#more on intersex activism

[hazel2468]

I know I've said something similar before but like.

People are all "uwu we shouldn't let kids do hormone blockers or have surgeries because children can't consent to that!" and like. Aside from the fact that no one is doing gender affirming procedures on kids.

I would be willing to bet my left tit that these are the EXACT same fucks who would have given me shit from middle to high school and into college about getting laser hair removal, about my voice change from a soprano to an alto (not severe but noticeable, as I was a singer), who said I should amputate my healthy stomach so I could be more thin and "ladylike", who gave me ENDLESS shit for my body hair, including facial hair, who demanded I shave and pluck and squeeze myself into clothes and an image that didn't fit me and who ENCOURAGED me to take medications and have procedures that would permanently alter (and in the case of weight loss surgery? Damage, most likely) my body to fit what THEY thought I should be.

All because I have PCOS. My body is not what people expect of a cis woman's body.

Gee. It's almost like it has nothing to do with kids not consenting, and EVERYTHING to do with these chucklefucks wanting to deny trans kids access to life-saving care AND wanting to force intersex kids into medical treatment that they, by their own logic, cannot consent to.

But that's all fine when they're making us intersex folks "normal", huh?

[clownprince]

oh and just btw no joker i ever write/talk about/refer to is cis ever. even if it's under m/m. joker to Me is a man and a woman and a transsexual transvestite girlboy boygirl queer genderfuck Thing. anyway

[epochryphal]

just saw someone crediting me for coining xenogenital and clicked through to a post where i indeed mark it as i coined it, and

i completely fucking forgot that i did

doubly hilarious given i was just thinking “i bet all these definitions focusing on Imagination are just same phenomenon as quoi and originally it was more nuanced and could indeed fit Transition” (answer: yes)

apparently i originally described it as Conceptualizing and linked it to alien… whereas now i would emphasize it as a Relationship To Body and that it should be understood as agnostic about physical transition/modification, but certainly not understood as Unaltered or as Just Fun Fiction Narrative (nor about “always a dream, alas, definitely physically impossible, mustn’t get hopes up, let’s preempt any innovation and always specify it is hopeless wish”)

which of course is the whole. issue. and probably requires more intentional careful pushback (but also, is simplification and flattening just inevitable)

how do we open up the cognitive space to think about “hey, some people have genital setups that don’t occur naturally”

(without activating dysphoria and anti-trans cooptation along the lines of “-plasty surgery results are never ~real~ genitals”)

and this is where eunuchs and nullos are obvious but often forgotten examples. assumed archaic, or always only coercive. no thought about changes in healthcare experience or needs (eg risk of osteoporosis after gonadectomy unless on a hormone therapy; i wonder what preventative care some folks may still need and get denied because it’s tied into assumptions about organ inventories; how much does disgust reaction activate and prevent life-saving care)

but even then, how do we avoid the sort of “male / female / neuter” trinary?

i’ve been about removal (literally, blockers-and-ectomies) of sexed organs and tissue and traits, and it’s led me to yearn for transmutation into something visibly notably unrecognizable

and i don’t know what “not penis, not vagina, not a smooth doll crotch either; not scrotum, not labia, not smooth skin either” looks like, still — even as i literally have it, lmao.

like… how does this visually, conceptually (there’s the original word i used again) register? and how do we create the possibility to register something new? something possible. literally able to be noted/noticed.

i think a lot of xenobio designs focus on the physically humanly impossible for the foreseeable future - prehensile, especially.

probably all of this is very directly tied to phallocentrism. and it generates a binary yes/no, where further details are irrelevant (beyond coercive intervention to reinforce and reify that binary).

and anyway for all discussion there’s this looming spectre of “it’s sexual harrassment to discuss your own genitals, tmi inappropriate predatory creepy, can’t hide behind the veneer of fictional and have to be explicit (anything less gets misunderstood and elided back into penis/vagina/neuter) so that makes it real life sexual boundary crossing” - when uh how does one “get consent” to arguing with a paradigm of what can/does exist

mm. i threw this in my drafts for two weeks trying to think further and/or encourage myself to Formalize this into a bigger Plea For Paradigm Shift Around Genital Reality, and i hope i’ll be able to articulate that better in the near future but i’m gonna share this now as is

[zapsoda]

"what is a woman" is a question too philosophically complex for the average person to be used as a transphobic strawman

[shine-on-cd]

random but id like to apologize in case anyone accidentally saw me following a t=rf blog. i tend to doomscroll (really bad habit of mine) and i most likely accidentally clicked follow Lol

[nerdygaymormon]

The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.

In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ as they adopted the word as was used by homosexual men, except that society also used it as an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The wider queer community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.

The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.

The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities. 

Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism. 

In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.

In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals. 

Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym. 

GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis. 

Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+. 

In the 2010′s, the process of reclaiming the word “queer” that began in the 1980′s was largely accomplished. In the 2020′s the LGBTQ+ acronym is used less often as Queer is becoming the more common term to represent the community. 

[marlynnofmany]

Have you heard about mole genders?

I’ve heard of this concept in sci-fi, but thought it was absolutely made up. I know some fish and frogs can change genders, but not in cycles like this. Wild. If I slapped this down in some alien world without explanation, I’d laugh in my own face. But no, real biology IS that bizarre.

Image descriptions:

A series of tweets from @NaturalCalendar that say:

Hello lovely Nature Noticers. It is time for today's thread! Follow me, and we'll delve deep into the subterranean and subversive world of Talpa europaea, the common European mole. We'll begin with a bombshell - there are no female moles.

Genetic researchers have recently discovered that female moles have reproductive organs unlike any other mammal. If measured by the standards of other species, there are no fully female moles. Instead, there are males and individuals that would be considered intersex.

So, lets look at how this works. Female Moles are called Sows. Sows have both ovarian AND testicular tissue They also have vaginas that disappear between breeding seasons!

Most of the year, female moles look and behave like males. They have masculinised genitals, with no external vagina + an enlarged clitoris. When this point in the year arrives, mating season begins. At this point the Sow's testosterone levels drop + they develop a vagina.

As is typical for mammals, Sows are equipped with two X chromosomes and Boars with an X and a Y chromosome. Unlike any other mammals Sows simultaneously develop functional ovarian and testicular tissues united in one organ, the 'ovotestis'. This is unique to Moles.

This testicular tissue does not produce sperm. It does however, produce large amounts of the sex hormone testosterone, meaning that Sows have similar testosterone levels to the Boars -except during mating season.

Scientists have hypothesized that these high levels of testosterone provide an adaptive advantage for the mole's underground life - providing added muscle mass for Sows who need to dig burrows and fight for resources for their offspring.

This is a dynamic process - the ovarian tissue that makes eggs and gets larger during breeding, then regresses. Outside of breeding season the testicular tissue, expands until it’s larger than the ovarian end - flooding the Sow's system with testosterone.

This explains why female moles have male-like genitalia... But it doesn't explain how patch of testicular tissue forms in female moles even though they do not have a Y chromosome. Up until recently the Y chromosome was thought to be fundamental to male sex determination.

In 2020 a team of molecular geneticists studied the female mole's ability to produce testicular tissue without a Y chromosome. They found that changes in the structure of the Mole's genome that lead to altered control of genetic activity.

But what does this mean? In short the female mole shows us that evolution doesn't work in the way that we have assumed since Darwin - their DNA changes within the living organism.

Since Darwin, it has been generally accepted that the different appearances of living organisms are the result of gradual changes in genetic makeup that have been passed onto subsequent generations - but Moles experience changes in the regulatory regions belonging to sex genes.

The researchers found that female moles do not have a Y chromosone but they do have a triple CYP17A1 gene. CYP17A1 is involved in the formation of steroid hormones + the triplication of this gene in the mole creates a dynamic sex regulatory system.

This dynamic process appends additional regulatory sequences to the gene and leads to an increased production of male sex hormones in the ovotestes of female moles, especially more testosterone.

What the intersexual mole shows us is how important the three-dimensional organization of the genome is for evolution. Nature makes use of existing developmental genes and rearranges them to create a characteristic such as intersexuality.

We see in the mole that evolution is not a linear process, arranged around the principle of Euclidian geometry. It is rather a topological process - a structure cast in rubber that is responsive and adaptive to the environment.

The mole also reminds us of the complexity of sexual development. The shifting sexual characteristics of the mole shows how the process of sexual development can, and does result in a wide range of natural variations.

[thehmn]

I’m intersex and I’m very hesitant to make this post because it could very quickly turn into a shitshow if I don’t word my thoughts correctly, but I’ve noticed a small, slowly growing trend and I think it’s important to talk about this before it gets out of hand.

I’ve seen a couple of posts with a lot of likes and reblogs where trans people accuse intersex people of being transphobic when they want hormonal treatment or surgery for themselves to look more female or male. It’s never about forced surgery on intersex children, but specifically about adult intersex people who want treatment for themselves. In these posts people see it as subconscious transphobia because they think this mindset is supporting the gender binary and harms trans and nonbinary people who technically get intersex bodies once they start to transition with hormones and surgeries. In their eyes not only are intersex people who use hormones/surgery to visually get out of the intersex sphere abandoning trans people, they’re also working agains nonbinary people who use intersex people as proof that there are more than two sexes which justify the existence of more than two genders.

The fact that there are a lot of similarities between trans and intersex people should be obvious. Both groups are saddled with bodies that doesn’t necessarily represent their gender and both can experience severe body dysmorphia, but at the end of the day the biggest difference is that the bodies of intersex people change on their own.

If you’re trans, imagine if you were assigned your preferred gender at birth and was perfectly content and happy in your gender experience when you suddenly hit puberty and start developing sex characteristics that goes against your gender and suddenly people around you start telling you you’re not actually the gender you think you are. Basically, imagine the way you felt before you came out/transitioned, except reversed.

I can for the life of me not understand why a trans person who thinks hormones and surgeries are acceptable for trans people can’t extend that mindset to intersex people.

It’s an ongoing debate among intersex people wether we belong in queer spaces and I can see both sides. A lot of intersex people consider themselves cishet people with a birth deformity who aren’t any more queer than people with dwarfism. Other intersex people feel more at home in queer spaces because there’s generally more acceptance of people who fall outside the norm.

But at the same time, in my experience, you get a lot of the same questions in both spaces. Both queer and cishet people often assume intersex means nonbinary, and I’ve been asked more than once how intersex people can call themselves cis or trans when their bodies fall outside the two majority sexes, forgetting that it’s all about what gender you were assigned at birth.

This leads to situations where you’ll meet trans men with functioning penises and trans women with natural breasts. A child might be born with something that looks like a vagina with a big clitoris and be assigned female but once they hit puberty the big clitoris becomes a small penis.

And even if they’re trans and start developing sex characteristics more in line with their true gender they might not be ready for it yet. As a teenager you become a target if you stand out so if you’re a trans girl living as a boy and you suddenly develop breasts that can be horrifying.

I personally experienced a much milder version of this. As a child I was perfectly content with people calling me a girl but I also felt like a different kind of girl. Not in a “not like the other girls” or tomboy way. More like a girl with something else in the mix. It was a very physical feeling because I was naturally stronger and more boyish looking than other girls and I didn’t really feel like I fit in with either boys or girls but at the same time it didn’t bother me when I was grouped in with the girls during school activities. I’d play around with makeup in my room, giving myself a beard and chest hair without wanting to be a man. It just felt like the right mix. Then I hit puberty for real and developed breasts and hips but also a full beard and chest hair. Despite all the times I had done it to myself I was mortified. This wasn’t something I could take off. I stood out wether I wanted to or not. Shaving left me with stubble. People looked. People commented on it. And my breasts didn’t grow super big and a lot of my body fat sat on my stomach like on a man, which meant if I didn’t wear a very flattering bra and feminine clothes I was sometimes mistaken for a chubby guy with manboobs. I was NOT ready for that. I was already struggling to fit in at a new school so this was like a social death sentence, not to mention I wasn’t sure about my own gender yet. It was something I should be allowed to work out on my own in peace when I was ready for it without people constantly asking what I, a child, had in my pants.

So hormones was a gift that allowed me to “transition” when I was ready for it at a later age. I’m off those hormones now and live as a “woman with something extra” like I always knew I was, but the things I had to go through as a child makes me very sympathetic to intersex people who does not feel that way and just want to be a man or woman with nothing extra because that’s their gender and like everyone else they want their gender and gender expression to align.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect people to be a martyr for other people. Most intersex people think trans rights are important but that doesn’t necessarily mean they belong in that debate. I know a lot of trans people who think women’s rights are important but feel no obligation to help the cause by sharing their experience of what it was like living as one gender and then another and how much respect and dignity they gained or lost after they transitioned.

So while I understand the natural instinct of wanting intersex people be part of a lager cause I also think it’s unfair to call intersex people who want to look like their preferred gender transphobic.

I really hope I made myself understood and that this isn’t an angry post. I just saw this “intersex people are transphobic for taking hormones” opinion with little to no understanding of the intersex experience and I’m hoping to shed a bit of light on that ❤️

[leverage-ot3]

okay I absolutely get and adore harry being oblivious about ot3 developments, but consider:

after breanna makes it explicitly clear she’s queer in the card game job, harry starts Researching™

he’s trying to be good, be better. he likes this girl and wants to be there to support her and be her friend, someone she can trust. it doesn’t help that she’s around the same age as his daughter, who barely wants to associate with him anymore

he learns breanna is queer and dives into researching. watching TED talks in his spare time. reading ebooks on his phone in between playing roles in a con (bringing a physical book is less convenient and he doesn’t want to wave around the fact that he’s researching like he’s trying to be performative about it). he reads about legislation and book bans and wonders about how they could work their magic through a con to fix those things. he reads about asexuality and recognizes the flag colors from the sticker on breanna’s laptop, which he files away for later

he learns a lot! he has been peripherally aware of queer stuff- it’s kind of hard not to be in the 2020s, but now he is much more informed on a lot of issues. he has memorized at least 50 different labels and terms and has an index of resources in his head (and on his phone) if anyone might need them. he wants to understand the people he loves and cares about, whether it’s breanna or one of his daughter’s friends, or anyone in his life that is queer and he doesn’t know it yet. he wants to be ready and prepared to support them!

he learns about sapphicness and bisexuality and intersex rights and the gender spectrum. he learns about karyotypes and stonewall and other queer history. he learns about kink (blushing, but still reads because it’s important!) and relationship diversity… which leads him to discover the term polyamory

he tries not to actively apply the terms he has learned on the people in his life because he knows it’s wrong to assume things about other people. BUT. harry spends a few days reflecting on parker, hardison and eliot’s interactions and wonders. he thinks about the long hugs and lack of personal space and near telepathic communication not just between parker and hardison, but parker and eliot AND hardison and eliot. how parker knows how to make eliot take care of himself, how he knows when she forgets to eat because she’s so hyperfixated on planning a con. how parker jumps on his back for fun and no matter what, he always catches her. hardison’s absence is felt when he’s gone, deeply by the both of them.

it could just be a deep friendship, he knows. they have been working and living together for over a decade, of course they would be close!!! maybe they could even be queerplatonic! (another new word he learned!)

but. still. he quietly observes, watches closely, and thinks.

[genderqueerdykes]

Intersex Liberation Now! Volume 1 is out on Ko-fi!

Intersex Liberation Now! is a series of zines about the reality that intersex people face, and how our lack of autonomy when it comes to our bodies affects more than just us. The intersex author describes their experience with coming to realize they were intersex, as well as helpful information on overcoming internalized intersexism, and how you can become involved in intersex activism easily in your own community.

purchasing a copy of this zine supports its author. i am a disabled transsexual intersex lesbian artist who is losing their housing in 4 days and needs help while i relocate from my current extremely unstable and unsafe situation where i actively being abused and manipulated by my current roommate.

[doberbutts]

(Different anon here.) I'm intersex and I DESPISE the TMA/TME terms. Transmisogyny and transandrophobia are both useful terms, but neither is "worse," and neither is somehow exclusive. I know trans women who get mistaken for trans men, I know trans men who get mistaken for trans women, I know nonbinary people who get mistaken for both, I know other intersex people who get mistaken for whatever pisses people off the most in that moment.

I get called both a dyke and a faggot from car windows, despite being neither WLW or MLM. I get called a tranny every couple of days, despite the fact that I identify as intersex, NOT transgender!

Nobody CARES what my actual identity is, they just know I've got a body that doesn't "look right," so I'm fair game to harass and abuse. Do I get to call myself TMA despite not being a trans woman? Am I somehow TME despite the fact that I experience what is objectively transmisogyny? I'm not a trans man, I'm not a trans woman, I'm not transmasc, I'm not transfemme--I'm intersex!

Watching perisex trans people play these weird pissing contest games where they try to decide who's most oppressed, while all of them are throwing intersex people under the bus...ugh. Perisex people, do better. Why are trans spaces so fixated on preserving the fucking sex binary?

Out of all of the asks I got, that's pretty close to my frustration with the whole thing honestly. Perhaps because I also am intersex and thus my experience is a bit different than others as well, but I've always been really aware of what lines I have to toe in order to not get hatecrimed in broad daylight. The lines were recently redrawn due to my transition but the learning process has been... rough... as things that I used to have to do are now things that actively create danger for me, and visa versa.

I have another ask in my inbox about the binary thing and I mentioned it when I first joined this discussion about how not every trans person easily fits into "trans fem" and trans masc" and I'm wondering not only what this arguing thinks of trans neutrals and multigender people but also how left out they must feel in this entire thing. Forcibly assigned one way or the other despite fighting to not have to deal with that, or altogether erased and silenced from the discussion.

In my refusal to allow trans men to be erased from conversations that affect them, I need to be careful not to erase mascs, neutrals, and more. I'm not always the best at it, but I think it is important that the effort is there.

[genderkoolaid]

im being genuine but im an idiot so forgive me if asking this sucks, but for doing surgery on babies, aren’t those for when like the um. parts won’t function to keep the baby alive? that’s all i’ve heard of,, if they’re forcing cosmetic surgery to affirm the sex binary that’s so horrid, i don’t know how to think about it

Oh they are absolutely forcing cosmetic surgery on children to enforce the sex binary.

There are times where surgery on children is necessary for healthy functioning, but when talking about intersex children, surgeries are regularly done for no other reason than making the child "look normal." Medical literature regularly tells doctors it's vital to pick a sex & perform whatever surgeries they deem necessary to make the child's body fit that sex, often including forced HRT at puberty. They often argue that not forcing them into the sex binary could result in trauma– but that trauma only exists because they will live in an intersexist society that tells them they should be ashamed of their body. It's a real "being trans will make you depressed because of how I will treat you" type situation. & a lot of people are lied to about surgeries performed on them as children, because doctors tend to be weird about admitting that intersex variations exist & act like they are doing people a favor by not telling them.

That's why being against forced surgery is such a big part of intersex activism. If you want to know more check out advocacy groups like InterACT:

[hiiragi7]

If you genuinely think intersex people are safer or more widely accepted than trans people, you do not know anything about intersex people. Being so incredibly blind to intersex oppression that you would say things like that (especially if you're someone who gets defensive over it when intersex people try to educate you) makes you a poor ally to intersex people and actively feeds into silencing our oppression and sweeping it under the rug.

Telling people you have a sex variation or a hormonal condition is not safer than telling people you are trans. It is callous to attempt to use us as a shield and then claim it doesn't harm anyone. So many of those in the queer and trans community know nothing about intersex oppression or how we are being killed too and it hurts.

I am both intersex and trans. These communities are siblings. Watching one sacrifice and then neglect the other over and over pains me. We are siblings, yet you use the intersex community when you think it suits you, and then you are silent when intersex people are screaming for our rights and for help. We have been fighting our oppression all this time, and it feels so often as though we are doing it alone. It especially hurts when the trans community, the sibling to the intersex community, claims the great harm we are facing either does not exist or that it is "not nearly as bad as what the trans community faces". Or, worse, erases us entirely by calling us "cis people with a disorder" rather than intersex.

When you claim to be intersex "for safety", you actively participate in erasing the unsafety we as intersex people face every day. Claiming you are intersex is no safer than being trans, and when you say it is safer, you erase how my community is being slaughtered, the laws that are pushed against us, the intersex babies that are mutilated at birth, the constant harassment, the high risk of sexual assault or violence when someone learns you're intersex, the medical malpractice and forced medical procedures, the way we are isolated socially, the insults, the mockery, the fetishization, and so on, and so on, and so on.

I understand the need to feel safe as an oppressed minority. However, saying that you are intersex "for safety" is not actually any safer at all. And when you claim it is, it harms my community. It works against the visibility of intersex issues that we have been trying to bring up for decades.

The harsh reality is that there is no way to be completely safe as a queer person in this world as it is right now. Telling others that intersex people have it better is a lie. We are all unsafe, all oppressed. Whatever illusion of safety you get from the lie that intersex people have it better is not worth the damage it does to intersex activism.

[identitty-dickruption]

shoutout to my hometown for banning intersex genital mutilation! the government has also implemented a medical board to oversee medical processes for intersex folk, with a mandate that this board include people with "lived experience". this is a great step forward, and I hope that the rest of Australia will follow!

you can find out more here:

I encourage my fellow Australians to look into similar movements in your state/territory! A Gender Agenda is doing some great work in the ACT at the moment, but if you're in another part of Australia, I'll point you towards Intersex Human Rights Australia for all your intersex activism needs!

[esrah-rah-rasputin]

So I think I should zone out and draw to music more

[ID: a freeform ink drawing featuring a trans man reaching up to the sky, and an intersex woman holding her hands above his. A trans flag connects them both, and around them are various symbols and imagery, mostly nature related. A halo surrounds the man’s hand, and his hair hair turns into various types of clouds, including a thunder cell that’s actively raining. His build is spindly and he has visible scarring on his arm. He also has two tattoos. The woman has long curly hair and has visible facial and body hair. Her build is somewhat muscular. She is wearing a robe with long flowing sleeves, and beaded earrings. Behind her is the sun, characterized as a sleeping woman’s face, and over her shoulder is a fantasy castle scene. To the other side there’s a curled snake, and a burst that contains three pomegranate seeds and two teeth. Below that is a partly peeled orange, several knives, blueberries on the branch, and two interlaced fingers. /End ID]

[hadesoftheladies]

queer theory is actually a nightmarish frankensteinian creation of postmodernism, and post-modernists philosophers have frequently and explicitly been pro-pedophilia, because this is a logical consequence of what post-modernism says is true: there is no (epistemic) certainty or stable meaning.

when my conservative parents tell me they basically associate "lgbtq" with "maps" and pedophilia, they have reason to do so, given how "queer culture" is fundamentally a creation of post-modernist values, and post-modernist estimations of sexuality. everything is fluid, no binary exists, no meaning is fixed, so there are no defining lines, which means lines cannot actually be crossed. homosexuals can be bisexual, man and woman are interchangeable meaningless terms, and attraction to children is just one of the many ways sexual fluidity is expressed in humans, a benign and normal thing that should be released from modernist moralistic confines

that is queer philosophy, and it is actual queer culture. so not only are LGB folk being told they should celebrate the reclamation of an awful slur that explicitly others them as "perverted" and "strange", but now they are told to embrace queer culture (which means queer identity and philosophy) which not only declares their reality as abnormal and unreal (same-sex attraction is myth, since there is no such thing as sex and attraction is fluid), but also defines them explicitly with sexual perversions like pedophilia and bdsm: which IS EXACTLY WHAT HOMOPHOBES BELIEVE ABOUT THEM.

when queer culture is predicated on subjective feelings of identity needing to be validated, celebrated and "set free" from modernist (read definable, material and epistemological) structures, then the distaste for MAPs from queer folk doesn't mean anything, because even if MAPs are publicly rejected by queer culture, they are embraced and validated by queer theory and post-modernist philosophy.

what is doubly baffling to me is how the lgbtq+ community has tainted a movement for gay rights, you know, people who are being killed and ostracized for being same-sex attracted. not only nullifying their experiences and struggle in being same-sex attracted, not only associating their neutral, normal orientations with perversions and kinks, making something neutral political . . .

but they have also actively decentered a movement for homosexuals and bisexuals in order to accommodate identities that have NOTHING to do with that struggle or fight. intersex conditions, gender dysphoria, and asexuality have nothing to do with the oppression LGBs have faced for their sexual orientation and gender nonconformity, their culture of genderlessness. the idea that men and women can wear and present however they want, love and be attracted to the same sex, without it altering their material status.

EVEN MORE INFURIATINGLY, queer politics has offered almost ZERO challenges to patriarchy. by throwing out definitions, throwing out distinctions, it has relegated the essence of oppression to an individualistic, liberal fantasy that is powerless to change the system, and so can only grant us "spicy" patriarchy. dominance and submission, patriarchal inventions, are now cool kinks that every couple should try. gender is now open access (but still necessary), so men can wear heels and still call women slurs and violently harass them. transmen can go by he/him and still be refused abortion access! gay people are gender fetishists, not sinners. nothing has structurally changed, it's just we have cool names now! :)

so now LGB and women all over the fucking world are relegated to this homophobic misogynistic hell whether we turn to the left or right, and when we speak up about it, conservative homophobes and misogynists confuse us with liberal perverts, and liberal homophobes and misogynists conflate us with conservative sadists.

the structure doesn't change. there is no actual progress. like, same-sex right and women's movements all over the world have suffered for this. because white liberal westerners wanted to play around with words and have that count as activism.

i fucking hate queer theory and politics. i fucking hate how rich western whites shit on every human rights movement while capitalizing on them.