory’s got more holes than a swiss cheese) and there seems to be a pretty tight warlock community, so maybe he went to wherever it is that the warlocks meet to gossip and shit? trying to find somewhere else where he belonged. and there he met Ragnor, who helped him break out of his shell and find who he was beyond the constant abuse and the deeply ingrained idea that he was Born To Be Evil.

so for a while, magnus was learning who he was, and again the Warlock Community should be pretty open with gender and sexuality considering most of them are also older than western binary bullshit and also come from different, non-european backgrounds. it was probably at this point that he started going around, having relationships, looking for someone who loves him and somewhere to belong in, you know. haha im fine and soon he figured out that he wanted to find out more about the world. magnus is a curious and creative guy, he’s going around inventing portals and shit, he wants to see the world. so magnus goes to the mundane world. it makes sense, considering in most of his pics he seems to be in mundane settings, and there were no accords at that time. also i mean even post-accords magnus is still going around owning clubs where mundanes can get in so i think he’s quite fond of mundanes.

and that’s when shit comes crashing down, because “sodomy” was punishable by death in England until the 1960s and like boy these guys were not into the whole free sexuality thing. at all. i tend to think magnus would go looking for sex and stuff in downworlder and warlock spaces, where there was a lot more freedom and nobody gave a shit, but he was going around meeting people, and he’s vulnerable and he wants to be loved and he’s definitely been in relationships with mundanes. he knows he needs to hide it, but it doesn’t mean he’s uncomfortable with it. so he might get the occasional insult and he knows he needs to be careful, but this is one aspect of himself he’s actually okay with

but like, he’s spent centuries doing that, eventually shit would go down. and it does. i firmly believe that one of his lovers got caught and got the death penalty. magnus managed to escape but couldn’t save him, and i mean, that’s at least the third time he’s blaming himself for someone’s death. immortality is tiring, and he doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere. there’s the shadow world, but even there he’s being looked down on because the shadowhunters are racist assholes. he’s got his friends, sure, but he’s never really felt worthy of any love, or like he belonged anywhere, and he’s been through so much abuse and being used and everything he touches seems to go to shit and he’s tired. and he’s killed someone he loved. again. so he goes to the bridge. and camille finds him, and stops him.

now, i don’t know if that’s how they’ve met of if it’s happened before, something like, seeing each other in parties and in downworlder spaces or something. but either way, he’s at a really low point, and that’s the first meaningful interaction they have - camille saves his life. he feels like she cares.

she’s not the only one who cares, obviously. so does ragnor, so does cat, so does dot and lots of other of his friends. but at this point, he’s feeling so empty it’s hard to believe that they care, and camille is all too quick to figure out his exact weaknesses - she’s there to listen to him when he wants to kill himself, i can only imagine the infodump that went on that night. he gives her all she needs to know - his fear of abandonment, his desire to be loved, his belief that he will never be accepted no matter what, his fear that he really is evil inside after all despite everything proving that he isn’t - to use against him perfectly. camille is smart. she’s also manipulative. and she also seems like a ticket into a somewhat normal world - she’s a woman, she’s immortal, she’s acting all sweet around him and telling him that she understands, that this is why she doesn’t mingle with mundanes, that it’s better if they’re just amongst themselves, that people like them can’t trust too much and need to stick together. slowly, she plants into him the idea that he’s gullible, has a weak judgement, and is just weak in general for going around thinking he could ever have a thing with mortals or could ever find a space to belong. she uses that to drive him away from his friends and make sure he does as she says. also, magnus owes her, doesn’t he? she saved his life. how can he fight her, when she saved his life? how can he say no to her? how can he disagree? he’s gullible, he’s weak, and she’s the only one who has enough patience for him. everyone else leaves. she’s all he has.

in conclusion: his sexuality is a huge factor in camille’s abuse, it’s what makes him vulnerable to her and gives her every tool she needs to manipulate him. it’s not direct, she’s not about to make fun or dismiss his bisexuality because she knows this is not something he’s internalised, but she can weaponize the trauma that queerphobia brings to his life, and so she does.

she wrecks him. like really really wrecks him, everything he’s built for himself, his identity, whatever he had of his confidence. like he was still trying to build all of that, but he was getting there, and she gets him back to ground 0 just like that. i think he only broke up with her because she started doing her more Clearly Immoral shit and magnus can’t do that. say what you want, but magnus’ actual nature has always been to care and to give all that he can for others. and camille is just evil mcbad. and her abuse goes a long way, but i don’t think anything could actually break magnus enough to be okay with hurting others. especially considering how most of his trauma seems to revolve around the fact that he believes he is constantly hurting others, and it seems to me - considering how he’s going all around the place helping everyone and sacrificing himself without a second thought - that helping others is even a way to cope somewhat, he doesn’t focus on himself, he does his job and helps others and doesn’t think about himself and so he copes, he can do what he’s good at and also believe he’s somehow “repenting” for “killing” his mother and stepfather (it was SELF FUCKING DEFENSE he didn’t murder him, but he does seem to believe he did). so that’s probably when they break up, when he realises that camille is just. keen on hurting others and she’s bored with him and his morals anyway. i know that in book canon apparently the reason they broke up was that she cheated on him, but again i don’t consider book canon and show canon to be the same canon, specially considering how magnus is a wildly different character in those. so i don’t think that would somehow be the last straw for him. camille probably was cheating on him left and right but he probably just believed that it was his fault, or just kept forgiving her anyway because he had nowhere to go and it should be enough that she loves him and saved him, right?

he doesn’t really get around to realising that camille is a straight-up abuser and awful person (as shown by the fact that he seems to still internalise the whole “camille saved my life” bullshit when she was really just manipulating him and using his vulnerability against him) but he does realise that he can’t keep looking for a partner as a solution to his issues. he also doesn’t really want to be in a relationship after her, not when he’s broken in more pieces than he was when he left asmodeus, and that was a lot of pieces as well. so he sleeps around and all, crafts this whole playboy persona of his, and locks his heart away. dedicates himself to the downworlder children he keeps adopting and trying to help, reconnects with ragnor and the other warlocks - who kind of knew what was going on and never blamed him for it or for growing distant with them because they’re amazing and probably have seen this happen many times before.

he also carefully avoids mundane men. he’s not risking getting anyone else hurt.

but then there’s the 60s and 70s, and he’s in bloody new york, and the queer community is shaping itself, and goddamn, after all the hurt and pain he’s seen due to sexuality, he’s not gonna ignore this. also, his Adopting Instincts are way too strong anyway, he can’t really see people struggling and not do anything. so he supports queer spaces, probably made pandemonium one, too - a particularly safe queer space, since she could use his wards to keep police out of his business and ensure everyone’s safety. he definitely was there at stonewall and subsequent protests and parades, keeping people safe, weakening gas bombs and the like with magic, making sure they managed to escape jail.

magnus’ relationship with the mundane queer community is kind of weird, then - he’s not an actual part of it, not really, and he’s particularly scared of getting attached then, so he guards his heart with even more determination than everywhere else. but he still wants to help, so he brings in his money, tries to keep them safe, participates in some community activities and volunteers, and occasionally talks to some kids who were just kicked out of home or something, who are dealing with self-loathing and fear, and even though he hasn’t gone through the whole “my sexuality is unnatural” thing or particularly hated that aspect of himself, he does know what it’s like to be cast away and seen as a monster, and to see himself as uncapable of being loved. so he listens and he talks about his experiences and tries to help as much as he can, and for the most part, he’s successful and he feels kind of accomplished in that sense. he might never have hated himself for his sexuality, but this is the first time he is fully able to bring it into his mundane life. and it also helps him deal with and talk about his other issues, even if he can’t be 100% frank about being an immortal being who does magic and shit, he can connect to these people in a lot of ways, and he also has his own scars brought in by homophobia even if they weren’t internalised in the same way. also, there are names popping up for what people are, homosexuality is being decriminalised all over the world (even in england, he’s heard), things are starting to look up.

as the 80s come up, he knows that a lot of things are changing - that white gay guys are getting more and more space, that the word “bisexual” is being popularised, but also that the reason for that is that a lot of gays and lesbians are trying to get bi ppl out of some spaces, that there’s a division going on between people who want to be seen as palatable and are willing to step over others to get it, and people who refuse to blend into an oppressive society, or just can’t, because they’re trans, they’re people of color, they’re sex workers and homeless and they can never be really assimilated when, even if they’re not getting the death penalty, they’re still getting killed and framed as criminals for existing.

magnus is a person of color as well, he’s bisexual (meaning one of the groups that were being cast away and despised by the white, “clean” gay movement) and he’s been there since the beginning, where these exact people that are being driven away were the only ones building the queer movement, so i think it’s pretty obvious who he “sided” with. not much changed in that aspect, then, since the spaces of queer resistance he was used to were the ones created by the “outcasts”. it was disappointing to see a movement that seemed so amazing at first get slowly gentrified and push the most vulnerable people away again, but at this point, he was used to seeing the divide, to drawing the short end, and at least he could continue as he was and try and help people, right? so life was good as a whole.

then the AIDS crisis happened, and shit that was SO rough. people were dying left and right, they had nowhere to go and there was so little he could do. of course he tried his best - pandemonium, like many other similar clubs, was definitely raising money to help the victims, and he was definitely volunteering to help them, along with catarina (who’s better at healing than he is, anyway), but even healing magic isn’t as simple as “begone, disease” and this was a completely new thing, anyway. there was little they could do beyond try and lessen the pain and symptoms and spend countless nights awake doing research and trying to figure out what exactly was causing this and what they could do to help and try to cure it. it’s endlessly frustrating and he gets to see a lot of people he knew, and talked to, and helped, die slowly while he was unable to do much, and shit is that a theme on his life. he also blames himself for not being able to work out a cure - what good is fucking magic if he can’t do this? - even if he and cat do figure out ways to help, at least. but they’re just two people and creating spells isn’t easy and it’s not like their patients have a lot of time, and also he needs to sleep, as cat and dot keep reminding him. the mundanes beat him to it, and for a while he can breathe again. but then there has been so much loss and death the community is in shambles and they’ve been set back one hell of a lot, and magnus is so tired. his friends help him, reassure him that it’s not his fault, and he’s okay, because he’s stronger now, he’s been getting better during all these years and a part of him is used to it - it never hurts less, but it does get easier to push through.

and then, well, there’s the whole war against valentine thing, and then the accords, so i think for a while magnus was kind of not very involved with the mundane world, and also this is already WAY to long to get into the 2000s and shit, but i will finish by saying that maybe after a few years magnus might get somewhat involved with the community again, because i just. really like the idea of magnus joining some kind of group of bisexual men and learning that SO MANY of them have gone through abusive experiences with straight girls that are scarily similar to his experience with camille, considering, you know, all the other layers involved and the fact that it happened centuries ago. and it kind of works as group therapy, and magnus finally realises that what he went through with camille was abuse, and that he’s not alone, and that queerphobia made him vulnerable, and that the fact that he is part of so many minorities can mean that, rather than not belonging anywhere, he belongs in many places and many different spaces, and he’s helped so many people in so many different ways. and then he finds out that there are other warlocks who are working as therapists and in there he can talk about his immortality issues and, well, other issues and he starts healing faster than before - he’s been healing ever since the breakup with camille, of course, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to open up to alec. like, of course, alec and him are soulmates and shit, but if he wasn’t in a better place he wouldn’t have allowed himself to fall for him like he did. and. yeah. magnus doing therapy and getting better and finding groups where he feels like he belongs, and realising camille was an abuser, please.

#ask #cosmicnovia #luxxmagnus #sh #shadowhunters #meta #magnus bane #magnus bane meta #history tag #queer history #sh meta #overflowing trashcan

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morphogenetic · 5 years

Text

okay so its been a few days but i keep Thinking About Shit about pride stuff so here we go. im going to politely request that you dont read this unless you can like it/acknowledge that you read it somehow (unless you’re on mobile and this readmore doesnt work in which case: im sorry) and also d/o/nt rb but if you’re some variety of not-straight and/or not-cis replying to this is totally fine

also this is long as fuck sorry

im in this very weird place where, although i am not in any way cis or het, i don’t feel like i truly belong at pride. like. obviously i’m trans, i’ve been out and living as trans and nonbinary for literally a third of my fuckin life. it matters to me very much that i’m trans, i have to basically come out over and over for the rest of my life because everyone is going to read me as a dude when they meet me for the first time and that is equally as wrong as when everyone was reading me as a girl before t. or if people look at my id and see the ‘f’ even though i can’t even change it to anything else and don’t even want to bc i have no desire whatsoever to tell the fucking government ‘HEY IM NONBINARY’

like being trans and nb is going to affect the rest of my life literally forever. but i’ve been out so long and since i was so relatively young that i just don’t think about it any more. i have absolutely no desire to even be cis, not like i can be bc that would mean i wasn’t nonbinary and the idea of being a binary gender is so fucking weird to me lmao. but it’s like. it’s obviously not a bad thing to be trans and i specifically am very content with it. being nonbinary and knowing that for sure and being super comfortable in that identity is great! but i also don’t feel like i have any reason to celebrate it because i just am. like it’s the same reason i feel very weird about celebrating birthdays and stuff. i mean my birthday isn’t soon in the slightest lmao but like. yeah cool i’m this age now! neat! i’m fine with telling people im this age and i have no negative feelings about being this age! but i just AM that age now why do i need to celebrate being a year older? it’s like that kinda

theres always the issue of the aroace-spec thing too like. yeah boys (and transmasc/masc-or-androgynous-leaning nb people, not girls lol) are attractive sometimes so i am, technically, gay, but my interest in having a relationship is so fucking low. ive had two crushes in my entire goddamn life! in 21 years! and both of those were on friends bc im also super demi! and otherwise the mere idea of a relationship is like. why the fuck would i want that?? why would anyone else even genuinely want that from me, a fucking average-as-hell-looking, balding-at-fucking-21 person who has literally no fucking ability to even function reasonably as a human being?

like. even putting aside all the fucking issues that i have with actually having and maintaining close relationships - not even in a dating kind of relationship, i mean literally just trusting people in general let alone as friends - thanks to the shit that three different former friends of mine pulled. even putting that aside i really don’t think i would ever really want a relationship even if i somehow managed to be even a little bit attractive to someone lol. im just too much of an inherent introvert for that.

and obviously you can be gay/bi/queer/pan/(insert other not-straight romantic/sexuality orientation im sure im forgetting) and not be in a relationship lol. it’s just. there’s so much fucking pressure ESPECIALLY in the mlm communities that i would theoretically be most in-tune with to be extremely sexual. and obviously that’s not inherently a bad thing at all!! it just doesn’t work for me in the slightest because i have basically no drive for that at all and the only time i ever did was when my body was adjusting to being on t initially. now that i’ve been on it for long enough shit has settled back to where it was for most of my life and yep, still basically no interest in that.

and like. im not gonna pretend that i have it the hardest out of literally any lgbtq person. im incredibly white (some ashkenazi sprinkled in there but like. nobody would ever be able to tell that without me saying it since it’s only a fourth and i have no association at all with any religion let alone being jewish) and able-bodied (to the best of my knowledge lmao) and definitely in a rare space of having extremely well-educated liberal parents who, while not being like millionaires or anything, are able to financially support me and didn’t ever reject me.

and because of all this im like. i dont belong at pride! it’s not for me! yes im trans but any random person is gonna think im a white cishet dude without me correcting them on pronouns. yeah im white but thats the only part of that that’s true but i still shouldn’t be taking up space that i honestly really do not need. i am happy the community exists and i WANT it to continue to exist and i dont think im gonna make any new cishet friends for the rest of my life but i just dont feel like im ever really going to be a true part of it

i really have no idea how to fully put my feelings about this into words. it’s just like. i am not afraid to be who i am but i dont feel proud of it in the way that i’m proud of like. my accomplishments. like when i graduate im gonna be proud of that! but i can’t be proud of who i am as a person in the same way, regardless of what im actually proud of myself for. i’m not proud of being 21 or having brown eyes or having my height. im not upset about them either but they’re just facts to me! in the same way that me being trans is just a fact about me

and pride is just. that. it’s just being proud of and celebrating your own existence. and im happy for people who can feel pride in existing (for all sorts of minority-related things not just lgbtq+ stuff) and i want people to continue to feel that way because when the world tells people they can’t be proud of who they are that’s shitty! but that’s not me and i don’t think it ever will be me. i realized i was aroace and accepted it in the span of a few days. i found out nonbinary people existed and immediately realized ‘oh that’s me’ within a week without feeling any self-hatred over it. realizing that i was mildly gay and not 100% aroace like i thought took me literally hours to realize and then accept. and i dont know how to express this irl without it seeming like i don’t want pride to exist because I VERY MUCH DO. i just. i never had the struggle in accepting those parts of me to the same extent that so many other people do and it feels wrong for me to be in a space for celebrating making it past that internal struggle when i never had it

#junpei.txt

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m-cree · 5 years

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you know what I am feeling very full and very thoughtful right now and I never really ramble about my own experiences so much as I ramble about my opinions but it’s pride month and I love being queer and I love other queer people and I just need to write this shit down, I think.

my sexuality and the way I approach it was so deeply affected by the way I was raised and the experiences I had as a child and ive never really given myself time to think about those ideas until now. it’s only recently that I realised the reason why im borderline repulsed by the idea of dating men despite being attracted to them and identifying as bisexual is because when I was 8 or 9 I briefly went to a school where everyone in my class just up and decided that me and a boy who I hung out with were dating, even though i had in no way expressed interest in him – keep in mind I was LITERALLY a prepubescent child. I can even recall a time where a girl who I sat next to at lunch had said “don’t u think [name] is cute?” and I responded with a shrug because “yes” or “no” was out of the question for me because even as a child when the idea of having a boyfriend or girlfriend is this cool, mystical thing that only cool kids have, my interest in males was very little.

this entire series of events was the cause of my first emotional breakdown, which, by the way, I had FAR too early in life, and also led to a whole bunch of other issues. being told by a load of girls in my class that this boy apparently did like me, when I didn’t share the same feelings, gave me this giant narcissistic complex (that I still experience to this day may I add) where I crave the idea of male attention, validation, and affection despite not wanting to return any of those feelings, that severely affects the way I act around males, even males who are my close friends.

watching a tv show with my dad when I was a little older, maybe 12 or 13, made me certain I was never going to be able to come out to him. a transgender character said that he’d known he was a boy since he was a child, and my dad just muttered very passionately about that being “bullshit” and various other expletives. the feelings I have towards my dad and his opinions is very strange because I know he is fully accepting of queer and trans people. my brother is gay, and my dad is fine with it. my cousin is trans, and even if he again said that he didn’t think my cousin was old enough to know he was trans (even though he was 17 at the time of coming out and at least 19 or 20 now) and often trips over pronouns and names, he still does try to respect his identity. ive even talked to my dad before about homophobia and the application of politics to sexuality and he’s said things that I whole heartedly agree with like “there’s nothing political about the way someone is born, it’s not something they can help, it’s just the way they are” and yet im still absolutely terrified of coming out to him and know I could never do it myself. my mum has had to out me to my siblings (upon my request) and has told me she will do the same for my dad, although I don’t know if she’s done that yet, and the uncertainty of whether or not my dad knows about my sexuality makes every visit to his place a minefield.

even coming out to my mum was a trainwreck because I never even intended to come out the way I did. I had an emotional breakdown in a car park because I have certain problems with communicating because sometimes I don’t understand what people (particularly adults) are asking me/don’t know how to answer them and when that happens my brain just shuts down and I cant respond. my mum didn’t understand the problem and just assumed it was some other ~teenager thing~ so asked me if I was upset and repressing things because I was having issues with my sexuality. I nodded and didn’t actually say a word the entire time because despite being proudly and angrily and purely bisexual I physically cannot say the phrase “I am bisexual” out loud to my mum. I can acknowledge myself as queer, I can say “we” when referring to queer people when I talk to her, but I cant call myself bisexual in front of her, and I don’t know why. my mum has two queer children – even if my brother is raging racist transphobe – and is very clear about being fully supportive of both of us, but I cant verbally state my identity to her. I also cant talk to her about queer stuff for too long without crying.

i don’t rlly have a concrete end to this post. mostly bc it’s a vent post and not made to be ~rebloggable~ but I felt the need to spill some stuff bc it’s only recently that ive realised im not as stable in my queer experience as I thought I was. let’s just end it with “I want a gf” bc at least it’s true

#txt #very long post im sorry

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promiseimnotacop · 5 years

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let's go about this a different way: pick your fave ten questions from the trans journey ask game and answer them!

bold of you to assume I’ve ever managed to make a decision in my life. also warning this gonna be looooooong

from this ask game

1. How did you choose your name?

so I’ve always been interested in names and a couple years before i ever came out to anyone I asked my mum casually if there were any other names she’d considered giving me. She said that Finn or Finnbar were up there had I “”been born a boy”” and so I latched on to that. It worked pretty well for me because I wanted something that felt like an equivalent exchange for my birthname and that I didn’t associate strongly with a particular individual and I’d never had a Finn in my year at school so that was all hunky dory. Took me a while longer to figure out middle names (because my birthname has two middle names and it’s sort of a tradition on my dad’s side so I wanted to have those).

There was a hot minute when I considered calling myself “Hugo Finn” which I’m so glad I didn’t, not that it is objectively a bad name, but because my reasoning was erm....bad. It was at a time when I had a lot of internalised self hatred/disgust and the name Hugo I first came across and associated heavily with the morally ambiguous “freak” from ASOUE. At the time I thought using a name I associated so heavily with the word freak was a way of subverting negative feelings but tbh it wasn’t. I’m so glad I didn’t tether myself that negativity.

Also fun fact, my birthname is Shakespearean protagonist who spends most of the play dressed as a boy so again for a hot second I considered using the name she does, Fidele, but I wasn’t about having a super conspicuously uncommon name.

For middle names in the end I went for James Lee (though nothing is legal or set in stone feedback and opinions are welcome lol). Lee came first, after the river in my village that I have a lot of postive memories associated with, outside of all the gender bullshit. The problem then became that the name “Finn Lee” would sound like/get mistaken for “Finley” and “Finnbar Lee” would sound like “Finn Barley” which would be eccentric and confusing. So it needed a buffer. In the end I went for James, partly because the first middle name of my given name is a saint, but mostly because James can be Jim and that allows for some of my childhood nicknames (im jim jam, imbo jimbo) to sort of still apply. that was a long answer to a short question lol but I spent a lot of time thinking about this because for some reason I felt like I couldn’t come out until I’d already settled on a full name.

3. Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria?

I don’t think they’re separable. I have dysphoria about my body but it is because of societal perceptions of my body

8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?

depends on how savvy that person is to trans jargon honestly. The best, if clunky, label I’ve found for my gender is “transmasculine non-binary” which is two different quite broad umbrella terms lol. I like the looseness of it. For me personally, it means that the framework of masculinity and maleness is not an exact fit and does not cover some of the complexities of my gender but, in my daily interactions it is a close enough approximation and I do desire to pursue parts of what might be considered a “trans masculine” medical transition. For the most part masculine coded language (including he/him pronouns) is what suits me the best, with only a few particular exceptions. So, for most of the world I am functionally “a man” (even though that is one of the few bits of masculine coded language I don’t gel with), or maybe “a gender non-conforming man” and I am not gonna split hairs about that if we aren’t close.

But if we’re seriously getting into a chat about gender there’s a lot more to be said. If drawing a diagram of my gender I would say I’m about 55% male, 30% “other”/third gender/maverique/genderqueer/whatever you want to call a gender identity autonomous and seperate from male or female, and 15% nothing/void. And all of that is subject to fluctuate a bit and which parts I might connect with most can be slightly contextual. I am more “a man” than anything else but also pretending to be a binary man is cutting out a significant part.

12. Do you pass?

Let’s unpack the most Problematique question lol. Just kidding. It is important to acknowledge how “passing” or not effects daily safety/experiences but....god can we not use that word? Can that not be the agreed upon term? The implication that you are otherwise “failing”? The way in which it is incredibly difficult to apply to no-binary people? The way it does not acknowledge the nuances and the way that being read as a certain gender can be conditional?

I prefer to use the terms “read as” because it allows for more nuanced discussion, does not have moralistic implications, puts the onus on the people viewing - not the individual being viewed and is kinda intuitive to understand.

To answer the question though? For the most part (like maybe 80% of the time) I am read as male. By no means always, and it is conditional on me following a certain level of gender conformity, but for the most part I interact with the world being addressed as a guy. As someone who is very much pre-t it seems that this alone subverts the standard “trans narrative”. Hell I was mostly read as male for a while before I ever came out. I’ve been corrected and laughed at in the women’s bathrooms. I’ve been harassed for gender nonconformity not in spite of but because I was wearing “girl’s” uniform. I have had fellow trans people assume I was a cis man (on more than one occasion) even when I introduced myself by my very much feminine birthname. I have little kids point blank refuse to believe I am “a girl”. I have had strangers confront and correct my mum for addressing me with she/her pronouns (before I was out). I have had kids yell the T slur at me (before I had begun to learn the invisible rules - which to be totally clear are bullshit -that need to be followed in order to be more consistently and unerringly read as male). I’ve been read as male occasionally in contexts where it was impossible for me to be out (near strangers on holiday whilst using birthname, new teachers and students at a school i’d been at since I was 11 and worn “girl’s uniform” until 16, etc).

It’s by no means always though. Which makes the times I don’t difficult and awkward. The technician on my course refers to me with feminine language but none of my tutors. The other day I tried out wearing eye shadow to class and I guy I bumped into later said that he hadn’t recognised me because it made me look like a girl (cringe). etc.

17. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public?

haha i don’t go. I literally haven’t been to the men’s bathroom (apart from once on holiday) but also i get harassed in the women’s/get directed towards the men’s so.....here’s to hoping I don’t get a UTI lads. Literally been in a public loos once since June (not including holiday abroad) and then i nipped into the disabled one during shark week.

19. Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth?

so at the beginning of uni I sort of tried to go stealth to see if I could/if it was comfortable (and by go stealth I mostly mean I just didn’t openly talk about my trans-ness for a while). I didn’t wanna be known as ‘the trans one’ and so i didn’t want to introduce myself with that fact. It fucking sucked would not recommend 0/10. It’s incredibly lonely-making to try and filter your experiences and to not be able to discuss certain issues with anyone irl.

32. How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years?

I used to do this thing when I was feeling particularly dysphoric/hopeless where I would draw myself now, and myself in 5 years time. Help construct something to look forward to, and work out what I would sincerely like to wear/express but don’t due to dysphoria. For me I really want to get to a place where I am comfortable in androgyny. I want to grow my hair out without sacrificing being read as male. I want to wear long skirts and crop tops whilst still being read and understood as a guy. I’ve done a lot of self reflection and I don’t think I can get to the place of being comfortable until I have had top surgery and I might also require T (though top surgery is really the necessity for my day to day life). Fingers crossed that will be possible and slightly healed within 5 years but given the NHS it really is not certain.

39. Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference?

T4T is self care. Jk. Honestly probably but that’s not to say a cis person couldn’t be my ideal partner? like at any rate it’s fucking necessary that my partner fully understands/perceives me to not be a woman. They could just be cis and no. 1 ally but in all likeliness they’re probably gonna be trans (particularly given the number trans and/or nb cuties out there)

40. How did/do you manage waiting to transition?

I’m not managing. Send help.

seriously every week I have a break down about how long NHS wait times are.

42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?

I’m an art student in Brighton. Yes.

(Also my sibling Sumner is an NB lesbian, and my childhood best friend Hunter is NB).

Literally going to be one cis person in my house of six next year.

#rockintwink

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