#the cishets don’t feel comfortable calling us the queer community

[labyrynth]

imma be honest this whole toothpaste flag nonsense feels a whole lot like mark hamill going “aww, everyone has a musical theme EXCEPT for luke…i want a theme too!!” and then everyone else going “mark. you have a theme. luke is the main character, mark. the MAIN THEME is your theme.”

*points at gilbert baker flag* it’s right there

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AMITA for lying to everyone I know about my identity’s as a queer/neurodivergent person?

I (18M) am a bisexual, transgender man who is also autistic, ADHD, and OCD. When people hear this about me, even if they know me, I feel like they build up this image of me as an awkward, “cringy” 11 year old who’s obsessed with “cringy” fandoms. And while i have a qualm with this because I know they are looking down on people who are just less masked/higher support needs, I also dislike that they do this because it’s just not who I am. Without the labels, I mostly seem like just a normal dude, if not a bit nerdy.

I also used to be extremely bullied as a kid (7-12) to the point of a suicide attempt, mostly due to homophobic, transphobic, or ablest remarks about me. Since then I’ve completely changed community’s and do not talk to anyone i knew before high school.

When authority figures (Teachers, Show Directors, Investors of the teen programs I lead) apply ablest/transphobic stereotypes or prejudices to me, they also tend to be less,,, normal? around me. Less kind compared to other kids, call me an “inspiration”, or they’ll coddle me when I’m incredibly capable. I do a lot for someone my age- and I know the connections I make now at conferences and whatnot will help me in the long run. My dad’s family is poor, and my immediate family is more comfortable but not that much. I know I’m smart, and I can weaponize that to get a better life for my family by getting good scholarships and jobs in good fields. I can’t just let people who could be very important to my goals look down on me. So i just.. don’t tell them anything about me. They might assume Im odd or “not normal”, and for the most part I let them assume whatever, but if i’m ever asked directly about anything I deny it. Especially in relation to me being transgender; I have the very privileged ability to pass without any medical intervention, and I use that to pretend to be cisgender. Living in the deep south of USAmerica, most of who I am could make my social life very uncomfortable to downright miserable.

Here’s where the problem starts happening. when my social and (what i consider to be a) “professional” life occasionally touch, I wouldn’t be able to be out everywhere socially without someone I don’t want knowing finding out. So i don’t tell any of my classmates/friends/peers about any of my identities either. I hang out with queer and straight people, never be actively homophobic/ablest, and will be very vague about the two questions i’ve ever received about any of that stuff. It’s very, very exhausting to pretend all the time, every day, especially pretending that I’m cisgender because it’s a tricky game, but I can’t really back down and I’m afraid that I might get bullied again if I was ever open about it with classmates.

A few months ago, I was dating this guy, who i’ll call Kai (17M) Kai is also a transgender man, but does not pass at all and is comfortable with it. He’ll get shit sometimes, but also has essentially no straight friends. I told him I was queer when we became good friends, and then told him I was trans after we started dating. I also told him why I lie about being cishet or neurotypical, and while he didn’t seem happy he didn’t push it at first. I told him that I understood if he didn’t want to be in a secret relationship, but because of where we live and what I want to do I wasn’t comfortable with being out again. He said he still wanted to date me, and claimed he would support me, and we had a pretty good relationship overall.

A month after that, he started bringing it up again. He told me that I was more than my identity, and if people didn’t see me for who I am instead of stereotypes, it isn’t worth talking to them at all. And while I agree with the sentiment, it’d never be possible to just not hear someone if they were harassing me, and while I truely dislike a lot of the authority figures that I engage with, they are in the professional fields I’m interested in, and I’m incredibly lucky for getting where I am so early. Kai also said that since I am well known in our very small school (only 300 kids), being out could be a positive influence on what people think about autistic people or trans people. In a particularly heated fight, he even said I was doing a disservice or betrayal to my community by not representing or being proud of being apart of them publicly.

We broke up pretty soon after, but I think about what he said a lot. I know that I wouldn’t be the only out person at my school, and that my school is actually a lot better compared to most local schools, which are a lot larger and… dramatic, but I just don’t think I could be out without going back to how I used to be mentally. And Kai was right about how I could be a good influence on some of the meaner classmates- I do think some of my peers who I ingenuinely connect with might reconsider their prejudices if they knew I was transgender.

I’m intentionally choosing not to take the opportunity to do better. It wouldn’t ruin ALL my relationships with the authority figures I consider to be important holding, since it would just be my school, It might dampen one or two of them. Plus, I’m lying to pretty much everyone who knows me. They build relationships with a false idea of me, and I feel like an asshole sometimes because I’m not honest.

TLDR: I’m a transgender, autistic guy in a very bigoted community. Everybody thinks i’m cishet and neurotypical. AMITA for not being proud of who I am because of potential social losses, and AMITA for lying to people and giving friends/peers false ideas about who I am even if they would not be friends with me if they knew?

What are these acronyms?

[paranormeow7]

thinking about people being so mean to my friends abt their more unusual queer identities and its like? why do u feel the need to get so angry abt someone happy in their identity simply bc u don’t understand it? My 55 year old cishet dad had a coworker that used it/it’s pronouns and even though he didn’t get it, and even when that coworker gave him grief, he still tried to respect its identity and pronouns!!! a man who only uses the internet to order shit for work and read comic strips was more caring and tolerant than some of y’all young queers who call urselves “progressive!!” What happened to “live and let live” or “cringe culture is dead” and why is it a controversial opinion to say that you shouldn’t attack people for being comfortable in their own skin in a way you don’t understand? you will never get anything done by targeting your own community, and we can only stop our oppressors if we put aside our differences and band together. To anyone with an unconventional or controversial queer identity, I love you and and respect you!! Keep on keeping on 💝

Any deranged hate I get for this post will be ridiculed by me and my friends :]

[many-but-one]

hey just to let you guys know the term 'femboy' is an extremely derog term (i think some consider it a slur as well) for transfeminine folk. not upset, just informing you guys!

I mean. I have sometimes heard femboy used in the context of transfemme who don’t pass well, but mainly said by cis/cishet folk who ain’t part of the LGBTQ community. Femboy has been used by gay men or men who dress feminine who are not transgender for a very long time. Considering Dori was not referring to another trans woman or another person who did not consent to the term (she was using it towards herself because she used to consider herself a man who dressed feminine—a femboy—before she fused with a bunch of girls) I fail to see how that would be considered a terrible thing to say.

It’s like me calling myself a bulldyke/dyke, a faggot, or a tranny. I am all those things and I am well within my rights to call myself terms that used to be slurs used against us as much as I want. Reclaiming shitty things said against us has kinda been a big part of queer culture and lesbian/transgender history. No offense anon, as I know you were trying to give a heads up in good faith, this is hella chronically online behavior. Go hang out with some queer people at a bar and you’ll hear all kinds of words like that. Queer culture is by nature not “politically correct” and especially since this was aimed at ourselves and not calling anyone else the term without their consent, I’m gonna let Dori use whatever terms make her feel most comfortable in her skin.

For the record, femboy started as a slur around the 80s-90s and seemed to be used in conjunction with the term sissyboy, though the term femboy itself has existed for much longer. Femboys or men who use feminine expression have been around for a very long time—centuries, even, and in the mid-19th century the term femboy was coined to describe men who dressed femininely. Obviously derived from the word “feminine” and “boy.” The term gained traction as a reclaimed term (as the term was used to describe men as “incomplete men” who were not masculine enough to be “real men”) in the 70s and 80s with the rise of punk culture, and queer activists started reclaiming it to empower GNC individuals. I’ve personally rarely ever seen it as a derogatory term toward transfemme folks and our transfemme partner agrees that she’s hardly ever seen anything like that. And if it is a derogatory term toward transfemme folks, it was clearly not used in that way when Dori referred to herself as a femboy.

Don’t police the way we talk unless it truly brings actual harm to another person. We ain’t calling anyone else a femboy, Dori was calling herself that.

-Elektra🦂 (she/her) + K (she/he) + K (he/him)

[polyamorouspunk]

Coming here to yell about a thing.

SO. Im like. Frustrated with the whole ‘am I queer’ thing. (Like personally for myself). And i think Im at a point where I just. Do not care anymore. Like. I could care less what people refer to me as. I dont think its important to tell people. And I just do what I want. I think my new response when asked is gonna just be ‘idk Im just me’.

Like. Im dating this person and Ive not told them any of my queer exploits and. I dont think Im going to? Is that wrong of me? That I dont feel like its important or defining enough to be brought up and have a weird awkward conversation about when I dont even have a solid answer and also Im completely comfortable being called either way? Its not like the terms they call me upset me or make me uncomfortable. I just dont think its worth the conversation of ‘well my gender might be fucked but details are unobtainable’.

Of the few friends who ive told about it, some think i should tell my parter and another thinks theres nothing wrong with it if its not a path I plan on pursuing or putting importance on in my life. Honestly, I haven’t even thought of it in months until I was talking to an old friend who knew me as exploring my queerness that I hadnt seen in a few years and he just kept asking questions and prying about the gender stuff and like. Fuck bro I dont know anymore. Is it really wrong of me to just not care anymore and want to leave that chapter of my life behind? Like Im still kinda involved in my local queer community, but more like. Its like, not *because* Im queer, but because these people are accepting of me just existing as I am. Just. Aaahhhhhhh IM PULLING MY HAIR OUT WITH THIS

HELLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP 😭😭😭

I think that’s completely normal.

I live my life as a girl. People are surprised when I say I’m trans because like man I don’t like it but like it’s like yeah I don’t care enough to fight over people using pronouns other than she/her for me irl? Like it’s just not worth it and I don’t care that much.

Honestly I don’t really see much of a point in like “coming out” for myself anymore either. Like if it’s a conversation I want to have with someone then cool but do I really give a shit if the random customer I’m ringing out thinks I’m straight and cis? Not really.

Like yeah, different spaces for different things. A part of me is sad that a lot of other queer people probably don’t pick up on me being queer because I don’t really scream “QUEER” when you look at me, and that’s a big reason of why I’m going to cut my hair soon. But like I do think that’s kind of silly of me not feeling like I “look” queer enough. And honestly I know a lot of queer people who are shit and a lot of cishet people who aren’t.

I have a friend who as far as I know is cishet but just by virtue of him being autistic and nerdy he just attracts queer people. It’s like “oh he’s an honorary queer” no he’s just weird and different like the rest of us but in a different way.

There’s a reason queer overlaps a lot with like neurodivergence and physical disability/chronic illness etc. Weird just attracts weird. Who cares what flavor.

Honestly I’d rather have weird cishet friends than pretentious queer people who treat me like shit.

I’ve always said for myself that if a cishet guy was interested in me I would be fine with just being a cis girl in a relationship with a cishet guy. Like I wouldn’t want anyone being like “well he’s in a queer relationship because he’s with a transmasc genderfluid bi lesbian queer person” like nah dude if someone wants to see me as their gf and I’m comfortable with it then cool.

There are also a LOT of gay people who don’t ID as queer or even LGBTQ+. You can be LGBTQ+ whatever and not be “in the community” and you can be cis/het/allo/mono and still “in the community”.

It’s all about breaking down boarders. If YOU don’t care, no one else should care. What you tell any person you’re dating is completely up to you. Obviously some things are more important than others (like hey if you don’t want to disclose you have an STD you don’t have to! But you probably should) but queer status is personal and up for disclosure on a case-to-case basis- or just 100% or not at all.

[heyitsphoenixx]

see here’s the thing: I use he/they pronouns. I’m a nonbinary trans guy. But. I see the way people use she/her for gerard way who also uses he/they pronouns. and I feel seen. bc you all seem to get it. when you use it for him, it’s bc they’re putting on a performance of femininity and additionally they just are that feminine.

I want that. I want people to respect my pronouns as being he/they, but I also want to be called she in the same way. before I ever saw ppl calling g she, I thought of how I wanted to be called she in the same way a drag queen is called she. It’s the gender neutral girl meme. Its a performance. It is also very real bc I’m still a very feminine person in my mannerisms and my speech and my clothes. Everything. I’m just not a girl.

But I’m afab. I can’t exactly explain that to cis people, mainly cishet people, without being accused of faking it. I certainly can’t explain that to my mother who ik is just praying to god I’ll “change my mind” and this will all go away and she can go back to feeling comfortable using she/her with me.

So when I see ppl call gerard she/her out of affection and kindness and love, I can’t express just how safe that makes me feel.

And to people who get upset over the use of she/her for him. I hope they’re coming from a good place. I really do. But my instinct is ‘oh, they aren’t safe for me.’ My instinct is that they have not immersed themselves in queer culture and the only thing they know about it is what they’ve been told: use the pronouns you’ve been told by that person to use. Which in itself is Not a bad sentiment. But it is the most surface level respect you could possibly give someone.

I don’t know gerard, I’ve only read about them. and what I’ve read tells me they identify with the transfem community and women as a whole heavily. they are comfortable with Any pronouns (yes they’ve tweeted that too) and their gender expression and identity has always been feminine and they’ve been open about struggling with it their whole life. They have never rejected femininity and in fact have said they feel free when they can perform with it on stage and just Be that.

So, to me, people who jump down the throats of others calling him ‘she’ as a joke or out of affection are not committed to understanding queer people on an individual basis. they are committed to the appearance of doing so.

[spacelazarwolf]

ALSO, i feel it must be said that its absolutely absurd to get mad at trans men who 're lesbians when its not fucking safe to be olenly trans at all, not even in the queer community. like fuck that shit. if a trans man feels comfortable calling himself a lesbian, then a lesbian he can be, its no one's business but the trans man in question. period

seriously. and it always boils down to either 1. the semantics of what a man is, or 2. what cishets will think, neither of which actually fucking matters. labels exist to help people understand themselves and find others with similar (NOT IDENTICAL) experiences. if you don’t like what label someone uses to describe themself, then simply don’t interact with them. throwing a tantrum about it is just stupid.

[mcl38]

Trigger warning for homophobia and hate. For your last ask….I also think there is a huge difference in where and when you grew up with how it comes to how you perceive these types of coded words. I grew up in the 80s and 90s in rural America when children in my elementary school played a playground game called “Smear the Queer” and said you would go to hell for being gay. I remember the death of Mathew Shepard at the hands of hateful people crying gay panic and being told if you were gay you would die from AIDS and that HIV was Gods punishment. I remember hearing the word queer and twink and faggot being said with hate and derision. I remember being told twink was short for “twinkee” because a twink was “young, dumb, and full of cum”. I remember a limp wrist gesture being a deadly insult to the boys in my school. It took me many many many years to even admit to myself I was gay. I still don’t talk about myself or my partner with the people I work with cause even now I just feel like you never know who is hateful. I can’t imagine someone openly yelling out a gay slur in the street anymore, but I can imagine not getting a promotion at work. I feel very disconnected from the current generation and their use of gay coded language which my whole childhood was used with such hurt. It’s like homophobia went from what I experienced in my youth of being open and in you face to being all these coded cutesy terms. It sure feels like all the same insinuations are all still there just coded differently. Or maybe I’m just old and out of touch and letting my experiences color how I see things now. It’s even hard for me today to accept the reclamation of the word queer by the lgbtq+ community so I know my experience color my perception of thing.

no i think ur absolutely right. its not that ur old and out of touch, i think its that the younger generation is naive and overly comfortable. i have not had an experience nearly as intense as you in my childhood but i think growing up in quite a heavily homophobic country like romania and then moving to the uk was still quite a big culture shock to me. i kind of had the idea as a teen that romania as a whole is a homophobic culture and the west just isn't to that level (mostly out of jealousy for the things i was seeing on the internet lmao) and that perception deffo changed since ive been living here. essentially what i realised was that (especially) men were almost as shitty to women and gay people in the uk as they were back home, just way more covertly, because they knew how to say all the right things. so the only consequence of this for me personally was just that in the uk i am more likely to be negatively surprised by someone who i thought was chill, whereas in romania i was more likely to b positively surprised by someone who seemed like theyd have a horrible reaction to me coming out. but as far as i can tell british people themselves dont clock this at all, and a lot of them will just assume that if theres no overt discrimination happening then theres no discrimination at all. which is kinda scary from my pov but again, like u, idk whether to feel like im just reacting to my own circumstances and projecting

so to bring this back to what u said anon, i too am just naturally suspicious of stuff that seems inocuous in current western pop culture, which is why i too am so weirdly bothered by this new 'mctwink' thing and the greater trend that the portmanteau is a part of. even in terms of the reclaiming of 'queer', which is such a hotly debated topic that its become associated with a lot of other lgbt in-fighting, having been on the internet and in academic spaces enough to witness the sanitisation of the word 'queer' has been quite jarring if im being honest. in an academic space to me it feels like a euphemism with the same vibe as 'differently abled' instead of disabled and 'fluffy / huggable' instead of fat, where the word is said by cishet ppl not out of a genuine care for the community its meant to represent but rather out of a fear of accidentally saying smth wrong by calling the thing what it is (in this case, gay). people are still so goddamn afraid of the word gay in super progressive english humanities academia and its actually quite funny like thats the ONE word no one minds u using but bc YOU have ur own biases to unpack u think its a bad word, ykwim? anyways. this is a lot of digressions

i think there is a point where we have to accept that language changes. im very anti prescriptivist in that i think we should embrace linguistic evolutions and neologisms and all that bc like at the end of the day we don't make the rules, the zeitgeist does. and i worry that holding on to certain meanings and connotations of words after the words kind of stop carrying them is dangerously close to ppl who insist on using slurs or derogatory language because 'when i was young it didnt used to be an insult'. like i used to treat the usage of 'queer' exclusively as derogatory because of its history but at some point i had to look within myself and accept that the ppl whose classes im taking and whose books im reading are NOT using the word as a slur so i should not assume that to be their intent. which ik is a hard pill to swallow - especially hard for someone like u, anon, who also has trauma surrounding those words. idk i think the lgbt & academic communities shouldve been a lot kinder in that specific transition but whats done is done now i guess

so yeah. now we reach the silly little fandom squabble that's really only a tiny fraction of this bigger cultural issue. but as discussed before i DO think people are using these new tiktok terms as well as the repopularisation of the word twink in a secretly kind of derogatory way, maybe even subconsciously. and i do think straight but maybe not entirely masculine people like lando and oscar are somehow the target of that homophobia, but they r not the victim of it. there just is a sort of fetishisation and derision that happens in the process of calling them twinks that has subtle but real repercussions in the wider cultural environment. and to real gay ppl. 🥴 fun stuff

and re: this i think again this is a complicated distinction to make. mostly because this website rly does host the lgbt community in the way that a tiktok algorithm thinking ur gay and shoving other random gay ppl in ur face just doesnt. but bc of the fact that this is a curated community AND bc of the relative decay of tumblr, we tend to think that our community is disconnected from the most, when time and time again 2 or 3 years later the discourse on this website ends up rehashed on more popular social media to varying degrees of bastardisation. so yes obviously part of the thin line ur talking abt is stuff like the idea of lando or oscar actually seeing the things ppl call them, but at the same time it's not like we get away scot free with doing whatever. in the way that in 2019 f1 shipping and rpf were an isolated niche thing and now the formula 1 twitter account is tweeting on main about 'lestappen' even using that specific portmanteau. see what i mean? which is y im complaining on here abt the twinklaren situation, even though on twitter it doesn't seem nearly as prevalent, because i know it's gonna catch up at some point

[silvermoon424]

You are SO right about it being wrong to try to force queer back into being a slur. If you don’t like the word for yourself, that’s okay! But elder queers have been using it for decades and you can’t expect them to stop using it. I love the word queer cause it brings together the community. Too often people try to separate us and pit us against each other.

Using queer as a blanket term helps us protect ourselves too. Some people face so much biphobia, transphobia, etc that it’s safer for them to call themselves queer then to face hyper-targeted backlash they don’t feel like dealing with.

Also, “queer has been used as a slur so we should never reclaim it” doesn’t hold water. Any word for us can be used as a slur when a bigot decides it’s a dirty word. For all of middle school and half of high school I was called a lesbian as an insult along with actual slurs. They where all used against me the same. Does that mean lesbian should be considered a slur because homophobes decided it was a dirty word? Hell NO. These people also forget the way the word Gay was treated in the 2000s to 2010s, it was very much used as an insult right along with queer.

First of all, you sent this a few days ago and I'm sorry for the late response!! I've gotten really bad at timely responses lol

Anyway, seriously!!! So glad you agree with me, bestie. I personally love the word queer because of how inclusive and versatile it is. A lot of LGBTQ+ people don't fit neatly into the boxes of "gay" "lesbian" "bisexual" or "trans," and "queer" is a great blanket term that basically means "not cishet."

As for the whole "queer is a slur" thing, people need to remember that that the LGBTQ+ community has been working its ass off to reclaim that word for decades. Like I said in my original post, elder queers have chanting "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" for decades. "Queer" is also used in academia as an all-encompassing term for LGBTQ+ studies.

If someone personally doesn't want to be called queer because of bad experiences, that's totally fine. But demanding that everyone stops using the reclaimed term and trying to turn "queer" back into a slur is so harmful. So many people have found comfort and solidarity in that word and it's honestly fucked up to say that no one is allowed to use it just because you personally find it offensive. There are so many people who have also been called queer as a slur but have found power in reclaiming it. Why should they have to give it up?

[redheadbigshoes]

Idk if you heard about the US no fly list being hacked, but the person who did it is a self identified bi lesbian that now has thousands of eyes on her publicly with 20k+ followers and counting and huge ongoing exposure due to this & I just know this shit is not going to end well for lesbians & the more these people spread this message that lesbians can like men I just hate being a lesbian & feel that we have no place here anymore. I'm already loathed enough being non-binary yet somehow the shit I have seen & gone thru since coming out as lesbian has been astronomically worse and it keeps getting worse the more people choose to ignore us about our own damn identity. I just know this exposure is gonna get more people identifying as bi lesbian and I'm just done at this point I don't even want to be associated with my queerness anymore or this community which seems bent on hating us. I genuinely fucking hate myself and wish I was dead atp

Oh my I had no idea… Ironic how she is a hacker lol, seems chronically online, like every “bi lesbian” I’ve met. I think what’s most frustrating is that I feel like no matter what we say people (especially “bi lesbians”) don’t care at all about us. I feel completely powerless because I can talk about “bi lesbians” forever and the people who identify as that will never care about how shitty using that label is.

That’s why other people in the community (bisexuals, gays, literally everyone else) should try to give us more support on this issue, because people are way more likely to listen to them than listen to us. Not to mention that label is not only lesbophobic but it’s also biphobic and transphobic. If people understood that I’m sure there would be more non-lesbians speaking up and calling out queers who use that label.

The LGBTQ+ community normalize things that shouldn’t be normalized sometimes. It seems that because we suffer a lot of hate (whether that is homophobia, transphobia, lesbophobia, biphobia…) that a lot of queers think they can do anything just for their own benefit and comfort. And I know people who do that are not only chronically online but stupid af, but it amazes me how they don’t seem to notice some of their behavior is only giving allo cishets more ways of invalidating us and hating us. They’re indirectly siding with people who oppress us and they either have no idea they’re doing that or they don’t fucking care because being chronically online they will not be affected as much as someone who will face hate in real life.

[queercelestialhoneybee]

7,9,12,13,20,21,22 for the Pride asks!! i know this is late and i'm also still figuring out mine, but i wanted to ask these!! happy pride month!!

first of all, thank you for the ask! i love asks and ask games bc it’s a chance for connection — something we’re all striving for 🥰

7. Are you the “token” queer person in your family? A: i would say for the most part yes. i have a step cousin who is gay and it is very nice to hang out with him, and i have a baby cousin who is trans but he is not out to family yet, so i am the token queer of the rest of the family.

9. When did you realize you weren’t cishet? A: i started questioning things during the pandemic. i had a good queer friends around me and i felt comfortable trying things out finally, and i finally felt like i wasn’t performing gender. i could just wear clothes i liked and that was it. so freeing

12. Name some queer artists or bands you like the most. A: i put together a pride playlist for this month and i immediately put “All The Things She Said” by t.A.T.u on there, Betty Who, Queen, Tracy Chapman, Janelle Monáe, and “Revolution Lover” by Left at London (ofc the classic pride stuff is there too and i tried to include as many queer artists as i could)

13. Do you choose to reclaim slurs? Why or why not? A: i do reclaim slurs bc in queer history, there is record of our ppl taking slurs and using them proudly like saying “yeah so what? what are you gonna do about it?” and i think that’s a rlly great mindset to have. i’m not gonna force other ppl to do so, but if anyone tries to police what i call myself, we will definitely have words.

20. Do you feel like you “fit in” with the queer/Pride community overall? A: when i was younger, definitely not. now? more so. it is kinda hard with some of the older generation who don’t seem to “get” nonbinary and asexuality and all that, but that could also just be where i live being more conservative - sometimes it’s hard to tell. i’m still trying to break into the younger (like closer to my age) crowd. i have a couple young queer friends, but it would be nice to have that community. transportation is my main barrier there

21. What message would you give to your younger self? A: fuuuuuuck thats a great question. i mean i know i wouldn’t listen to this, but my message would be: don’t try to conform to what you think ppl want from you. wear what you want, be what you want, do whatever wild crazy shit you want bc literally no one cares! it’s okay! and stop judging out loud other ppl for things you don’t understand. you can write that shit down but don’t say it out loud cuz that shit will get you in trouble

22. How do you usually celebrate Pride month? A: i used to live in NorCal, so i would go to a couple small Pride events throughout June. however, now i’m in the southwest and it’s so fucking hot that we don’t celebrate Pride until October! i’ve been trying to incorporate some sort of pride into my wardrobe every time i leave the house, though.

hey evan, thanks again for the ask! i appreciate you, and i can’t wait to see your answers!!! Happy Pride! 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[cretaceousundead]

Honestly what even is the point in pride month anymore when what used to be the LBTQA+ community is now literally just the oppression club for bullies?

Trans people aren’t welcome. Transphobia is so fucking accepted now, not only from conservatives but even liberals.

Bi people are on ‘thin ice’, as the saying goes. We’re seen as Queer Lite. Only valid if we’re in a same sex relationship, but then we get told we’re basically gay anyway. When someone comes out as bi, let’s say a celeb comes out as bi, their fans celebrate, but it never comes across like they’re genuinely happy that this person felt comfortable coming out, it’s more like they’re just happy the person isn’t straight, cause we all know the only people gays hate more than bi and trans people are cishet people. Gays celebrating a celeb they like coming out as bi has always felt more like a “oh thank GOD they’re not straight” rather than a “I’m so happy for them”.

Recently I’ve seen LGBwithouttheT trending on Twitter allot, but let’s be real if they succeeded in booting the trans people out they’d start trending LGwithouttheB next.

Growing up I saw the community, back then simply called the LGBT community, as simply a community of people who were anything other than straight or cis.

If lesbians and gays ever succeeded in claiming this so called ‘community’ for themselves they’d start fighting amongst each other as well over whose more oppressed. Obviously the general consensus would be that lesbians are more oppressed than gay guys because “US POOR OPPRESSED WOMYN!!”. So then the fighting would begin between lesbians and other lesbians.

White lesbians vs lesbians of colour. The lesbian of colour would be the winner of ‘most oppressed’.

Then it would be lesbian of colour with mental illnesses or trauma ve lesbians of colour without mental illnesses or trauma.

It will never fucking end.

When I was younger, before I even realised I was part of the community myself, I thought it was just a community for people who weren’t cis or straight at a time when those people often didn’t fit in with people who were cis and straight.

But now it’s the oppression club. It’s not about acceptance. It’s not about equality. It’s not about having a community to feel at home. It’s a “you must be THIS oppressed to ride this ride”.

The LGBTQA+ community barely exists anymore. There’s no sense of community anymore. There’s no kindness. There’s just hatred and bullying so honestly what’s the point in pride month? Why is it still a thing, what ‘pride’ are you people talking about? Because I don’t see anyone with anything to be prideful about anymore. Trans people are referring to as ‘things’ and ‘freaks of nature’. Bi people are either gays with internalised homophobia or straight people trying to be special. Gay guys are oppressing lesbians just by being male. White lesbians are oppressing lesbians of colour.

The whole point of the community was that at a time when we actually were hated or the very least not understood by cishet people, we needed a community of our own to feel at home in and safe.

But cishet people are not out biggest enemies anymore, most decent cishet people support us. I, as a bisexual woman, feel more comfortable around my cishet male friend than I did at the most recent pride parade I went to because I spent half the time there wondering how many of the people waving around rainbow flags spend their free time on the internet being transphobic and/or biphobic, whereas I know that my friend doesn’t care about my sexuality and loves me for me and supports me for who I am however I am.

Speaking of cishet people, I’m sick to death of being told by my own so called community that I simultaneously don’t belong here AND that y’all are the only people I can trust because cisheta are my enemy. When I reality the majority of the bigotry I’ve ever experienced has come from gay people not straight people.

It reminds me of radical feminists telling women that men are the ones we should be fearing while they simultaneously abuse us and bully us when we want female abusers acknowledged or when we even so much as say that we don’t hate men.

You use bigotry by cishets as a way to shield yourself from critisism for your own bigotry.

Where’s the fucking pride? Theres no pride. There’s just hatred. There’s no sense of community or belonging. The community doesn’t fucking exist anymore. So what’s the point in pride month. According to the self appointed leaders of the community, A.K.A the people who see themselves as the most oppressed, pretty much nobody actually belongs in the community. And if we don’t belong here then what’s the point in pride month? Who does pride month exist for?

[seikatsu-ga-tsuzuku]

tw // suicide, queerphobia, hate crimes, religious trauma

As a queer POC, I am so glad I didn't grow up religious so I didn't have to deal with the unfettered blatant homophobia from family members. Like that's some extra trauma and baggage I just know I wouldn't have been built for. Might've actually killed myself by now if so. I did realize that I was queer probably later than most ppl nowadays, but I was still and am still living under a parent's roof so I could've been victim to homelessness or violence. Also glad I was never raised to believe queerness was shameful or a sin so I never had to experience internalized homophobia either, or hide in fear in the closet. Never really had to build up the courage or make a big show of coming out either, just mentioned it casually in passing like I'd preferred, and nobody batted an eye. I'm really lucky.

Since I didn't experience firsthand the typical queer struggles growing up, sometimes I feel unfit for including those aspects in my stories, but I still want to write them. It's important to me. The world is still very far from accepting us, especially after the shooting today, and I don't want to write queer stories devoid of these experiences for that reason (not specifically mass shootings but just experiencing bigotry in general). I need to face the ugliness rather than live in a bubble. As much as I love that younger queer people feel more safe and comfortable to be out and open as they are, the atrocities are still out here. We don’t have to cower in fear but we still have to be careful and realistic.

I wanna draw attention to the bad shit in my stories. Not write tragedies, my characters will get their happy endings, because I want to spread the message that there’s hope for us and we can and deserve to be happy, and love will win. But I don't want ppl to turn a blind eye to the struggles that are very much still happening just because it doesn't apply immediately to them. Does that make sense?

Sometimes I think about how someone said “nobody calls gay people the f-slur anymore”. It’s just not true. I hear it all the time. I feel like people are once again becoming bold and blatant in their homophobia. I’ve been experiencing a lot lately. It’s always been normalized in society as a whole, yes, but I feel like things are especially volatile right now. And it’s a scary time to just be.

Someday I want queer people to be able to just be. Until then, I’m not gonna stop writing queer stories to give my community some comfort and strength and enjoyment, and to make our cishet allies, or oppressors, realize how much they may be hurting or negatively impacting us.

[polyamorouspunk]

Ive got a maybe odd question for you. The last maybe 7 years, I’ve gotten very involved in the queer community and really believed felt that I was also queer. But recently, this feels like its shifted? Like I’ve changed a lot in the past few years and I guess my gender magic aligned its self with my agab during that process?

So now, I don’t particularly feel queer. If anything, I think I just have a very unique ability to sympathize with queer people because I’ve been there. And in someways, I still definitely feel more comfortable with and around queers than I do allocishets. So I guess what Im asking is, is it okay to still go to queer places? Is it still okay for me to call it the queer community? I mean, prior to me having this little identity crisis, I was totally fine with cis people doing all these things, but I guess I feel really self conscious about it because it almost feels like I’ve betrayed the community in some way?

I dont know, this is probably really stupid and Im sorry to bother you with it. I just really wanted to hear someone else’s opinion on the matter

I don’t think that’s stupid at all and I don’t think that queer places should gatekeep either. Queer, in another way, simply means “strange and unusual”. I know that’s not how we use it but the point being there is no one definition of queer. I mean there’s the age-old argument that if you’re asexual/aromantic/polyam you aren’t El Gee Bee Tea, but that’s why queer exists, so we don’t HAVE to be. I can understand the feeling of betraying the queer community, but it (shouldn’t) be like that at all! Queer spaces are FOR people to come and go as they please and stay as long as they need. Plus I’m sure plenty of queer people invite their cishet mono also friends to queer spaces, etc. I mean I have friends that probably fall under the queer umbrella but as far as I know don’t actually ID as queer. I don’t think it matters. I think what matters is your intentions, not your labels. Besides, it’s a great place to meet friends either way.

[maevessecretspace]

Welcome!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

- this is a side blog where I don’t want my identity on main to be revealed. I started this to experiment with my gender expression in queer spaces anonymously and see how it feels on me online before trying it in IRL ones. I’m also here to spread positivity to other people in the same boat as me figuring this stuff out, and just positivity for other LGBTQ+ people in general. Because of this, if you try to talk to me on a post I will not answer back because that will reveal my main, if there’s anything you want to say to me that relates back to something I’ve posted before, please send me an ask or a DM.

About me

- call me Maeve, that is not my name in real life. It’s just my alias here, named (obviously) after Maeve from Sex Education cause she’s one of my comfort characters.

- I’m a genderqueer woman experimenting with using she/her and ze/hir pronouns interchangeably in exclusively queer spaces.

- I’m a femme lesbian (femme4everyone but always <3’s butches no matter what! You cannot be a femme without at least admiration for butches babey)

- I’m autistic, for me I see my gender identity is heavily influenced by how I see the world as an autistic woman.

- I won’t reveal my age as it isn’t necessary here, but just know I’m an adult.

- I’m white

- TME

Who can follow?

- this blog is made not just for me, but also for other LGBTQ+ people who are experimenting with a new aspect of their identity in a place that is safe, anonymous and encouraging of exploration. If you resonate with this you are more than welcome here.

- any other LGBTQ+ people are welcome here too, just as long as you are nice and respectful to others.

- cishet allies of the community are welcome too if you want to learn a few things! Once again though, just be kind and respectful to your fellow peers.

- This blog has also lowkey become a crushcore blog so that I can talk about my feelings for my person in a safe anonymous space! If you’re out here yearning you’re more than welcome here too! We need that gay yearning solidarity!

- you can be of any age and follow me! All I ask is that you are respectful of any of the boundaries I have stated.

DNI

- The usual assholes. (Homophobes, TERFS + all other flavours of transphobe, racists, ablelists, transmeds/other exclusionists, “MAPS” etc.) I know a lot of these people probably wouldn’t even want to follow me anyway for multiple reasons, but just in case I need to state it out loud…

- discourse accounts/anyone who tries to start discourse. This is not the space for that! This is a space for positivity

- anyone who demonises butches/masc lesbians and butch/femme relationships.

- anyone trying to flirt with me. If you’re not a man I’m sorry, but my love life is already complicated enough irl and I’m not trying to meet people here. (I already have my eye on someone yada yada yada) If you are a man you’re getting blocked on sight.

- pro-ED/s3lfh4rm is not welcome here! Please take care of yourself offline in any way you can. If you are a recovery blog/any other blog that may occasionally vent about a relapse without condoning it you’re still welcome here.

- kin accounts are more than welcome to follow me, but please do not try to RP with me. I go by Maeve as an alias and may occasionally use Maeve Wiley’s image as expressions/avatars, but I don’t kin Maeve Wiley. This is not a kin account.

- anyone trying to find out who I ‘am when I’m not on this blog will be blocked. I wish to remain anonymous on here at all times.

Thank you! Have a nice day xxx

[barbiegirldream]

There are two types of specific people who hate Dream and you’d think they’d want nothing to do with one another and yet. 

On one hand you have the alt right freaks who hate that Dream ‘gives into cancel culture’ they don’t think he should apologize for anything. The conservative upbringing and past that Dream is ashamed of and has apologized for and says he will continue apologizing for and growing from is what they want him to celebrate. I have seen them call him a cuck for changing his political beliefs and I have seen them call him an sjw and get pissed when Dream says things like ‘welcome to the boys’ to trans fans that ask him to for example. They hate his fanbase for how inclusive and diverse it is. They hate that Dream is trying his very hardest to make sure everyone feels included and safe. So they do their hardest to make them feel unsafe. 

Every fan of Dream I know has been sent hate by an anti that was targeted at their gender, sexuality, race, religion anything we might have mentioned the antis use to mock. And it is because of how much they hate us for not being cishet white men and they know Dream’s replies will be filled with minorities they could attack. People started intentionally sending an old racist clip to Dream’s black fans and when those black fans pointed out it’s from 8 years ago when Dream was 14 and he apologized and has shown growth they swapped to calling those black fans slurs because they couldn’t hurt them like they hoped to. And you see it in the way they call Dream homophobic and ableist slurs and they try to make it known any discussions of his sexuality are not okay. Dream says he likes women and men and gets inundated with homophobic slurs and threats. Dream’s little corner of the internet is one he is actively trying to shape into an inclusive and accepting place and these circle jerks bigots hate that so much. 

And on the other hand you have radlibs who have never had a coherent political belief in their life. They preach some insane purity of thought culture where if you were not born and raised in a leftist environment and have had modern to 2022 beliefs your entire life you are a horrible human being. They actively undermine any activism that real leftists try and do. Dream is a pretty good example of what we’re trying to do. He was raised in the early 2000s in Florida in a conservative household where he was incredibly sheltered. His beliefs as a teenager reflected this. He started Youtube at 19 going on 20 years old. One thing Dream has said he likes about the internet the most is the ability to speak to and hear from people of all different backgrounds all around the world. He’s even said that what he and his fans can do best is listen to each other and learn from each other. Which is true if everyone stays in their own bubbles there is no learning and growth and there is no chance of social and political reform if everything stays the same. 

By age 21 Dream was speaking out for BLM during the protests and speaking out against racism. He was apologizing and holding himself accountable for his past that he has stated again and again he’s not proud of. Dream wants to be held accountable and for us to bring to his attention anything that might be worth addressing because he wants to do better and be better. Dream wants to make people happy and build a community that is safe and accepting and comforting. In June of 2021 despite a very popular lie he was able to raise 37k over the course of the month with various podcasts where he encouraged people to donate. And with one big charity stream at the end 53k more and he donated 50k himself. $140,000 was donated to the Trevor Project (a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ kids). And this is brushed aside real lives of queer people are dismissed by these fake activists who just want to hate Dream. The fake activists are the same ones who looked at Dream’s tweet about liking women and men and called him a liar, who told him he is still straight, who said he will never be accepted into the community. And when Dream was hurt by this and responded to this invalidation he was told to shut up and take the homophobia in silence. 

I am not saying if you hate Dream you’re a conservative or you’re a radlib. What I am saying is it is not normal to dedicate so much of your life to negativity because that makes you naturally more vulnerable to radical ideologies. It is normal not to like people. Sometimes you just don’t vibe with them that’s fine you don’t need to justify it. Or maybe you are a minority who can’t forgive Dream’s past and you don’t want to support him that is completely valid and I am sorry for the hurt you faced. There is so much bigotry in this world I understand not wanting to interact with people who previously used to hold these beliefs. Dream himself said if you can’t forgive him or support him then you can’t, he understands too. But there is no benefit in constantly bringing up old things over and over again to try and insist he hasn’t changed when he has so visibly. And spreading around blatant lies and un-fact checked claims isn’t helping anyone either. You will be happier to just ignore him I promise you.