#tell me you’re a cis het white man without telling me you’re a cis het white man

[intoxicatinginsanity]

Only paranoid idiots wear face diapers. Survival of the fittest.

Lmao bro when you die from covid complications; please be sure to tell me how much your trash eugenics helped you from beyond the grave, Shit Ass.

[just-here-for-the-moment]

Tell me about Reader who’s only dated assholes (arrogant tech bros, flaky politicians, unfaithful artists, ghosting athletes, etc…) from different walks of life until she meets Frankie 👀 maybe pure FILTH ensues after a while, maybe… 👀 like. Pure fucking nasty filth. Also, beaches. 😊 maybe not at the same time tho sounds painful tbh

Ok this may have ended up softer than "filthy" but not by much!! Hope you enjoy Frankie and his magic hands, dude. Those Hands

Word count: 1200+

Rating: explicit, 18+ only

Outline: Frankie Morales x “You” (cis/het female reader, “blank canvas”/no physical description/no name/no use of “Y/N”)

Warnings: coffee shop meet-cute; beach vacation; oral sex/F receiving; vaginal fingering; P/V sex; shower scene; mentions of food and alcohol

It was the hands you noticed first. Work-worn and calloused, but somehow also soft-looking. Big hands, nice hands, they held the door of the coffee shop open for you to enter as he left, and you almost tripped over the threshold with how distracted you were. You didn’t know you could be attracted to hands until you saw his, but somehow they were different from the soft, manicured hands of all the men you had dated before. Guys who only worked at keyboards in nice offices, who played golf or maybe drew sketches for upscale galleries, guys who didn’t mow their own lawns. Guys who got bored and left you after five days or seven weeks or four months. You hoped you would see him again.

And a week later you did, and then a few days after that, and then again the next day. And then one day you timed it just right, or he did, and you actually ended up in line together. And when you both picked up your orders, you ended up sort of fighting to give the other person the last open seats, a little two-top table, until you both just laughed and decided to sit with a stranger. Well, a nice stranger anyway. And there’s no way to sit at a tiny 2-person table like that without talking, and so it was very nice to find out that the pair of nice hands belonged to a nice man who finally gave you his name, and by the end of the conversation, his number. And so that’s how you ended up with ‘Frankie Morales’ listed in your phone and a date for the following Saturday.

And oh, wow, what those hands could do. Over the next few weeks you found out how warm they felt holding your hand, how well they fit around the side of your hip as you walked, how good they felt cupping your jaw for a kiss, and how thick they were when he slid them inside of you while he worked magic with his talented tongue.

Weeks turned into months turned into a year, and then suddenly there was an anniversary weekend to plan and a beach vacation to arrange, and you found yourself laying on a white sand beach holding one of those big hands in yours as you napped under an umbrella. You were just drifting off when Frankie’s big hand gave yours a squeeze. You cracked your eyes to watch him walk away, because you never got tired of that particular view, the broad shoulders and the golden skin and the easy confidence he carried himself with. Your Frankie.

And then he came back and offered you a cold drink and you sat up and brushed his fingers with yours as you took the cup and smiled at him over your sunglasses. And when he smiled back little stars burst behind your navel, better than butterflies because the starbursts were backed up by 365 days of knowing what those hands and lips and body could do, to you and with you and for you.

And the afternoon passed in lazy naps on the beach blanket interspersed with squealing moments in the water, Frankie splashing you or carrying you piggyback into the waves. And one big wave knocking your sunglasses loose into the water, lost forever until Frankie gives you his to wear, and tells you how cute you look with his big aviators on. And then the sun sets and it’s time to go wash up, have a romantic dinner, take a bottle of wine back to your beach view room. And when it’s dark you turn off all the lights and let the moon stream in through your open balcony door.

Frankie takes his time with you that first night, working you open with his lovely soft lips and tongue, licking and swirling you up into knots of desire until his fingers push you over the edge and you burst into pieces, moaning wordless sounds into the salt-scented night air that’s rolling through the room. And then he does it again, one more time just to feel you squeeze his fingers hard before he strokes himself and slides into you with hardly any friction at all. You cling to him with your arms and legs wrapped as tight as you can until he chases his own high and pins it down inside of you, thrusting into you and releasing his own deep groans, then making you sigh with contentment as he tucks you under his big arm to sleep.

The second day passes in a blur of laughter and a boat trip, sightseeing and catching a few precious glimpses of dolphins, and then more beach time and dinner. And another long night of lovemaking in your room, but this time with Frankie taking you on your hands and knees, feeling him pound deep inside of you, hitting that ticklish spot over and over as you gaze out the balcony door over the moonlit ocean. And then again at 1:00 a.m. when you wake up and feel Frankie’s cock hard against you as you snuggle, and you shift your hips back into him, and bump him playfully until he wakes up. And then you straddle him and he cups your breasts with those big hands as you grind against him and make him moan in the near dark.

And you wake up the next morning and he’s absent from the bed, but you hear him in the shower and you sneak in to join him. And Frankie puts those hands to good use one more time, scrubbing your back and rubbing suds all over you, tip to toe, and then rinsing you off before he makes you come on his fingers. He wraps you tight with your back to his broad chest, one big hand under your ribs and the other rubbing tight circles into your clit and dipping up inside of you by turns until you collapse and shatter for him and then come back to yourself. And then you kiss him and tell him you love him and he says it back, and you know he means it.

And you wonder how you did this before, without Frankie. How you put up with the arrogance and the dullness of the disinterested men that you dated. How you ever believed that they were worth your time. Because now you see it, the way that Frankie uses his hands and his whole heart to love you. How he listens to you and sees you, how you won’t ever be alone as long as he’s there.

And you dress and go down to breakfast and intertwine your fingers with his beside your orange juice, and you lift his hand to yours and kiss his magic fingers one by one. And he just looks at you, glowing at you like you’re the sweetest thing he’ll ever see. And then he tells you how soft your lips are, and how much he’s looking forward to tonight. And you tuck into your breakfast and you swear nothing has ever tasted this good in your life, because you’re finally with the right person, and that makes all the difference in the world.

--- Frankie "Catfish" Morales character masterlist Just-here-for-the-moment’s main masterlist

The only tag list I have for fics: @quica-quica-quica @anaaaispunk @justanotherblonde23 @gracie7209 @nicolethered @honestly-shite @driedgreentomatoes @dihra-vesa @1800-fight-me @the-queen-of-fools @juletheghoul @kesskirata @honeymandos @silverwolf319 @mourningbirds1 @greeneyedblondie44 @spacedilf @maxwell–lord @anxiousandboujee @cevvie @sherala007 @writeforfandoms @libellule2001 @deadhumourist @mandoalorian @javierpinme @eri16 @mandocrasis @pilothusband @bastillealmighty @eri16 @jitterbugs927 @babiiface95 because Frankie!!

[wordsmith30]

After “Dave Chappelle: The Closer”

Here’s one thing you should know about me. I’m not a big comedy fan. Most popular comedy is made at someone else’s expense. And as someone who has heard plenty of racist and sexist jokes growing up; been misgendered numerous times; been questioned about my sexuality; suffered from mental illness; and has had my own feelings and experiences belittled, I was not impressed. And I’m not even part of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m a light-skinned, cis-het Black girl.

I came as a complete newcomer to Dave Chappelle’s comedy and watched The Closer without any idea of what I was getting myself into. And the longer I sat there listening to him, the deeper my discomfort became.

He, like so many others, pulls the “I can’t be transphobic! I have a trans friend” card with his story about Daphne Dorman. Not only was that utterly heartbreaking, it was even more disgusting for the way he uses her to further his own position. Newsflash, buddy. Just because one trans person liked your jokes doesn’t mean they weren’t transphobic. Being validated in your transphobia does not make you right or remedy the real harm you’ve done to trans people.

He seems to be under the impression that as a Black man, he’s incapable of being sexist, prejudiced, homophobic, or transphobic, and that’s simply not true. 1) He is a cis-het man who benefits under patriarchy. He will never face the kind of sexism, discrimination, or violence that women face. And though he supposedly supports the #MeToo movement, he had plenty of jokes to make about not only women’s, but trans women’s genitalia, and offered to become the leader of the #MeToo movement so long as they “suck [his] dick.”

He says he loves the “old-school gays”, but has no problem getting into fights with lesbians at nightclubs (or misgendering them in the process). He says trans women are women and then agrees with J.K. Rowling, saying that “gender is a fact.” You can’t play both sides!

Chappelle claims that his problem isn’t with the LGBTQ+ community, but with white people and how white people within that community use their privilege to harm Black people. While that is a real issue, his arguments are undercut by his blatant homophobia and invalidation of trans identities. Because he’s not just talking about white people/white gay people/white trans people with his statements. He’s talking about the entire community at large – all trans people, including Black trans individuals (because yes, they exist too) – so he’s hurting the Black community as well. I’m sorry, but if your response to racism is homophobia and transphobia, then you’re not really helping anything. You’re only widening the divide.

You can critique racism within the LGBTQ+ community without being sexist, homophobic or transphobic.

Worse, he takes issue with anyone who criticizes him. You’d think that if multiple people – cis and trans women alike – came up to you and said, “Hey, what you said was really harmful/hateful”, you might stop for a second and say, “Oh, really? I had no idea. I’ll work on that.” But no. The attitude he takes is that all these people are “too sensitive” and that he doesn’t need them because plenty of other people think he’s funny (i.e., Dorman). He embraces the controversy and proudly proclaims himself a transphobe. Everyone else can just get over it.

And that’s just the problem. He knows what he’s doing. He knew that his commentary would get him a lot of heat. He warned his audience that his jokes were going to be controversial, and he went ahead and said them anyway. He knows what he did and he owns it. He will not apologize and he will not stop.

But the main point he takes issue with is people telling him he’s “punching down”, implying that because he’s also a marginalized individual (a Black man), he cannot be punching down because LGBTQ+ individuals are more privileged than he is. This is a gross oversimplification that ignores intersectional facets of identity. Ignores the experiences and struggles of POC people in the community. So why don’t we check your privilege, Mr. Chappelle? You are a cis-het male with a huge celebrity platform and millions of dollars in Netflix deals. You benefit under patriarchy and you’re profiting off controversy. Profiting off of the pain and suffering, and offense you’ve caused in your attack against the trans community. The Closer is going through the roof! Positions like yours only enable other people’s bigotry, only incentivize the laws that oppress trans people, only reinforce the fears and stereotypes about the LGBTQ+ community. You are a very powerful person and you’re doing very powerful damage.

Daphne Dorman defended you in your bigotry and this is how you repay her? By making fun of and misgendering her, and invalidating her identity as a trans woman? Anticipating the moment you meet her daughter so you can tell her that you “knew [her] father and he was a wonderful woman”? Screw you.

[rametarin]

I didn’t want to reblog another long post, so I’ll just say my own thing here.

Gatekeeping fandom is good, ackshully.

Especially since we have a certain pattern of person, call them, “SJWs” if you want, that deliberately creep into a fandom with their values and shamelessly, deliberately, use it as a platform. They CONSCIOUSLY do this. They DELIBERATELY do this.

And then they have the audacity to see false positives and imagine dog whistles everywhere of things outside THEIR orthodoxy in the fandom being -isms, or -gnies. Accusing the people already there of being “out of date” and “toxic”, when it’s neither toxic nor uninclusive- it just isn’t rearranging itself to accommodate Intersectional Feminism or giving Intersectional Feminists voluntary control over everything from how something works to how it’s defined.

That to them is tantamount to being Nazis. And that’s kind of how you can tell they’re the same sort of daft, disingenuous fucks that wrap up socialist or ancom shit in supposed social progress. And if they could they’re reshape EVERYTHING to match their sensibilities, because their sensibilities are, “our way or you die.”

If you spend enough time peeking through academic papers and colleges you even learn there’s a thing many of them do. Which is, “Queering,” characters on purpose, to make them unpalatable or untouchable to cis/het people. That’s culturally like raising a flag on something to annex it and landgrab it.

And if you say, “hands off, this character isn’t gay?” They pivot and declare you’re just a homophobe whom is afraid of change, tell other people that and then talk in the broad bruckstroke about, “society is really so homophobic/afraid of new ideas. :c”

These people don’t even want to be part of that fandom for the sake of being in the fandom. They just want it because they want the fandom to perpetuate their values and parrot their beliefs and spread it to everybody else that wants to participate in that fandom. Do you like this popular thing? Okay, you can have popular thing, but only if you hug this Courtney Love doll and buy it and pet it and love it as part of the package deal!

And as part and parcel of the demanding to not just define the fundamentals and parameters of a fandom, they also demand to reinterpret the history of said fandom based on how out of orthodoxy to their values they find it to their own beliefs. So, was the hobby primarily done by white men in the past? Then naturally they’ll automatically paint it with a broad brush and say, “this hobby was very unwelcoming to non-whites and women in the past because of icky homophobic and misogynistic men!” Regardless of how many authors were beloved by the fandom that were female, regardless of how many women were equal fandom members before- they weren’t the Intersectional Feminist types of fans, so clearly they were “closer to the Daughters of the Confederacy than real people,” right? That’s how that works, apparently.

So yes. We had a taste of this in the 90s, but the feminists/radfems at the time weren’t trying to infiltrate the fandom and take it over to be about feminism. They were shaming boys and other girls for liking the big booby comic book girls as sexist and objectification and trying to get comic fans to abandon comics in order to pressure the companies economically into changing.

“These comics are written and drawn by MEN! MAAAAALE GAAAAAAAAAZE!!! Sexualized girls are only okay when WOMEN are drawing them and writing them for the authenticity!” And there were not many women that either liked comic books or wanted to BE in them, so they’d maintain that impossible standard to try and coerce the boys to FIND women for the sake of having a woman on staff, just to assauge their, “icky boys aren’t allowed to do this without me declaring it wrong” qualm.

And true to form for Progressives, give an inch and within a short period of time they just want more, and declare what was offered before was just to mollify or patronize them. “Oh so women can tidy up and do the low work. Why no female CEOs in the company yet? Why not Editor in Chief?”

But the way the Intersectionals do it is new. Rather than just stay outside the fandom because “yuck it offends my sensibilities, it shouldn’t exist,” they try and appropriate the fandom and then contribute rules and policies for it.

We saw this in the years leading up to Gamergate. The Subverters infiltrated video game journos, got incestuous and buddy-buddy with both Triple A industry people and independent game creators and traded favors, financial, sexual and other, for good reviews. Folks like Anita Sarkesian trying to make a name for themselves by already being insiders and getting plugged by the conspirators to LOOK like she was anything more than a plant for that cause, using other peoples video game playing footage in her critique videos, styling herself a holistic “girl gamer” and waxing poetic about “those awful neckbearded dudebros questioning my gamer cred! Tch!”

And so that romantic boogyman became a thing that they perpetuated. “The gatekeeping, woman hating, manbaby Gamer.” Where they then added in racism and male chauvinism and traditionalism and transphobia because you know you can’t just leave it at “misogynist.” Not, “in this society.”

Gamers protesting and demanding that game journalist magazines state their relationships to the creators for full disclosure got them retaliating asymmetrically, though. The FBI investigated all those, “threatening and trolling social media messages” that supposedly got Zoe Quinn and Sarkesian to leave their houses, “for fear of an attack,” and they got nothing. A few of them were caught doxxing themselves on purpose on 4chan. Quinn herself being part of the SomethingAwful’s Crash Override forums, where they’d do shit like this to troll and harass people for fun. They KNOW how to false flag and make it look like a bunch of angry dudebros did it.

Statistically the number of harassing egg names was far lower than the messages either girl received that was NOT harassment or threats, merely replies they didn’t agree with or didn’t appreciate. And yet they still ran around screaming about “all those misogynistic dudebro gamers” that were “harassing and doxing them.” And that boogyman became the party line. That Gaming and Gamers were full of toxic, misogynistic, racist manbabies SOooOoOooOO intimidated by, “women finally in what they feel are THEIR spaces,” that they’d try to run them out.

That’s how they interpreted it and that’s how the history books they write will repeat it.

They try and make a great big public show about “entering this toxic space” to flip it and civilize it, but what they’re really trying to do is officially own it. As a fandom, as a space and as a culture. And that entails being able to say what goes, what’s acceptable and what’s not, and set the tone and culture for that space. Meaning, to be able to gatekeep the product.

Rather than just decry the product, they decide they’re just going to mutate the product by slow assimilation, until the product doesn’t even resemble the original product anymore. They do this shit with comic books, videogames, and now they’re working on doing it to beloeved novels and their fandoms. It’s like forcibly marrying them to terrible people, so you can never have a fandom WITHOUT those people in your space trying to insist their interpretations of things are original canon, ever again.

And the sickest part is, these people DO NOT stop at fiction. That’s why this shit is called Cultural Marxism. Because it’s not much different from the way communists and socialist guerillas act and operate when it comes to land, resources and industry. They take over public spaces and forums and use a combination of instittional corruption, terrorism and violence and vandalism in order to destroy or silence competition.

They’ve even infiltrated the Linux community and taken over most of that, via Linus Torvalds’ daughter. You can’t have ANYTHING around these people, because they just sit and wait and conspire to come in and make even a simple community mural to revolve around whatever social issue and specifically their philosophy’s take on it being THE only valid take on it that everybody else must now interact with, good or bad, but they can’t ignore it anymore.

This is, also, partially why they hate it when fandoms are gatekept by singularly powerful individuals. Like say, authors of their own works. They don’t like singular owners of enterprise and property, because it prevents the mob from taking them and then dictating TO the creator, “this is the PEOPLES property now. WE decide, as the most powerful clique, what is true and real with it and what isn’t.”

Because like what happened with Frank Oz of Jim Henson Studios. An activist gay writer declared that Bert and Ernie’s relationship was “canon gay,” because he wrote them as canon gay lovers. There was a great big information cascade as all these affiliated journo companies published articles about how “happy they were to see Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop as representing LGBT people in public!”

Frank Oz spoke up, set the record straight, “These characters were made by me and a friend and were meant to depict a platonic male-male relationship. They aren’t gay but I’m glad you could identify with them.”

That poor old man caught so much shit. They called him a homophobe, said he was, “stealing Bert and Ernie from them,” that he should just shut up and “let people have this.”

No. Fucking no. These people are fucking conspirators, believe wholly in dominating and taking shit over by moving their people into a thing until they have the warm bodies and the institutional authority to crowd out oppositional voices, then have the audacity to SCREEEAAAAAAM bloody murder about the dangers of anybody else organizing to contest them because, “The Nazis are gathering to attack us poor innocent minorities!!” Counting on the ignorance and unsuspecting nature of people to not know such a thing is fake or the totality of the situation.

That’s why they’ll keep this shit on the downlow and call anybody that accuses them of doing shit like this a liar or a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Demanding evidence, in bad faith, knowing there’s little to no way to PROVE any of this UNTIL they’ve done it, and then declaring you to be invalid since you can’t prove the conspiracy.

Because if you can’t prove it with evidence, they’ll simply say you’re a Nazi trying to smear “good people.”

[azurowle]

I fully admit that like 95% of my spite for James Fucking Potter comes from having been bullied by my peers in school for being an awkward neurodivergent kid and being really fucking bitter about it

Just like

When you’re the victim of bullying you’re just supposed to believe and forgive the people who shunned you because they’re “grown up, because they’re “better people now,” because “people change.”

People don’t change that much, not by a long shot. Not without the right parenting anyway. And the adults in my life let those fuckers get away with a lot. They’re all mostly white, cis, het, probably still Christian.

Even if they changed it’s not like they face any of the consequences of their actions now. They don’t have to live with the suspicion of every person they meet, the memory of being the class outcast, having your every little mannerism mocked and laughed at. They don’t have to live with how being a bullying victim stunted their social life in a way I have been desperately trying to claw back. They probably don’t even feel the guilt for what they did.

And James Fucking Potter never suffers any negative consequences for being a bullying fuckbucket. He gets the girl who’s honestly too good for both him AND Snape. He grows up rich by wizarding standards. He gets to have a family and life of his own, and he gets to die a hero. I don’t care that he technically saved Snape’s life. I don’t trust that he did it because he was genuinely concerned for Snape or that he was a good person.

I don’t like Snape. Or at least I like him less than I used to.

But fuck you if you tell me I have to believe James Fucking Potter was a “changed man after he grew up” and a “good person.”

Lily should have settled down with a nice witch and been done with it.

(Rowling’s writing also hasn’t aged well and she never showed us anything that indicated any sort of character development from Point A to Point B but I only partially blame this on her.)

[mildlyoccultish]

I don’t usually post personal stuff here, but...

Yesterday, I had a white gay cis man tell me to recognize my passing privilege when I am in queer dominated spaces. He said be aware of it. This man, who is a podcaster with a large following and a massive platform in the pagan sphere, and who is conventionally attractive and fit, “passes” more for cishet than my shaved purple crewcut fat ass does.

He said this because I mentioned that I am a non-binary bisexual/pansexual person who is married to a cishet man. I’m also poly. He disregarded that I am also married to a non binary pansexual person.

I was told by a cis white conventionally attractive man that I am less queer because I am married to a man. Because I can pass as cis and straight.

He said “It isn't that you don't belong. It's that walking around as a passing heteronormative person, you are far, far, FAR less likely to be a target of violence due to your identity. You are far less likely to be a victim of a hate crime due to your identity. You are far less likely to be denied housing or employment … or any number of things because of your identity. You pass. You have the golden ticket. Many of us can't pass for cis/het/etc or don't want to and need a safe space to be ourselves.”

Ourselves. As if I was not one of them.

He said “It's not that it isn't your space, but it's important that you recognize going in to a space like that as a straight passing cis white woman you carry 𝑰𝑴𝑴𝑬𝑵𝑺𝑬 privilege.”

Even after I pointed out I was non binary, he still misgendered me.

When I pointed out that this gay cis white man was gatekeeping, he said “Nobody here is gatekeeping.

I will defend the sacredness and queerness of queer spaces, but I don't think I am defending them from you or REDACTED, as you both certainly belong in those spaces.

I don't care if you don't *want* to pass. You do pass. That is privilege. Immense privilege. Recognize and remember that. That's all I'm saying.”

“... That idea seems to have touched a nerve with you, given how you've sort of blown up this comment thread. Perhaps this is something you can unpack and write about elsewhere. I'd be happy to read those thoughts.”

Okay. Sure. Right-o.

Let’s be real for a minute - anyone can pass if they want to diminish themselves enough. Not talking about the safety of trans folks here - just merely the concept of “passing”.I recognize some trans folks make the choice to pass for their own safety, regardless of their true gender. That is a shitty, horrible choice they have to make. They shouldn’t have to.

I am specifically talking about passing in queer spaces.

What he said is incredibly hurtful, and it is gatekeeping. It is biphobia, panphobia, and it is not privilege. Calling out people as having ‘straight privilege’ is a silencing tactic. It’s turning being queer into a binary – you’re either gay or you’re straight. Monosexism is the great uniter in the erasure and bigotry against pansexual and bisexual people.

I do recognize that most cishets might just clock me as weird, but not necessarily queer. I recognize that to the cishet world, I am less likely to suffer violence than someone who is trans or a lesbian with their partner, for example. However, it is not a privilege to be shut out of my own community because I happen to be married to a cis hetero dude. I’m also married to a non binary pansexual person who looks like a cis hetero dude, but is no less non binary. It’s not privilege to be questioned about how queer I am. That I’m somehow a traitor or fake because I married a cishet. It’s not a privilege to be shoved back into the closet because I somehow don’t tick all the binary boxes.

Did you know that bi and pan people are far more likely to experience issues surrounding mental health? That they are at an increased risk of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking? That bi and pan people have a harder time raising human rights and discrimination suits if their relationship appears heteronormative? Bi and pan folks (and ace and aro folks too) constantly have to reaffirm and restate and justify their queerness to cis white gay men to pass their judgement and be let past the velvet rope, temporarily. That somehow being bi means if you’re in a gay relationship, you’re going to leave anyway because you’re not actually gay, but if you’re in a heteronormative relationship you’re a traitor and no longer belong in queer spaces.

Pan and bi erasure is a real thing, hidden under the term “passing privilege”. It’s absolute horseshit. And the audacity of this cis white gay man – this conventionally attractive white gay man who “passes” as more cishet than I do – to other me out of queer spaces that I belong in is disgusting. He has more privilege than I ever will, and instead of recognizing his own, he decides to lecture me about what he perceives mine to be.

Not to mention that there are loads of queer people out there who don’t fit the idea of how queer people should “look” – and what does that even mean anyway? Does it mean that a femme lesbian who goes to a queer event without her girlfriend as proof of queerness will be turned away? Or how about all the single queer people that don’t look “queer”? Are they questioned by the cis white gay men in charge to make sure they’re queer enough? There is no specific “queer” look. I know lots of gay folks who are “cishet passing” – doesn’t make them less queer, nor does it give anyone the right to question them about it! Queer people are not homogenized - everyone is different and beautiful and just as valid as anyone else. If someone is in a queer space and says they are queer, they are queer.

I don’t owe anyone androgyny. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I am queer. I belong.

(Now – in other terms of privilege, yes. I am privileged because I am white, lower middle class, and appear able bodied. I don’t identify as trans. And there are other folks who have to deal with this bullshit ‘passing privilege’ stuff too – trans folks, intersex folks.  All of the shit I am saying? Goes DOUBLE for queer BIPOC who identify as bi/pan. And trans folks and BIPOC trans folks have it even worse. Because of my own privilege, I feel pretty safe to talk about this, but please remember that all of us in the queer community should be elevating more marginalized voices and people who are not able to voice their concerns on this. This happens all the time. If you see it, speak up against it because fuck this bullshit.)

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Gender

Lower engagement, but higher personal satisfaction... let’s go for that.

How I define my gender.

I’ve never really been 100% committed to being a woman.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-know-I-am-cisgender-Ive-heard-some-cis-people-do-question-their-gender-and-Im-trying-to-tell-whether-Im-trans-or-one-of-these-cases Taking the questions from here... it would split this way: Gender dysphoria- when I was younger, a little. Gender Euphoria- never. Gender Politics (beyond basic empathy for others)- Oh fuck no. I don’t get why so many, particularly cis men are hung up on men must wear pants and not pink. I *do* look for women in history, but it’s more like a solidarity and hating erasure of marginalized groups and celebrating those marginalized groups. So political one way, but not particularly on the philosophical performance part. I also tend to spend a lot of time on things I don’t understand.

“Do you feel equally comfortable in men and women’s fashion, only noticing the practical differences?” Pretty much. If you give me a man’s suit I’d wear it. I had no issues with playing as a man for a skit.

 Are you basically ambivalent about makeup? 50/50. Sometimes I do care and do it for “funsies” but most of the time I don’t care because I don’t like “woman as object and consumerism.”

“Do you ‘play along’ when someone tells you what your assignment should be doing, but also don’t really care?”

Pretty much true. Like I was told girls aren’t supposed to like dirt. Screw that. girls aren’t supposed to like sports. I was like screw that. Girls aren’t supposed to like bugs. So what?

I did tend to read more women-led fiction over men’s fiction, but that’s mostly because men’s fiction has “gems” that sexualize women in ways that made me squirm. Cis het men’s writing about women usually piss me off, so I usually don’t try. And I’m all about the fairness. (But also note I’m gray-aro and read a crapton of romance, so who knows how that all works. I’m also gray-a and read a crapton of romance, though not sex repulsed (more like somewhere between sex neutral and receptive? I rated myself a 6-7... on a 0-9 scale.)) Gender tests I’ve taken: 50/50. Usually get something like demi-boy or demi girl. Though I don’t really have that much dysphoria. I do occasionally feel pissed off about my sex presentation, but that’s not really dysphoria as in I hate my body parts actively. It’s more like, why do I have to bother with it? It’s so much work to have to worry in the first place.

When you look in the mirror, do you feel like there’s nothing that really needs to be changed?

This one is more like why do I have to care so much? I feel gender fucked. Like why do I have to go through the steps?

Are you happy with your hair, your chest, the shape of your face?

50/50 on this one.

Aside from maybe wanting to bulk up, wash your hair, or lose a few pounds, are you generally pleased with your appearance?

I give no shits?

Do you appreciate your genitals?

75%/25% appreciation/hate. Sometimes I hate they exist.

Do you like the idea of using them in sex or to make a baby?

This is more like my ace side, I think, but meh? Take it or leave it.

Do they make you feel connected to other people with the same genitals socially, such as complaining about periods, or talking about dick length?

Not really. I’m more like why do you care so fucking much? But I’m not sure how much this is an ace thing.

Do you feel like even if you don’t use them, it’s comfortable just having them around?

Sometimes, not always. Might also be an ace thing.

If you were in a social group of only your assigned gender, would you be happy with it?

Not always. I don’t evaluate that way. Trans people are cool. I pick usually by belief systems and who the person is, morally.

Would it be fairly easy to communicate and find things in common?

I feel ambivalent sometimes towards other women, especially when they go off on tangents about mall shopping, clothes, etc. I feel the same about men talking about watching sports and warfare.

Would you feel harmonious and homogeneous with the group, if the individuals had personalities you liked?

Meh? I also listen to people I don’t like.

If you took away all the physical features that made up your assignment, what gender are you now? Where does that feeling come from?

I’m still me. I don’t care.

If you got to choose your gender upon reincarnation, what would you pick?

Flip a coin. Roll a dice. I don’t give a fuck.

If a wizard changed your sex permanently, would you be pissed or excited?

Meh. Don’t care.

What gender characters do you generally play in RPGs, and what options do you wish were more frequently available?

I’ve generally played women, given no other options besides binary, but also moonlighted as men, but then felt sick because male privilege.

“Do I FEEL like my assigned gender?”*

Shrugs. Not that committed. If you got an all-expenses paid trip to womanhood spa central, and became a socially idealized version of yourself, THEN would you feel like a woman? 

No. I oscillate between liking make up for the pure knowledge of it, and not giving a fuck. I’ve never understood the hours of make up, hair performance, etc.

As a child, I was the type that wanted to be good at *everything* and was upset that my Dad wouldn’t give me the time of day for “masculine” things. I was *also* good at figuring things out. I *also* wanted to be good at sports. I *also* like girly things occasionally. I wanted it all and didn’t see why my brother or me got compliments for different things and felt deep insult when I couldn’t do that too and also get compliments for it. (If you’re imagining an annoying precocious child--that’s about right) I don’t see the point of the gender construct when it re-enforces ideas of genders can do only certain things, when it’s never been proven true. So why are people so effing committed to performing it? I wear hanbok. I’ll wear a male one. I’ll make an androgynous one. I wear those without issue. I’ll cross dress if I like, because I don’t really see the point and European and European-derived defined genders as fucked in the first place. What is this men==violence and horses thing? What is this women==weakness and capitalism thing? I don’t get it. And why do I have to wear European-derived clothes in the first place? Plus from my academic study of gender and gender history, that just cemented for me how fucked up the White European and White European diaspora is about gender in the first place and I feel even less committed to it. I do perform usually more like a woman than a man, but it’s more like whatever is convenient, rather than an absolute commitment to the role. ‘cause you know, my gender is my least concern here, (probably along with ace aro) while not quite hating on it. I wear my hair long, because money and I don’t feel like cutting it very often and I like to be able to keep it out of my food, as well.

I don’t mind masculine pronouns in theory, because whatever floats your boat. But I do care if you think foreign name==men, because that’s giving into masculine hegemony and that is rude to other people unlike me who might be more committed to their genders, and that I definitely care about.

[dalekofchaos]

My problems with Avengers Endgame

For the most part, I like it. Could’ve been better. But here are my problems with the movie

The bad taste Thor fat jokes and mocking jokes about Thor's PTSD and depression....like really? Also nice of the Russos for throwing Thor's character arc out the window and abandoning his people....TWICE. Instead of taking responsibility and rule with Valkyrie as his equal, Thor just abandons his people just to be a Guardian....for reasons??????

Sidelining Carol. WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF TEASING HER ONLY TO LEAVE HER ON THE FUCKING SIDES. NO SERIOUSLY, FUCKING WHY???  Why does Wanda get to unleash on Thanos, but Carol gets knocked around by Thanos? Fucking seriously? What kind of fucking bullshit is this. What kind of actual fucking disrespect is this horseshit?

Not making Carol and Maria married and being the representation fans wanted.  Carol’s butch lesbian look was more representation than a nameless guy saying he was seeing another guy. 

Fridging Black Widow before her fucking movie even comes out, jesus fucking christ, they really went "you're getting a Black Widow movie lol lmao bitch you thought" it’s not just that. Natasha isn’t even given respect after her passing. She isn’t given a goodbye. All she gets is the men turning into whiny pissants and Bruce tosses a bench into the lake. Natasha sacrificed her life for her family and to stop Thanos and THIS IS THE FUCKING THANKS SHE GETS??? 

Gamora is still fridged. Past Gamora is loyal to Thanos. That makes no fucking sense. Did the Russos even WATCH Guardians Of The Galaxy? Gamora in 2014 was working AGAINST Thanos. She plotted on hiding the power stone away from Thanos. Present Nebula didn’t even need to convince her, she should’ve helped Present Nebula from the beginning. There was no need for it. Even worse, Strange couldn’t just bring Gamora  from a time before she went to Vormir. Gamora couldn’t have been spared her fate. And even worse. Both Gamora and Nebula are denied the revenge of the man who has abused, manipulated and gaslighted them their whole lives and they couldn’t be allowed the opportunity to kill Thanos? Fuck you.

Hank and Pierce's bad toupees

Not making Loki the rat who frees Scott and having it revealed and having Loki's grand dramatic slut return entrance. Loki just escaping with the Tesseract and  not doing anything with it is just dumb. But what’s really dumb is not having Thor and Loki escaping together in Infinity War while Thanos is fighting The Hulk. He had it and he didn’t use it. It just feels like Loki’s death was ultimately pointless now. And apparently Loki escaping with The Tesseract  was pointless, Loki is seen in his cell in Asgard....how the fuck is this supposed to make any sense at all? So honestly I would just have Loki be the very last one to return and reveal himself as the rat who freed Scott. It would make more sense than anything. Loki is the very thing that started The Avengers, it makes sense that he returns to help them against Thanos.

That fucking Hydra Cap reference, he needed to stay in cover, I know but we wanted to forget it ever happened

Once again the shows are screwed over. No Quake, Ghost Rider or The Defenders

Nebula does not kill Thanos.....fucking bullshit fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Nebula should’ve killed Thanos. Nebula by far suffered the most and the hand of Thanos. She was abused, manipulated, and isolated because of him and he killed her sister. Additionally, all of her movies, but especially Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Endgame flesh out and develop her character quite well, giving the audience ample time to connect with her. Furthermore, a great portion of Nebula’s body has been replaced with metal, which we already knew from previous films but was highlighted in Endgame itself, when Nebula simply sticks her hand in the energy field surrounding the power stone to retrieve it, destroying the “skin” on her hand but leaving her “skeleton” intact. Because of this, it is likely that Nebula had a better chance of surviving a snap than any other Avenger (except for maybe Bruce), and the cinematic payoff of allowing her to be the one to kill Thanos would have been far greater than letting Tony kill Thanos. You could even have Thanos say “I am inevitable daughter” Nebula could have a Eowyn moment “I am not your daughter” and finally Nebula would kill him. Nebula deserved to kill Thanos. And since Nebula was the one who snapped, we know Gamora would return, maybe since they worked together, Nebula would bring back Natasha. Like they all fought to bring an end and bring everyone back. Gamora and Natasha deserved to return and reverse the bullshit fridging. Tony could return to his family and once again they didn’t have to make Far From Home of making Spider-Man be “the new Iron Man” Tony could retire in peace and tell Peter “the world is in safe hands of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man”

Steve Rogers abandoning his found family and the horrible implications of Steve staying in the past. Before I talk about the implications, I just need to say it makes no sense. Steve made peace with his life in the new world. Peggy wanted Steve to move on, Steve grew as a character. He even saw Peggy was happy in Endgame(however I would’ve had Peggy be seen with her wife Angie, yes fuck ABC I am still bitter) and Peggy herself said she was happy with her life. It makes no sense for Steve to just abandon Sam and Bucky just to be with someone he kissed once. I honestly would’ve been happy if he chose to sacrifice himself to bring Natasha back. I would even be happy if Steve came back, married Sharon and chose to retire, and pass on the Shield to Sam. Just anything is better. It’s not a satisfying conclusion to Steve Rogers’ character arc.  A satisfying character arc means more than giving the character a prize at the end of the story. Women are not prizes. Peggy Carter is not a prize. Peggy Carter would slap the shit out of Steve Rogers if she knew he threw his life away just to be with her and ruining her own life in turn. Even if I didn't like how they paired Peggy with Daniel, even I understand that Peggy moved on and found love and married a man who lost his leg for his country without superstrength or fame, and they had kids. Steve took away Peggy's agency, destroyed her family and ruined his own journey. Even more insulting is the fact that Bucky Barnes was brought back to life and Steve barely acknowledges him. Ever since The Winter Soldier, Steve’s journey has been focused on Bucky and he barely even acknowledges him. He fought a fucking war that split The Avengers for him and he STILL does not even have one last moment with him? What the fuck? But you know the real stupid thing about this? Tony and Natasha died just so to make the world a better place. The better place that Steve then leaves at the end of the movie. Steve’s entire character arc throughout the MCU would be opposed to altering the timeline for his own selfish desires. This is not the Captain America I know. You’re seriously telling me that Steve Rogers didn’t value his present friends, possible girlfriend and life even a little bit? What has been done to Steve Rogers is unforgivable and I would rather Steve dies sacrificing himself in bringing Thanos down. That would’ve been a better send off than ignoring everything about his character arc. As for the implications about going to the past? He knows about the future, he knows HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD, he knows Bucky is being used as their weapon and will kill the Starks, he knows that Peggy, Howard and Hank are surrounded by Hydra,  he even knows about the civil rights fighting. it’s a little alarming Steve Rogers’s idea of a retirement plan was to go back to the jim crow era to cuddle up with his old flame. Apparently a happy ending for Captain America is a white man in the US. He went back to an era where a cis het white man would feel very safe and comfortable. He doesn't choose to fight for Civil rights in the 60's(how is Sam supposed to feel that Steve did nothing for the movement?), Steve and Peggy don't crack down the Hydra infestation and there isn't a Bucky rescue. Like really bad implications

[dumdeeedum]

Some Queliot Queries & Exploration, hah! Shaddap.

So I really want to dive into some shit with this fandom because I really don’t understand, I really and truly don’t. And bear with me because this is going to get long but ideally it would open up a discussion and the dialogue can be a learning opportunity for me if someone comes correct or for others if someone takes something away from all of this: Why shouldn’t the writers have to deal with the fact that season 4′s decision to allude to Eliot and Quentin as a couple is a ret-con? Why shouldn’t they have to deal with the fact that for all intents and purposes Quentin’s bisexuality and Eliot and Quentin’s relationship has never been explicit (there’s allusions to it in season 1- maybe, season 3- barely, and now season 4)? Why shouldn’t they have to deal with the fact that the audience was never told that Eliot and Quentin were explicitly a couple in Fillory until season 4 and even then they can’t erase the fact that Quentin married a woman after having something with Eliot and that they then chose to ignore the entire episode until halfway into season 4? Why shouldn’t the writers have to deal with their poor decisions and poor writing in a meaningful way? Why is fandom trying to erase these things? I’m not being facetious or an asshole here, I’m truly curious. 

And I really want to preface all of this with a critique of something I’ve been seeing a lot on here and that’s that fandom and Eliot are somehow erasing Quenin’s bisexuality. They’re not, the writers are.

The thing is, television is a mostly visual medium, you have freedoms that come with that but also limitations. There’s the freedom to show and not have to tell so as to not have to go into long descriptions and “show don’t tell” has really become a fundamental rule in visual media because it’s really hard to pull off the kind of exposition literary media can get away with in visual media. This has been true since visual media was limited to the stage and has only become more true as technology has caught up with the more fantastical things creators want show now. So it becomes imperative, given this show don’t tell rule, to find another way to express certain things you’d simply be able to cover in a book by describing somebody’s thought process or having a character narrate their story. 

You can have a narrator in visual media but you really have to be careful with how much you use them and for what otherwise you’ve made bad visual media, especially when you’ve already set things up another way. Case in point, the show Veronica Mars started the show with Veronica narrating and normalized it so that it was never grating, never too much, and was generally never used when it was better to show instead of tell.The Magicians, on the other hand, has used narration very sparingly and it’s never become an aspect of the show that gives us those same glimpses into Quentin’s mind, especially since he no longer seems to be the sole focal point of the show. 

So when it comes to representation on visual media it simply isn’t enough to imply or allude and then never bring it up again. Or, in our case, to overtly display certain aspect of someone’s sexuality while explicitly ignoring the other aspects with the expectation that the audience go with it when the creators call the character “bisexual.” This is especially true on a week-to-week television show where not everyone’s been watching from the beginning or has that long a memory that they can remember every aspect of what came before, or hasn’t or can’t rewatch the series several times on Netflix or some other streaming service to refresh. It just doesn’t work that way on television, that’s not how you do visual media representation. 

And when we have so little visibility for certain groups and when part of representation means normalizing those groups in the mainstream so that in the future their presence or their expressions of sexuality aren’t taboo, you have to do that by showing those people and by showing those expressions of their sexuality, and not just the “palatable” ones or in a “palatable” way where you can just say it and not offend anyone by showing it. And usually it’s best to show them in a good light so as to off-set the amount of bad that’s out there that was outside of their control because of systemic oppression. It’s best to have a good balance of good and bad from the very beginning and that’s something that White, het-cis people have been able to enjoy for much of the time visual media has been around. We can argue about representations of women in media, especially White cis-het women, but that’s another topic for another day and they’ve still enjoyed more of a balance than anyone else besides White, cis-het men. It’s the same reason why we can’t simply have “queer-coded” villains or the “kill your gays” tropes be so rampant, it isn’t offsetting the tons of negative that already exists for the lgbtqa community in media.

That being said:

Narratively speaking, when Eliot rejected Quentin I strongly believe that at least in this the writers were doing right by them given the ret-con and I’d like to see it explored more. Season 4 episode 5 was a good start but only a start. Now do I think that Eliot should have implied that he wouldn’t choose Quentin? Fuck no, he absolutely should apologize for that and explain where that came from because it’s clearly the result of a defense mechanism, but that’s really it. I still think the decision for Eliot to reject Quentin was the right one if only to give Quentin the chance to think about what he wants within the confines of this shitshow of a “love” story they tried to ret-con and then staple and glue together as though we’d forget everything that ever happened before season 4 episode 5 and rewrite season 3 episode 5 in our heads. If you’re saying it’s OK to erase all of that for the sake of your ship you’re asking for a bad story, which kind of sucks and I kind of feel you, but it kind of sucks. I mean, their straight relationships haven’t been the most amazingly written either but they actually happened in a meaningfully explicit way. We were given a narrative where even after Quentin kisses Eliot for the first time in Fillory (a year after they got there) and presumably has a relationship with him in Fillory after that, which, really, we didn’t know for sure because they’ve never said it, it could just have been a drunken fuck for them up until that point, Quentin marries and goes on to have a life with a woman until she dies or leaves (I was never clear on which it was). The relationship with Eliot after that is only alluded to in season 4 and still hasn’t been explicitly shown, no kisses, nothing, not outside of Eliot’s mind. And for some people that may be enough to call Quentin canonically bisexual and to call Eliot and Quentin a canonical couple that will be together in the future and while I agree he probably is and that they might, I don’t think it’s a good example of queer representation in visual media, especially when season 3′s episode was never meant to be taken that way.

Now we can always assume that it was a consensually poly-amorous relationship between Eliot and Quentin when Arielle came along but then why was Quentin the only one who had someone? Is the assumption here also that Eliot is OK being a sister wife or some shit? Why didn’t Eliot have another boyfriend to split his time with since Quentin had a wife that needed attention? They’ve established that homosexuality isn’t bad in Fillory so why not give him someone if the poly thing was what was meant to be inferred here? I’m not saying it definitively can’t be the case but I’m working with what we have and raising questions because we’ve been given very little information otherwise and I’m not sure I buy that Eliot would be OK with sharing Quentin because up until now (outside of his marriage with Fen) Eliot has not been shown to be poly-amorous and has even shown that he gets jealous if his significant other looks at someone else. And I know that when it’s discussed in a relationship it’s different and jealousy isn’t an issue but we don’t have any information on the subject as it pertains to them. Earlier in the series Eliot said that being with women is not his preference, so no, Eliot is not bisexual even if he’s had to fuck Fen; he fucked Fen because he had to and it’s a problematic as fuck storyline that effectively worked to pad anything Eliot might have had with a man with a woman. So I’m also not sure it’s too realistic an idea to have him in bed fucking Arielle with Quentin if he’s in a consensually poly-amorous relationship with them. Maybe once in a while like, as he said, one would have Thai food, but if anything we’ll give him a 1 or 2 on the Kinsey scale? (for lack of a better way to put it) So why not given him someone for him while Quentin has someone for Quentin? At the very least we’d get a non-toxic homosexual relationship for Eliot too, right? 

And no, I don’t consider anything to do with the season 1′s threesome to be rooted in anything but what we’ve been told over and over that it was: the result of a lot of alcohol and emotion magic. Otherwise you have something else to deal with and that’s that Quentin is a fucking untrustworthy asshole for cheating on Alice whom he claims to have loved and that Margo and Eliot are shit friends for going with it. It could be the case but they’ve made it a point to tell us it was a result of all 3 of them being compromised and even Margo refuses to allow people to blame her for it because of that compromise.

That being said, I can understand why a gay man like Eliot would be hesitant at the idea of jumping into a monogamous relationship with a man like Quentin without giving Quentin pause to really think about it. Remember, Quentin wanting to be with Eliot happened right after he got his memories of Fillory back so it was a pretty rash, emotionally-charged decision on his part. And we already know Quentin gravitates toward escapism because of his psychological issues. Why would Eliot jump into a relationship with a man whom, from Eliot’s perspective and, more importantly, from the viewer’s perspective, has been chasing a woman since season 1 and even in Fillory decided to marry a woman when Eliot was explicitly shown to be an option? And literally the first woman he met there. Outside of Eliot, Quentin has sought out and has had relationships with exclusively female partners except for season 1 and except for Fillory which was another time and place and which was never explicitly shown to us and is only alluded to in season 4, that’s bad representation and something that requires further examination within the story!

From Eliot’s perspective it absolutely makes sense that he’d wonder if Quentin would truly be happy with him given other options, especially given the enduring presence of a woman Quentin has been chasing since season 1. We don’t know if Alice would be OK with sharing Quentin either, it’s never been explored because most of anything to do with Eliot and Quentin as a romantic couple has simply been ignored! The writers were the ones who shit the bed by giving Quentin exclusively female partners (even in Fillory) that would make Eliot wonder if he and his penis were enough. If we had some more clear and explicit depictions of Quentin’s bisexuality, especially in Fillory, Eliot wouldn’t have to worry about this shit as much. But even in Fillory Quentin chose Arielle until she was no longer an option and the writers chose to do that, the writers decided to show us one kiss between Eliot and Quentin before giving Quentin a rando wife, making her fuck off to who knows where but subsequently never showing Eliot and Quentin in a romantically intimate setting again. Some bisexual representation!

Eliot and Quentin as a pairing only comes back up literally a season later, 13 episodes later! Something has to be done about this ret-con and pretending it wasn’t a ret-con is never good writing, not the way they’re doing it! Because even after Quentin confesses his feelings during season 3x5, which we only actually find out he did in 4x5, it’s never brought up again even by depression Quentin the very episode after 3x5! The whole situation was ret-conned for season 4!

Moving forward either there has to be some mutually agreed upon, explicitly stated, explicitly shown, poly-amorous relationship set-up where they could both be fulfilled by both having someone else if they so choose to or  Eliot has to have Quentin’s assurance that Quentin sees him and that he is now Quentin’s first and only choice. And both of these options have to be a show don’t tell situation! It’s actually what I hope happens in episode 12, especially since they’re once again making Quentin and Alice kiss each other and showing us yet another expression of heterosexual love while stringing us along with the idea of a homosexual one that really hasn’t happened yet.

And perhaps some people might find that to be feeding into stereotypes about bisexual people that leave a bad taste but realistically speaking exclusivity is a conversation every romantic relationship has to have and mistrust will occur if the person you’re with has only had partners of the opposite sex, has only expressed interest in people of the opposite sex, and is still hung up on someone of the opposite sex they used to date and whom is still a romantic possibility for them. That’s just how it is unless you’re one of those miraculous people who don’t experience jealousy or insecurity or have had those conversations with your partner. In this scenario it wouldn’t be that Eliot doesn’t trust bisexual people, it’d be that Eliot doesn’t know who Quentin really wants and he doesn’t think Quentin truly, deep down, would want him if he took the time to think about it. That’s fair given the givens!

And the poly thing is certainly an option but feels like a more radical move, given what we know of these characters, than having Eliot and Quentin in a monogamous relationship and given how little they’ve given us of that prospect I’m not even sure what they’ll decide to do moving forward. Maybe they’ll decide it’s more palatable to include a woman in any capacity seeing as media is still really about padding anything to do with homosexual male love scenes with heterosexual love scenes or naked women, that could also be the case and then we’d have to decide how we feel about that. We know they did that with Fillory because Arielle was pulled out of someone’s ass because it could just have been Eliot with Quentin but it wasn’t. But as of now we don’t even know if the poly thing was ever really a thing with them to begin with, we just don’t, it’s just conjecture and I’m just exploring of the possibility, they could have gotten together after Arielle dipped. I’m not saying any of this to shit on the Eliot and Quentin pairing at all, or to shit on Quentin’s bisexuality, per say, I like the idea of them and I think it should happen and I like the idea of a bisexual Quentin. But I do think these are the consequences of the way the writers have chosen to navigate these things and now they have to deal with those consequences because otherwise this pairing is silly and unrealistic moving forward outside of Fillory, and if they don’t want to pursue it then that could explain why.  So why haven’t they been dealing with this by showing us a more explicitly bisexual Quentin or at the very least a more explicitly interested in Eliot Quentin outside of his confession to Eliot in 4x5? And I’m not saying he has to jump on the first dick he sees but even having a conversation with his best childhood friend about his feelings, regardless of what he thinks Eliot’s are, would be a really great jumping off point to show us that Quentin’s feelings for Eliot are trustworthy and real and not just alluded to or the result of an emotional compromise. At this point people are expecting this confession and really want it to happen for a reason.

I’d just really like to see the writers make a decision about this and stick with it because this specific type of will they, won’t they shit is why they can’t be trusted and why it’s so easy to wonder whether they’re queerbaiting. If they can explore Julia and Penny23, Kady and Penny, Margo and Josh, and even Alice and Quentin’s relationships during this monster arc without it taking away from the life or death severity of the situations they’re in then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be exploring Quentin and Eliot’s even if it’s just Quentin being introspective but showing us that introspection in some way. We’ve gotten Eliot’s but we really haven’t gotten Quentin’s and I think that’s what we’re all waiting for or should be waiting for and it’s imperative that it happens to build the trust in the writers the viewers need to become emotionally attached to the idea that a pairing will actually happen on screen and that the viewers aren’t just being fucked with for views. It isn’t fair to expect the blind faith from viewers towards the writers and show-runners that too many people in this fandom are demanding!

We shouldn’t have to go on a fucking deep-dive, clue-finding mission to break down every single fucking interaction to look for a relationship the writers are supposedly explicitly trying to build because that’s not how they’ve built any other relationship. They’ve jumped right into every straight pairing but somehow this one is the one they have to draw out to an almost unrealistic degree and add 50,000 layers of nuance to? The one with the most history and proof that it worked based on what the writers themselves have told us? Alice and Quentin were fucking within a season, Kady and Penny within a season, Margo and Josh within a season for some godforsaken reason, Julia and Penny23 are macking and seeing each other naked within a season but we can’t even get Quentin to be introspective about being in love with Eliot for one episode? We have to settle for allusions to their pairing and a couple of blink and you miss them kisses, one of which wasn’t even between the two men themselves? I’m not saying that the Eliot and Quentin pairing won’t happen but it absolutely hasn’t yet and I’m not here to pretend it has. Alice and Quentin were “in love” within a season, why can’t we explore Eliot and Quentin’s love in a meaningful way after a canonical 50+ years? Why has it been OK so far that the writers aren’t exploring Quentin’s part of this relationship at all if it’s their intention to pursue it? And why should we trust them and take it as faith that this pairing isn’t something they thought of doing but have long since thrown out?

Is it bad writing? Is it not gonna happen? What is it because I’m confused as fuck and nothing that’s been happening recently has helped because the writers have opted to waste a shitload of time in a 13 episode season rather than explore what they ought to be exploring in that limited amount of time.

I say all that to ask this: Can we just hold the writers and show-runners accountable to their shitty decisions already? That’s really what I want because I don’t think underrepresented communities should have to settle or take the scraps thrown at them in 2019 and that feels like what a lot of people are saying ought to be done. No, they absolutely should not be happy with the bullshit they’ve been given. The community didn’t come together with pitchforks and torches to storm their writer’s room and demand Eliot and Quentin be a couple, the writers and show-runners decided to move in that direction.

If people shipped them then there’s already parts of the fandom for that and people would have made due with fic as they always have done. So why the fuck is jerking the community around like this acceptable? 

I sincerely hope that there are consequences from the community if the writers and show-runners go back on this, I really do, because it was the writers’ and show-runners’ fuckup and they don’t deserve to be rewarded for bad behavior. Make them work for the good graces of the communities they’re courting and stop allowing them to do this to these already marginalized communities!

It’s well past time that they show us Quentin’s bisexuality and feelings for Eliot in a meaningful way or drop it altogether and never pick it up again and accept that they’re pieces of shit for doing this and should be cancelled, although as far as I’m concerned the damage has already done and there’s no going back without them admitting they’re garbage.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

THE BISEXUAL WYATT MANIFESTO: PART DEUX

The previous post simply got far too long for me to put it all in one place so here is part the second. Put below a cut and my apologies to mobile users!

Part one here.

PART THE SECOND: POURQOUI???

But why, Mads, you shout? Why decide to headcanon a character as bi? Is it just so you can write your dragon porn?

maybe

Ahem.

Listen. I love diversity as much as the next person. Y’all know I do. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Rufus and Jiya, and Denise, queen of my heart. But… I mean we already have a het ship with Jiya and Rufus. And I feel like, y’know, Wyatt being white AND cis AND male AND straight? Feels like a little much, y’know? And there’s no reason for him to be straight, he just IS, and that feels—I mean where’s the whole backstory about it, right? And it feels a little illogical to have… I mean I don’t have any friends who are white and straight and cis male. It just feels unrealistic.

Okay, okay, extreme salt aside and mostly out of my system…

As a character, even in season one when I did like him, Wyatt is boring. He’s the same white straight male soldier/law-and-order character that we’ve seen in literally every single piece of science fiction since the dawn of time. You will find an exact copy of him in Stargate SG-1 (my apologies to Jack O’Neill), Stargate Atlantis (sorry John…), 12 Monkeys, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Terra Nova, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda, Star Trek Enterprise, Eureka… and that’s not even touching all the mystery/crime shows (CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Law & Order, Blue Bloods, Take Two) and military shows (SEAL Team, 24, etc). He’s got a dead wife, fantastic, so does the Punisher, so does Sam Winchester (also created by Eric Kripke), so does GARCIA FLYNN, another character on the show, and Flynn’s wife’s death actually ties into the bigger mystery of the show. By God, if you’re gonna fridge a wife at least make her fridging the entire reason the show exists.

Yes, you heard me. Think about it. If Lorena and Iris Flynn don’t die, then Flynn never wants to go on a vengeful rampage, so Lucy never chooses to give him the journal, so he never steals the time machine… killing Lorena and Iris was the biggest mistake Rittenhouse ever made. If you’re gonna play the dead wife card then by golly at least do it like this and make avenging her death the entire reason for the show.

So not only is Wyatt the same cookie cutter character we’ve seen in every TV show ever, he’s also a repeat of Flynn. He’s not just boring, he’s redundant.

Wyatt is also the only character on the show that you could replace with someone else without changing any of the main plot. When I originally decided to do a fic where the team comes back to find one of them was erased from existence on the trip, I knew it had to be Wyatt—erasing Lucy would change everything (which I explore in The Void is Open), erasing Flynn would take them to a world where Rittenhouse has won, erasing Rufus would mean potentially no pilot… you see what I mean. But Wyatt is very neatly replaced with Dave Baumgardner in 1.14 and shows us that Wyatt is, literally, replaceable. Of course he isn’t to Lucy and Rufus at that point because they care about him but for writing reasons? For plot? Literally any soldier would do. Any. Denise could hop in there with them if she so chose.

Now, all this makes it sound like I dislike Wyatt. And I didn’t in season one. I quite liked our puppy. I liked him for two reasons: 1. He had a lot of potential and 2. his character mirrored/paralleled Flynn and I saw a copious amount of opportunities with that.

Both Flynn and Wyatt have lost their spouse. Both Flynn and Wyatt are soldiers. Wyatt had an abusive father and given that Flynn goes on a potential suicide mission for his mother but we never once hear him mention his father (he might as well not have one for his importance to Flynn’s life), I’m taking a guess that Flynn’s father wasn’t all that great of a person either. Both Flynn and Wyatt risk everything to save the people they love and both pay heavy prices for it and become people they’re ashamed of (Flynn all of season one, Wyatt in 1x13). Both Flynn and Wyatt care deeply for Lucy and look to her for guidance.

Wyatt and Flynn mirror each other. One is willing to break rules, and to forge his own path, while the other follows rules and is scared to strike out on his own. Both of them struggle with identity–Wyatt has no idea who he is now that Jess is dead, and Flynn believes he’s turned into a monster and who he once was is lost. Taking advantage of that mirror makes for compelling storytelling, and the writers failed in that in season two after setting it up so beautifully in season one.

The fun thing is, these parallels become even more poignant if you make Wyatt bi and have him be attracted to Flynn (and is a convenient shortcut to bring those parallels back to the fore).

We touched in the previous section how it’s easy to see Wyatt as attracted to Flynn and that’s why he lashes out so much, and indeed how that is the only rational explanation for why Wyatt is so goddamn against Flynn the whole time.

Let’s dive into that, shall we?

Of the original trio, Rufus and Lucy have ample reason to dislike Flynn. Wyatt? Has none. Flynn makes things personal with Lucy right out the gate, and Rufus’s family will be hurt if Flynn isn’t stopped. But Wyatt is just supposed to see Flynn as an enemy soldier. No personal vendetta involved. And before you say rivalry over Lucy–most of Lucy’s pivotal moments with Flynn in season one are without Wyatt present, and the ones she does have in front of Wyatt aren’t automatically read as romantic. Wyatt himself doesn’t even admit he’s got feelings for Lucy until season two, and as far as he knows, Lucy’s still dealing with Noah.

But Wyatt hates Flynn. As we’ve seen in our examples, he reacts to Flynn with a violence that is missing from Rufus and Lucy. And there is no reason for that violent dislike to be there.

Unless Wyatt is attracted to Flynn and is scared of that from internalized homophobia.

If Wyatt finds Flynn attractive, and has internalized homophobia from, y’know, growing up in Texas and having an abusive father and going into the army, then his anger towards Flynn, his stubbornness, his refusal to listen to Flynn (because if Flynn is right about things and Flynn is an okay guy that opens the door to other more ‘dangerous’ thoughts), and his tendency to react to Flynn’s time with Lucy with such anger–it all makes sense. The last one is partly about Wyatt’s jealousy and possessiveness over Lucy but if it’s coupled with attraction to Flynn it makes even more sense.

Having Wyatt behave this way simply doesn’t hold up. It relies far too much on the audience making leaps of logic about Flynn and Lucy’s relationship in season one and assuming that Wyatt and Lucy are meant to be together, without enough evidence for the latter and Wyatt not at all present for the former.

If Wyatt’s bi, it all makes sense and is logical and again adds another dimension to his character and to his interactions with Flynn.

Monkey Brain: heh heh Wyatt and Flynn kissing is hot as fuck

Wyatt’s toxic masculinity becomes even more interesting and important (and make more sense) if Wyatt is bi.

In this meta here (my first for the Timeless fandom!) I talk about Wyatt and his toxic masculinity so to avoid repeating myself howzabout you go read that and come back mmkay?

…

You done? Perfect. So. Now that you understand where Wyatt’s toxic masculinity comes from and how he displays it in canon, I can say this:

Wyatt being bi forces him to confront his toxic behavior in a unique and powerful way that he can no longer ignore.

Part of Wyatt’s toxic behavior is that his behavior is specifically based in the masculine and the patriarchal. And so most of his bad behavior is rooted in how he treats his romantic interest–which has been Lucy and Jess.

Wyatt was, by his own admission, jealous and possessive towards Jess. He didn’t know how to relate to Lucy when she was no longer a romantic option, so he keeps trying to be romantic with her instead, and his possessive behavior comes to the fore as he tries to control who she spends time with and tries to get her to be as emotionally intimate with him as she was before, despite his wife being back and that intimacy no longer possible.

Getting Wyatt to realize his toxic behavior is difficult, since so many people have bought into the lie that men are supposed to be territorial and possessive towards the women they’re in relationships with. However, most heteronormative toxicity falls apart and is recognizable as harmful once we put it in a new light.

When a situation is bad, you often need an outside perspective, or to change one of the circumstances, in order to see how bad it is. Wyatt’s been lectured at by Lucy, Rufus, Flynn, and Jess, and he didn’t see his behavior was unhealthy. But if we change one of the circumstances i.e. the gender of the person he’s attracted to romantically/sexually, then suddenly he has to look at his behavior towards that person in a new light.

Let’s take Flynn for example. Wyatt can’t treat Flynn the way he’s treated Jess or Lucy. If he tries to be possessive of Flynn, not only would he be unable to, but he’ll realize that it’s wrong of him to even think of it. Wyatt wouldn’t find it natural to try and be jealous when Flynn talked to another man, because Flynn is a man, and he wouldn’t automatically assume another man was flirting with Flynn, or that Flynn was flirting with that man.

Because the thing is, our society is pretty heteronormative still. It’s genuinely hard to tell when someone is just being friendly or actually flirting, but we tend to really assume that when a man is interacting with a woman, one or both of them are flirting. With people of the same gender (or of non-cis genders such as trans and nonbinary) it becomes harder to tell, and a lot of the time we assume that it’s just platonic. So for Wyatt to become jealous over Flynn talking to a man–that goes against the norm because it means he’s assuming romantic rather than platonic interaction, the opposite of what we assume when we look at two people of the same gender.

It would force him to take a second look at all of his behavior and choices. It would force him to realize that his behavior was wrong towards Flynn, which means it’s wrong towards Lucy and Jess, etc. It changes an element and so it forces him to see everything in a new light.

On top of all this—Wyatt’s character is pretty stagnant. I believe that’s why they brought Jess back, honestly: because without Jess coming back to complicate things, there’s nowhere for Wyatt to grow. Forcing him to confront his behavior towards Jess was, I think, what the writers ultimately intended for him (the smart ones, anyway). I don’t think they intended for him to end up with Jess at the end, at least not originally. There are things said by Shawn Ryan in interviews that suggest to me that they realized Flynn/Lucy and Wyatt/Jess was a more interesting dynamic than the originally planned Wyatt/Lucy, so they switched gears and planned to have Jess end up with Wyatt. BUT, whether a romantic reunion endgame for them was the plan or not, given the alley scene in 2x10 and other scenes in season two, I fully believe that prior to the nuclear bomb of dog shit that was the Christmas finale, the plan was always to give Jess a redemption arc and that Wyatt would become a better person through convincing her to turn double agent (and through becoming a father).

If you don’t bring Jess back, there’s nowhere for Wyatt’s character to go. Nothing for him to do. Rufus, Lucy, Flynn, Mason, Denise, Jiya—they all have hugely powerful arcs and tough situations. I could go into them but that’ll send me off into another tangent that we don’t have time for. Suffice to say, I can off the top of my head think of two internal struggles and places for each character to grow that would last a couple seasons. And that’s just off the top of my head.

But Wyatt? You can’t. He’s got nowhere to go.

Bringing back Jess is one way that you can force growth and give Wyatt a new arc, but you can’t just give a character one single arc. You have to give them multiple. No real life person is struggling with just one thing, we’re struggling with multiple things. Take Lucy in season two. She’s struggling with Rittenhouse, with her relationship with her mother, with her realizations about herself and what she’s willing to do, with losing Wyatt, with getting back Amy, and with her growing relationship with Flynn.

That’s a lot.

Rufus and Jiya have their relationship AND Jiya’s visions that lead to an arc about destiny versus free will, AND both struggling with the “what are we willing to do to win/who am I becoming” arc.

Give Wyatt JUST Jess, and that’s not enough. It’s also something that, to do right, you have to stretch over I’d say two seasons, seasons three and four. So you need something else to fill in more gaps.

Having Wyatt be bisexual and having him struggle with his sexuality gives him dozens of more opportunities for interesting interactions with other characters, it gives him more ways to address his toxic behavior (as we discussed), it gives him more ways to grow. Because we don’t just grow in a straight line. We grow like trees, with limbs stretching up all over the place and roots digging in deep and crisscrossing everywhere.

Wyatt is a stagnant character. Giving him bisexuality gives him a way to continue to grow that isn’t dependent on another character (Jess) and can be shortened or drawn out depending on how his other arc (Jess, potentially Lucy as well) plays out.

Having Wyatt be bi takes away all of his redundancy, and stops him from being boring, and stops him from being so easily replaceable. If a character isn’t intrinsically tied to the plot (Rufus is there because he’s the only pilot, Lucy is a history expert and tied to Rittenhouse, etc) then you need to think of other reasons for the viewers to really care about them and I’m sorry, but having a dead wife and then being stuck in a heterosexual love triangle doesn’t cut it in the year of our lord 2016 (or ’17, or ’18, or any other year that follows).

And no offense to anyone struggling with PTSD because it needs to be addressed, but the whole ‘soldier with PTSD’ has been done before and, despite making it a main feature in 1.05 The Alamo, it hasn’t been touched on since. Not once. So that’s I guess been thrown out the window by the writers as a plot device (although again that could be brought back by having Wyatt bond with Flynn and Flynn talking with him about shared experiences could be a way that Wyatt further develops feelings for him YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN!?!?).

It also, as I outlined in part one, explains all of his behavior. It takes behavior that made no sense and was toxic alpha male bullshit and puts a whole new and interesting and understandable spin on it. Note I said understandable, not justifiable, this does not in any way excuse any of Wyatt’s behavior. But boy howdy does it make it a lot more nuanced and layered. Having Wyatt be bi suddenly opens so many goddamn doors for his character I can’t even keep track. His PTSD, his relationship with his father, his relationship with Jess, his relationship with Flynn and Lucy, his time in the army, all of those things have new and boundless opportunities in them. It gives opportunities and explains and gives depth to one-note, shallow, cliche male behavior.

Not to mention, um, making him a repressed bisexual gives so many more opportunities for angst and hurt/comfort and all that delicious, delicious character conflict that we all love. Mmmm yes the precious. And, BONUS, it gives us character angst that doesn’t necessarily revolve around a romantic pairing! You can give a character a sexuality crisis without giving them a person to be paired off with! Wyatt can have his crisis over Ian Fleming or Wendell Scott or Rittenhouse Agent No. 5, and figure it all out with only platonic assistance from the team. OR he can be pining over Flynn without Flynn having a clue because Flynn needs his love interests to hit him over the head with a baseball bat to get him to notice and even then it doesn’t always work. OR have him worry about confessing to Jess and/or Lucy and fearing they’ll see him differently given their past sexual/romantic entanglements! ALL. THE. CHARACTER. ANGST. BITCHEEEEEES.

Finally, last but not least, why should Wyatt be bi? Because representation matters, that’s why.

Up until now I’ve highlighted why Wyatt, specifically, as an individual, should be bi. But stepping away from him individually… why the fuck not make your character bi?

It’s the 2010s. The world is finally waking up to the fact that LGBT+ people are here, we exist, and also having us as characters makes your ratings soar. People were ecstatic over The Day Reagan Was Shot, which focused on Denise and her coming out. Timeless’s diversity was a huge point in its favor and was a huge part of why critics loved it. Making, of all people, the most rough and tumble masculine man’s man of the cast be bisexual is important because it reminds us that anyone can have any sexuality, that there are no stereotypes, and that not all LGBT+ people are fashion gurus.

I’m sorry, Wyatt, but it’s true, you are no longer allowed to dress yourself, I’ve submitted you to Queer Eye.

What could be a more powerful storyline for today than a man who was abused as a kid, exhibited toxic masculinity, and was clearly unhappy with himself as a person and looking outside of himself to someone else to fix him, come to terms with himself, come to love himself, come to say “hey I love who I love and I am who I am and fuck anyone who says otherwise”? What could be a more wonderful representation of the diversity and family bonding themes of the show then to have Wyatt, the insecure difficult-with-feelings small town poster for typical masculinity come out, scared of rejection, scared of their reactions, only to have everyone show him love and acceptance and unwavering support? To have Denise hug him and tell him she understands how she feels? To have Lucy tell him she doesn’t see him any differently? For Rufus to joke this is why Wyatt can never choose a cereal and then reaffirm their friendship?

Having Wyatt be bi isn’t just good for him as a character, it’s good for the audience, and it continues the themes of the show and continues to break down stereotypes and honestly, there’s no reason for any character to be straight, either. We just ask “but why” because straight is still the default in our heads and all deviancy from the norm must be explained and rationalized. But there’s no need for that. Wyatt has the most typically heterosexual traits out of all of them, and he’s from a small town in Texas, and he went into the army. How powerful for people to see him come out. How wonderful. But Wyatt can be bi just because you damn well feel like it, because there shouldn’t be a big list of reasons (although I do have them, clearly). He can be bi just because, well, there’s no big tragic backstory for why I’m bi. I just am. And so is he.

In conclusion: Bi!Wyatt is ten times more interesting, nuanced, and unique than Straight!Wyatt, it adds depth and opportunities for growth, it gives layers to existing storylines and character relationships involving Wyatt, it explains his behavior and makes it more understandable, and it gives us needed representation.

My monkey brain adds that the opportunity for humor with this is also boundless and honestly I agree, good job monkey brain, you get a treat.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[provincianx-blog]

what i learned from unlearning everything that i know

lessons from middle school, aurora, and beyond. 

at the age of fifteen, my mom forced my brother and me to leave our home in hayward, ca upon discovering that my dad had been using meth again and wasting all of his money on catfishes on the internet. 

my mom and dad had been separated for longer than my brother and I were aware of, but my mom finally had the courage to really leave him in july of 2011. she loved him her entire life, but she was done taking care of someone that wasn’t taking care of her. she was done taking care of someone who didn’t love her enough to take care of himself. she was done. 

while this seems incredibly simple, leaving hayward prompted what would turn into a 7 year identity crisis. 

as an outcast at every school i transferred to, i found a community on this website with my best friends from middle school and random strangers who loved harry potter and other fandoms as ridiculously as we did. true commitment to friendship would transcend from anonymous messages on tumblr to mutual follows on twitter. and here we are: in the age of twitter.

upon switching up different meds, after over a decade of looking for mental and emotional stability, i found out that i have bipolar-1, which still doesn’t make that much sense to me, but i’m beginning to understand it more than i did before.

i’m grateful to have been obsessed with star wars when i first saw revenge of the sith on opening night because of my tita and her husband’s work perks. i loved padme and she was my first crush but also my first example of a strong girl in mainstream film in addition to mulan (bruh i used my mulan costume for like 3 years and never gave a single HECK). i would then beg my dad to take me to blockbuster to watch the original trilogy, where i met carrie fisher/princess leia, who would radically transform how i saw the world and myself.

i grew up with my tita and tito. they took care of me when they were in college, and they’re still taking care of me now. i want to be able to take care of their kids and love them as much as they loved me growing up. i love them with all that i am and all that i can give. 

i studied politics because i wanted to make sure that my younger cousins and my baby brother would have a better world to grow up in than i did. it seems that my undiagnosed mental illness of nearly 14 years has been exacerbated by the political climate we live in today in 2018. 

i learned so much about life by learning about my own history, and i hope that everyone has this opportunity in their lifetime. it feels great, and the only one who seems to really get it is ariana grande. 

so here are 14 things i learned from being mentally ill and emo while being passionate about wanting to make the world a better and more habitable place. 

1. don’t trust the feds: a lot of 2nd amendment boys actually don’t trust the government as much as people think, and the 2A comes from settlers’ distrust in colonial Britain. the problems we see today are because the GOP has lured these same people and their kids (and their kids) into their corner by advocating for organizations like the NRA; gun control has reached the Supreme Court, but the 2nd amendment took precedent (i believe). gun control must come from the state and local governments, but political participation in these arenas are very low, especially for younger voters. i, as someone who has been involuntarily hospitalized despite voluntarily seeking medical help, am not allowed to buy a gun in the state of california for 5 years. and honestly, i really don’t care because i don’t want to need a gun anyway, but the poor and the middle class in the south feels that they need guns. 

2. stay woke: deray said this nearly everyday after michael brown was shot by darren wilson in ferguson, missouri. michael brown was my wake up call to reassess my complacency in the status quo and my participation in reinforcing anti-blackness. in the bay area, the n word was used so casually in places like union city/hayward that we became so desensitized to it. it’s still used casually, but non-black people like myself have no agency in saying it because we’re not black. it’s as simple as that. i began noticing how my family reacted to what would turn into the Black Lives Matter movement, and for the first time, i felt that i could no longer trust my relatives if they were complicit in the murders of black youth simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. i couldn’t even talk to them without crying because of how upset i got from the anti-blackness i would hear. i began to isolate myself and found community on twitter. 

3. our youth is a reflection of how good things were and how good things can become if we learn to build community: in addition to the community i found on tumblr through avatar, harry potter, and the beatles, i found community with all the losers who had xbox’s instead of ps3′s. we would hang out and play search and destroy (which i still cannot succeed in after all this time smh agjhgarhdfhre) or 1v1 each other on rust. my nerd friends would let my brother and I play with them regardless of how much we sucked, and they hyped me up even when my KDR was trash. these friendships would then transcend from mw2, halo 3, and into runescape. my brother is now really good at overwatch, and the friends i made in middle school are also really good at overwatch. the difference now is that they’re making money off of it, and i’m just like, “let’s get this bread, nerds!” thank you for being there for me even though i sucked at everything i tried doing. i was reminded of this when i watched “mid90s” by Jonah Hill. our youth was such a pure period of time, but it was also the time we lost ourselves through imposing harmful social norms onto each other, such as the idea that a girl cannot be “just friends” with a boy. but - here’s the kicker - i’m queer, and i don’t really like cis-het men hahahahahahahahaha but whatever. 

4. becoming american made me forget who i am: our immigrant parents teach us that the only way is to assimilate into white America, which is essentially what happened to black and brown people following the civil rights movement. the notion of egalitarianism/equality has been nothing but harmful for all of us nonetheless, fueling debates on affirmative action and pitting black people against asian people. one of my best friends from elementary school is in prison for trying to make a living with the resources and skills made available to him. he was apprehended in thousand oaks. he is a black man, and we grew up in the same environment, but his life has been so different since we were in elementary school. the concept of equality/egalitarianism stemming from civil war gains (13th-15th amendments) has manifested into the racial inequality we see today; in other words, the idea that white americans and POC are equal has been harmful because this has never been true and continues to be untrue. my filipino friends and i would get bullied by white latinos for not speaking english in america, which is why i learned to hate myself and my culture. i love myself and my culture, and i am fighting so that i can return home to the philippines someday. 

5. our bodies are different, and that’s okay: can y’all believe that i got bullied for not having boobs in the 3rd grade? this is what happens when young girls are sexualized so early. boys participate in this, and they turn out to be shitty boyfriends later on. girls will be girls. girls just wanna be treated like human beings instead of sexual objects. i don’t think this needs to be explained further. 

6. america is a settler-colonial state turned global power, and that is problematic: this country began with the murders and deaths of indigenous people because of imperalistic pursuits. it was built on the backs of slave labor from africa. it was reinforced by colonialism through the conquering of countries such as the philippines. we’re socialized to believe that there’s no place like america and that america is such a good place to be in, but that is only true for white Americans and POC who have integrated into white American suburbs. 

7. know history, know self: - jose rizal 

8. if my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable - carrie f. fisher

9. at times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of - carrie f. fisher

10. rebellions are built on hope - princess/general leia organa + jyn erso

11. we have nothing to lose but our chains - assata shakur

12. keep ya head up - tupac shakur

13. everything i’m not made me everything i am - kanye west

14. i remember you was conflicted

misusing your influence

sometimes i did the same

abusing my power full of resentment

resentment that turned into a deep depression

found myself screaming in the hotel room

i didn’t wanna self destruct

the evils of lucy was all around me

so i went running for answers

until i came home

but that didn’t stop survivor’s guilt

going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes i earned

or maybe how a-1 my foundation was

but while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city

i was entering a new one

a war that was based on apartheid and discrimination

made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what i learned

the word was respect

just because you wore a different gang color than mine’s

doesn’t mean i can’t respect you as a black man

forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets

if i respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us

but i don’t know, i’m no mortal man

- kendrick lamar

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [171]

“That’s a fine man you have for yourself,” Isabela says as Lavellan finishes her towering masterpiece of hot chocolate, whipped cream, caramel, sprinkles, chocolate chips, marshmallows, and cookie sticks.

“Yeah, he’s really great. He’s got a huge dick and everything,” Lavellan says.

Isabela sighs.

“I didn’t get it right, did I?”

“No, sweet pea, you didn’t, not even close,” Isabela says, “Maybe if you were talking to another man?”

Lavellan frowns and starts working on a second mug of hot chocolate, pushing her finished one down towards Sera.

“Dare I ask?” Sera says as she squints at the drink, trying to figure out where to start from.

“This is how heterosexual people talk,” Lavellan says, “But I guess I’m not doing it right.”

“Do I want to ask why?” Sera continues, taking a huge bite out of the whipped cream tower and shuddering before Isabela hands her a spoon so she can try and disperse it into the drink itself.

“I think I should practice not being flamboyantly queer,” Lavellan says, “Maybe it would make some of our negotiations easier. Maybe if I took the queer down a notch of two. You know. To make the heterosexual people comfortable, and I thought that Isabela could help me.”

“Maybe you don’t actually need to turn it down, maybe you need to crank it up to maximum and rip the dial off,” Sera says, “Have you considered that extreme?”

“That’s what I’m doing if this part doesn’t work,” Lavellan replies.

Just then the door to the lodge opens and Bull comes back in with Fenris, both of them looking grim.

“You didn’t get my text message did you,” Bull says, “Fucking reception.”

“Why, what?” Lavellan blinks, “What happened?”

“Hawke found a dead body in the woods,” Fenris says, “We have to go immediately.”

Lavellan swears, “No.”

“Yes,” Bull says, “We’ve got to repack everything. Right now. Fenris and I came back here to warn you all.”

“We just got here,” Dorian says, coming out of his room, drawn by the sounds. “We can’t leave. We even rescheduled this from the ski-lodge.”

“What happened at the ski-lodge?” Isabela asks.

“We the people of the minority groups - queer, women, people of color, races of not human - felt bad vibes so we left as soon as we got there,” Lavellan says. She touches her fingertips to her forehead and pushes. “I had hoped that if we combined forces with Hawke’s friends that our combined not cis-het white male-ness would be able to create an atmosphere of not horror movie and we could all enjoy ourselves. I’m sorry, Isabela. I did have an ulterior motive for having you all over and it’s not because Cullen was feeling lonely.”

“I was feeling lonely?”

“We’re leaving,” Fenris says, “I’m going to find Anders and Aveline. Between the three of us maybe we’ll be able to get Mariam and Garrett to go without any drama.”

“I recognize your logic, it’s not bad,” Isabela says, “But when you were trying to counteract Cullen and Blackwall’s cis-het white male-ness - “

“I’m not even straight,” Cullen sighs, but Cassandra’s already thrown his overnight bag at him with a silent get packing look. As soon as she sees that he’s gone to listen to her she goes up the stairs towards where Josephine and Leliana had gone to take a nap.

“Whatever, you’re still white and a cis-het man. Don’t interrupt me. Anyway, Lavellan, dear heart, did you stop to factor in Mariam and Garrett’s - how do I put it?”

“Bad protagonist,” Anders says as he bundles himself up, looking chagrined and resigned as he heads towards the lodge doors. They can hear Aveline groaning with exasperation and - only the damned Hawkes.

“Yes, their bad protagonist vibes?”

“Their what-what?” Sera asks.

“Have you ever noticed,” Anders says, waiting by the door for Fenris and Aveline, “That the Hawke family - mostly Mariam and Garrett - tend to find themselves in the centers of very bad movie plots? Mindless action? Terrible detective noir? B-rated horror? The occasional network TV rom-com?”

“God,” Lavellan breathes out covering her face, “I’ve sidelined us all into a very bad poorly budgeted indie horror movie starring the elder Hawke twins.”

“Nope, because we’re the smart ones who get out before shit hits the fan,” Bull says.

There’s a shriek outside the lodge and the door bangs open, Anders throwing himself back in time to avoid being hit and Merrill is standing in the doorway, holding tight onto Cole’s arm, eyes wide -

“I think we found big foot,” Merrill says. “And he killed a person in the woods!”

“Fuck,” Lavellan says slowly, adding an extra five syllables to it. “Well. Alright. This is our lives for the next thirty-six to forty-eight hours. Someone call Vivienne and tell her not to come because there’s going to be an ominous fog rolling in within the next thirty minutes.”

[solacekames]

What does gender nonconforming mean?

So here are my definition(s) of “gender nonconforming.” I typed up something yesterday and had a lot of convos based on it, so I thought I’d type it up again in a more organized way.

These definitions of “gender nonconforming” I’m talking about originate from the LGBTQ+ community but don’t stay there: they were specifically designed to apply also to people outside the community. I’m not a member of the community, and that’s important to state only because I don’t want this post to be taken as prescribing anything back into the community. I don’t think there’s widespread agreement as to how to use the word, so I’m going to talk about how I see it now in descriptive terms, not prescriptive terms.  

I first started seeing the word in a really tragic context: news about young children who killed themselves because of homophobic/transphobic bullying. That young, the abuse isn’t very differentiated—it’s all a kind of vicious, amorphous gender policing. These children might have known they were gay or trans. They might have known they were bi. They might have known they were straight. They might have not known what they were at all! It didn’t matter to their tormentors.

I realized that the activists talking about these deaths wanted to respect these children and were therefore including “gender nonconforming” as a neutral umbrella phrase. I’m not an expert on this but I also noticed that more PoC LGBTQ+ activists were using the phrase. My gut feeling is that these activists understood more than white activists that many physically violent forms of oppression are not based primarily on internal identity, but rather on external conformity.

So my personal definition of gender nonconforming became, “anyone especially vulnerable to gender policing for any reason, voluntary or involuntary.” It’s an especially useful term for cis het people, because we can talk about not fitting gender roles without appropriating stuff that belongs in the LGBTQ+ community (for example, words like “butch” or “femme”). GNC isn’t an identity or community. It’s impossible to appropriate GNC because there’s no real positive value to being GNC: all it means is that you have a greater than average chance of getting your ass kicked.

Here are some factors that go into GNC in my context, in my country (the US):

Age. Really important. Young people, especially adolescents, are policed more than older people. Also, a lot of people who were gender policed when younger “learned their lesson” and figured out how to conform and were able to move out of the risk category.

Racial/phenotypical minority. Certain racial groupings are feminized/masculinized in different ways. E/SE Asian men and women are policed for sexual characteristics judged as “too small.” Groups where women have more facial hair are policed more. Anti-blackness and colorism have huge impacts, and so on.

Ethnic/religious minority. For example, religious practices that forbid hair removal for women, or mandate certain forms of dress that appear feminized for men, will make people more vulnerable to gender policing. On the most basic level, just the simple status of “looking different” or “talking different” makes people more vulnerable.

All intersex conditions.

Genetic/congenital conditions not necessarily classified as intersex. Gynecomastia for men, hirsutism for women, and so on.

Disability. People might not understand how to conform to gender, or be unable to conform because of physical disability.

Weird random things that don’t make sense because gender doesn’t make sense. Very tall women. Very short men. Women with square jaws. Men with high voices. 

Voluntary factors. People who choose to present androgynously for any reason. 

Class. Properly conforming to gender if you don’t have “the right body” can be expensive, especially for women. 

I’m sure there are many more not listed.

The thorny question is, what about the LGBTQ+ community? Are they all GNC, only some GNC, or not GNC because the one label excludes the other? I can’t answer that question because it’s not for me to answer. And also because it depends on how you define gender policing and gender conforming. Because there are sensory rules of gender (does the person look male or female, do they sound male or female, etcetera) and there are many deeper more abstract rules. For example, a gender rule is that women are supposed to get married to men. By that rule, any bi, pan or lesbian woman is automatically GNC. Another gender rule is that “you have to be a man or a woman.” If you’re nonbinary or other gender or have no gender, you’d be automatically GNC.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the phrase evolves, and whether it stays as an umbrella term or becomes more mutually exclusive. Whatever happens, I think its greatest political use is to show that gender policing hurts more people than we realize. That might sound like a selfish, asshole thing to say, but bear with me for a second:

A lot of people who grow up gender policed react by becoming police themselves, and especially targeting the LGBTQ+ community. For example, let’s say there’s a cis het man who grows up with a high voice that never dropped that much after puberty. In most places in the country he’d grow up bullied and abused all over the place. He’d grow up with other kids and some adults telling him he doesn’t sound like a man, he’s got to be *insert slur for gay*, etcetera. When he gets older there’s a range of possible effects on his life. The most positive is that he gets annoyed at the whole system of gender rules and passively or actively fights against it. That doesn’t mean he’s going to become a “perfect ally” or anything, or free of homophobia/transphobia, but he’ll probably have more compassion. The most negative possibility is that he grows up overcompensating for a perceived lack of masculinity. He needs to prove that he’s a “real man,” and takes it out on women and LGBTQ+ people. His gender presentation gets wrapped up in an “I’m not one of those” complex. I mean, I used a high voice as an example, but we already have “short man complex” in our cultural vocabulary.

A highly vulnerable person like a trans woman already knows aaaaaaall about gender policing, because it intersects with transmisogyny and their very life might depend on it. But the cis het man I’m talking about above might never get a good understanding of it, even though they’re subject to it to a lesser degree. 

One example of a natural, organic allegiance between cis GNC people and the trans community is developing in reactions to the ridiculous “bathroom bills”. Everyone harassed over being in “the wrong bathroom” so far have been… cis GNC women! So I think it’s increasing our awareness that we need to stand with trans women without speaking over them.

So whatever happens, I think growing usage of the term is a positive thing that will make more people think about gender. And when they get gender policed, they’ll have more tools to deal with it, fight back against it, and not turn into bigots, thus helping everyone.

In summary:

if you think you’re GNC, you probably are. Gender rules are complex, confusing, culturally and historically fluid, and you probably know what rules you’re subject to way better than I do.

As far as I’m aware, GNC is not an identity or community, and attempting to appropriate it or defending it from appropriation strike me as pointless (not to say I see people doing either yet)

GNC is a state that’s permanent for some people, temporary for others.

GNC depends on time and place. It’s easy to know what’s gender nonconforming in Topeka Kansas, probably a lot harder in Berkeley California. 

GNC is limited but potentially politically useful, especially in places like Topeka Kansas.

[cerullos]

You don't have to answer. Reading the responses to that reblog about ace struggles made me really sad. The way you talk about the ace thing in general makes me sad. And I really like you, actually. I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. And a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist. Ad infinitum. This doesn't have to be the oppression olympics. Intersectionality is the only way out of this mess.

And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence. Is that as bad as being electrocuted? No. But is that the point here? Why say that? Why amplify that kind of divisive message? We just want to belong somewhere. You can believe this or not, but we’re dying here. The LGBT community has been the only safe place I’ve known my entire life. To figure out years later that I was labeling..

myself wrong? It was the most terrifying feeling I’ve ever experienced. It still is. It’s like we don’t exist. One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.

Straight people see us simply as gay, and treat us that way. So we’re getting electrocuted too. Sexual, gay people tell us we’re ‘cis/het’ liars trying to steal their community. So we have no safe space. We can’t find partners. Our friends, family, and fellow LGBT ppl don’t understand us or even believe in our existence. We are constantly questioning out own existence. I don’t mean to flood you. I realize that’s what I’m doing. But I’ve seen this kind of post coming from your direction a few…

times now. And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly. You’ve got a lot of followers. And being ace has made me full on suicidal in the past. So just. Think about it. Gay ace is a real thing. Can you see how you might have…

privilege over a person like that? everyone in my life sees me as gay. I fall in love with women. and yet here we are. can’t you see how I might want to be in your shoes? At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.

Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.

okay, this is long but i’m going to try to keep my answers as succinct as possible. i don’t know if this was your intention, but elements of this message feel vaguely guilt-tripping, despite the fact that none of what you’ve mentioned here presents an argument i haven’t already seen and strongly disagreed with.

“ I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist […] This doesn’t have to be the oppression olympics. ”

two things: one, you’re referring to lateral aggression in every instance but the first. what i mean by lateral aggression is that it occurs between two people–within the same community–who experience oppression along different axes (e.g. a straight trans person and a cis gay person). in contrast, a cis straight ace man who engages in homophobia and/or transphobia is not “laterally aggressing” his victim, he’s oppressing them. the reason LGBT people have become so vocal against inclusion of cis straight aces is because their oppressors are now gaining entrance to their exclusive spaces, and speaking over them. and whereas a lesbian can voice her discomfort with this on tumblr, she’s forced to stay silent at her local GSA for her own safety.

two, this isn’t an issue of a “handful” of violently homophobic people in the ace community. the founder of aven–david jay–was a homophobic white cishet man, and the platform on which he built his activism was homophobic. moreover, oppression against (straight, cis) ace people is not enforceable, because who is and isn’t ace depends entirely on the decision to identify as such! there are (as the ace community has been told many, many times) plenty of LGBT people (if not most) who have a complicated relationship with sex and sexual attraction due to abuse/assault, compulsive heterosexuality, dysmorphia, etc. none of these people can be considered “allosexual,” even if they (for perfectly valid reasons) decline to share this information publicly! these people deal with many of the same issues you’ve mentioned here (e.g. choosing between getting dumped or engaging in sexual acts when they would rather not), although they would likely attribute this to homophobia, misogyny and rape culture, not aphobia.

also: the “oppression olympics” is nonsensical and offensive and i wish y’all would stop passing that term around. yes, the LGBT community’s history is absolutely rooted in oppression of same-gender attracted and trans individuals! and yes, the community exists to actively oppose legislation that exists to oppress them, and to provide resources for those affected. the community was not founded in order to provide comfort to people who feel outcast from society for [x] reason. when you make this claim (or when you sarcastically liken the community to an exclusive “club” one gains entrance to by virtue of being oppressed) you miss the point entirely. it’s watering down the mission statement and end goal of this community, plain and simple.

“And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence.”

i find this argument (which is repeated often) to be ridiculous when the LGBT community has years of coherent history, and AVEN (and the popularization of identifying as asexual in the first place) has only gained prominence within the last decade or so. on top of that, as any oppressed individual will tell you, (and, again, something that has been repeated very often and rarely acknowledged) hypervisibility is dangerous to the oppressed! black and latinx trans women and gay men are the most endangered members of the LGBT community because it is impossible for them to “hide” themselves.

this alone should make it clear to you that what the LGBT community want and what the ace community want are two very different things–so what exactly would their shared goal in activism be? what purpose would expanding the community to include straight cis aces serve other than comforting individuals who resent being excluded? LGBT people may share the ace community’s desire for representation in media, but visibility–within the context of their everyday lives–is exactly what’s getting them killed. the pulse shooting is obviously the most recent example of this, but it’s one of many.

“One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.”

you’re introducing a very different argument here, and one i obviously don’t agree with. if you’re a gay ace, you belong in the LGBT community. i’m sorry you’ve been told otherwise. but if this entire passage (and the several paragraphs following it) are meant to convince me of this, i don’t know what to tell you? i’ve said before that–based on my history and  relationship with sex and sexual attraction–i could easily identify as an ace lesbian. i don’t, for some of the reasons listed above, and personal reasons of my own–and i don’t benefit from failing to identify as ace in any material way.

“And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly.”

i’m genuinely sorry you’re feeling this way, but again, if you think this is an experience LGBT people (ace or otherwise) don’t share, then i’m not the one turning a blind eye here.

“At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.”

you need to consider that you are making assumptions about what i want from a relationship based on the fact that i don’t publicly identify as ace. this is another thing we’ve been repeating constantly: you cannot do that, and therein lies one of the issues with asexuality as a framework for oppression. also, even on the off chance that i had a perfectly healthy relationship with and desire for sex (which–as i’ve said–very few people in the LGBT community do) none of us can just “get a girlfriend.” to suggest it’s more difficult for ace people is ridiculous when LGBT people have had to resort to dating apps and LGBT-exclusive spaces in order to find people to date in the first place. and before you say that similar spaces don’t exist for aces: they need to be built, just like ours were. the onus is on adult aces, not “allo” LGBT people.  

and, again, what an ace person would potentially want from an ace-exclusive space is not what an LGBT person (provably, historically) would want from an LGBT-exclusive space. ace condemnation of sex and sexuality is valid at the individual level, but it can be suffocating (and, yes–oppressive) to LGBT people who have fought long and hard to take pride in their sexuality. telling LGBT people that their love and “PDA” is “dirty” and “impure” is nothing new or progressive, it’s textbook homophobia, and those attitudes are damaging to us.

“Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.”

look…i hate to tell you this because i don’t think you mean any harm, and i’m not trying to attack you–but, as i think i said earlier, none of the arguments you’ve presented here are new to me. these are arguments that have been addressed and derailed by LGBT people (many of them ace themselves) multiple times, to no end. what you’ve mentioned here highlights an important point, and that’s “hurt feelings.” those are the stakes for straight cis aces–those are not the stakes for LGBT people (and i include LGBT aces in this statement). but i haven’t “learned” anything from these messages–i’ve never plugged my ears and ignored the arguments of straight cis aces, i’ve listened to them very carefully. and they’ve informed my opinion on this matter–an opinion that hasn’t changed and will not change. if that’s upsetting to you, you can unfollow–i won’t hold it against you!

[adventures-in-transmania]

It’s been one year since I’ve started HRT and I’m feeling nostalgic. Let’s talk about the last year.

Last year about this time, I was three months into a new job I thought I had hella potential for. I was enjoying the job. I had come out to my aunt who I worked with and thought would have issues with this facet of my life. I accepted the job without telling her this information and it caused me a good amount of stress. To have her accept it so easily, I couldn’t be more grateful, considering the environment.

When I accepted that job in August of last year, I had no /idea/ that I would start HRT just a few months later. When it became a thing, I realized I had to tell those I worked with, at least the ones I worked with often enough and the ones I felt comfortable outing myself to. You’d think after outing myself so much over the years, I’d be better at it. I’m fucking terrible at it. I hate confrontation and I hate outing myself even to people I know will be accepting. However, once I know they’re accepting, I word vomit because there aren’t many people who listen/understand.

I started HRT in a house (a trailer, tbh) that I lived in for my entire life, with my grandmother who didn’t know and my parent who didn’t want to tell her, who didn’t accept me for six years, who I was terrified to tell that I’d started HRT because of them telling me not to. I didn’t tell them until after the first shot. They were disappointed I didn’t tell them before that shot, but understood ultimately why I did what I did. It’s difficult living with a transgender parent. I feel bad that I was able to start HRT before them and feel bad talking about the changes, but this is my life. They’ve dictated enough of it, it’s my turn now. I’m glad I made the right choice in my perspective of not putting HRT off any more than I already had.

A year ago, I thought I’d be dead within 5 years at the maximum. I thought I was stuck where I was. I had just graduated college a few months before and wasn’t sure where I was going.

In the last year, I have started HRT. I moved out of that God forsaken trailer. I moved my family out of that God forsaken trailer (I FUCKING DID THAT and I’m proud as fuck to have had to adult so much in so little time). I have come out to more people than I had to before. I have talked more openly about being trans in many circumstances than I ever thought possible and to people who are cis/het. I have gotten acceptance from people who I thought would cause so many issues. I have made so much progress on things I thought I would never be able to overcome. I have changed so much more than I thought ever possible.

I read up on HRT before I started, because what trans person doesn’t? I knew what I was in for. I knew what I was dysphoric about. I knew my hopes and expectations.

My expectations were merely about my voice. I knew about the other changes, the muscle tone, the fat redistribution, the hair (facial, leg), the mood changes. I knew about things that wouldn’t change (height, Adam’s apple wasn’t a definite change that could occur). I mostly wanted my voice to change just so I could pass as a man. The binding was an issue between school/work at my last job, but I didn’t have to bind past 7pm, unless I went out with friends, which may have occurred maybe once every six months. I only worked until 7pm at my last job (occasionally I’d cash until 10pm, but more than not I’d be done at 7pm), but if I started binding at 6am, it wasn’t ideal, but manageable. My new position (while I may not have been in school, thank fuck) meant I could work at all hours of the day, meant I may be binding for more than 24 hours, it was not good. Considering I didn’t pass well enough to feel comfortable not binding, I binded as long as I was out and it wasn’t good. I enjoyed this job, though, so I dealt with it. Well, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed my last two jobs. I also make more at this current job than I would getting a job in my field at this current point in time.

I didn’t pass in the workplace the first few months on HRT. There were people I knew would have issues working with a transgender man. I also realized I had things set on “easy” being a transgender man rather than a transgender woman. I was never afraid of being fired for being trans and for that, I know I’m lucky/privileged. Using the men’s room meant maybe getting a few weird looks if I wasn’t passing. I don’t think I would have felt safe using the women’s room if I was a trans woman in some of these towns. It was bad enough I didn’t feel safe just existing in the small towns we went to to inventory small grocery stores. When you pass at least five (one that was massive) signs supporting Trump in 2020, with not one minority race in sight, you feel a little unsafe. I grew up in a small town, albeit it was considered a “middle/high class” small town, but it was full of white people (with the exception of one family) and you were made fun of for being queer. You get used to that kind of mentality.

Anyway, the first few changes on HRT I noticed where more personal. For one, my menstrual cycle stopped in November of last year and hasn’t come back. I can’t tell you how fucking thrilled I was about that. They say it may take 6+ months for a menstrual cycle to stop and I hoped for the best but expected the worst. Mine stopped after the first month after my first shot. I did not expect this. I hoped, but I didn’t expect. I had cramping that would keep me in bed whenever I was home. It was consistent, though. I’d get cramps up to a week before actually bleeding and then for day 1-3, paired with heavy bleeding. It was also consistent in timing. It would often occur from about 12pm to up to 6pm. I distinctly remember always being in trig in high school when it hit. I’d cry often just from the pain of the cramps, paired with dysphoria in college, it was a bad time altogether. I thought I might have some issues in months to come, some unexpected bleeding, but I didn’t. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I had some cramping (at least it felt like uterine cramping) maybe 9 months later, but no bleeding. I never wanted biological children (or any children, tbh, which was something the medical field tends to put a heavy voice on before starting HRT, with good reason), so it was a nonissue. In the first few weeks, there was some growth and sensitivity in regions I did not expect. I have to say after the sensitivity went away, I wasn’t disappointed by this change. After a year, I’ve actually come to like that certain change.

I started getting facial hair probably three months in. It was super light and blonde. Six months in, it darkened on my cheeks, jawline, and my chin. This wasn’t something I ‘wanted’ exactly. It made me feel gender euphoria, getting this facial hair. I shaved it, because my parent had issues with it, had issues with what my grandmother would think. I kept the blonde hair above my lip. I shaved that only twice since starting HRT. I keep the facial hair long enough to be euphoric at times before shaving it. It feels nice to have, but ultimately I shave it off.

More personally, I have chest hair. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this, as someone, as a biologist, who has looked into male puberty more often than one should. This didn’t start until probably month nine. It looked weird coming in on a chest of DD boobs. It still does, but it feels right. I like stroking the middle of my chest and feeling hair there, like it belongs. But the stray hairs on the breast part of my chest looks odd.

I’m about six months into passing as male. Work is still hard to traverse. I pass well enough to strangers, the people we work with, but not so much to my coworkers, not so much to the people I work with every day. There are people who know, people who met me as a woman but who know I’m not a woman. There are people who still don’t know and don’t see it.

There were people who I thought would have issues working with a trans individual, (males mostly), but have been better than expected and have even respected my pronouns as a trans man, even before actually passing as male.

Another year after starting HRT and I’m still traumatized by a ‘friend’ having issues with me using a male locker room at a progressive Vincentian, Catholic university. There isn’t a day that goes by, even days that I pass enough to get “sir,” or “buddy,” or “mister,” that I don’t hesitate. HE had the issue, not me, not anyone else around me, it was HIM.

I recently had a coworker who has showed an endless amount of support follow me into a men’s restroom. I had a panic attack. I knew he wouldn’t say anything, I knew he wouldn’t attack me, and yet, I thought about how I didn’t belong, how he could hurt me. It wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t fair to him.

I use gender neutral restrooms when I can, but that isn’t often a thing when I’m at work. It’s usually small stores with only men/women restrooms. I’m trying so Gods damn hard to get over HIS issue with me, but three/four years later, here I am, thinking “do I pass well enough to use the men’s room?” The other hard part is going into a men’s room and finding the only stall occupied. The only thing you can do is wash your hands and leave, because what else do you do? I know this happens to other cis men, but it feels odd knowing that other cis men can use the urinal but I cannot. It’s like another stab in the chest. i know cis men who are unable to use a urinal with other people in the room with them, yet it still makes me just as dysphoric. It also sucks when you’ve gone in there multiple times when you really have to pee because every other coworker has left and you’re able to now and you aren’t able to because the one stall is occupied.

I hate that I have to be this aware. I shouldn’t be, I shouldn’t have to be. I know my manager(s) are supportive. But I’m noncomfrontational and I really really don’t want to cause issues. I can’t get it out of my head that if my “friends” have issues with it, certain people would, too. I hate it, I hate what he’s done to me. I’m trying so fucking hard to undo it, but it’s fucking hard. It’s a process and it’s a process I can’t explain to anyone else.

I talked to another trans man recently about it and his take on it was “I just decided to use the men’s room. If they had an issue with it, so what?” Honestly, I aspire, but I can’t imagine ever being like that unless I’m in a room full of strangers.

[biandaceconfessions]

do you still respond to confessions? I guess im confessing anyway. I don't often talk about my sexuality because sex, being sexy, being hit on (which is rare, but has happened) makes me uncomfortable, especially from guys (im a 20 y/o girl). I've done very well closing myself up and shutting people down. I feel my unconscious mindset is I'd rather someone not get to know me than know me and reject me. However I feel my fear of rejection has also clouded my understanding of my own sexuality. 1/?

I assume I'm something fucking queer as I've been questioning my sexuality since 12 y/o or earlier. But, more along the lines of why do I lie about having crushes? If I dont have a crush on a boy I must like girls do I have a crush on my friends, no? So, wtf? Throughout teen years, a friend has a cursh, I'm like yeah they look hot but I don't want to pursue them. At the same time I'd be hot and heavy for Eric from True Blood. So then I feel strange because it's like I can't let real people 2/?             

cont.- can't let real life people, be people and sexual/romantic partners, like I'm objectifying people only attracted to their appearance but then again I'm not so attracted that I'm like yeah I'd fuck them. I don't know. I'm confusing myself just typing this. I didn't even touch on how this makes me question if I'm bisexual or ace or both or am I just looking for a lgbt label so that I'm just edgy, different and not a boring white, cis-het girl. I think my biggest fear is saying I'm ace 3/?         

cont.- without fully comprehending what that is or how others would read that. What if I'm not ace but then people beieve I am and then no ones is interested in me. But since I'm not interested in anyone do I care about that or not? Same thing for when I had an inkling that I might like girls but if I don't like girls then I just told everyone I did, then am I posing and will guys not like me. Because I don't get asked on dates I also thought what if I'm questioning my sexuality just because 4/?

cont.- just because guys don't like me, am I just thinking I might be into girls because rejection from girls hurt less than guys? because most girls I meet are straight so their no possibility that I could be rejected romantically for someone not seeking my gender. Ditto for my obsession with gay men in media such as films, stories and drag queens. Do I like them and want to be a part of that life just to get rid of the pressure of questioning if they're attracted to me. 5/?             

cont.- So one again that all trickles back down to am I ace or bi? Neither or both? Do I want a relationship?-I'm not looking. Am I not looking because I do want a rom/sex relationship but fear rejection or because I genuinely don't want that because I don't feel that way about anyone? I've seen my sister literally cry over not having a boyfriend multiple times in adolescence and I'd be like "wtf. why does that feel so important to you?" So that's kept me thinking okay maybe it's not 6/?             

cont.- not all influenced by my shyness, anxiety or the fear of rejection but that I genuinely do not feel the same way about people romantically/sexually than the "average" person (Gay, Les or Straight). I literally found this new word on your tumblr -squishes. Now it sounds so childish but the meaning of the word is how I feel about a girl right now. We are not friends, she's just beautiful and I wish I could become her close friend. However, this is clouded by the feeling of do I simply 7/?             

simple have an interest in her (for a friendship or intimacy), simply because she's openly bi, but has a boyfriend and several other guys thirsting for her. So am I attracted to her or just because she's conventionally attractive and/or because guys are interested in her and I want her to be with a girl so boys can't have her because I'm so fucked up that I have some internal hatred towards men, which is possibly due to past sexual harrasment/abuse from men, so now they must all be shit... 8/?             

cont.- so now here is my apology for such a long-winded, convoluted confession that likely just shows that I'm a crazy person overthinking and also just man-hating. But I do have male friends who I actually really hope find happiness and romantic relationships. So here I sit another year older and another year confused about what I feel and who I am in terms of sexuality. final part/?             

(Yes we do still take confessions, it’s just been a while since one has come in.)

I’m going to do my best to parse though everything you’ve sent in because as you, yourself have already realized, there are a whole helluva lot of layers to this and what you’ve been questioning and thinking over.

The first thing that I kind of latched onto that you shared was that you don’t really have an interest in crushes and you can understand when your friends do, but it doesn’t hold any sway for you. I don’t know how much you know about aromantics, but that rang a bit of a bell for me since aromantics either don’t experience crushes or they take different forms so you could have no interest in that aspect of relationships.

Something else you mentioned was the attraction to fictional characters. Some people lose interest in sexual/romantic relationships when those feelings are reciprocated. So, being attracted to fictional characters could be your way to ensure there’s no discomfort of possibly being faced with someone having interest in you, since there is your internal struggle with men liking you.

I don’t know how much research you’ve done into asexuality and have read through accounts by other asexuals, but asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction to others. You can be ace and still be interested in sex and have sex. Asexual people can also most definitely have relationships. So if people are completely turned away from pursuing you because you might be ace, then that makes them an asshole who probably wasn’t interested in you for more than sex anyway and they deserve a kick in the groin for being an asshat.

As far as crying over not having a boyfriend as your sister has done, I think that can easily be tied to the heteroromantic pressure that exists in society. Social norms are constantly telling us that we should in heterosexual relationships and that we have to be in romantic relationships to have any form of fulfillment in our lives. Now that idea is all kinds of wrong and causes more pressure for everyone (especially aromantics) and negates any form of personal happiness or satisfaction that comes from platonic or familial relationships. And those are just as important as any sort of happiness that comes from romantic relationships. It just happens that not everyone needs romantic relationships in their lives to be happy and society is going to lash out at people who feel that way because of it and make the pressure worse for people who aren’t dating someone.

Squishes is a very important term for me and I’m so happy it exists and that you found it because to me it reflects a need to get to know someone and forma  bond that doesn’t necessarily have any sexual or romantic ties. It’s a desire to share your life with someone else that is at its base really no different from romantic or sexual connection.

After reading all of this I just want you to know that you don’t have to find a label right away. Whether you settle on bi, ace, or something else entirely. Sexuality is confusing and the way society functions doesn’t help things at all. Figuring things out can take a while, especially when you’re sifting through so many layers like you have been. And it sucks that it can take so long, but it’s not an easy thing for some people to figure out. I didn’t figure out I was ace until I was in college.

If you’re afraid that testing out a label right now means you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life, let me reassure you that you’re not. Considering how much you’ve thought this over and recognized the different impacts it has on your life, I doubt you’re doing it to be “trendy” or “different” or special in some sort of way. It’s just as acceptable to think you fit one label right now and realize you’re something else later and that’s fine. You’re not going to get more brownie points or whatever for figuring it out faster because the whole process is really fucking difficult in itself.

And if you never find a label that really fits and can be at peace just going through life as who you are then that’s okay, too.