#label discussion

[evolvedclown]

i think alot of people online genuinely don’t understand what being queer is bc what do you mean he/him lesbians shouldn’t exist? yes i am talking about this again.

do you not know about all of the lesbians before us (decades and centuries before us) who would pretend to be men or even transition into men just so that they could be with their gfs/wives? all the old butches that call themselves boys and men but are still definitely lesbians? all the genderqueer lesbians that take t or id as transmasc or present completely masculine? the lesbians that prefer to be called your boyfriend or husband? they have always been here and you getting all of your queer information solely from tiktok or the first post you see online is not going to change that.

if you have your definition of a label that fits you, that’s amazing! it really is/srs. but that doesn’t mean that a label doesn’t have a different meaning for others. that’s how things work. everyone’s got their own nuance and it can conflict with others but the whole point of being queer is discovering who you are and loving it. not because it make sense, but because it feels right.

[imoga-pride]

Is there a label for being transmasc-aligned?

it's used, so yes. not that it was formally made a flag for it specifically yet.

transphoebian would be a term I guess. let me tag @neopronouns to know what he thinks of this term (or if he knows a word for that). comment: not sure if transphoebian would be exactly a better term for this, since I feel that transsolarian, for instance, would mean transtidal-aligned. transtidal includes those who are neither transmasc or trans man but are trans and masc or man in some way, for example.

[doberbutts]

I always think it's funny whenever I post about an issue that directly affects me and someone responds with "you're an idiot that doesn't know what you're talking about" and I have to be like. Hello. This is my demographic. Do you see this label here? Guess who falls under it OH RIGHT it's me. Maybe I like. Have some amount of idea of what I'm talking about considering this is sampled directly from my life experiences. Just a thought.

[bullet-proof-gay]

You have Bad Person Disease.

Oh, what does that mean? Well basically. You're Bad. And you can't be Good, because if you ever try to be Good then you're only doing it to hurt people, because you're Bad.

If you ever try to seek help through therapy then you'll have to wade through therapists who believe Bad Person Disease makes you dangerous to everyone around you. Yes even if you've never actually hurt anyone, or you respond to stress by isolating or hurting yourself. Actually if you hurt yourself it's just to manipulate others. Because you're Bad.

Also any time you try to seek help online you'll find people discussing specifically how to upset you, including to the point of ruining your life. But it's okay, you have Bad Person Disease, so acting maliciously or cruelly towards you is justified.

These kinds of disease are all on complicated spectrums and different people will experience wildly different symptoms or express things in wildly different ways. Not Bad Person Disease though. Yeah, you're all the same. All Bad, you see.

If someone else takes personality traits from other people then it's just a normal impact of socialisation on human development. Not you though, if you take any personality traits from the people around you then you're doing it on purpose and it's bad, because you're Bad.

If someone else has a meltdown, screams or yells or snaps, it's probably just that they're having a rough day and need some help. Not you though, if you ever do anything that upsets anyone then it's because you're Bad and always will be Bad and that makes you dangerous.

I don't know how to end this post.

[genericpuff]

it's so funny that dramatubers are calling the censoring of asmongold from bbno$'s new music video a "controversy" when it's actually a totally reasonable and sane thing to do and the only controversy is the fact that asmongold still exists

not funny haha funny weird

it's just flat out weird that people keep defending this loser, you're weird, go outside

[bonefall]

Splashtail and Atheism

Hello. I am an Atheist and I call Splashstar an Atheist because he is based on widespread bigoted depictions of godless people like myself. There have now been several posts about this written as if they're trying to "correct a misconception," and I am tired of vagueposts completely missing the point of the criticism to get caught up on arguing semantics.

The misanthropic, god-hating "Atheist" character in Christian propaganda, which I feel Splashstar has some alarming similarities with, does not come from the writer's correctable "misconception" of irreligious labels. It is born from a hatred of nonbelievers.

Specifically, my point that Splashtail is a mashup of two popular anti-secular tropes common in religious media;

The assertion that there's no such thing as a "real" nonbeliever, and that Atheists are just "rebelling" against God because we're mad at him, want to do bad things without guilt, or have "lost our way."

The belief that morality itself stems from faith in a higher moral being, asserting that the irreligious are "evil" in contrast to the faithful.

Even passing familiarity with the arguments of Christian apologia seen in Chick Tracts, Pureflix films, PragerU videos, and so on, will have put these tropes in front of you. They are false and harmful, and they target Atheists.

For more on this, TVTropes has an entire article dedicated to the Hollywood Atheist and its sub-tropes. Note how many of these Curlfeather and Splashtail fall into, regardless of if you're arguing that they are "real atheists" or not.

Those that hate us do not care about semantic labels. To them, we are without God, A-Theistic, and they do not actually care what is at the core of your beliefs if it contradicts their narrative.

But, even worse, the "Splashtail Can't Be An Atheist" crowd isn't even totally correct on the semantics they're trying to have a pedant battle about.

Most atheistic organizations and online atheists define Atheism as "one who does not believe in God" and attempt to push a sliding scale of "agnosticism" on how hard of a "maybe" you're feeling about your lack of faith. In the sliding agnostic scale, Agnostic Atheists are a "probably no god" and Gnostic Atheists are a "definitely no god." Others describe that scale as "hard" and "soft" Atheism-- but there is NOT universal agreement on that definition.

There other definitions of an "Atheist," and even those who reject the "agnostic scale" completely (I am one of them). "Atheism" was historically the catch-all term for what we might now call "Irreligious," and more.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy explores its many meanings, and proposes that what defines an Atheist is an active choice to distance oneself from faith; "Someone who rejects the premise of gods either based on lack of belief, or meaninglessness of the question." Matt Dillahunty, a prominent educator and activist, intentionally refers to himself as an Atheist when others (including religious people!) have tried to pressure him into using the label Agnostic, for reasons he covers in great depth. Historically, "atheist" simply meant anyone who denied the gods or acted impiously, evolving into use as a broad label for irreligious practices around the 1500s, until attempts to narrow it to "nonbelievers in deities" in the 1800s.

By EoP's expanded definition alone, Splashstar qualifies as an Atheist. The rejection does not have to come from a belief that Theism is false, but that the question is meaningless. He doesn't have to "believe" in StarClan any more than you have to "believe" in a total stranger. He rejects faith in it and lives without their influence.

But even more than that, "atheist" is a broad, stigmatized term with a history you can't erase. Hundreds of combinations of philosophies, spiritual beliefs, and logical positions have been called "Atheism."

"Atheist" can refer to Agnostics (those who aren't sure if there is a god or not), Antitheists (opposition to the belief in and/or worship of gods), Igtheists (those that feel that "god" is such a nebulous term that the question of belief is meaningless), Apatheists (people who just don't care), practitioners of Non-Deistic religions (such as Humanistic Judaism and some sects of Buddhism), and even heretics who spoke against religion like Diagoras of Melos (gay guy who chopped up a statue of hercules and used it to bake beans. king.)

In a fantasy universe where gods are provably, visibly real, the term "Atheist" is going to look a lot more like those historic and expansive uses.

Unless you want to argue that "atheism" by the narrow, popular definition of "believing in deities" can't exist in such a setting. So, arguing that Cloudtail stopped being an Atheist when he saw demons in OotS, in spite of this not affecting his spiritual practices. Or, dancing around using one uniting term, you could specifically say Curlfeather is a Misotheist, Splashstar is an Antitheist or Agnostic, Mothwing is Deist, etc.

You could have a discussion about how applicable these words even are in the setting. Or make up terms that satisfy yourself. You could do this forever. But I choose not to.

I think it's counterproductive to push people to learn a bunch of terms for hyperspecific branches of irreligious philosophy just to discuss clear anti-secular sentiment within the text of a book, actually. Or push people to abandon a useful word because fantasy isn't exactly the same as real life. Functionally, imo, all of those aforementioned cats are Atheists within this setting, living "without god" by rejecting belief-- and many of them invoke real world bigotry, with tropes much older than WC itself.

So the simple fact is; Calling Splashtail an "Evil Atheist" immediately communicates the narrative tropes I am criticizing.

Either by authorial accident or on purpose, Splashstar's lack of morality being tied to his rejection of StarClan invokes the demonized atheist trope, very much like the ones seen in PureFlix's God's Not Dead or Jack Chick's The Last Generation.

All the arbitrary wishing that the terms were more narrow and exclusive will not change the reality that those characters are intended by bigots as atheists. The terms of the discussion reflect that. Trying to tut-tut the fandom for calling a spade a spade is a smug way to phrase you completely missed the damn point.

[rookflower]

remembering the "is squirrelflight or leafpool holly jay and lion's Real Mother" discourse being really big and that people seemed unable to conceptualise that both of these things can in fact be true at once

[backpackingspace]

I have such complicated feelings about Athena's regert in epic. Because on one hand. Athena WAS right. Odysseus did need to listen her. And he did need to kill the cyclops. And her regert and her desire to find a better path for the future makes it seem that wasn't the case. That odysseus was right to adopt polites mindset (WHICH is a whole other post I might write up. I have. Thoughts!)

And that is very much not what Athena is regretting. She regerts leaving and LEAVING ONLY. (And maybe her comment about the dead friends). She regerts not being able to make odysseus listen. And later she regerts what happened to odysseus because she's horrified about what he suffered with calypso.

How many times in those ten years did Athena almost go visit odysseus on the automatic. When she left, she had convinced herself that odysseus was just another mentee just another one of her heros. She had been convincing herself of this for years, for odysseus's whole life basically. And then when she left she found that that was not the case. The pain she felt would not allow her denial anymore. (Yall ever lose a friend? Have a best friend become a stranger? That shit hurts like nothing else.) So at first she's angry and hurting and then later she's idgent with herself (she's not going to apologize first. Like hell shes the goddess here.) and hurting and then she's just lonely and hurting.

Shes not really close to any one on Olympus. And odysseus always took such good care of her (his prayers and devotion and inventions fed her so well) even though she's a war goddess and doesn't need it. And he was always fearless of her. Comfortable with her the way literally nobody else is. (Because he's her friend /her best friend) and Olympus is all politics and cold distance and catering to her father and she tried to go visit diomedes but (the poor boy) is still so afraid of her. And was all great Athena direct me to where you need the spear thrown. (The feeling of heart break is familiar now. She's never felt this human before how do they cope)

And so she's lonely and bored and hurting and she MISSES her best friend. She REGETS leaving. And she's missing and reverting enough to swallow her godly pride and go visit odysseus friend. Maybe she won't apologize first but she can extend the first olive branch. So she goes to Ithaca and does not find him. That's super weird but she does find telemachus

Telemachus who, despite his circumstances is so happy. Who teaches her about how the future could be. And they talk about it, how the future could be. (Honorable warfare. No more camp slaves, so more women hiding in her temples and Athena failing to protect them from being raped. Giving your enemies a the chance to surround and then dealing out a quick death honorable death if they dont.) Telemachus who calls her friend immediately. Who is maybe a shyer happier verison of his father. Who odysseus might be if he ...hadn't had her in his life. (It's a horrible thought. Heart break is a familiar feeling.)

So she hustles telemachus off the island. They make a plan, telemachus will be safe from the suitors. Athena will block the women's door so none of the suitors can go in. And telemachus will look for his father in the mortal relam, seeking odysseus's old comrades and she will look for odysseus in the godly realm.

So Athena, filled with heart break and regret but hopeful for the first time since she was four (and play fighting with pallas) goes time diving for her old friend. And is /horrified/ when she finds him. Finds out how exactly he spent the last seven years. Another one of her chosen violated another one she failed to protect. Her best friend gods. What has she done? This never would have happened if she had never left. Why did she leave? It was odysseus's first fuck offense why did she leave?

She has to help. SHE HAS TO

So off she goes, pissing off her father for the first time ever. And putting her pride to beg (also for the first time ever. Odysseus do you see this shit I'm doing for you)

By the time she's talking to odysseus again. She's spent ten years of heart break missing her best friend, the guilt has cumulated into self blame for not preventing odysseus's violation. (Keep in mind that witnessing trauma is just as traumatizing as going through it. And Athena is a chaste goddess. ) telemachus has shown her a new path for the future. Hence her regert and wondering about leading odysseus astray.

But then this tragic complicated guilt and character growth Athena goes through gets boiled down to actually polites was right (again I have thoughts about his philosophy and that is a completely separate post. As is how telemachus and polities views differ (because they do!!!!!) But again. Separate post.) And any killing at all is bad. And then you have fics where Athena begs odysseus's forgiveness and claims that all killing is bad and (like no hate obvious people can write and headcanon however they want. ) it's just an instant fuck no for me and I've got to click out of said fics. And I know this is part due to this culture we've developed lately and childish black and white thinking (bad vs good. No nuace. If anybody disagrees with my opinion that's uncomfortable and that threatens me so therefore that person is evil and I must attack them) and partially because in fandom things get summerize, nauce gets lost. And it's hard to see the nuace in a musical playlist anyway. And everybody is going to interpret things differently and all that.

But at the end of the day. Athena was right that the cyclops needed to be killed. And she knows this she doesn't regret this. Just how she handled the situation , just that she was so ubrupt with her best friend, everything that led to odysseus being trapped on that island for seven years.

[omegalerc]

to all my anons yk i love u all but when u send me asks talking about ur other bottom omega drivers … there’s just nothing for me to do or say im afraid. Charles to me is the prettiest omega at the omegaverse ball and i spend what limited braincells i do have, only on him

[hellothepixel]

I want to be able to discuss transmisogyny, both to be able to defend myself against it and to help other transfems suffering from it. But if the person talking about it goes out of their way to frame trans men as inherently more privileged than women, or dismiss transandrophobia, then- i have to be weary.

How can I trust that you're being accurate about the bigotry you experience, when you are being dismissive of the bigotry fellow trans people experience?

Truth is that transmasc people suffer a unique blend of transphobia, one that insists they are women and then enacts misogyny upon them based on that assertion. This is transandrophobia. Why shouldn't transmasc people be able to use this label to correctly identify their struggles, as we transfem people use transmisogyny to correctly identify ours?

[evolvedclown]

i think another reason i kept denying im a lesbian is bc most lesbian centered media is about wlw or feminine presenting nb’s. unless im specifically looking for it, you never really see anything but pretty, femme, she/her lesbians as the forefront of lesbians. So when i remembered that butch lesbians exist and that he/him lesbians are a legit thing and not just a rage bait point that people like to use to invalidate certain genderqueer/gnc lesbians, it became a lot easier to accept myself.

i use any pronouns and i want to start t but im nonbinary and like girls and others in a gay way. if you’ve read other posts i’ve written you’ll see that i’ve tried to convince myself over and over that i still like men but it’s really just aestheticlly. if you id as a man, i usually lose any interest in you past what you aesthetically look like. unless its a guy that i convince myself is a lesbian bc that’s the vibe he gives off. like percy jackson (i will not expand on this)

i really needed to go back to our queer roots and look at all of the lesbians of the past that identified/presented as men solely to be with their women lovers. or butch/butch relationships where they call eachother their boyfriend.

lesbians have always been gnc and we need to start accepting that there are more types of lesbians than just she/her fem4fem or fem4masc (the masc being like, ellie williams at most bc after that it gets too much for some people) relationships bc it ostracizes the lesbians at the beginning of it all that dressed like men and used he/him pronouns and went by different names so they could be safe with their wives. or the lesbians that grew out all their body hair and shortened their names and buzzed their heads to rebel against societal norms for women but also bc that’s just how they wanted to look.

let’s maybe stop with all the label/pronoun discorse bc all it does is divide us as a whole and make it easier for queerphobic people to attack us.

being queer is about being. stop making people feel bad for wanting to be.

if you don’t understand it, that’s kinda the point. you don’t need to understand someone else’s experience to accept it. if it’s different than yours, then so be it. no one’s experiences are going to be the same.

[ciderjacks]

I hc Marcille as a bi girl but I have to admit as a lesbian myself that her “taste in men” is incredibly dykey

[bucephaly]

Hi! quick question: if i have confirmed Cherokee ancestry (which I'm working on currently and likely do) even if it's a small amount, is it okay/not appropriation to identify as "two-spirit" (though i don't think that's super accurate in terms of Cherokee-specific traditions, but i think i have heard that cherokee gender roles tended to be more flexible- correct me if i'm wrong.) I'm definitely white + don't know much about Cherokee culture/what is acceptable in terms of being a part of the community.

Ok a big disclaimer that I'm also white and disconnected and this is a very complex topic. But I have looked into this some so I'll try to share what I've learned and ofc check the replies for if anyone has chimed in with corrections or added anything etc

'Two spirit' is a pan-native term used as an umbrella for the many distinct cultural 3rd [or 4th 5th +] genders that many native cultures have or had. I think the consensus I've seen is that it's distinct from just being native and LGBT. And you Have to be native to be 2spirit, there have definitely been nonnative appropriating it

I would say to be 2 spirit you would have to be involved enough in your culture and community to take on community roles according to the cultural 3rd etc gender. Like.. I'm trans and gay, but I'm culturally disconnected. I dont consider myself two spirit, because I'm not in those community roles because I'm disconnected. 2spirit means something specific and it means more than just being trans and native.

As for what the actual cherokee systems were, I'm not sure if I should share what little I know about that on a tumblr post, but I'll say not much of anything has survived to the present. And be careful if you do research it, as an author claiming falsely to be cherokee has written about cherokee 2spirit stuff before but they're a weirdo pretendian. So don't trust anything from a Qwo-li Driscoll.

But yea basically 2spirit isn't just 'LGBT native' and ive seen lots of reconnecting people go 'oh I'm native? I can use this cool native-only term now!' As if it's just a fun thing for natives only just to look cooler or smth, it has more meaning than that and most of it is specific to the culture.

As always, native folks feel free to chime in in the comments

[farshootergotme]

My take on the "is Dick Damian's parent" debate:

Dick doesn't think of Damian as his son (I feel like he considered it at some point but with all the other problems in his life he wasn't ready to be a parent so in the end he left it at that), but he knows he had to step up as a parental figure during the time Bruce wasn't there.

Damian knows Dick isn't his parent nor will he be with Bruce in the picture, but he was to some extent a parental figure in a way his parents hadn't been before that point (not hating on Bruce or Talia, but they weren't stellar parents to Damian).

[randomshenaniganery]

I have the habit of drawing twin D like D from the movies and D like a little rat from my head

D rat comp:

they both get to have pouty lips and depressed eyes but the hair is where I put my foot down, I might have to slightly alter his fringe because when I leave it uncolored he reminds me of Diluc

Twin D gets more grace to make up for his severe daddy issues