#these words will always belong to US more than transphobes

[gemsandjunk]

i love you transsexuals i love you transvestites i love you ftms i love you mtfs i love you "wrong" and outdated terminology i love older trans folk so so much

[weareuniqueandimportant]

POWERFULL BLACK WOMAN THAT ISN'T HARMED BY RACISM... SHE IS KIND AND WILL FIX ALL YOUR PROBLEMS... DO YOU AGREE...?

[transmascissues]

silly little pooner... when will you realize that the reason you are oppressed is because of MISOGYNY? because you belong to the FEMALE sex class.

your brain may be gaslighting you, but your ovaries and fallopian tubes will ALWAYS know your truth.

alright, let’s see what we got here…

✅ immediate infantilization/condescension

✅ calling me a slur

✅ trying to explain my own life to me…

✅ …using clickbait-style CAPITALIZATION

✅ egregious misuse of the word “gaslighting”

✅ personification of my organs?? that’s new

anyway, idk what all this talk about a sex class is or who enrolled my gay ass in the female sex class, but you must be new here because you’re talking to the guy who regularly talks about how trans men still experience misogyny. the only difference between what you said and what i’ve been saying is that mine is actually based in the real life experiences of myself and other trans men, while yours is just based on a bunch of transphobic bullshit that happened to be half-right about one thing. something something broken clocks and all that.

nice try, though. you might have more luck next time if you do literally anything other than being weirdly obsessed with a stranger’s body.

[rv3rblog]

what was i made for?

writing smth for ftm!reader bc i am in fact.. ftm (and gay ! and poly yeehaw)

kyle “gaz” garrick x ftm!reader

warnings: maybe ooc, angst/comfort (more angst than comfort), transphobic remarks (not really shown), internalized transphobia, internalized homophobia

word count: 942

(this is lowkey a vent writing piece so.. uhh yeah!)

IT WAS ALWAYS HARD TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO YOUR FAMILY YOUR IDENTITY; they didn’t seem to care enough to take you seriously and it hurt.

It was tiring to explain that you weren’t a girl, that you were never one. That you were a man and you liked them too.

They either didn’t care or didn’t understand. They kept misgendering you, dead named you sometimes too.

Yet, throughout that pain, you didn’t cut them off. You couldn’t find it in yourself to let your family go. Although you should, that’s what your therapist told you.

It was odd. You found it odd to have found a boyfriend who loved you. Someone who saw you like you saw yourself. Someone who came up to you and asked you out shyly because he found you attractive and had heard your giggle and he was smitten.

But.

There was always a but.

Your brain couldn’t comprehend that Kyle truly loved you. That he saw you as a man because surely he’ll leave you as soon as he gets the chance to.

You were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Your therapist told you that it wasn’t healthy of you to hold your insecurities so deep within yourself and not share them with him. You tried explaining yourself but it felt as if your therapist wasn’t hearing you.

Because how do you explain that you don’t feel like you belong? How do you explain that in your mind, in your head, you never felt like you belonged in a gay relationship.

That you felt like a fraud some days.

Maybe you needed to get a new therapist.

No, that wasn’t the issue.

You stayed in bed, curled up. Only getting up to use the bathroom. You didn’t contact anyone all day either.

Your brain was eating you alive.

You felt wrong.

It felt like you didn’t belong. It was an odd thing. Always a mess when you were in your head. You knew Kyle was probably worried, concerned for you.

You didn’t hear the front door opening. You didn’t hear your bedroom door opening either.

You didn’t see Kyle looking at you with sadness in his eyes. Just by your position alone he knew.

You felt the bed shift behind you. His arm hovering over you.

“Darlin?” he whispered. “Can I touch you.”

You nodded weakly and he pulled you against his chest. You started to sob. Your body shaking as you let go of your emotions after being bottled up for so long.

You didn’t belong.

You weren’t a girl. Sure, you understood the pain of misogyny and sisterhood was something special to you but, you weren’t a girl.

Sometimes, you barely felt like a man either. Sure, toxic masculinity was something you saw pre transition and experienced during transitioning but, what made a man a man?

Even when voicing your concerns to your therapist they didn’t seem to understand.

No one understood you, not really.

So when Kyle told you it’s okay. It’s okay darling.

You snapped. You pushed him away and got off the bed. Your eyes were puffy and your nose was runny. You shook your head, constantly repeating it isn't. It isn’t.

Because to you, it wasn’t okay. It would never truly be okay.

Kyle got up to hold you again but you shook your head, raising your hand to stop you. He stood in front of you, frozen in place, unsure of what to do.

You also didn’t know what to do.

For how do you explain to your boyfriend the demons in your head were eating you up? That they were destroying any sense of security you had.

The answer is, you couldn’t but, you tried.

You saw the way his eyes widened slightly when you started rambling. Your therapist's words ringing in your head.

Open up. Let him in. He loves you, let him help you. Let him in.

He shook his head, grabbing your hands and holding them. He whispered soft words of praise, understanding. He let you shake your head. He let you yell that he didn’t understand and that he never would, not truly.

He was trying and that was all that mattered to you at the moment.

You whispered softly that you didn’t feel like you belonged, not in a gay relationship and not anywhere really.

He nodded, encouraging you to talk.

You continued, letting him know that it was okay, if he were to leave you for a real man.

He shut you down there. He told you that he loved you. That to him, you were a real man. You just shrugged at his response, not truly believing him.

He wasn’t upset at you nor was he growing frustrated.

It always startled you, how calm Kyle was in moments your self doubt was loud.

He told you that you were a man. That you always were.

He pulled you into his arms again, his head resting on top of yours and you started to cry again.

Kyle may not understand, not fully but he’s trying. He whispers to you that he will always be there for you. That he loves you so much. How he’s so proud of you for continuing even though you’re struggling.

You let the words sink in. You know that some days are worse than others and today was bad. You melt against him, your hands gripping onto the back of his shirt.

Your body shakes as you sob. He lets your hair and whispers soothing words.

“You’re enough.”

“I’m so proud of you darling.”

For now, for a while, for next time, his words are enough.

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Pao-lin’s Gender Presentation, Gender Identity, & Sexual Orientation

First, I want to give a big thank you to @isleofair for providing me with this scan! Now, let’s get going. :)

Along with Nathan, who I also did a write up on the other day for both gender identity and sexual orientation, Pao-lin is another character who a lot of fans perceive as being queer. This is due to a variety of things, such the mention of her experiencing “amour” (read: a crush) on Karina in the S1 Drama CD #5 (I will link to the full translation in the comments, but here is the segment that mentions Pao-lin’s crush) :

Pao: [Karina looked so pretty as she applied it to my lips. It was almost like she was sparkling.]

Karina: Okay! Wow, it's sooo cute! Just perfect! Let's go!

[Karina runs off]

Pao: [I don't know why, but my heart was pounding like it never had before.]

Agnes: That look on your face...that's "amour".

Pao: Ms. Agnes, you were there?!

Anges: You guys looked so close, I didn't want to spoil the scene by calling out.

Pao: Um, just now...you said "amour"...

Anges: Don't worry so much. You were looking at Blue Rose so intently. Even if she isn't a boy, you can still fall for her, you know?

There are other small things in the series as well, like how Karina was angry with the old man for what he said about Nathan, but Pao-lin was definitely hit harder and was the one that actively spoke out, likely because she can probably relate a bit to what Nathan has experienced. There is also that scene where the girls are all talking (Nathan, Pao-lin, and Karina). Karina makes a (rather transphobic) joke about one of them “not belonging” and Pao-lin immediately thinks Karina is talking about her, rather than Nathan. 

This was meant to be a “comedic” moment, but after The Rising and how they basically had Karina stop making transphobic “jokes” like that in S2 and such, I think we can safely say that this scene isn’t just a throwaway joke, but a serious aspect of Pao-lin’s character. Something that is also touched upon in S1 Ep 9, with the whole baby thing and the barrette, etc.

So, let’s break down the above Hero TV Vol. 2 page on Pao-lin and see what it tells us about her gender presentation and sense of gender identity. We are going to start with the title:

Translation: A unisex girl who uses the “boku” pronoun. 

Okay. So, we want to take a look at three things:

1. The word ユニセックス or “unisex,” checking the Japanese Wikipedia on the word shows that both English and Japanese have the same definition for this word (you need to be careful of that, because English loan words in Japan don’t always share the same meanings). That definition is: a word used to describe something that has a lack of distinct between masculine and feminine. For example, a skirt isn’t considered unisex, because it is still heavily associated with feminine presentation, but something like Pao-lin’s track/body suit from S1 would be. Because that is a style, especially back in the 60s and 70s, that was worn by both men and women and didn’t lean too much in either direction. The same goes for Pao-lin’s haircut in S1, which is at a length that isn’t perceived as being overtly masculine or feminine. 

2. The word 少女 (shoujo) or “girl.” This term is very straight forward. It means girl, doesn’t have any other secondary meaning, outside of like “young lady” or something similar to that. When someone uses this term, especially in regards to marketing for anime and manga, the age range is 7 - 17 years old. What this is telling us though is that the creators (at least at this point in time, about two months post the end of S1) view Pao-lin as a girl. So, her gender identity by the writers and creators is of a cis girl. 

3. Last, we have the fact that she uses “boku,” which is a masculine way to say “I.” However, it should be noted that girls using “boku” isn’t super uncommon and “ore” is perceived as even more masculine, but you can still find some women who might use it. When I lived and worked in Toyama City, the secretary at my junior high school was a lovely old lady who used “ore.” I loved it! T0T

Bringing this back to Pao-lin though, we have to take into consideration that she is an anime character. And a bokukko (literally just a combination of the word “boku” + “ko,” which means “child” but is also often commonly associated with girls) is a very common anime trope. It even has its own TV Tropes page, where it mentions how often these characters are meant to be tomboys. Some other things mentioned in the TV Tropes page are:

Even with Japanese speech patterns becoming more gender-neutral over the years, this would be considered unusual in real life

And:

Although none of this has to be reflected in her appearance, bokukko are usually either flat-chested, athletic, or extremely well-endowed.

Pao-lin does check off two of these, her breast size isn’t as big as Karina’s (something which is discussed in the Drama CD as well, show below) and she is athletic (very focused on martial arts).

Karina: Whoa! Don't pat my boobs all of a sudden!

Pao: If you never eat, why are they so big?

Karina: Are you mocking me?

Pao: Huh?

Karina: [sighs] Just seeing Ms. Agnes's body makes me feel miserable.

Pao: If we're talking about that, I'm not that way at all...

Karina: You still have room to grow.

Pao: But I'm tiny! So short!

Karina: Ah, you thought we were talking about that?

However, this is not something that is totally exclusive to anime and manga. You can find real life Japanese women and girls who use “boku,” and a native Japanese nonbinary (they/them) Twitter user, who lives abroad now, called MishimaKitan wrote about this for one of their Ko-fi posts. I will be linking to their website in the comments. Here is what they had to say about minors (girls) using “boku” in real life and how that is often perceived by cishet Japanese and Japanese society as a whole:

If a person who is perceived as female (vocally and visually) by others who is a prepubescent minor and uses 僕, surrounding adults likely think that they are going through “a phase” (or being a tomboy) because usage of 僕 by girls (and children who are classified as “female” at prepubescent age by others and yet to determine their own gender identities) are quite common in Japan.

They then go on to mention the “bokukko” archetype that we talked about above, and also mentioned this in regards to adults who are perceived as women by others in society using boku:

2. Creating an “I use 僕 as my personal pronoun” public persona and has their own little world, perhaps because they were influenced by anime and/or manga.

So, now lets just recap and see where we might be with Pao-lin’s gender presentation, identity, and sexual orientation.

Gender Presentation: Unisex

Gender Identity (According to the Above Text and as of S1 of T&B): Girl (so likely Female)

Sexual Orientation: (Going Off of the Drama CD): Lesbian (or, at the very least, Not Straight)

Now, let’s continue with the actual text of Pao-lin’s character write-up:

Translation: Pao-lin’s forte is fighting, but she has little interesting in anything outside of that. And her boss tells her, “Be more ladylike!”...

This translation doesn’t tell us too much. But this is obviously talking about the struggle we see Pao-lin having in S1. The series does have her eventually put on a dress and present more feminine: 

But, the series does make it clear that 1. Pao-lin is uncomfortable presenting in this way, a way that is decidedly not unisex, and is very clearly feminine. And 2. Pao-lin is very strictly doing this for her parents. 

Still, I remember when this episode first aired - it left a really bad taste in a lot of the fans’ mouths, mine included. A lot of fans wished that Pao-lin’s story line had been handled differently. We could see Kotetsu’s advice and intentions, but we also hated the whole “make the gender non-conforming girl or unconventional girl look conventionally feminine” trope. 

Of course, then The Rising happened, and that really changed things. But, before we get into that, let’s take a look at the last bit of text:

Translation: She is still young and has an androgynous body. So she is mistaken for being a boy...!?

Here “androgynous” is being used as a descriptive marker (since it has the descriptive marker 的 added to the end of it 中性的 and is being used as an adjective with the inclusion of な + 身体 (body)). It should be noted that 中性 on its own does means (from Wikipedia’s X-gender Japanese page) :

  自分のことを男と女の中間であると認識する人の性自認のこと

Translation: A gender identity of an individual who identifies themself as being between male and female

And it falls under the X-gender umbrella term. All that being said, that specific term isn’t being used with Pao-lin here. 

However, I do think we are seeing Pao-lin existing in a queer space and identity, and not just in a “tomboy phase” or existing solely as “tomboy character archetype” that you often see in other anime and manga series. The reason for that being 1. how T&B chose to handle Nathan’s character in The Rising - that was a very raw and genuine deep dive look into gender identity issues and 2. how they’ve chosen to present Pao-lin in the continuing movie (The Rising) and Season 2. In both of these, they’ve gone harder in having Pao-lin present more masculine. 

Even though Pao-lin has gotten older (by S2 she is 16 or years old), and likely has developed a bit more in regards to her body’s development, we see her designs in The Rising and S2 placing less emphasis on her breasts and her hair cuts are also shorter (more in the masculine presenting shortness range, in a generally speaking “this is how that length is generally perceived” perspective) and styled more masculine-like as well.

That makes me think a lot in regards to Pao-lin’s gender identity, just as how the slight ship teasing between her and Lara makes me think a lot about that Drama CD and Pao-lin likely (possibly) being attracted to girls. But, as far as  official identity goes, we don’t have anything new beyond what we were given in that Hero TV Vol. 2 fanbook and Drama CD (as far as I know). Pao-lin is definitely GNC (Gender Non-Conforming) though, and I would love it if we could get a new Hero TV Volume fanbook soon, one that is updated to include The Rising and S2 content.

[auxiliarydetective]

1. What is your OC's relationship to their family - biological or found?

2. Does your OC act differently around different people?

3. Is your OC a good leader? Do they like to lead or do they prefer to follow?

4. Who influenced them the most on their journey?

5. Do they have any siblings?

For my best friend Kit, of course <3

Yeeesssss, my darling Kit! As per usual, you're getting both Kit versions :)

1. What is your OC's relationship to their family - biological or found?

Biological family? Bad. I mean, 80s!Kit ran away from home, that should tell you how she feels about them. But at least they leave her alone now. As for her found family, Kit would gladly bite a bullet for the A-Team. She likes to bicker at them and gets angry at them sometimes, but she loves those guys and they love her. Her and B.A. are mechanic buddies, and Face always gets a heart attack when he sees her with a mechanic's overall bound at her waist, muscled chest and arms covered in grease, so he's not complaining about getting to spend less time with her. She also picks up some of B.A.'s speech patterns sometimes, and he's an enabler of her violence. Murdock and Kit together get up to the wildest shenanigans, and anyone who those shenanigans are directed at is gonna have a bad time. Hannibal treats her much better than her own father ever did, so Kit respects him a lot more as well and she trusts him. If she's an attack dog, he's holding her leash and gladly letting her sprint at this week's bad guy while he smokes a cigar. The two of them sometimes bicker back and forth, it's fun! And Face? Well, well, well, Templeton Peck... He's head over heels for her and he can't help it. Kit honestly thinks he's a bit of an idiot, but he's her idiot, and anyone who dares to hurt him is gonna get severely hurt themselves.

Much like 80s!Kit, movie!Kit also ran away from home. His first found family was the circus, and, for the first time, he felt like he belonged somewhere. But then, his father found him again, and he decided to join the military, at which point he decided to pretend to be a man because that's just generally more practical in a military setting. Only that he realized he actually liked being a man, and the unexpected gender euphoria transed his gender. That didn't really help with the fear of being discovered though. But that's where the A-Team comes in, because this found family is where Kit feels safe and where he's accepted for who he is. Not only that, but all four of those guys are willing to throw hands at any transphobes in the blink of an eye. Hannibal is Kit's father, and anyone who says otherwise will be quickly proven wrong. If he could adopt the little bundle of anger and energy, he would. He's also one of the few people who can actually manage to calm Kit down, which is an incredible feat. Face is kind of down bad for Kit, but it only takes a few magic words from Face for Kit to be just as down bad for him too. These two are a nightmare to have kidnapped at the same time because they will whine and complain so much and be so dramatic and talk so much bullshit that you'll let them go willingly. Also an absolute battle couple. Murdock and Kit, once again, are absolute chaos. Enemies (and allies, honestly) beware. It takes a Colonel Hannibal Smith to keep these two in line, or at least to channel their chaos into something useful. B.A. and Kit, once again, are besties. If Murdock is the chaos sibling, B.A. is the cool sibling. These two are usually just chilling, but if you provoke them to hit things, they will hit things.

2. Does your OC act differently around different people?

Both of them, yeah, because the A-Team are almost the only people that both Kits don't hate. Also, movie!Kit only makes trans jokes if he's alone with the A-Team, for obvious reasons.

3. Is your OC a good leader? Do they like to lead or do they prefer to follow?

I'd say both of them probably aren't, no. They either work alone or have to follow others, because they're not good at planning. They both don't like being ordered around, but they listen to Hannibal on a base of respect.

4. Who influenced them the most on their journey?

Their fathers, hands down. Both as in their biological fathers and as in Hannibal, for movie!Kit even more so than for 80s!Kit.

5. Do they have any siblings?

Do Murdock and B.A. count? But biological, I actually don't know. I feel like they don't, but they probably have some cousins that they used to be close to but left behind when they ran away from home.

Thanks so much for your ask! Have a wonderful day! <3

Taglist: @starcrossedjedis @oneirataxia-girl @daughter-of-melpomene - let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!

[moonshinedyke]

Pinned Post:

-Asteria/Eris (+)

-Mixed Black/Indigenous

-Intersex genderfluid multigender transmascfem

-Alloaro bisexual lilaen lesbian.

-Stud, butch, (bull)dyke, faggot, tranny, freak, bulldagger

This is my blog for venting and just talking about bigotry. I didn't want to clog my main too much with these types of posts since a lot of them involve discoursey topics. This is not a blog that I plan to use to argue with other people under most circumstances. I'm using this blog to vent about my experiences, no matter how big or small they are. Check below the cut for some of my beliefs.

Just because I reblog from someone doesn't mean that I agree with everything they say and do. What it DOES mean is that I think they made a good point in that specific post they made.

-Many white queers have a problem with using their queerness to try and avoid accountability for their white privilege and racism. There is a HUGE racism problem in both online and real life queer spaces.

-Gender criticals are enormous pieces of shit with a very flawed view of sex and gender.

-The hyperpolicing of lesbianism on here is super lesbophobic. Stop obsessing over lesbians not conforming to your neat little cis fem white woman centric boxes. Let lesbians have some gender fuckery without frothing at the mouth.

-Bi lesbians/gays do not hurt mono lesbians/gays by existing. We are not responsible for homophobic cishets harassing you guys and saying that we are is violently biphobic. Stop being a narrowminded cishet bootlicker, assholes.

-Straight passing privilege does not exist. Invisibility and erasure is not a privilege.

-Lesbian separatism as an ideology is transphobic, biphobic, lesbophobic, and racist. If you defend lesbian separatism or pretend that it was even remotely okay then you are a bad person, straight-up.

-Intersexism is rampant in trans spaces. We are not your transition goals, we are not your gotcha to use against TERFs, and we are not nonbinary icons by default. The diversity of the intersex experience is unfathomable because of how many intersex conditions there are and how intersex conditions are viewed across the globe.

-Slur discourse is pointless at best and a straight-up psyop at worst. Let a bisexual call themself a dyke, let a transmasc call themself a tranny, let a lesbian call themself a faggot. I promise that it's not hurting you when other queer people reclaim slurs. Quit your victim complex.

-Butch and femme have always belonged to the whole queer community and have NEVER been lesbian exclusive. Denying that is spitting on ballroom culture- in other words, you're racist and transphobic as hell. Furthermore, Black non-lesbians have more claim to butch and femme than ANY white lesbian does. Read more here. It's a Carrd, yes, but it's a Carrd with actual sources, which is more than you can say for literally every Carrd written by exclusionists that you all choose to use anyways.

-Queer is not a slur and it's up to you to avoid people who use the word if it makes you that uncomfortable.

-Flag discourse is ridiculous. If you hate a flag that badly, just don't use it.

-You don't owe anyone an explanation for why you blocked them.

-I'm very wary of anyone who is against non-traumagenic systems. I don't really understand endo systems or other non-traumagenic systems, but I've seen tons of fakeclaiming and racism coming from the anti-endo community, so I tend to avoid them. I'm not interested in getting into syscourse and I generally keep my system life private.

-Well-researched self diagnosis is good, especially if you can't afford to get a professional diagnosis. Ultimately, you are the one actually experiencing what's in your brain.

-Shipping discourse is ridiculous and literally all of you need to go outside.

-Anti-transmasculinity as a form of oppression exists and to say otherwise is antiblack and transmisogynistic, since it often goes in hand with transmisogynoir.

-Nonbinary people do not owe you androgyny, let alone any change in appearance once they come out as nonbinary.

-Nonmen and nonwoman are not just terms that are super hostile to multigender people, they're also racist due to their hostility towards Two-Spirit people as well as how they've been used to degender Black people.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

September 23 is the 20th annual Celebrate Bisexuality Day, also referred to as Bi+ Visibility Day. The original goal for today was to step away from activism and going on the offensive—proving that we exist or begging for inclusion—and simply feeling celebrated. In spite of this, we keep using today to educate because so many myths about bi+ folks persist. And we internalize them. Only 28% of bisexual folks are out to their loved ones compared to 71% of lesbians and 78% of gay men. Very few of us feel like we belong within the LGBTQ+ community. And so, part of celebrating bisexuality involves liberating ourselves from stereotypes, assumptions, and disempowering narratives.

It seems that no matter how we identify, no matter the words we try to reclaim or the labels we use to affirm ourselves, there is always criticism. We are perceived as greedy fence-sitters, incapable of monogamy, too confused a pick a side, and never queer enough.

Pop culture tells us that bisexuality looks a particular way—a 50/50 split in attraction between men and women, which therefore suggests that we inherently hold binarized ideas about gender. We are pressured to identify as pansexual or otherwise be seen as transphobic. While some bisexual folks do define themselves as being attracted to men and women, there are still so many more who are attracted to many genders or all genders. Bisexuality encompassed non-binary attraction long before the modern usage of pansexual was even coined.

Bi+ identity doesn’t sit at the midway point of a sexuality scale that travels from straight to gay. Some bisexual people lean to one side, some occupy primarily LGBTQ+ spaces, some shift between different labels throughout their lives (and even shift back). There are bi+ folks who claim that gender expression is important to who they find attractive and there are some who describe themselves as attracted to souls, not gender expression.

We aren’t fence-sitters because there isn’t actually a fence. There aren’t two sides to sexuality.

Some bisexual folks are monogamous, some aren’t. No matter how a bisexual person loves, it’s valid and worthy of celebration. But it’s important to note that bisexuality and polyamory are not synonyms. We’re treated as if our entire identity is a performance for men that requires a male and female relational counterpart. But you can be bisexual and completely satisfied dating one person. You can be bisexual and dating multiple people of one gender. The point is that every bisexual person is unique.

We are not too confused to pick a side. Rather, we have chosen our side and nobody believes us. We aren’t fence-sitters because there isn’t actually a fence. There aren’t two sides to sexuality. It’s a spectrum.

These harmful stereotypes about bisexual identity have real-life consequences. We often hear that bi+ folks are only “half gay” and therefore do not experience marginalization to the degree that gay and lesbian folks do. This is used to dismiss the impacts of homophobia and biphobia in our lives. It positions us as a hyper-privileged community rather than one struggling to be heard, seen as valid, and taken seriously. When we describe our experiences, it almost feels like the response is: “Stop whining.”

According to the Human Rights Campaign, bi+ youth struggle with a lot of the same issues as their lesbian and gay peers, and then some. They reported lower levels of family acceptance and social support, less awareness of safe spaces in which to learn self-acceptance, lower levels of happiness, and were less likely to “come out” than their gay and lesbian peers. The largest group of LGB youth experiencing homelessness identify as bisexual.

Adult bi+ folks report higher rates of employment and workplace discrimination, difficulties seeking immigration relief, physical violence, and worse mental and physical health disparities. Bisexual folks, and especially bisexual women and femmes, face shockingly high rates of sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Forty-six percent of bisexual women reported that they’d been raped compared to 13% of lesbian women and 17% of heterosexual women.

Queerness is not measurable, but if it was, we would still be queer enough.

This is not about campaigning to be The Most Marginalized; it’s about facing the reality that all sexual minorities have to navigate certain biases and discrimination. It’s about acknowledging that lesbian and gay folks are guilty of those same biases and participate in that discrimination, as research has shown for years. The double discrimination bisexual folks face informs bisexual mental health disparities and struggles to find social acceptance and safe spaces. How, then, are we still forced to defend our right to complain, to take up space?

Even though 29% of bisexual youth reported frequent verbal harassment and slurs, we are still often told that we cannot participate in the reclamation of those slurs the way gay/lesbian folks can. Even though bisexual women and non-binary folks have always used words like butch and femme to describe themselves, we still hear that we should use alternatives like doe, tomcat, and stag, or otherwise be seen as lesbophobic. These narratives participate in keeping us excluded from the wider LGBTQ+ community. They are subtle forms of gatekeeping.

Queerness is not measurable, but if it was, we would still be queer enough. I am tired of proving my queerness to others. I am exhausted when I think of how many sexual experiences I collected—experiences I’m not sure I even wanted—just to say that my identity was real. Heterosexual folks are free to identify as such before making their sexual debuts; bisexuals should be free to do the same. Sexual orientation can describe behavior to a degree, but it is also about our capacity for attraction and how we see ourselves. It’s deeply personal. And it’s offensive that other people think they know us better than we know us.

This Celebrate Bisexuality Day, I hope the awareness of these stereotypes and the wisdom that they do not reflect our reality is empowering for bisexuals. I hope it reminds us that we deserve to take up space, that we belong in the LGBTQ+ community, that this label is valuable and important. We still have a long way to go in combating bi-erasure, bi-invisibility, and biphobia, but today is not about that. Today is about knowing who we are, and knowing that who we are is okay.

[birklurks]

Hmm... Been getting quite a few messages asking me if I have files/downloads of leafygirl fics, jinnyskeans fics, ila-moon fics, etc. 

Sorry folks - no I don’t. 

That is because before I was officially reformed:  I always figured that, you know - it was wrong to just take things from someone that were not explicitly given to me, or that I didn’t pay for (I actually learned this lesson early on while attending my public school kindergarten: this idea that I can’t just walk up to someone and take whatever I want from them when it doesn’t belong to me). 

I know, weird right??

But that’s why I never downloaded fics or fanart unless I commissioned the fanwork in question and paid for it.

I crazy regret that now. How could I have been so stupid?!!?!!

Because as tumblr has taught me: "Fics belong to everyone”, not just the writers who put in all of the actual hard work required to create their transformative stories.

I have finally learned that as a consumer, I’m entitled to whatever the fuck I want, when I want it, and I deserve to have whatever media I want to consume in whatever medium conveniently served to me on a silver platter for absolutely nothing in return. 

Anything less is ABLEIST, CLASSIST, ABUSIVE, OPPRESSIVE (and probably also racist, queerphobic, transphobic, fatphobic, insert whatever ____phobic, too!!)

Remember: the great part about owning something is being able to do whatever you want with it. 

And that means, fan artists and fic writers can fuck right off with whatever boundaries or guidelines they try to implicitly or explicitly set when it comes to their work product. 

Putting extraordinary time and effort into something doesn’t mean shit. Who cares if I don’t put any hard work into creating whatever fanfic or fanart?? Doesn’t change the fact that I STILL OWN IT. 😤

Fics belong to everyone, so who the fuck do these writers and artists think they are to tell us what we can or cannot do with OUR art and stories??

That’s some bullshit.

I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT. 

This is so much better than the worldview I used to hold (and it’s exponentially easier and way more convenient for me, too). 

This way, I get to have whatever I want, as much as I want it, whenever I want it, HOWEVER I want it - without lifting a finger or otherwise doing a damn thing. 

And I can immediately shut up anyone who disagrees by calling them an “ableist”, a “classist”, a “racist”, a “fascist” or [insert whatever word to describe a terrible social justice ENEMY 🤬].

This is awesome!! 

FREE DOWNLOADING SPREE HERE I COME!!!

Because what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too. 🙃🤡  

[vaspider]

I have a question, and you seem to be very good at explaining things. My understanding is that transfemme/transwoman/femme? are all the same, and mean someone who was assigned male at birth, and currently identifies as transgender. And the same for transmasc/transman/masc. Just, yknow, the other way around. Is that correct? Or am I getting my terminology wrong? I've always been kinda shakey on that, but wasn't sure who to ask without seeming rude, or like I was mocking them.

"Femme" is a word with multiple meanings. It can mean:

"Woman" - since it's just the word 'woman' in French, and this is where all of the other meanings come from.

"A femme lesbian, that is, someone who fits the 'femme' dynamic or presentation within a butch/femme relationship, or simply on their own." - This is regardless of actual gender, pronouns, cis, trans, whatever. Butch and femme in this context come to us from Polari, which is a theater cant from the UK commonly used by Travellers, theater people, sex workers, and queer folx (and all the intersections thereof). The butch/femme dynamic in lesbian (and gay!) relationships and communities goes back at least seventy-five years. This has way more context to it than I can cover in this, but, like, if you look at movies like Paris Is Burning or read any of the older lesbian zines, you'll see many many examples.

"A transfeminine person, that is, someone who was assigned male at birth and is moving in a feminine direction with their transition, or presents feminine rather than masculine OR a person who presents feminine regardless of gender." - 'Femme' is often used as a catch-all term for anyone who is "femme of center" when discussing gendered issues. This can include cis women, femme non-binary people regardless of gender at birth, binary trans women, and many other varieties as well.

You'll sometimes see "women and femmes" used to describe who belongs in a particular space, but this is falling out of favor, thankfully, as it was often used as a low-key misgendering of AFAB non-binary people and trans men. What people usually meant by that is "people with vaginas and also trans women I guess," and it ended up with a sort of 'woman lite' implication for the word 'non-binary' and excluding non-binary people who didn't present feminine enough (usually meaning 'they have a dick and are non-binary'). The whole phrase is a mess and I'm glad we're moving more toward talking about "marginalized genders."

My wording on this may not be perfect, and it may not match every single use of femme as other people understand it -- and I'm sure I've forgotten some usages of it. The point is that it's a contextual word. What it means often depends on the conversation at hand, who's having the conversation, what community they're part of (whether that's the lesbian community, the queer community, the trans community, what region or country they're from... ), etc. If you're confused by someone's use of 'femme' contextually, it doesn't hurt to ask for more information. (Though I would avoid saying things like 'define femme' bc that's often the sort of thing that TERFs and the baby-TERF exclusionists do, and you may come off unintentionally as one of them. Asking 'hey, I know this word has lots of contextual different meanings, would you mind clarifying for me' is probably better.)

That's one thing, honestly, I think we need to get a lot better at as a community -- and here I know I'm going on a tangent -- recognizing that a lot of our words are contextual, lots of them don't have single, fixed, universally-recognized meanings, that the US isn't the single defining experience of queerness and other countries use other terms which are as correct as ours, and that even regionally there are lots of different terms or slightly different definitions. This sort of dogmatic 'there is absolutely only one definition, and it's mine, and I'm going to redefine your experience and your identity if it doesn't fit my definition' is something I've seen far too much of lately, especially from younger queer folx.

I know it's like, really tempting to want to have singular rigid definitions for every word, but that doesn't fit people's experiences of gender or sexuality, and the trend I've seen toward literally telling people "you are not X, your experience doesn't fit X, you are Y," is some nasty-ass stuff and it really needs to stop. I've seen it most often with younger lesbians telling older (in some cases decades older) lesbians "you're wrong, you're bisexual/pansexual, you're not a lesbian," but I've also seen it with gender, people telling others what their gender is, and that's the shit that TERFs and other transphobes do, we can't be doing that to each other.

Anyway, femme means a lot of things, depending on context. Ask people if you're not sure. And before I hit post on this, let me make clear that I don't tolerate discourse around whether butch and femme are "lesbian exclusive" terms. They are not, they never have been, and if someone comes into my notes trying to start that old bullshit up again, they will not get the serotonin of a reply from me. They will get blocked without response.

[scriptlgbt]

TW: Transmisogyny, and mentions of sexual assault

Ask

Hi, I'd like to mention my ask is on sexual assault.

The victim (f) and abuser (m) are both cis and straight and the victim now shys away from men. But how would she see people who are not cis? Could she see a trans woman as an abuser if she knew she had a penis aka has the body part that the abuser used? How about a trans man? Or another gender identity? Especially if gender identity is not easily seen or when people don't pass as their wanted* gender. Say, the victim says she needs a woman's comfort and approaches a nonbinary character who uses male* pronouns, I don't know how to deal with that. I don't want to make it sound cissexist or transphobic but still be able to validate abuse triggers and circle of comfort. Otherwise my only solution is to put all non cis people or even cis people who are nonconforming and don't present as cis out of scences with the victim, but isn't that cissexist?

Answer

I first need to link our Writing Trans Characters: Corrections of Common Mistakes post, as you've made a couple of missteps when it comes to wording. I have put red asterisks beside the issues, if it helps any. But just in case, the first one should either just say "their gender" or "their actual gender" rather than "their wanted gender" and the second asterisk is covered in the linked post.

First, I think you are asking about how one hypothetical individual would respond when this isn't necessarily the purview of this blog. Everyone responds differently to sexual assault. Not all responses are healthy coping mechanisms. And some people get PTSD and some don't. (And contrary to popular belief: the presence of PTSD is not always 1:1 with the severity of the event. But I digress.)

I can try to advise on writing this in a respectful way. I don't think people who aren't trans women specifically are qualified to write a version of this story that involves genitalia as being the factor for safety. It is specifically trans women who are constantly seen as predatory and whose genitals are seen as disqualifying them from experiencing oppression. Despite trans women facing some of the highest rates of sexual violence out of any other demographic. It would be most responsible for you as a writer to write this character's aversion to be around people who directly remind her of her assailant. Personally, I do double takes around people with the hair cut and colour of my rapist. For different reasons, I also can't deal with people when they are expressing anger, especially if it involves some kind of angry interaction with their environment, like kicking a wall or slamming down a keyboard or mouse. My reaction is to become small or initiate a fawn response, especially if I can't flee. I'm probably projecting with this one but for other survivors that I've talked to, a lot of our trauma is more about the circumstances than people who fit a whole category that our rapist belongs to. Things like a certain style of bench, certain events, florescent lighting. Being alone with just one other person you don't know very well in a situation can also make things harder. I think it makes sense to be skittish around men after experiencing violence from them. BUT It does not makes sense to group an exceptionally marginalized group of women in with them, in a fictional story you are writing. There's just too much baggage to address there, too many things tied up in that which are harmful (explicitly transmisogynist) when put in public.

It also goes into committing sexual harassment to actually ask and assume the genitalia of people you interact with. That's not information everyone has the right to, regardless of what they've been through.

Trans women are targeted by narratives that claim their bodies are somehow dangerous. Often it revolves around their genitalia, regardless of what their genitalia actually is, regardless of who they are, regardless of their experiences as survivors (when applicable, which is at least 47% of the time). That's a very specific, very transmisogynist belief. It is specifically used to justify taking their lives.

I am not trying to deny that trauma can be illogical. But it is unhealthy, maladaptive, and oppressive, to use trauma in order to marginalize people. Writing this into something fictional is dangerously irresponsible and will most likely be used as transmisogynist propaganda. Even if you mean well. It is an attitude which people use to rationalize policies which criminalize trans women and put them in extremely dangerous situations just for existing. This sort of thing has been used to rationalize hate crimes and, in cases where transmisogynoir has come into play, lynchings.

For these reasons among others, I would find a different way to write your character's triggers. Or else get a trans woman survivor to co-write these scenes. I do not trust that anyone outside of that group could write this in a way that is remotely respectful.

- mod nat

*Note: I am TME, but a TMA person was involved in sensitivity-reading this answer.

[elamarth-calmagol]

Did Tolkien deny the existence of transgender elves?

The footnote

I mentioned this in my big LACE post, but I thought it needed separate post.  I don’t think I even noticed this the first time I read LACE, but I was checking for a quote later when I came across it.

This comes up in the section about names and the way elves will go by different names at different points in their life.  Tolkien then writes a footnote about the way that elves’ personalities or preferences change throughout their lives.  Within that footnote, there’s a second note that Christopher Tolkien found on another page in the second version of LACE that he thought fit best there.  And that note goes:

According to the Eldar, the only ‘character’ of any person that was not subject to change was the difference of sex.  For this they held to belong not only to the body but also to the mind equally: that is, to the person as a whole. [...] Those who returned from Mandos, therefore, after the death of their first body, returned always to the same name and to the sex as formerly.

Speculation

So what do we do with this?  Does the “body but also to the mind” mean that there can’t be a conflict between the two?  So there can’t (for instance) be elves with a traditionally male body who are female in mind/soul?  If there can’t be conflict between the two, could there still be nonbinary elves, as long as they are also intersex?

Or are “trans male” and “trans female” separate genders from “male” and “female” (as it is in some traditional cultures)? So if someone has (for instance) a traditionally female body and a nonbinary mind, they’re just cool with it because both of those things together define who they are?  Then a trans woman wouldn’t just a woman, the way it is in modern Western culture, she’d be a trans woman, and she wouldn’t say she’s a woman without saying she’s trans.

Or are there trans elves, it’s just that they go back to the same bodies when they're reborn?  (This would be strange if elves are re-born in bodies based on their own sense of self, which seems to have been Tolkien’s last word on the subject.)  If they'd had surgery in their first life, would they go back to their pre-surgical or post-surgical state?

Or does all of this just mean that their gender can’t change over time (i.e. gender isn’t fluid for them)?

My personal favorite theory is that elves have enough control over their body that it will grow up to match who they really are, regardless of how they were born.  Then that’s their body, and it matches their soul, and they’ll just be reborn like that without having to go through growing up again.

Did Tolkien know what he was saying here?

Did he even know about trans people? Maybe.  As I mentioned, a lot of cultures traditionally have more than two genders.  Native American two-spirits and Thai kathoey (hopefully not an offensive term?) come to mind. England, of course, is one of the reasons that changed, when they took over half the world and tried to force their morality on all those places.  But transgender rights in western Europe isn’t as new as we tend to think.  The first gender clinic existed in Germany in the 20s and 30s.  Gender confirmation surgery already existed.  (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/)  The Nazis completely destroyed it, of course, and set us back decades. But Tolkien hated the Nazis.

And honestly, I don’t think he would have bothered to write that if he didn’t know that trans people existed.  So is Tolkien transphobic?  Maybe just quietly transphobic, the same way he’s quietly racist and xenophobic.  Maybe he couldn’t imagine his perfect and holy elves being trans, not because it’s bad for Men, but because he just doesn’t see it as compatible with perfection.  I don’t know.  It’s a lot of speculation to get out of a few sentences.

So what?

It’s a side note in a footnote in a noncanonical essay that is (as I said in my other post) probably extremely biased.  Should we bother discussing it?  I don’t know.  I wrote this because I want to hear other people’s opinions, not because I think I can come up with a solution.  So what do y'all think?

[richincolor]

Today is Rich in Color’s eighth anniversary! Can you believe it?

We’ve read so many fantastic books over the years, so our bloggers compiled a list of eight books that we wanted to recommend to our followers. These books are ones that we love and that have stuck with us through the years. How many of them have you read?

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books

In an unforgettable new novel from award-winning authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galuzzi, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

But there were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline Dancing Cat Books

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the “recruiters” who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing “factories.”

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore Feiwel & Friends

Love grows such strange things.

For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.

The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.

Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert Disney-Hyperion

Danny Cheng has always known his parents have secrets. But when he discovers a taped-up box in his father’s closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family, he realizes there’s much more to his family’s past than he ever imagined.

Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family’s blessing to pursue the career he’s always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words. Harry and Danny’s lives are deeply intertwined and as they approach the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook their friend group to its core, Danny can’t stop asking himself if Harry is truly in love with his girlfriend, Regina Chan.

When Danny digs deeper into his parents’ past, he uncovers a secret that disturbs the foundations of his family history and the carefully constructed facade his parents have maintained begins to crumble. With everything he loves in danger of being stripped away, Danny must face the ghosts of the past in order to build a future that belongs to him.

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan Little, Brown Brooks for Young Readers

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.

Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

Pride by Ibi Zoboi Balzer + Bray

Zuri Benitez has pride. Brooklyn pride, family pride, and pride in her Afro-Latino roots. But pride might not be enough to save her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood from becoming unrecognizable.

When the wealthy Darcy family moves in across the street, Zuri wants nothing to do with their two teenage sons, even as her older sister, Janae, starts to fall for the charming Ainsley. She especially can’t stand the judgmental and arrogant Darius. Yet as Zuri and Darius are forced to find common ground, their initial dislike shifts into an unexpected understanding.

But with four wild sisters pulling her in different directions, cute boy Warren vying for her attention, and college applications hovering on the horizon, Zuri fights to find her place in Bushwick’s changing landscape, or lose it all.

The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1) by Roshani Chokshi Wednesday Books

Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin will need help from a band of experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian who can’t yet go home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in all but blood, who might care too much.

Together, they’ll have to use their wits and knowledge to hunt the artifact through the dark and glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the world, but only if they can stay alive.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender HarperCollins

From Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle….

But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

[politalysis]

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

[kingofpeacows]

In honor of pride month, here are some things that are biphobic that I still see happening!!

headcanoning a character attracted to both men and women as gay or lesbian (additionally, saying a canon bi character is gay/lesbian because of comphet/heteronormativity)  

your bi headcanons only consisting of the ‘flirtatious’ character or the ‘womanizer’ in regards to men

headcanoning a canon bisexual character as literally anything other than bisexual

telling bisexuals what their identity is when trying to define pansexuality or any other sexuality including more than one gender (it is not your place to tell bisexuals what their identity means, if your definition of anything includes ‘as opposed to bisexuality-, etc etc’ please word it differently. Bisexuality is different to every person)

telling bisexuals that they should have a preference

telling bisexuals that their identity is transphobic/excludes trans people

saying that non binary people aren’t included in bisexuality (they are and always have been)

people straight up not believing bisexual women when they come out, they don’t owe you ‘proof’

seeing bisexuals as gay lite or ‘spicy straight’ when they’re in a relationship 

telling bisexuals they don’t belong at pride when they’re in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender

saying straight relationship or gay relationship, bisexuals in a relationship are always bisexuals

faulting bisexuals for contributing to “heteronormativity”

saying the homophobia bisexuals face is less than that of gays or lesbians

the idea of “straight passing” (newsflash: straight people aren’t gonna like us either)

I am white and not a woman, so if there’s anything you want to add on in regards to intersectionality, please please do! or anything else you want to add on as well.

[bubbelpop2]

Gay and Tumblr etiquette: a guide

This is a compilation of rules that keep the lgbt community a safe space for all. A lot of the older gays are getting sick of seeing recycled bigotry, and we’re here to tell you what the general opinions are in the real world. Some of the content in this post contains not necessarily gay content, but cay culture. Gay culture is all about the lack of heteronormative toxicity, the promotion of critical thinking, teaching the youth that they need to rely on themselves and friends instead of the government, because the government doesn’t really care, and the abolition of White Christian ethics being forced onto people.

You need to read this essay. [x] You need to know your history. It’s important, you need to know it. This is the baseline you need to know. ACAB.

If you want to know more than just the baseline: [ here ]

Don’t debate transphobes, racists, or n@zis. Don’t debate them, block them. Do not reply. You are giving them a place to express themselves. This emboldens closeted racists and transphobes. Don’t do it.

If you disagree with someone who isn’t any of the above, carefully consider their argument. Could they be right? Is it a lesson that you’re just not ready for? Block them, ponder their words, and consider your stance on the subject. Only a fool walks away from an argument more convinced than ever that they are correct.

Pedophiles are not in the lgbt community. Pedophilia is not a kink nor is it a sexuality. It has been proven to be a mental illness in which the brain is shaped and ordered incorrectly. 

“Queer” Is not an inherently harmful term. It is a term that the community has reclaimed, and many people identify as queer. By calling someone who is queer “gay” or policing THEIR right to be called queer, you are erasing history. Queer is a term that people have used in the lgbt community since before stonewall. Queer isn’t your term to take away, especially if you’re not queer. 

“Gay” Is an umbrella term. If someone LIKES being called “gay”, no matter what the complex rules of their attraction are, respect it. Don’t insist that they belong in a certain box according to your definition of different sexualities. 

If someone is questioning their sexuality, don’t push them. The point is for them to FIND OUT what they’re attracted to, and what they like best. Whether they turn out to be gay, straight, bi, or ace, leave them the hell alone. Especially if they’re a kid.

“Terfs” used to be called “political lesbians” because people who were not wlw would take over lgbt spaces and advocate to “kill all men” and would point actual wlws against men. This is terrible. Bisexual wlws deserve to express their sexuality fully without judgement. Trans lesbians deserve to express their gender without judgement. ANYBODY who is amab or trans, or attracted to amab or trans people, deserves a safe place to express themselves. We got rid of these “political lesbians” and stopped them from poisoning the minds of bisexuals and trans men. We can do it again. 

(” queer is a slur “ was started by terfs. stop saying it if you’re not a terf.)

Nonbinary is not a fad. Nonbinary people have always existed. It is not new, and you are not allowed to police other people’s gender.

There are a lot of things to gender as a whole. Your gender, what you identify as, is a large part of your identity. Some people identify as female, some people identify as male, and some people identify as neither, both, or any combination of any other genders! This may be confusing, but that’s okay. You don’t need to completely understand someone’s gender, and someone may not even understand their own! What IS important is that you respect their gender expression.

Gender expression is mostly just two things. Pronouns, and Presentation. Pronouns (He/She/They/Xhey/Ect) are for the person who has them. Pronouns don’t have to “match” your gender. Your presentation doesn’t have to “match” your gender, either. It’s all about your comfort. You don’t have to understand someone’s gender identity, but you DO have to respect their name and pronouns. Always.

Mogai is a great term, even if it’s not popular. Mogai is an all-inclusive term for all people who are not allocishet.

Being ace does not make you straight. Being aro does not make you straight. Straight = You are actively and wholly attracted to the opposite gender. It is the lack of attraction to the opposite gender that includes them in the community, as well as the constant harassment from both straight and gay people for being “broken”

“Femboy” Is not an inherently harmful term. Calling a trans woman a “Femboy” without her permission is. People who use the term to refer to themselves, or to refer to people who are comfortable with the term, are not infringing upon anybody. You need to stop taking away terms from gay people because of what transphobic pieces of shit do. Yes, shitty transphobes refer to trans women in porn as femboys. This doesn’t mean that who the term was ORIGINALLY meant for, which is, gay feminine men, can’t use it to describe themselves. This is far too similar to “queer is a slur” for me to change my mind on this. A lot of people identify as femboys, and use the term for their comfort, leave them alone.

Truscum and Trumeds are gross. Their entire personality is built off of policing other trans people’s identities. They want trans people to act like they’re cis, and conform to heteronormative societal standards. Their opinion is that it’s flamboyant trans people’s fault that cis people are transphobic. Which is simply not true. Transphobes are Transphobes because they’re bigots. It is never, in any shape or form, the fault of the oppressed for being oppressed. Ever.

Your love for the oppressed should come before your hatred of the oppressor. This does not mean that you expressing your hatred is “performative” in any way. You’re allowed to hate the oppressor, verbally, and often, so long as you, personally, know which is more important.

It is not okay to call people out. Calmly talking to people, or simply blocking them, is best. It is not okay to send hate anons. It is not okay to interact with bigots willingly. It is not okay to do something that is mean-spirited.

Be gay do crimes. (As in, fuck the police, they’ve always been against every minority. Including us.)

Disabled people are beautiful and loved. All gay spaces should be accessible.

The people that lead the protest that sparked lgbt rights across the world were black trans women. Remember that. Remember it good and well. 

Autism isn’t shameful. People with autism are worthy of respect and admiration.

Punk culture is antifa and gay culture. Bigots like punk fashion, and dress in punk fashion. We call these people “posers” and they should be beaten if spotted being a bigot at a punk function. Punk culture is all about being against the systemic oppression of the lower class and marginalized. Many punks go to protests for human rights and better work qualities. 

It is neve okay to police someone else’s identity. Period. 

It is never okay to police someone’s kinks. Pay attention to actual abusers and rapists, not fictional and 100% consensual scenarios.

Child touchers get their heads bashed in with baseball bats.

It’s not okay to bully people for shipping anything. Yes, anything, including abusive ships. Quit telling people to kill themselves over fictional people. What you SHOULD be worried about, is straight white boys who romanticize REAL abuse towards REAL people, not people just minding their own business and expressing themselves via FICTIONAL characters. Don’t tackle ships, tackle rape culture in real life. Go outside. 

It is never okay to police someone’s writing, art, or artistic expression. Yes, dark and violent content included. The idea that you can be punished for thoughts or expression of thoughts, regardless of if you’ve ACTUALLY harmed anyone, is white and Christian purity culture. If you think this is okay, read this: [x]

The above is in the same mindset of soccer moms that say “people who play video games are inherently violent” which is simply not true at all. Here’s an interesting post on a similar topic that will interest you: [x]

Just follow lace code. Doc martens have a lace code in the punk community, If you’re not a racist, follow the lace code. 

mosh pit etiquette [x]

more about gay punk: [x]

That’s all I could think of for now! Any other queer elders wanna have a stab at it?