#they're gay and nonbinary is what im saying.

[till-dawn-do-us-part]

don't know who needs to hear this but being queer isn't a competition. if you're a homosexual transgender woman that doesn't make you "more queer" than say a straight transgender man or a cis bisexual person or a heteroromantic asexual person. this is not a hierarchy, this is a community. these labels aren't stars on a uniform determining your rank; just because you have more doesn't mean you are somehow superior to the other queer identities, they belong in the community just as much as you do.

[healingheartdogs]

Men can have vaginas. Women can have penises. Being a lesbian is not about "only liking pussy". Being gay is not about "only liking dick". Those are transphobic and intersex exclusive statements.

The "sex" in "sexuality" is not referring to assigned sex at birth or the most common presentations of assigned sex genitalia. It refers to sexual attraction. Queer sexual attraction is gender and/or shared queer experience based. Gender is not the same as assigned sex at birth or genitalia. If your personal sexual attraction is based on assigned sex at birth and specific genitalia and you use a queer sexuality label you are appropriating that label and participating not only in transphobia and intersex exclusion from queer communities but also in homophobia.

Stop appropriating queer sexualities and then trying to kick out people who actually belong under that label because you want to make a little exclusion based bigot club for yourselves.

[oh-cramity-its-amity]

its so weird to read some of my old fics (do NOT do it but i'm just being hypothetical rn) and reading it. like who even was this person?? i completely was in a haze back in 2020. i literally was posting 3 chapters a day. A DAY. what in the WORLD was that shit.

anyway i remembered some STUPID sappy shit and i didnt remember if i'd put it into a fic or not BUT I FOUND IT.

She and Hope had been dating in secret for months anyway, and any attempt to go talk to Ryan only filed her disposition of displeasure upon knowing that she couldn’t tell anyone, Molly especially, it destroyed herself mentally. They couldn’t really go anywhere near the school, always having to lie to everyone about having projects together when Molly wasn’t around them. It’d consisted with 9 PM - 2 AM intervals of being able to actually see each other. Hope would sneak through her small bedroom window with a portable record player and whatever she had gotten from the vintage record store downtown, and Amy would always fall asleep around eleven because of her internal clock. She would always wake up to find a single sticky note stuck on the edge of her desk whenever she woke up to her alarm the next morning. One of them, Amy still had tucked inside of her phone case, a heavily detailed human heart, with blue and red ink sketched onto a neon pink sticky note, there was a caption that headed the small paper reading the phrase over every now and again makes her almost melt every time. “You have my heart.”

yeah idk why the fuck but i thought of this fucking idea again today and i was like "omg did i ever put that heart note thing in a fic???" yeah you fucking did.

all that to say ME AND WHO???? imagine. thats so fucking.... RAHHHH.

[maxknightley]

confession: i still don't understand what tme/tma js and i dont understand the google definitions because im kinda dumb, so i dont understand the arguments ): i feel like its too late to ask. it means transmysongony exempt right? i just. i dont get what that meabs!!

broadly speaking, TMA - or "transmisogyny affected" - means "amab transgender and nonbinary people." i.e., people who are the "intended target" of transmisogyny in the same way that Jewish people are targeted by antisemitism or gay people writ large are targeted by homophobia.

TME - "transmisogyny exempt" - is basically Everyone Else, including cis people as well as AFAB trans/nonbinary people.

the idea of the construction is to describe the ways in which transfems are harmed by cis people & "TME" trans people as well. but I have a few problems with this language:

I think it's absurd to describe cis men as "exempt from transmisogyny" because a major purpose of transmisogyny is to socially discipline GNC cis boys and men. as a thought exercise, I like to point out that I could have had the exact same experiences as a child/teenager, but if I hadn't transitioned, I would have magically ceased to be "affected by transmisogyny". I think this is Fucking Stupid because a large part of my childhood was defined by transmisogyny I didn't even know was transmisogyny yet.

we already had perfectly good language for what "tma" is intended to represent. namely, transfem. idiots and jerks misusing that language, describing themselves as "afab transfem" or whatever the hell, doesn't matter to me when 1. people are going to play silly little word games with literally any terminology marginalized people use to describe our experiences, and 2. the replacement terminology is actively worse at describing things.

whenever people use "TME" they're usually referring specifically to other people in the trans community, making it a transparent - and, imo, Worse - replacement for "afab." just say "afab" or "transmasc." let's be honest with ourselves.

while I think the ability to describe transmisogyny is necessary in order to express what it's like to be transfem, I feel that people often treat transmisogyny as if it's a separate construct that happens to intersect with other forms of transphobia and sexism. and I think this is silly, because transmisogyny is sexism is homophobia. they're all parts of a self-reinforcing structure and cannot be properly understood until we accept that you don't slay the hydra by continually cutting off its heads

I'm an extremely spiteful person. Every time I see a post that's based on the idea that Everyone Who Dislikes This Is Transmasc, or that Transgender Women Aren't "Allowed" To Be Butch And Therefore Don't Exist At All, my anger gauge fills up a little more. someday it will hit its maximum and I will be able to unleash my ultimate. that or I'll have a stress-induced heart attack

[ineffablydaydreaming]

Okay i might be a little pissed off. Expect typos, im on my phone.

A character does not need a specific label, have a gender, nor have sex/romantic physical gestures in order to be queer rep

Aziraphale and Crowley are not gay men.

They are played by male actors. They present male most of the time. But that means nothing, because gender presentation =/= gender identity or sex.

Neil has said multiple times that angels and demons are sexless. It's on the book. It's on several of his tweets and answers to asks. This implies that angels and demons are non-binary by default. Gabriel isn't a man, Michael isn't a woman, Beelzebub isn't a woman, Furfur isn't a man.

And now, you could argue that a genderless creature isn't necessarily queer and I agree! Several animals are genderless irl.

But here's what makes them queer: it's not that they don't have a gender, it's that they don't give a fuck about it. Crowley presents female i believe up to three times in the show, Neil was planning a minisode where both he and Aziraphale are fem-presenting in the 60s; Michael is a male angel name and he's played by an actress and (At least in the portuguese dub? Correct me if im wrong) still called "he". Same for Beelzebub, who I think is also reffered to with they/them in english. Hell, God has a female voice and is still called God (the male version of the word!!!) and even Her pronouns are a bit flexible in certain dubs.

What makes them queer is that their genderless aspect isn't just biological, it's their identity, too. These characters are all non-binary, they know it, and they don't mind it.

"But they present male and call each other 'he'!"

As I said, gender presentation does not equal identity and neither does pronouns. It's words: words that get often associated with a certain gender but are, in the end, just words.

Not only that, but this argument also comes from the expectation that non-binary people cannot present themselves in a binary way, which is an absurd thing to expect. People irl have all kinds of different hormonal balances and many enby folk may be hypermasculine or hyperfeminine due to high testosterone or estrogen respectively. And you know what? They might not want to change that, and that is completely fine.

Non binary people do not owe you androginy.

Being trans isn't about appearances, isn't about transitioning, it's about identity. Thinking otherwise is borderline transmedicalist ideology.

Good Omens breaks gender norms all the fucking time in both seasons, something many shows are afraid to do, and it's not just for comedy reasons, which tends to be the norm when shows do it. They do it because it's fun, it's fine, and because they acknowledge that gender norms are stupid.

That's queer as hell.

My second point, no need for labels. Just like angels and demons don't need gender labels, they don't need sexuality labels. At all. Especially since they're often intertwined.

Just because two characters don't have their specific labels revealed doens't mean they aren't queer or, fuck's sake, don't love each other.

In A League Of Their Own, no characters get specific labels, what they are is simply implied. Greta is very implied to be lesbian but they never say the exact word. Does that mean she isn't queer?

In The Song Of Achilles, no characters get specific labels because hell, the labels didn't exist at the time the story takes place in. Both main characters are implied to be bi/pansexual but it's obviously never told in the text. Does that mean they aren't queer?

In Undertale and Deltarune, no characters get specific labels, but in both games the main protagonist is nonbinary (and is in both cases a human being!) and both games have several mlm and wlw couples and several more nonbinary characters across the storyline, but it's never specifically labeled. Does that mean it doesn't have queer rep?

Neil has said several times that Good Omens is a love story, that Aziraphale and Crowley love each other, that even if they're not 'gay male humans' they still feel love for one another. That's the entire point of season two.

And now, I get it, okay? I don't like authors tip-toeing around labeling their characters either, especially since in most places we are past the age of having to code characters instead of just make them openly queer. I get the fear and uncertainty that often came from some sort of trauma from bbc's Sherlock, I felt it too. I get that for some it may seem as if it's queerbaiting, or pink money, or simply being too scared to say a character is queer.

But that's just not the case with Good Omens. The point is not to avoid labels because they're scary. The point is that, for Good Omens, and aziracrow, labels are useless. They're not humans, they don't have a gender, they don't need the labels.

And you know what?

That's also queer as hell.

Society has to put people into boxes, has to separate folk, has to label everyone. No one can be different, and id you are you need to fit this specific box of different. If you go out, you're too much, you're too rebellious, you're a freak. If they just let people do whatever they wanted it would be hard to marginalize them and keep the system going.

A quote I once heard feels important for this occasion:

"To define yourself is to restrain yourself."

When you define something in strict terms you're putting rules to it. Rules that can be broken. Rules that should be broken. And the rulebreakers get insulted, hated, violated, killed.

Aziraphale and Crowley are breaking these rules by 'existing' as who they are. They're not gay men, they're not lesbian women, they're not bisexual agenders, but at the same time they are all of those things at the same time, whenever they want to, whenever YOU want them to, as Neil himself put it. Because fuck labels. And you're hating them for it, hating them because they're refusing to enter those boxes.

Humans are weird and complex. Let the angels and demons be weird and complex too.

Lastly, queer relationships don't need sex - nor kisses.

There's this expectation that romantic love is only true love if they kiss, if they live together, if they sleep on the same bed, if they go on dates, if they marry, if they have kids, if they have sex. Break one of these and people will raise an eyebrow. Break two and they look at you weird. Break three and everyone judges you. Break all of them and, suddenly, you and your partner have been declared "just friends" by outsiders who don't know you in the slightest.

Welcome to amatonormativity.

Or, better saying, another stupid box, another set of rules.

There's this headcanon that Crowley kisses Aziraphale as a last resort not because it's a gesture if love (even Neil said it wasn't out of love) but because he's seen it in human movies and, in movies, kissing someone in despair is a cliché that often ends in the other person not leaving.

This wasn't a love kiss. But Crowley still loves Aziraphale. Do you know why?

Because angels and demons, most likely, do not need human gestures to show love. They, most likely, comprehend love in an entirely different light.

Maybe Aziraphale is touchy with Crowley because he likes it and that is a good enough reason, but it's an individual reason, just like a person irl might be more fond of hugging their partner than kissing them, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with it. There's no right or wrong way to have a relationship. Acting like there is is reinforcing the rules set by amatonormativity, and it is also completely disregarding the experiences of asexual and aromantic folk. The entire spectrums btw.

Now think about the rules I mentioned earlier. Must kiss, must fuck, must marry etc.

Aziracrow also breaks almost all of them.

That's also queer as hell!!!

Being queer and celebrating pride isn't about having labels. It's about breaking societal norms: heteronormativity, cisnormativity, mononormativity, amatonormativity, etc. Norms that are used to opress us, to put us in boxes, to separate us, to marginalize us, and to kill us.

A show that gives the middle finger to all of these and just tells its story however way it likes, not caring about labeling the characters or having a long monologue about homophobia or showing a explicit sex scene between the two characters or following any of those stupid rules imposed by society, a society ran by cishet folk, is as queer as a show can ever be.

To deny that is to reinforce a narrative that is literally used to opress us.

That's all, bye.

Also, some of you guys are giving "I call beez she/her because of the actress" and that's cringe, but not surprising, ngl.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/728489573268750336/im-really-not-fond-of-baby-gays-trying-to-make?source=share

This got me thinking about the way gender, and especially manhood, is constructed and defined and how it sucks for both cis and trans people.

If a man puts on a frilly dress, he is thought of as not actually a man, in queer circles, homophobic circles, and everything in between.

If a cis man wears a dress, he's thought of as a trans woman, and if that's used as an insult or said supportively depends on the context, but he's always thought of as not a man.

If a trans man wears a dress, he'll get some people saying he's acutally nonbinary and some saying it's proof he was a woman all along, and, again, wearing a dress erasing his manhood.

GNC is a useful term because it acknowledges that people behave outside the expectations of their gender, without contradicting what their gender actually is. A GNC man is a man, not a woman or a nonbinary person, who doesn't dress or act the way people expect men to.

(I'm sure this happens for women, too, but the expectations and the level of acceptance for crossdressing are different for women and I don't have a good window into the finer details myself)

--

In my experience, a lot of women who self-describe as GNC are either living in places with much more aggressive Thou Shalt Wear A Full Face Of Makeup To The Supermarket At Ten A.M. cultures than I am or they're just too autistic to perform Girl™ correctly even when they try.

[just-antithings]

The situation with Harry Potter fandom makes me wanna put my head through a wall.

I saw comments on a post that said "if you have a Harry Potter url I think you should kill yourself <3"

Like. What the fuck.

Dont get me wrong, I HATE jkr. Along with the transphobia, there's the antisemitic goblins, Asian stereotypes (Cho Chang really??), the fact that she said her werewolves were a metaphor for AIDS when there were explicitly "bad" werewolves who spread their "disease" to children on purpose, the fact that she made a race of magical creatures slaves and then mocked the one character going against the enslavement (but it's fine because they LIKE being enslaved) (also this character she also later attempted to retcon by saying she's Black. Big yikes), also the running joke of the one Irish character exploding things (written by a British woman in the nineties so there's some Implications there). She's bad. No one should support her, so no buying the games, books, movies, etc unless they're second hand.

And I know there are plenty of fans who agree with her, and seeing someone mention liking the franchise could raise some red flags.

BUT.

Why the fuck do you go after creators of fanworks?? Jkr doesn't get shit from that, first of all. Second, she's mentioned previously she doesn't want any fanworks that aren't "kid-friendly", so anything with smut/queer characters other than Token Retcon Gay Mr. Dumblydoor would probably make her shit herself.

But newsflash! A lot of creators suck! Taking it out on people who separate the content from the creator and are just doing this for comfort reasons, people who KNOW why she's wrong and have often been a target of that bullshit themselves? Jerk behavior.

Im nonbinary. I loved Harry Potter growing up. I grew out of it before a lot of this came out, but it still fuckin hurt. I'm just so sick of people taking it out on those making fanworks that don't even support jkr instead of...yknow...going after jkr herself. You're just punching down to the people already hurt, because you can't do shit to the one who hurt them and you need to take out your rage somewhere ig.

Anyway fuck jkr fuck transphobes who like her and fuck these people man

.

[blood-choke]

hi! i have a question, but before that i just wanted to thank you for giving such amazing sapphic rep in both of your games. as someone who's sapphic (Im a bi girlie) I'm always a little bit disappointed when the female sapphic characters are given not as much thought even when it comes to both female gender locked ros and the female/nb counterparts of gender selectable characters in comparison to the male characters/male counterparts of gender selectable characters in other ifs. i absolutely adore both of your games and the fact that you take such great care with each of the characters' identities, even if they share the same sexuality or gender, they express their gender and sexuality in different ways and i also love the stud rep with hana. And I love that your gender selectable ros in tnp present in a similar way regardless of gender, yet there are still differences in the way that they express it or experience it. my first language isn't English so if i get any terminology wrong please lmk. ❤️

as for my question I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding sapphic ros in IF. do you think gender selectability could be used in a better way to explore a characters' identity in some circumstances. i am curious as to what you think regarding gender locked and gender selectability especially regarding to female/nb ros. i always love to hear your thoughts on different topic so i thought i would ask. ❤️❤️

thank you so much! 💗 now, get ready for a really long-winded response!

honestly, my opinion on genderselectable ROs tends to fluctuate. it's kinda a love/hate relationship, hahaha. there are a lot of games that i think do a fine job handling it, and overall i prefer having the option as a lesbian because typically we don't… get sapphic/gay female characters… like, at all.

now for my controversial opinion: i don't really think most of these female genderselectable characters are actually sapphic. they're just playersexual. and this goes for the opposite, as well, for the male versions. they're not gay or bi they're just playersexual. genderselectable characters can only work if the author is willing to make an effort & flesh out both/all versions of a character as well as acknowledge their sexuality. if one version of the character is meant to be a bisexual woman, then you should be writing her as a bisexual woman. unfortunately i'm sad to say i've seen more than one author publicly admit that this is "too much work," but i suppose i can commend them for being honest about it…

it's been interesting to see this kind of stuff in the IF tag recently. for a while it seemed like we were actually moving more towards favoring genderlocked characters, with set sexualities, and then suddenly it feels like we've ended up in a worse spot than we used to be. i see some really egregious gender essentialism with some genderselectable ROs, down to even their sense of fashion and tattoos changing so the female version can be more feminine and dainty. it's very bizarre, and i really, really do not like it.

i don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for selectable characters to be different. it makes sense in some cases, like if you had a character that was gender nonconforming in all variations. it would make sense that their clothes would be different and their experiences would be different. i even think it can be interesting to explore how certain characters are affected differently by society because of their gender. if you had a character like Lea that existed in a misogynistic society like ours, their experience as a butch would be very different from their experience as a masculine trans man or androgynous nb person… and they would also share a lot of similar experiences, too! but this is not what i usually see. it's usually just… woman: wears pink, is shorter and skinnier, has long hair. man: wears blue, is big and muscular, has short hair. nonbinary (if there even is a nb variation): thin and androgynous artbreeder mashup of the other two. and then in every other aspect they are the same. unfortunately, that's as far as some authors are willing to take it. the rare times i do see someone add in differences it's always just the female version experiencing some form of misogyny that her male counterpart does not, with very little elaboration or reflection.

i don't really think i need to explain why that kind of characterization is a problem.

i do think there is a lot of potential with the gender selection mechanic. i've tried to do something interesting with Lea, and i like to think i've been successful with it. but in my honest opinion, if you want to write a story about gay and/or sapphic characters, you should just genderlock them. for one, the IF audience at large is always going to favor the male version of your character. that is just a fact. if your only female or nb characters are selectable, they will be erased by the wider IF audience. i know this sounds kind of cynical, but this is my honest opinion & my experience as someone who has been involved in this community for almost four years now.

i think if you are someone who is setting out with the intention of writing a sapphic RO, you are doing them a disservice by making them genderselectable. just genderlock them! you may get people that complain, but they can suck it up or go play something else. and i don't think i need to tell you this but just to be clear, genderlocking gay or trans characters is not the same as a game with an all straight or all cis cast. it just simply is not. cis, straight, & white people are already considered the "default." most games already cater to this demographic. it is not the same to genderlock or even lock your characters race or ethnicity to something other than cis, straight, or white. cis, straight, white people are not a minority. you are not underrepresented. there are millions of games out there for you to play. & it's irritating when people pretend like someone getting upset at the exclusion of gay people (or any other minority, for that matter) from a game is somehow comparable to another game "excluding" straight people (or white people, or cis people). arguing this is just blatantly ignoring the reality of our misogynistic, racist, homophobic & transphobic society. again, straight people are not underrepresented. you are automatically included in almost everything except the gay media that gay people create themselves.

gay women especially are repeatedly left out of IF. unless you want to go read yuri VNs (which, no offense, but little anime girls are entirely sexless to me. i do not feel represented by feminine, bug-eyed little anime girls) you're pretty much shit out of luck. there are very few lesbian ROs out there, fewer gnc women, almost no butches and definitely no studs that i've seen in this specific tumblr/cog IF space.

so all of this to say, if you do really want to make your characters genderselectable, then just take your time with it. really think about how their gender may change their experiences within the world of your game. does it change anything at all? maybe not. there does not need to be a drastic difference at all if it's not applicable. don't loop back around into gender essentialism. but you should still think about it, and consider what the gender selectable mechanic can offer as a narrative and characterization tool.

what is my plan for this character? what am i trying to accomplish with them and their story? does making them genderselectable add to that narrative or does it hinder it? how can i explore the potential differences between these versions of this character without falling into and reinforcing harmful stereotypes? how does their sexuality impact their experience? i think these are some of the questions authors should ask themselves when deciding if they want to make their characters genderselectable.

[homosexualasstransbian]

im transfem/nonbinary and honestly the whole cutesy uwu anime girl puppy girl aesthetic is making me feel ill. i recently got harrassed by a cis woman chaser who saw the transflag in my bio and started talking to me in this really weird overly cutesy way and started flirting with me, i told her im taken and not interested and this is weird and she said something like "oki u silly transie, if u ever need a girly to do something for you im here, cuz nornal girls are boring" and then the next day she sent me some image of some anime girl w/ the caption "im not like other girls, i have a massive cock" and asked "this u?" and she was so weird and gross and overly cutesy. and like the fact im trans is part of me and im proud of it but i want to be seen as me, as a person, as smthn beyond arbitrary boxes. thats why im nonbinary, i dont wanna be forced into some made up vague perception of how i have to be and instead just be me and do my own thing. i dont label my sexuality either but im pretty sure im like pretty aromantic. greyromantic or whatever its called. and my sexuality i kinda tie together with my romantic attraction, so its often incredibly odd to me how prevalent sexual language and stuff is online and how weirdly its treated as smthn normal, especially in more queer communities. and when i feel terrible and get support online, ppl will say ooo ur pretty ooo ur cute dont be sad and downplay it when i need someone to talk to qnd need to be acknoledged beyond how i physically am, it makes me feel rlly objectified and like my only value is in the fact that i am trans and how i look, and its my only thing and the only way ppl refer to me and boil me down to. but i dont want to be some cutesy meme girl, i want ppl to acknowledge me and what i do and like and love and enjoy and hate and dislike and think and say, i want to be seen and understood regardless of and beyond my transness. because im a raw, living breathing human person thats infinitely complex, and i just wanna be me and do what i enjoy. i dont want my personality boiled down to superficial aspects of me that exists solely because outside society needed a label for it to ostrasize or fetishize it. im sorry for the long rant its just rlly frustrating, especially when you try to find communities and its just so weirdly sexual and condescending and objectifying 😭

hey unfortunately, i do not have the mental capacity to be able to read all of this and actually respond to it, i just lose 80% of the ask once I'm finished reading, so I'll just say: damn fuck that cis bitch.

While i get that after your experiences this "aesthetic" might make you feel ill, i really don't see why i should be told this.

I do not choose the way i present to other people because it's what i feel i should look or act like, i act however feels good to me. the reason my blog looks like this is because, put simply, i like it.

I may not be just a puppy, girl or gay, in fact the most accurate way to describe me would be "thing that should not be alive as far as anyone knows, but it persists, it's also a puppy that is a girl, a robot, a void and divine flesh"

but i go with my current aesthetic, username, and whatever else because they're the descriptions I'm most confident in, they make me feel nice, i love them.

I am quite literally a tranny girl faggot that acts like a puppy sometimes.

Sometimes i feel like I'm a shattered vessel built of divine flesh that's empty and yet so completely full.

Sometimes i wish my flesh melted away, permanently fusing me with the outer shell of a mech.

None of my identities are fully separate or stable, but they also feel distinct enough that i only choose one at a time (and even then sometimes they can split apart).

I don't act like this because i wanna be "haha silly cute trans girl that's an adorable puppy and is so so overly sexual", it's just what i act like, in general, if I don't worry about pretending to be someone else.

I guess put simply: if you don't like me: fucking leave, block me, get rid of me, i won't hold it against you, I'll continue to do what i like, the way i like doing it, because this is my blog.

i forgot where i was going with this post, y'all just get this really long one i guess.

[teekays]

thing that's on my mind today is when you're reading a fic and there's hockey players using niche internet microlabels... i think to me in the same way i vastly prefer the fics where they're having like objectively kind of bad sex i also just cannot get into this kind of thing. im not knocking it if that's your bread and butter but personally it takes me so out of like his ass maybe IS nonbinary but he is NOT saying that. he probably barely knows what bisexual means. and i think that makes for a more interesting story because in no way does not having the exact language preclude you from feeling and experiencing things but you get to explore it on your terms like what it means to you personally. and also all of these men are like DEEPLY emotionally stunted and that's also more interesting to me than just a cut and dry "oh yes... i am this label..." like really make them work for it. let them go on their own hashtag journey that ends in them being like idk im kinda gay i guess? to encompass things we would use like 4 distinct words for. go crazy go stupid.

[dukeofankh]

So...the gay orgy I mentioned the other day is more accurately a Queer SOP play party. I'm going because me and my wife's partner, who's nonbinary, suggested it. And now I'm worried I might not actually be welcome as a cis-ish dude

I was rereading the event rules again because it's happening tonight. I don't know how I'd missed it before now, but in addition to the usual barring of misogyny and transphobia, and a nice uncommon addition against fatphobia...they also say that "machismo" isn't allowed. Later in the same paragraph they say they're aiming to decentralize the kink/play party scene from being "masculine focused and cis-centric"

Like... obviously the positive way to read this is as just saying "don't do toxic masculine shit". There's a rule about not having culturally appropriative hairstyles too, they could just be covering their bases and listing all of the stuff that would piss people off that they don't want. But like...there are definitely events around here that are, with varying levels of directness, trying to achieve a "no cis dudes" environment without outright saying "no cis dudes." This one is very explicitly celebrating trans and nonbinary folks, so it's not TERFy, but I'm left wondering whether I'm actually wanted there?

I've been surprised before. Like, I've been to a "Lesbians and queer people" event and very quickly determined from the way people responded to my presence that that was meant to be understood as "Afab people." (Possibly with an exception for trans women, I don't want to speak for their experiences. There were definitely some there).

Like, they also suggested that everyone wear pink? It doesn't seem like a hard and fast dress code but it is all definitely leaning towards a "let's have a sex party without any of those gross boys" vibe, but with more of a t4t spin making it "*cis* boys"

Like, I know what toxic masculinity is. I can not do toxic masculinity. Machismo? If at some point in the night I'm acting in a dominant way with my wife or partner, is that going to be read as machismo? Is being masc machismo?

My constant desperate search is to find places that I belong. I knew I'd be more of a guest in this space--im genderfluid but that means a lot of the time I am just presenting as a regular ol' cis guy--but now I'm trying to figure out whether this is coded messaging telling me that I'm not wanted here, or if I'm just having an anxiety spiral.

[zerothejackal]

any barry headcanons? i bet they're actually a surprisingly good chef, based on a bit where they say something along the lines of "we'll see what you think when your microwaved chili dog is delicious."

asides from the ESP, and nonbinary, there's uh

they know a lot about caves, rocks, and minerals, and may even know about the chaos emeralds due of this—hence knowing about chaos control

gay gay homosexual gay

agree with the good cook part :)

they are kinda tech savvy... mostly thanks for needing to upgrade manually their different game equipments—perhaps they may know how to code? idk im still brainstorming this hc with myself :P

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

Book Review: The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

This book was a mixed bag.

Plot Synopsis from Publisher: "In this queer contemporary YA mystery, a nonbinary autistic teen realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the demons lurking in their past in order to live a satisfying life."

This review contains spoilers.

The Good

The author is autistic and non-binary, like the main character. OwnVoices is always nice to see.

The main character's dad, Junius, is a beautiful portrayal of Black fatherhood. One of the best fictional parents of an autistic child I've ever seen. He communicates with Sam their way, is always patient and kind, and is determined to get them what they need to feel safe. No Autism Parents™ here.

Sam was adopted at age 7 after bouncing between foster homes and group homes, and the time it takes them to fully adjust to their new life is realistic.

The portrayal of stimming, including self-injurious stimming, is very accurate.

Sam finds friends who like them for them, instead of having to change themself completely to make friends. Good change of pace from a lot of advice for autistic teens.

Autistic shutdown is correctly identified as a type of catatonia, which as far as I know is the first time that's ever happened in a fiction book.

Sam has very obviously learned a lot of social rules the hard way, like many of us do. There are direct references to learning social rules like what to do at a funeral, what specific facial expressions mean, what appropriate student-teacher conversations are, etc.

Sam does the autism/alexithymic thing where you relate to a story very deeply and have to back up and unpack why. That was very relatable.

The Bad

Sam is supposed to have a pretty morbid special interest in kids who died before 19. The portrayal of this was not realistic. Sam has no trouble hiding their interest when they think other people might feel upset by it. There's no mention of the pressure cooker feeling so many of us get when we want so badly to talk about a SpIn and can't. There's no mention of how having a special interest like that is deeply lonely; not only are people afraid of the subject itself, they're usually afraid of you, too. No one they reveal this interest to is at all perturbed.

There's a bizarre hang-up with Reactive Attachment Disorder, of all things. Sam was misdiagnosed with RAD as a very young child, which is a perfectly reasonable diagnosis to make when you have a severely traumatized, socially withdrawn foster child. The text treats this as some kind of cockamamie diagnosis they were only given instead of autism because they're AFAB.

The author seems to think mental illness means "for no reason," and this is reflected in the way characters speak about RAD. At one point Junius says to Sam, "I met you at that group home, and they told me you had reactive attachment disorder. I saw the hungry way you looked around and the frustration I knew all too well, like you were shouting and everyone pretended they couldn't hear you. I figured... maybe you had a reason not to get attached to people." Having a reason not to get attached to people is literally a key piece of RAD. It's a traumagenic disorder. None of what he says contradicts a RAD diagnosis at all, but Sam and Junius both act like it does.

The portrayal of Montana is about two decades out of date and seems to confuse it with Canada in some spots. There's regular mention of having lived in Airdrie, which is in Alberta, in the same sentence as Missoula, Montana. The main character says there was only one out gay kid in their entire high school in Missoula, in ~2021. Missoula has 73,000 people and a pride parade every year. There is no way there would be one out gay kid, in a public high school, in a town that large at this point in time. There were about a dozen out LGBT+ kids in my high school in my much smaller, less progressive town circa 2013. I mention this because it's important to recognize the ways homophobia, transphobia, and ableism have shifted over the years. Pretending there's no change at all does everyone a disservice.

Verdict: I've read much worse, but I also wouldn't reach for this as an example of spectacular autism representation.

[biracy]

abt your post abt bi women belonging in the wlw community just as much as lesbians : i was reading the replies and youre so right abt how ignorant people are abt what comphet really is. im a lesbian and like yea i think we would experience comphet in the most intense way since were not attracted to men in any level, but comphet isnt only abt that, its a symptom of the patriarchy forcing women to center men in their lives and hell even straight women experience comphet, let alone bi women. people just have thrown around the word comphet so much they dont even know the true meaning

I was actually gonna post abt this soon LMAO so yeah!! I think it's also a misunderstanding of what "heterosexuality" as a dominant social force is to say that lesbians who are not attracted to men can experience "comphet", but bisexual women who are attracted to men cannot experience it. "Heterosexuality" as it is defined by dominant social forces is not only "a relationship between a man and a woman" - it's almost always a relationship between a "masculine" man and a "feminine" woman, and quite often a relationship between a man and a woman that results in monogamous marriage and childbirth. When people write about comphet, they're not talking about how movies and TV and fairy tales and children's books and my parents and my teachers and my religion all came together and told me to want to fuck genderfucky bi guythings. There is a specific kind of man centered in the heterosexuality enforced onto women, and a specific kind of role that a woman is expected to take on in that heterosexuality. I think the idea that bi people (women especially) cannot experience "comphet" overlaps a lot with people who believe that all bisexual people have the capability to become "straight-passing" if they enter different-gender relationships, which is in and of itself based on, in my observances, the belief that "gay/lesbian culture" and "bisexual culture" are completely distinct and that bisexual people are in some way innately less capable of being gender-nonconforming (or as some Tumblr scholars will call it, "visibly queer"). Bisexual people often date each other, we're often trans and/or visibly gender-nonconforming, and that's not something that we can just turn off the minute we enter into a quote unquote "heterosexual relationship." I'm bisexual, I'm nonbinary and id as both a man and a woman (so I take part in all these "sapphic" conversations etc etc u know the drill), I'm weird and kinky and switchy, I'm polyamorous, right now I'm dating a cis butch bi girl and a trans + nonbinary pan guy. At this point in my life I have absolutely no interest in relationships with cishet men, I don't want to get monogamously married, I never want to have children. I have not performed heterosexuality any better than, idk, a "gold star lesbian" has, and I FEEL it, I'm given shit for it, every relative I have pressures me already about boyfriends and grandkids and whatever. I do think there are bisexual people sometimes who do conform more to Straight Society but a) I think there are an equal amount of gay guys and lesbians who conform to Straight Society tbqh and b) it doesn't cover the breadth of bisexual people who do exist and who do feel the pressure to conform to the mainstream, dominant social system of heterosexuality and who CANNOT conform to it any more than you, anon, probably can. So yeah TL;DR bi girls can definitely experience "comphet" lmao and people are probably gonna hate that I said that

[the-kitty-hell-system]

I mean this light heartedly but what's with the dni for bi lesbians? Being bi doesn't exactly mean they like men it just means they're attracted to two or more genders. There are some lesbians who consider themselves bi because they like women and non-binary people for example.

hi. the term lesbian quite literally includes nonbinary ppl. it's nonmen loving nonmen. this can be nonbinary ppl or women or whoever just not a man. you aren't a "bi lesbian" for loving women and nonbinary ppl you're just a lesbian.

being a lesbian is inherently mspec. it includes anyone but men. claiming you as a man can be a lesbian or saying you're attracted to men as a lesbian is wrong. you aren't lesbian, you're sapphic

if you say you're a bi lesbian im gonna assume you mean you like men because if not, the lesbian label already fit you. if you do like men you aren't a lesbian you are just sapphic

if someone uses the bi lesbian label and actually specifies what they mean then ofc i won't block them? but if they don't specify how will i know they aren't saying they somehow like men as a lesbian? that dni was worded bad and i apologize as i meant to just say "people who claim men can be lesbians or lesbians can be attracted to men" and same thing for gays.

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hey, so it seems that everyone is coming out to you so I though why not.

I’m not entirely sure if I’m Pansexual or Bi or something else entirely and honestly it’s kinda confusing (I’m female btw). I mean I don’t rly care abt gender but I find myself attracted to females ALOT more. So yeah idk. Maybe gender does make a difference. But then I don’t like the label Bisexual because it implies that you are attracted to males and females only and not people outside of that.

And also when it comes to coming out to people I kinda feel stuck. What do I say? All of my friends know (they’re also queer) but we never really came out to each other we all just kinda were like “hey! that girl looks good” and went along being gay af. But bc we all just knew abt each other we never really talked abt sexualities and stuff.

And on top of that I’m fairly sure my parents wouldn’t be supportive and no one I know irl can relate to that bc all of my friends parents are accepting.

I feel like I’m complaining over nothing. Im sorry 😫😫. But still love yah and hope you have a nice day 🫶

Hi! <3

I actually can relate to this first part SO much (as far as pan versus bi). When you say you don't care about gender, that sounds like pan to me. But then you say you have a preference, so is that still pan? I've wondered that for myself.

Here's what I have realized: Firstly, YOU are the person who decides who you are, so whatever label feels best (or none at all) is totally fine, even if it doesn't match someone else's definition. However, for me, I think it helped to think of sexual attraction as different than romantic attraction.

For example, perhaps you can find yourself sexually attracted to someone regardless of their gender. BUT, romantically, you prefer girls? To me, that would still be pan, but perhaps you are homoromantic (meaning you only enjoy romantic relationships with the same gender).

Or it could be that you could possibly see yourself both sexually attracted to someone regardless of gender and having a romantic relationship with someone regardless of gender- you just are more likely to want those things with girls. That's okay, too, and could still be considered pan! It's okay to have preferences!

To make this more simplistic, if we stick to a gender binary (which we shouldn't, obviously, but let's do it for a second for simplicity's sake)- a traditionally bisexual person is rarely attracted to boys and girls at a 50/50 split. Maybe they like girls 70 percent of the time and boys 30 percent of the time. That doesn't make them any less bisexual. So, the same holds true with pan. Maybe you mostly see yourself with girls, but also think boys are pretty cool, and nonbinary people are sometimes attractive, and agender people can sometimes be cute, etc, etc.

All of this to say, pick whatever label feels good to you (or none at all! I also frequently just say to people that I'm queer.)

As far as coming out, I think some people are under the impression that it has to be a big thing. It only has to be a big thing if you want it to be. It seems like your friends already know that you're not straight. If that's all you want to say, you don't owe them any more of an explanation or a label.

BUT if you want to come out, go ahead! Sounds like they'll be supportive, so remind yourself that they are safe for you and bring it up in a more intentional way. "Hey, I have a crush on this girl, what do you think?" or "Hey, so you know I'm not straight, right? It's cool that we all are so accepting of that stuff." I think you'll find your friends will be receptive, since they're not straight, either.

As far as your parents, that's trickier. It sounds like you still live with them, so coming out to possibly unaccepting people who have control over you can be sticky. If it were me, I would first do a bit of testing. Mention queerness in a hypothetical way or in a "I know someone who..." way. See how they react. If they react positively, you could start dropping hints. If they react negatively, consider the pros and cons to telling them. Is it worth it to come out because you would be sharing your authentic self? If yes, have a plan if things go poorly. Have a support system to talk to and to go to. If you find that it's not worth it, there's no shame in that, either.

But it's important to know you are NOT complaining over nothing. This is tough stuff and it's hard to navigate.

I'm here to talk if you need me! <3