#this is coming from a nonbinary person who’s been told I can’t really be nb bc of my pronouns/presentation etc

[paranormeow7]

tired of nonbinary people being pressured to be thin hairless elf like pretty and always depicted as white afab skinny kids with blue hair, of course only using they/them. give me nonbinary people who are heavily fem/masc aligned!! give me nonbinary people who use neopronouns and xenogenders!! give me fat nonbinary people!! hairy nonbinary people!! nonbinary POC!! amab nonbinary people!! disabled nonbinary people!! nonbinary people who wear crazy clothes, or nonbinary people who don’t stand out and don’t feel the need to!! nonbinary people with names like Moss or Socks, or nonbinary people with “regular” names like Susan or James or something!! Give me every flavor of nonbinary people, and stop trying to make it into yet ANOTHER gender binary!! Nonbinary can be anything, not just a third gender to adhere to!!

[leadfeathers]

Oh Lordt.

Parents came up for a weekend and wanted to see a baseball game. Went to game and it’s pride night. My parents are “straight people don’t get a whole month” kind of people. I told my mom we have Toyotathon.

Next day we go to small town nearby to shop and bop. What’s that? Small festival with food trucks? Great let’s go! Pride festival. We get a beer and rainbow wristbands and walk around. Dad can’t quite stand it. Not sure if he has something against pride festivals or if he’d just been standing too long. Hard To Say.

Mom wants to go to a Saturday night church service. Only Lutheran church with a service is a Everyone is Welcome here type church where they are celebrating pride month, Father’s Day, and Juneteenth all in one. There is a talk from a mom about her daughters transition. There are new bathroom signs they are proud of. The service goes way long as a woman is giving a Very Intense Sermon that is actually her life story and by the end I’m sobbing because her brother died after contracting HIV. We have to skip out early because it’s the longest Lutheran service I’ve been to. Longer than a Christmas service. And we have reservations for dinner so we gotta go.

I’d like to state for the record that I was not planning on giving my parents the talk about this stuff this weekend.

I was told hey we’re coming down come to a baseball game.

We’re in the car. Drivin. I’m stressing. I’m fielding comments about People. I’m trying my best. But guys I’m straight. I’m cis. I’m never right. I don’t use the right words. And my mom is asking me to explain it all. Pronouns. What are they. Nonbinary. Intersex. She has combined NB and trans in her mind. Do all trans people use they/them? Nobody introduces themselves with pronouns do they? Dads cutting in with Comments.

She just feels like people are spending all day walking around talking about who they want to have sex with! Or at least that’s what tv is telling her. I try to explain that it actually comes up very little. It can be as easy as someone just letting you know they are going through some medical changes. Maybe needing some help with those changes. Or maybe you need to learn a new name. Like how when someone changes their maiden name and it’s hard to make the switch but very expected and you know it’s rude to do it wrong.

And guys maybe I got through to her? I tried some jokes. I tried to keep it on the level of: we don’t want to deliberately hurt people and everyone is different and if they want you to call them a certain name or refer to them as a boy or a girl then that’s kind and pretty simple. No one has the same life experience so I just trust them to tell me about themselves and we go from there. She agreed with that of course.

The church was a bit weird. There wasn’t really anything church focused there at all and it had kind of culty vibes. They were talking a TON about their inclusivity work but never once mentioned any disability inclusion. Which was the one demographic that that very white Minnesotan congregation could probably understand the best. We chatted about that and how that can make us feel like outsiders. Both of them wear hearing aides now and obviously we have my brother who is severely disabled. So that was a bit of a touchstone for them.

My guys I’m so exhausted tho. I always feel like I’m trying so hard with them. To combat the shit they hear from their friends and the rest of our family. They love people and I think delight in silliness and uniqueness. And they’ve got this crazy wall on this one issue. I just think I’m the only person they know who tries to explain it to them.

I just want my parents to be nice people. I’m a little worried about my dad. Since he’s retired I think he gets more and more of his life from the internet. And his adhd brain and dyslexia combine to make him skip around from weird inflammatory headline to inflammatory headline making up shit and drawing conclusions as he goes.

[daydreamsandcrashingwaves]

“To be visibly Queer is to choose your happiness over your safety” 

It’s pride month and this is the only space I feel save being honest about MY experience. I knew in middle school I liked girls, this was before I determined I was NB. I was scared, a bully in my gym class often put me down by calling me a lesbian, I did not know what it was really, fragments maybe. I knew my Uncle was gay, I knew that was something my family accepted and I never knew anything different, but no one explained what it meant to be a lesbian. Growing up lesbian and gay were the popular slurs. In middle school I played traveling volleyball, it was what I considered my main sport, I was always on the outside socially because I tried very hard at practice and the rest of my team wouldn’t meet my energy as they considered it a leisure sport to engage in during their off season. There was always this one girl who was nice to me when we’d talk, I had a crush on a girl in my friend group from school (Not volleyball), and I wasn’t sure what to do. I talked with girl and she actually gave me great advice and I followed it the next day at school, didn’t work out but thats okay. So I come home from school that next day feelin good and I walk into my mother screaming into the phone, I don’t remember that part but I know when she saw me she dismissed the person on the phone, came marching up to me (which with her I’m so mad face that wasn’t great) and asked if I’m a lesbian. Being young and afraid of this big bad word that was an insult I said no! I just liked this One Girl, I still liked boys. Turns out the girl not only told the whole team and all their parents had been harassing my mom all day. She looked at me, asked if I loved volleyball, I said of course I do! She then looked at me and said “Then you’re going to practice tomorrow, fuck ‘em”. That was my last (? or second to last) season on the court. I regret not looking for another team to this day. I can’t tell you how many couples want to bring me in their bed for their pleasure, Or you turn down some guy at the bar and they take it as a challenge and maybe they can now have two girls instead of one. It’s dehumanizing and gross. Being queer has always held me apart from most. Being known is truly difficult.

One of my mutuals on another platform posted the quote at the top this week, and I have some mixed feelings about it. To Clarify the feelings are not about my mutual but the quote itself that was posted on twitter. (I found it on their page and quoted it word for word but I’m horrible with links so if you want to see it I’ll do my best or just search it I guess lol.) This person is someone I hold a lot of respect for in my community. They are a transperson, are very visible as a transperson with their partners. With the dangerous conditions in America right now for our community, transpeople especially, trans poly people even more so. The strength to follow the heart when things are tough, persevering, it is irreplaceable. It did get me thinking though, and I have a lot of questions. What does it even mean to be visibly queer? Is there a definition? Is it a box to check off to feel “included”? 

To Me: For pride month it’s important to support the things you believe in, for yourself and others. Sharing individual and personal struggles to bring awareness and education during this month is great! I always learn so much this time of year. I will say this though, I don’t like such generalized statements. This quote is fine for specific groups, but doesn’t always apply to the community as a whole and I hope I can properly articulate why I think this. First queer people are diverse! A lot of people in the community ‘pass’ as cisgendered heterosexual couples but could be bi or pan or ace (or closeted). The other thing that comes to mind is you could be single! I am! and maybe that is why this bothered me so much, both of these apply to me. I am nonbinary and have been told and done my own research to tentatively know I am technically part of the transcommunity although I never felt I truly “count” whatever that means, and would not label myself that way, the statement felt almost criticizing??... I’m not sure. I’m as plain jane as they come. Dark long hair, nail appointments and feminine clothes are being reincorporated into my space from what I couldn’t explore in childhood. I do pass as cis. and I know how important those kinda statements are so I’m not saying it’s inherently wrong.... I guess what I’m trying to say to you and myself is you don’t have to be visible to count. We all have different challenges and what I experience will be different from you. I want to use this post to personally recognize the groups that may get overlooked or receive a not so warm welcome because we all know our own commuity can be very exclusive. Bi, poly, ace and pan people get flack from both sides, straight and queer a like. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me two days to get this out on a page. During these trying times I believe we must speak out for others, not just ourselves. We are here, We are Queer, We are united. No one gets left behind. We must strive to be open-minded and curious to our differences. If you got this far thank you for taking the time to read this. Happy Pride Month my friends!

[gendercensus]

On fae/faer pronouns and cultural appropriation

HOW IT STARTED

I had a handful, a very small handful but more than two, responses in the Gender Census feedback box telling me that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative. The reasons didn’t always agree, and the culture that was being appropriated wasn’t always the same, but here’s a selection of quotes:

“Fae pronouns are cultural appropriation and are harmful to use“ - UK, age 11-15

“I’m not a person who practices pagan holidays but, my understanding is that pronouns like fae/faeself are harmful because the fae are real to pagans and is like using Jesus/jesuself as pronouns“ - UK, age 11-15

“I know you've probably heard this a million times, so has everyone on the internet, but the ''mere existence''of the fae pronoun feels really uncomfortable for some of us. I'm personally not against neopronouns like xe/xim, er/em and the like, I am a pagan but apart from the, imo most important, reasoning of that pronoun being immensely disrespectful, I worry as an nb about people who banalize the usage of pronouns ''for fun'', and I'm quoting what some people have told me.“ - Spain, 16-20

“I don't agree with fae/deity pronouns just from a pagan perspective it's very disrespectful to the cultures they come from. Like Fae are a legit thing in many cultures and they hate with a fiery passion mortal humans calling themselves Fae to the point of harming/cursing the people who do it“ - USA, age 16-20

“only celtic people can use far/ faers otherwise it’s cultural appropriation, many celts have said this and told me this“ - USA, age 16-20

So that’s:

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

❌ Someone who definitely isn’t pagan.

✅ Someone who is pagan.

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

❓ Someone who doesn’t say whether they’re pagan or Celtic.

So, just to disclose some bias up-front, I am English so I’m not Celtic, but I do live in Wales so I am surrounded by Celts. The bit of Wales that I live in is so beautiful in such a way that when my French friend came to visit me she described it as féerique - like an enchanting, magical land, literally “fairylike” or thereabouts. Coincidentally I have also considered myself mostly pagan for over half of my life, and I can’t definitively claim whether or not the Fae are “part of paganism” because paganism is so diverse and pick’n’mix that it just doesn’t work that way.

To me the idea that fae/faer pronouns would be offensive or culturally appropriative sounds absurd. But also, I am powered by curiosity, and have been wrong enough times in my life that I wanted to approach this in a neutral way with an open mind. Perhaps what I find out can be helpful to some people.

So since we only have information from one person who is definitely directly affected by any cultural appropriation that may be happening, the first thing I wanted to do was get some information from ideally a large number of people who are in the cultures being appropriated, and see what they think.

~

WHAT I DID

First of all I put some polls up on Twitter and Mastodon. [Edit: Note that this post has been updated with results from closed polls.]

I specified that I wanted to hear from nonbinary Celts and pagans, just so that the voters would be familiar with fae/faer pronouns. I asked the questions in a neutral way, i.e. “How do you feel about...” with “good/neutral/bad” answer options, instead of something more leading like “Is this a load of rubbish?” or “are you super offended?” with “yes/no” options. I provided a “see results” option, so that the poll results wouldn’t be skewed as much by random people clicking any old answer to see the results. And I invited voters to express their opinions in replies.

Question #1: Nonbinary people of Celtic descent (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany), how do you feel about non-Celtic people using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It's good / No strong feelings/other / It's bad ]

Question #2: Nonbinary pagans, how do you feel about non-pagans using the neopronoun set fae/faer? [ It's good / No strong feelings/other / It's bad ]

The Twitter polls got over 1,100 responses each, and the Mastodon polls got over 140 responses each. With a little bit of spreadsheetery I removed the “N/A” responses to reverse engineer the number of people voting for each option, combined those numbers, and recalculated percentages.

Obviously this approach is not in the least scientific, but thankfully the results were unambiguous enough and the samples were big enough that I feel comfortable drawing conclusions.

Celts on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-Celts (561 voters):

It's good - 42.5%

No strong feelings/other - 44.0%

It's bad - 13.5%

Pagans on fae/faer pronouns being used by non-pagans (468 voters):

It's good - 47.2%

No strong feelings/other - 39.5%

It's bad - 13.3%

Here’s how that looks as a graph:

The limitations of polls on these platforms means that we have no way to distinguish between people who have more complicated views (”other”) and people who have “no strong feelings”, so we can’t really draw conclusions there. If we stick to just the pure positive and pure negative:

Celts were over three times as likely to feel positive about non-Celts using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.

Pagans were over three and a half times as likely to feel positive about non-pagans using fae/faer pronouns than they were to feel negative.

So Celts and pagans are way more likely to feel actively good about someone’s fae/faer pronouns, even when that person is not a Celt/pagan. That’s some strong evidence against the idea that fae/faer pronouns are appropriative, right there.

~

CORRECTIONS

To be clear, I haven’t done any research about the roots of fae/faer or the origins of the Fae and related beings, but my goal here was to get a sense of what Celts and pagans think and feel, rather than what an historian or anthropologist would say.

On the anti side, here were the replies that suggested fae/faer either is or might be inappropriate:

“I only worry that not everyone understands the origin of the word outside of modernized ideas of fairies.“ - pagan

“As a vaguely spiritual Whatever (Ireland), I think a mortal using "fae" as a pronoun/to refer to themselves is asking for a malicious and inventive fairy curse (on them, their families and possibly anyone in their vicinity, going by the traditions). I have not heard of this term before, so this is an immediate reaction from no background bar my cultural knowledge of sidhe/fae/term as culturally appropriate. My general approach is people can identify themselves as they want.“ - Celtic

So we’ve got a pagan who’s wary that people who use fae/faer (and people in general) might not have a fully fleshed out idea of the Fae. And we’ve got a Celt who doesn’t mind people using fae/faer personally, but based on what they know of the Fae they wouldn’t be surprised if the Fae got mad about it. No outright opposition, but a little concern.

There were not a lot of replies on the pro side, but not because people weren’t into it, judging by the votes. There were a lot of “it’s more complicated than that” replies, many of which repeated others, so quotes won’t really work. Here’s a summary of the Celtic bits:

“Fae” is not a Celtic word, and Celts don’t use it. It is French, or Anglo-French.

“Fae” can refer to any number of stories/legends from a wide variety of cultures in Europe, not one cohesive concept.

There are many legends about fairy-like beings in Celtic mythologies, and there are many, many different names for them.

The Celts are not a monolith, they’re a broad selection of cultures with various languages and various mythologies.

And the pagan bits:

Paganism is not closed or exclusive in any way. It might actually be more open than anything else, as “pagan” is a sort of umbrella term for non-mainstream religions in some contexts. A closed culture would be a prerequisite for something to be considered “appropriated” from paganism.

From my own experience, pagans may or may not believe in the Fae, and within that group believers may or may not consider the Fae to be sacred and/or worthy of great respect. (I’ve certainly never met a pagan who worshipped the Fae, though I don’t doubt that some do.)

And then we get into the accusations. 🍿

“this issue wasn’t started by Celtic groups or by people who know much about Celtic fae. It was started primarily by anti-neopronoun exclusionist pagans on TikTok.“

“[I’m] literally Scottish [...] and it’s not appropriative in the least and honestly to suggest as such is massively invalidating towards actual acts of cultural appropriation and is therefore racist. Feel like if this was actually brought up it was either by some people who seriously got their wires crossed or people who are just concern trolling and trying to make fun of both neo-pronouns and of the concept of cultural appropriation and stir the pot in the process.“

“It wouldn't be the first time bigots falsly claim “it's appropriative from X marginalized group" to harass people they don't like, like they did with aspec people when they claimed "aspec" was stolen from autistic language (which was false, as many autistics said)“

“It's been a discussion in pagan circles recently ... People were very quick to use the discussion as an excuse to shit on nonbinary people.“

“I think it would be apropos to note that the word "faerie/fairy" has been a synonym for various queer identities for decades, too. The Radical Faeries are a good example.“ (So if anyone has the right to [re]claim it...)

A little healthy skepticism is often wise in online LGBTQ+ “discourse”, and some of these people are making some very strong claims, for which I’d love to see some evidence/sources/context. Some of it certainly sounds plausible.

~

HOW DID IT START?

I had a look on Twitter and the earliest claim I can find that fae/faer pronouns are cultural appropriation is from 18th February 2020, almost exactly one year ago today. Again, tweets are not the best medium for this, there was very little in the way of nuance or context. If anyone can find an older claim from Twitter or Tumblr or anywhere else online, please do send it my way.

I have no idea how to navigate TikTok because I’m a nonbinosaur. (I’m 34.) I did find some videos of teens and young adults apparently earnestly asserting that they were Celtic or pagan and the use of fae/faer pronouns was offensive, but the videos were very brief and provided nothing in the way of nuance or context. For example:

This one from October 2020 with 29k ❤️s, by someone who I assume is USian based on the word “mom”?

This one from December 2020, that says “I am pagan and i find it rather disrespectful. It’s like using god/godr or jesus/jesusr.” That’s probably what inspired the feedback box comment above that refers to hypothetical jesus/jesusr pronouns.

If anyone is able to find a particularly old or influential TikTok video about fae/faer pronouns being appropriative I’d really appreciate it, especially if it’s from a different age group or from not-the-USA, to give us a feel for how universal this is.

For context, fae pronouns were mentioned in the very first Gender Census back in May 2013, though you’ll have to take my word for it as the individual responses are not currently public. The word “fae” was mentioned in the pronoun question’s “other” textbox, and no other forms in the set were entered so we have no way of knowing for sure what that person’s full pronoun set actually is. This means the set may have been around for longer. The Nonbinary Wiki says that the pronoun set was created in October 2013, as “fae/vaer”, later than the first entry in the Gender Census, so I’ll be editing that wiki page later! If anyone has any examples of fae/faer pronouns in use before 2013 I would also be very interested to see that.

~

IN SUMMARY

Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, as the Twitter polls are not super scientific and they only surveyed a selection of Celts and pagans within a few degrees of separation of the Gender Census Twitter and Mastodon accounts, but I can certainly report on what I found.

For a more conclusive result, we’d need to take into account various demographics such as age, culture, location, religion, race/heritage, etc.

As far as I can tell based on fairly small samples of over 400 people per group, a minority of about 13% of Celtic and/or pagan people felt that use of fae/faer pronouns is appropriative.

A much higher number of people per group felt positive about people who are not Celts or pagans using fae/faer pronouns. The predominant view was:

It can’t be cultural appropriation from Celtic cultures because fairy-like beings are not unique to Celtic cultures and Celtic cultures don’t call them Fae.

It can’t be cultural appropriation from pagan cultures because paganism is not “closed” or exclusive in any way, it’s too broad and open.

~

If your experience of your gender(s) or lack thereof isn’t described or encompassed by the gender binary of “male OR female”, please do click here to take the Gender Census 2021 - it’s international and it closes no earlier than 10th March 2021!

[stickynotestoletters]

Yandere BNHA Boys pt 2

Okay, this is a continuation of the first yandere ones I did because I wrote that in basically a night and was too tired to do more, I'm probably gonna post some after for the pro heroes and villains if I have time, I might finish those on the weekend then post it.

This is just a bunch of headcanons I have about the boys in BNHA and what they’d be like as yanderes. Only the really fluffy or good things about them listed here. Neither of these works are a good depictions of a real yandere and make sure to be careful to identify yandere traits in real people around you. It’s a very dangerous world and stay safe!

sorry if you were waiting for me to come out with these and I literally took forever lol, link to the first one is here. It's basically just me comforting myself with the sweet things that I think they would do as yanderes.

Warnings: Brainwashing, blood, gore, death, trans headcanons, body dysmorphia, nonbinary they/he Sero, they/them pronouns + nonbinary headcanons for Tokoyami, he/they nonbinary headcanons with Shinsou, a little NSFW because if I don't specify then they are aged up (around 20-25 is where I imagine the timeline that they actually captured you and have a hero carrier going for them already), manipulation, regular yandere things, kinda just turns into dumbass horknee headcanons at some point after Shinsou (sorry lmfao), objectification

Sero Hanata

so basically the first time they saw you they immediately wanted to come up to you

they love to give you back hugs because once you stop trying to fight them he's gonna be so honored you finally trust him

Big time slut [non-derogetory] for you

Likes to have an apartment that's high up, probably a secured penthouse with lots of windows

If you're afraid of heights they will get a ground bed for you two, they would also vibe with a low hanging hammock if you allow it

they really really like just putting you on a custom made leash, not inherently in a sexual way just in general likes to have it look like that with their tape on you at all times

they really really like it when you come to them for hugs and comfort

If you're a trans reader, if you want a binder he will get you one as soon as you ask, cried when you told him about it.

they cried way more than you though...

Was very accepting as an nb person as well

they custom made you a tape binder of his

Kinda as a joke but high key felt like they were gonna combust at the thought of you wearing that for them

Takes you to pride but you cannot speak

only takes you to pride after they are 1000% sure that you're not gonna speak to anyone but them

Takes you to it as a part of their float because they'd been invited onto the Hero Float

You are in a costume that's exactly like his, helmet and everything, you aren't allowed to be looked at

After that though, it's gonna be your choice to go or not to go

they trust you a little more after you run away from some assholes though and after that sometimes lets you take your helmet off during pride, you have to give them a lot of kisses though

When/if you ever consider any type of surgery he is 110% on board

they demand that you have to have it performed by someone who has done this a million times before, trusts no one else

If there's a way for you to go through it without the surgery they're excited but he's more excited if there is surgery because they love the idea of you being so cuddly and clinging to them for their comfort

Tokoyami Fumikage

haha they're in love with you

like, intensely in love with you the moment they first meet you

Dark shadow thinks you're adorable but says nothing more about their obsession with you

when you met them before UA they absolutely cannot handle being around you in a 10-foot radius

Eventually, though they do try and become a friend of yours

After that, it's a hop on the manipulation train, my dude

they basically make you see them as your savior from a mean uncaring world

they love talking to you about things that make you happy and loving you in little ways

hugs, hand holding, a lot of time it's just a little peck (haha) on the cheek

they love living with you though, like really love it

they like baking and making dinner for you

but especially baking

like really, baking

the manipulation they use makes it seem like everything is okay when you only talk to them so that's what you do and to you, it seems so much better than anything you could do

they haven't come out to you by the time you come out to them so your trans journey really helps them figure things like that out as well

The first time you explain that gender is a made-up construct they're like "yeah......isn't that how everyone feels? Like, not a gender????" we love this for them

you both kind of heal each other through this process

they like seeing you when you're most comfortable so they get you as many binders as you need

also gets you a custom binder like Sero but with feather designs, not like stupid printable patterns but something that is soft and the softness isn't feathers it's regular fluffy cloth

idk I'm not a designer that's why I gave up and became a writer lmao

they also get you a compression corset because they're emo

if there is surgery it takes a lot of time to convince them

they don't ever want you to regret anything they helped you with so it takes a lot of long-winded conversations about it

there was a lot of nervousness on their part because (this is just my headcanon) they were almost convinced to get surgery to construct their face to look human-like

they had a lot of their family tell them that, because of the way they looked, they had less of a chance to become a hero, they were immensely traumatized by this and thus wants to make absolutely sure you were okay with this

but when they finally find themself comforted by you about it it happens quickly and in the safest way you could possibly imagine

Shinso Hitoshi

Shinsou didn't want to approach you at all, he was so scared you'd run away or tell him he's a villain

they always thought that they weren't good enough for you

he loved you but you needed to say hi first

and you did

so he whisked you away

they like to just brainwash you into tasting certain types of food when you're craving them instead of just getting you food

he likes to talk to you in a voice like he would talk to a kitten, not like husky or anything sexy, but something cute and adorable

especially when you're brainwashed and can't say anything to him

He likes to give you lots of soft stuff like I'm talking pillows upon pillows and squishmallows

once he gets his own house they get it in a place that's more comforting in the dark than in the light

they really like the dark and outdoorsy vibe anyway so if they choose a place somewhere in the forest to keep you what's the added bonus if no one can hear you scream?

a little bit of spice; he has this whole a/b/o fantasy (idk it's his vibes that he'd read that fanfic and stuff lmao) and kinda treats you like you were an omega

sometimes if you guys do have sex they'll brainwash you to act like an omega or once he's more experienced with bodily manipulation involving their quirk they'll make you do all of the......omega things

when you come out to them, if you're trans, they're definitely gonna not care

like if you need comfort and stuff about it they will not make a big deal about it

he legit is like "okay .....can I still fuck you or?????"

HE JUST GIVES OFF REALLY HORKNEE VIBES OKAY?????

definitely brainwashes you into not feeling dysphoric anymore though

like loves it when you come up all sad to him and uncomfy just to ask them to brainwash you

he melts over you cuddling them after those times though

if you want surgery they're gonna make sure that it's between him and the doctors that y'all are there

like no one knows you're there, completely off radius, in and out like nothing (he's basically a cryptid in the woods by the time you guys have the surgery, so they wanna make sure no one questions it)

Monoma Neito

bold of you to assume that man can express literally anything when he wants to just sit you on his lap and look at your pretty face

love at first sight taken literally but not in a shallow way

he loves just having you around him

kinda treats you as an accessory at times, talks like you're a purse or something and people don't really comment but it's really freaking them out sometimes when you don't speak up on it

likes to say he's the only one to understand you cause he's afraid you'd leave him

a hardcore fan of collars though

definitely has lots of jewelry that represents him even though you don't go out he still loves the idea of it

big time cook

loves providing for you, never lets you do a damn thing other than watching pre-approved cartoons and hobbies

absolute fucking disaster about hugging you

always has to be touching you

he thinks you're so fucking gorgeous and body worships you even out of the bedroom

if you're trans he will definitely be weird about it at first

he's just diet transphobic

he's not denying it but sometimes he's like "Are you sure???" and stuff

he clears this up with the help of you being pissed enough to not eat or talk to him until he apologizes

he then educates himself on it and comes to the conclusion that he was in fact being an asshole

talks to you about binders and stuff like that

doesn't really believe in surgery, he would never allow you to do that just because it would be too painful for him to see you go through

he instead literally searches the whole fucking globe for a person with a body-altering quirk to make sure you don't get hurt

he seeks out homophobes, transphobes, and other dumbasses on the regular just to kill them like literally it just started out for your approval but now it's just for fun

Anyway, the villain one (if I do it) will probably become just horknee brain rot cause I am a slut. Request some stuff and I'll try to put up some works if y'all want ig.

[arcticdementor]

Sitting on the couch watching TV earlier this month, my wife read to me a headline from her iPhone. “Listen to this,” she said: “There are only 15 lesbian bars left in the entire country.”

“Great,” I said, “We’ll each get our own.”

Lesbian bars have always been vastly outnumbered by bars for straight people and gay men, but in the 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars in the U.S. What happened? Well, a lot of them sucked. The first lesbian bars I went to in my early 20s were dank, smoky caves where women in khaki shorts and backward caps grinded on each other to Outkast. They could have been frat bars if not for the notable absence of men.

…

But there’s something else going on right now, because it’s not just lesbian bars that are disappearing; it’s lesbian as a category itself.

After Portland’s last lesbian bar closed in 2010, as Ellena Rosenthal explored in the Willamette Week, there were attempts to start lesbian-specific nights at various venues, but most avoided the L-word to appear inclusive of trans and nonbinary people. One event, called Temporary Lesbian Bar, apologized after being accused of condoning “trans women exterminationism” for using the labrys — a double-headed ax that symbolizes female strength and has long been a part of lesbian iconography — in their logo. That event still exists (or did before Covid), but the organizers make sure to advertise that, despite the name, it’s “open, inclusive, and welcoming to all people.” (Oddly, these fights only seem to occur around women’s space, not men’s. If gay bars, bathhouses, and clubs go extinct, it will be because of Covid, not because of infighting over inclusion.)

Portland may be a parody of PC, but it’s not an outlier. When I came out in North Carolina in the early 2000s, the term “lesbian” was fading and “queer” was rapidly rising. Most of my peers saw lesbians as stodgy, old-fashioned, and uncool, whereas queers were hip, edgy, and inclusive. Yet “queer” is vague enough to mean nearly anything, so the label says less about your love life and more about your politics. (I propose we all start using the Kinsey Scale instead.)

The flight from “lesbian” has accelerated since. An academic in the Southeast, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that when she mentioned to a colleague that she’s a lesbian, the colleague “reacted like I’d confessed to being a Confederate Lost-Causer. She told me that the term is outdated and problematic, and I shouldn’t use it.” So the lesbian keeps quiet about her identity: “It’s like living in a second closet.”

Not long ago, it would have been the Christian right stigmatizing homosexual women. Today, it’s also from people who call themselves queer.

…

Nonbinary people say that the identification liberates them from the prison of gender, but for others, it doesn’t dismantle gender roles and stereotypes; it reinforces them. It legitimizes the idea that there’s an intractable gender binary in the first place. Instead of saying, “I’m a woman and I reject gender roles,” NB ideology says, in effect, “I reject gender roles and therefore I’m not a woman.”

Joycelyn MacDonald, the editor-in-chief of the lesbian site AfterEllen, has seen the NB ideology pushed by well-intended people and she worries about the unintended consequences. “When we say that femininity is equivalent to womanhood, we leave no space for women, gay or straight, to be gender non-conforming,” she told me. “Butch lesbians especially have fought for the right to claim space as women, and now women are running from that instead of boldly stepping into it. It’s another way of saying ‘I’m not like other girls,’ and it’s demeaning to other women.”

This is not a popular position in some queer communities, and AfterEllen is routinely accused of being transphobic. In 2018, Rhea Butcher, a nonbinary comic, tweeted: “You don’t represent me or my friends and your website is a sham. You’re not a lesbian/bisexual website, you’re a TERF website.” (“TERF" stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and is not, to put it mildly, a compliment.) Butcher’s tweet is typical, and it’s part of what makes having this conversation so fraught.

There’s been no clear polling on the shift from “lesbian” to “nonbinary,” and so my sense that the lesbian is endangered is purely anecdotal. But there are plenty of anecdotes. After I put out a call on Twitter asking lesbians for input, my inbox filled with emails from women who said vast portions of their friend groups have adopted new labels and pronouns. But none feel like they can openly discuss it, which is apparent by the number who asked to remain anonymous: all of them.

…

Some feminists argue that women are so oppressed in society that opting out of womanhood is a way of opting out of oppression. I’m skeptical. Why didn’t women do this decades ago, when oppression was objectively greater? Besides, enbies are more likely to be Smith undergrads than, say, immigrants getting assaulted at the border.

And there’s another not-so popular explanation: that it’s a fad, a form of social contagion.

I’m aware that this will be offensive to some people. The concept of a fixed, internal gender identity has become sacrosanct, and it’s viewed as something deeply personal and meaningful, like the soul. But humans are social creatures and we are easily influenced by our peers. This isn’t a moral judgment, just a fact, and I’ve seen how it plays out in my own peer circle. First one person comes out as nonbinary, then another, then another, and then one day half the dykes you know go by “they.” Add social media to the mix, and fawning profiles of nonbinary people in the press, and you’ve got yourself a mass cultural phenomenon.

I ran this theory by a therapist who specializes in LGTBQ issues. (She asked to remain anonymous, so I’ll call her Tara.) Tara told me that while the most common complaints of her young female patients involve gender identity, it’s not an issue with older patients. The older ones struggle with their sexuality or their relationships, but aside from a few transexuals with dysphoria, gender identity doesn’t come up. And young women, in particular, are prone to social contagion. We’ve seen this in many areas: eating disorders, cutting, exercising, yawning, strange fits of laughter, and even (forgive the term) hysteria.

When I asked Tara if social contagion could be the cause of the nonbinary movement, she paused for long enough that I thought she may have hung up the phone. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t really say that to anyone.” The professional risks are too great.

[expiredfairydust]

best friends ~ bubblegum rock/kazuleon || ft. nb gay! kaz || pt. 2

//tw: self hatred, kinda internalised homophobia, uncensored F slur bcoz the author can reclaim it//

a loud gasp forced the two to pull away from their kiss quickly, both of them quickly moving to look in the direction of where the noise had come from.

kazuichi went red due to embarrassment, noticing the unmistakable blonde hair of miss sonia darting away.

she had poked her head around the door to souda’s room - they never locked it in case leon wanted to come and cuddle - meaning to ask the pinkette if they’d been given any homework as she had been in first aid for most of the day before, unaware of what was happening between the mechanic and their crush.

and now she was running off, trying to give the pair privacy. souda, panicking because their illusion of heterosexuality was likely being broken, ran after her, calling “miss s-sonia! wait!! i-i swear it’s not what it looks like i’m s-sorry miss sonia you’re the only one i love i swear!!” they were crying for real now at the realisation that they had just ruined the one thing that was theirs.

the blonde suddenly stopped in her tracks and turned back to kazuichi. her face had an odd expression that kazuichi couldn’t read.

she put a hand over the mechanic’s mouth. “you do not understand souda, i do not care about you and kuwata’s relationship! in fact, i am glad because now you can leave me and miss fukawa to our relationship in peace - i was and still am rather disgusted at your lack of knowledge on personal boundaries but now i do not have to worry about that because you have no reason to!” she spoke slightly forcefully without meaning to. when she was done, she took her hand away and started walking off again.

“miss sonia!! i-i-i-“ kazuichi couldn’t gather their words, thousands of thoughts racing through their head. “we’re not dating... it was.. it was only a kiss....” they would mumble, more tears streaming down their face with every word. “i-it was all my fault anyways... i-i.. i was.. i was the one who kissed him and it was so so stupid of me because he’s the only person i have left and now he probably hates me for- for-“

their voice cracked and they couldn’t go on speaking, their legs giving way underneath them. “for being such a disgusting fucking faggot!! and-and-and i don’t blame him because i hate myself too!!” they were practically shouting now. “but dammit i love him so fucking much! so much, it hurts! god it feels like my heart is being ripped apart and i can’t fix it and i don’t know what to do and i hate that! and even if i could ever tell him properly i just know he’d hate me because who could ever like such a pathetic little FAG”

they didn’t know why they were telling all of this to miss sonia, maybe it was because they didn’t want her to think leon’s standards were so low as to date them. maybe they just needed to let everything out, needed to rant. because the moment they opened their mouth the words seemed to vomit out.

and once they were done ranting they ran off to the loos so they could actually vomit, as they often did out of distress. they ran to the far away disabled loos, on the opposite end of campus - they were the only public gender neutral loos on campus - so they wouldn’t have to face leon again, who they assumed was still in their room.

key word: assumed.

because leon had actually heard every word, only a few paces behind kazuichi during their confession. he had ran to try and take the mechanic in his arms, to say that it was okay because he loved them that way back. he had ran, just as kazuichi ran off.

meanwhile the princess was just happily beaming to herself, knowing that leon heard every word. she had successfully wingwomanned for the creep and the punk! it was a double win, as leon tended to flirt with touko as well as kazuichi’s horrible attempts to look straight by chasing after miss sonia herself. she made her way to her girlfriend’s dorm to tell her all about what she did.

leon’s thoughts were racing, as he tried to figure out what was even happening. kaz was in love with him... kazzy loved him back... but they thought that kiss was all their fault? as if leon hadn’t chosen to kiss them too? and now they thought he hated them? why? why would he kiss them if he hated them? god kazuichi was a dumb bitch at the best of times...

leon couldn’t help but smile through his tears, which he hadn’t noticed either.

kazuichi really loved him back..!

him!

but they thought leon felt the opposite...

right...

well, leon would just have to change that, he decided as he started looking for his best friend. he knew the mechanic got physically unwell when they were unwell, so he’d just have to check all the loos until he found the right one!

except kazuichi was nonbinary and relatively androgynous, so the baseball star had no clue which loos they’d be in, and he couldn’t exactly barge into the women’s loos checking to find his friend.

so, that meant he’d have to find ibuki, who had joined his band, and ask nya to check the girls’ loos while he checked the men’s and disabled loos. nya was also non binary, but at least she passed as a girl enough to enter the women’s loos.

it wasn’t hard, seeing as the noise they made made all over on the other side of the campus-

(conveniently close to one of the only gender neutral loos on campus)

-was loud enough to be heard in another country. leon was regretting leaving his ear plugs in kaz’s dorm, as he plugged his ears with his fingers and ran towards the sound.

“IBUKI!!!!” he yelled once he was in the practice room mioda was in.

“WHAT?!?”

“WHAT???”

“WHAT?!”

this was going to be tedious, leon thought, as he moved towards where everything was plugged in and unplugged the speakers.

ah, silence,,, at least it would’ve been if mioda wasn’t screeching at leon for what he did. “jesus christ calm down ibuki! i need you for something important” leon hissed, ibuki going completely quiet at the word “important” - void loved being helpful!

the bubbly musician sped off to search once leon explained what he needed. knowing nya, she’d probably check all the men’s loos too, void didn’t seem to get what made people so iffy about not sharing a bathroom with different genders.

but with that, leon got to looking too. and it wasn’t long before he heard the sound of sobbing in the disabled loos, accompanied by the sound of vomiting. well, there’s kaz...

he knocked on the door “kazzy?” he tentatively spoke. there was the click of the door being unlocked for leon to enter. he soon dropped to the floor, next to the pinkette, pulling them into his lap and holding them tightly. “shshshhh... i’m here kazzy...” the ginger would whisper sweetly into souda’s ear.

he held the younger student’s hair back as they puked again. “now how about you tell me what’s going on in that mind of yours?” he whispered, despite knowing already. he wanted kazuichi to say it again. to him, not to miss sonia.

but kaz didn’t want to talk. “it’s stupid” they said, snuggling against leon.

“if it’s stupid why don’t you say it?”

“coz you’ll hate me even more than you do for kissing you” their words were hard to understand through their tears.

“what makes you think i hate you? if i hated you, would i be here with you now? c’mon how about you wash your mouth out? all that puking must have left a horrible taste” leon spoke with a gentle tone, which was unlike him but comforting to the sobbing boy in his lap.

once almost all traces of puke had been ridden from the mechanic’s mouth, leon sat them on his lap again, holding them tightly. “how about you tell me what’s wrong now, eh kazzy?” he said sweetly, wiping his best friend’s tear stained cheeks with his sleeve.

“promise you won’t hate me?”

“pinky promise”

the pinkette drew a deep breath, getting ready to speak. then shook their head. “i-i can’t”

a realisation dawned upon leon then. this was his chance to reveal his own secret! “i’ll tell you something about me that i’ve been hiding if that would make you feel any better” a slow nod gave him the ok to speak.

“i’m intersex. when i was born the doctors told my mom and dad and they were.. well, i don’t know how they felt but i was forced into an opporation to make me “fully” male as a baby and all my life i’ve had to take medication to keep my hormones at a “normal male” level, which is odd coz i was never actually told that’s what it was for until recently” the ginger spoke, resting his head on kazuichi’s shoulder

“but, i want to stop taking my meds, i don’t want to be 100% a boy, and that decision kinda scares me in case people won’t accept it. in case you don’t accept it” he added after hesitating. “now do you wanna talk about your problem?” he wanted to change the subject.

kaz had gone quiet. then, after a few seconds they said. “it sounds silly now that you’ve told me how serious yours is... but- but-“ they paused to figure out the words they wanted to say. “i-i- i’m so sorry for kissing you! i had no right to do it and i-i- i didn’t even take the time to ask you if you wanted a kiss and- and- and- i’m so sorry i know you hate me for it and i don’t blame you because i totally deserve it” the words seemed to fall out quicker than kazuichi could think of them

“and i know you probably never want to see me again but if you could ever forgive me i’d really appreciate it because you’re the only friend i’ve got and i love you dude!” as those words came out, the pink haired mechanic started tearing up again. “i-i love you... i love you so much it hurts and i don’t know what i’d ever do without you but i totally understand if you hate me because how could you ever love someone who’s such a disgusting f-“

their words were cut off by leon kissing the shorter mechanic. it was a brief kiss, even shorter than their first, but the pure, raw emotion behind it was clear. love. reciprocated love.

“if i thought you were disgusting, why would i choose to kiss you twice? because now you know it sure as hell weren’t just you who wanted that first kiss” leon said simply, wiping the shorter guy’s tears away. “but i don’t still want to be friends,” he said, suddenly going cold, making the pinkette’s face drop. “i want to be boyfriends!” he said, making kazuichi start laughing with relief.

just as they were about to share another kiss, in barged mioda, yelling about how nya had found the pink haired mechanic, then once void noticed the ginger sat next to them and started yelling about how unfair it was that she had been looking all over for kazuichi for leon when the ginger was probably with them the whole time.

the couple smiled and sheepishly promised to make it up to the ultimate musician. the end.

[necro-hamster]

no idc i feel like shit and i wanna talk abt my weird little fc5 oc. my blog i do what i want. rambles under the cut bc i dont wanna clog up ppl’s dash

anyways. first of all this is abt my weird little fc5 oc danny. he is/was part of the cult, long story short, joined up when he was like 14 because his parents joined and dragged him along.

im not talking abt THAT aspect of their story tho. i wanna talk abt gender LMAO. it’s MY oc and I get to choose how to project. anyways ! i think, first and foremost, for a LONG time (like, from a VERY early age, likely around,, 11-12??) danny thought he was mtf. they knew they didn’t feel exactly MALE, but even then, FEMALE didn’t sit quite right either. but, that’s all danny really knew about ! he was vaguely aware of what being trans was, and it was the only label he could think of that got close to how he felt. they did a lot of private experimenting with using a different name, she/her pronouns, and attempting to look as feminine as possible just to see how it’d make him feel.

truth is, while it did help out a bit, he only came to the conclusion that the label of a woman didn’t exactly sit right either. which was admittedly kind of a relief? danny grew up in a very white, republican area in georgia, and his parents fit right in with the rest of the community, to say the least ! they were assholes !! as i’m sure you can kind of guess by them joining a crazy murder cult and forcing their kid to join with them despite not wanting to. lol.

either way, danny was pretty relieved to come to the conclusion that he didn’t want to necessarily TRANSITION in any way, they still felt ... off??? if you’re trans you know what i mean. that just constant feeling of WRONG. especially once puberty hit !!! facial hair in particular gives him pretty horrible dysphoria, and they’ve always been glad that they can’t seem to really grow it out much past patchy stubble, given the ‘no shaving’ rule the cult seems to have.

danny identified as a cis male for years. he figured out that he was bi around 16, and figured that maybe THAT was what had been causing him so much discomfort. it wasn’t. obviously. he went through this same cycle for YEARS, even after he left eden’s gate, of “i’m a cis male” -> “i don’t feel male” -> “maybe i’m a woman” -> “i don’t feel like a woman” -> “i’m a cis male”, rinse and repeat.

(keep in mind i personally go w/ an ending where the collapse doesn’t happen because i do what i want and the ending is open ended anyways lmao. same basic thing happens in the situation where the collapse DOES happen tho, just takes a lil while longer to get there.)

finally, at around 22, danny learned about the term nonbinary, and it really was just like an instant click. they were talking to a friend who told him they were nonbinary, and he just felt like “oh, me too”, once they explained what it was. obviously, being nb is a whole complex experience, and there was still a LOT of treading water he had to do before fully figuring himself out.

but i literally refuse to give a nb character a shitty ending so as of now !! danny’s come to a very comfortable conclusion that they’re nonbinary, and use he/they pronouns. they’re okay with presenting primarily masculine and are quite frankly very proud of themself for finally figuring out their gender identity tbh. their shitty parents and relatives/”friends” are out of their life (completely cut out) so they don’t ever have to deal with any of THAT bullshit, luckily. :^)

[fake-wizard]

How did you become a trans terf? This is really interesting!

Thank you for this question because I can now delay watching my lectures for like 30 min. 

I got tumblr my freshman year, started my deep dive into the realm of tumblr’s lgbtqianpd+++ stuff. I did a bunch of ace discourse as an “inclusionist” then as an “exclusionist”, started iding as nonbinary demiboy, ace/aro, he/they, got a binder i think during the winter of my sophomore year and came out to a couple friends as nb. Went more towards ftm. Started dating my current boyfriend winter of my junior year, told him I was id’ing as ftm (he’s bisexual, didn’t matter) and the rest of my friends, changed my name and pronouns socially. Start of my senior year I told my family and had them change pronouns and name as well. My bday is in October, so turned 18 and was going to start testosterone. 

By the winter of that year however, I had been hate-reading a lot of “terf” blogs. And what I found was that I could not argue against what they were saying. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance about it all, repeating the same mantras but knowing they didn’t quite add up. 

Specifically about: If sexuality is based on an internal sense of gender, how can you be attracted to anyone until they tell you what gender they are? If a lesbian sees a woman and she says “i’m ftm” does that mean the lesbian is now a bisexual because they were “attracted to a man” or is a switch supposed to flip and they stop being attracted? If sexism is based on “being perceived as a woman/passing as a woman” then why do butches who pass as men still experience sexism? If being gay is about “being perceived as gay in society” then wouldn’t that make all the homosexual couples historically who passed as hetero for safety suddenly become actual literal heteros? If transmen have male privilege, why are they not represented in politics, are targetted for sexual abuse by straight men, and need access to abortion just like women do? If transwomen don’t have male privilege, why are they the main voices of the movement? They can reap all the benefits of a male life for 50 years, and then suddenly none of that mattered? If me and my boyfriend’s relationship is “gay” now that i id’d as ftm, how come we could legally get married and adopt in any country in the world? I was raised being told I Should like and date men, I never once believed my attraction to men was a sin, and gay men experience the Exact Opposite, so how could we both possibly be gay men? Why do transwomen have male patterns of violence? Why have I only ever heard of stories of transwomen abusing transmen, and not the other way around? Is it possible to only be attracted to the same sex? To say no is to say that it’s possible for all women to like dick, which is obviously fucked up. What is so different about a man and a transwoman that means a lesbian is supposed ot like the latter? Why can’t anybody define women? first woman, then female, then afab, the goalpost kept moving. What is there to being a woman besides being female, isn’t all that extra stuff just stereotypes? When my sister is distressed with her body and denied herself food, or I cut myself, that’s a bad thing because it hurts your body, but hrt and a mastectomy hurt your body, they even risk killing you, but that’s okay? I took a sociology class and it’s clear socialization effects behavior - but somehow magically trans people grow up uneffected by it? If socialization can influence women to wear makeup, dress, and act in specific ways that arent’ innate, and cause higher rates of eating disorders, couldn’t it effect dysphoria as well?

And so much more!!!

And that’s only on the trans side - I also had my eyes opened to the horrors of pornography and prostitution, the rates of domestic violence, and all the other terrible sex-based oppression that women are subjected to globally. There is so much more to being a radfem than the trans issues too. 

So for two years (winter of my senior year to winter of my college’s high school year) I decided not to transition. I engaged with radfem tumblr and talked about all these things with my female friends in person as well, it was like getting a huge weight off my shoulders too. And it really did help lessen my dysphoria to an extent. I came up with a long list of coping mechanisms to employ for dysphoria as well. 

But by this february, I was just so tired of that. I still supported everything I say about radical feminism, about sex based oppression, protecting homosexuals, and the dangers of medical transition. But dysphoria is just this constant painful presence day in and day out, and I pursued medical transition in february. I applaud every woman who chooses not to transition, and ultimately view transitioning as giving in, because I can no longer be a role model to young dysphoric women, who shows them that you don’t need to transition. 

At this point, I love my body more than ever and I can’t imagine regretting these changes really. I will miss connecting with women the way I used to, especially as a woman in science, but the women in my life from before transition will always see me as one of them still, and I appreciate that. 

The way I see it, words don’t hurt me at all, they are immaterial, and as a scientist I value coherent definitions, and I understand the realities of sex. So my goal with transition is to pass as male in society and to alter the parts of my body that bring me distress - I know i’m not literally male. And I think all trans people need to get to the point where they understand that, it really helps mentally. 

And I’ll always think, maybe if i had different friends (half of my friends understand, half think i am or would think i am an evil terf) or was dating a woman instead of a man (i’m bisexual, thought i was hetero in highschool (but called myself a gay man lmao), and dating someone with the same body seems like a big deal in handling dysphoria), if i tried harder with my coping mechanisms, if I saw a therapist who understood all this and didn’t just encourage me to do whatever I wanted, maybe i wouldn’t be transitioning. But I’m happy now, so that’s what I focus on as mattering to me, and that’s what I want to pursue. 

I do caution others from doing the same though. 

Also tangent at the end here, I call myself “trans” because I’m medically transitioned. To me, “cis v trans” makes no sense and is sexist. But “dysphoric vs not dysphoric” or “medically transitioned vs not medically transitioned” make more sense to me. 

[unicyclehippo]

Hey are you NB? I saw that you have they/them in your bio and I know you've written NB characters before. Hope it's okay to ask! If so how did you know you were? Recently I've been feeling really uncomfortable with my body, my chest specifically, I always look at it and wish it was a lot more flat. I know I'm not trans but I don't know if I feel enough to be NB? (1/2)

Like maybe I'm just dissatisfied with the typical constraints placed on femininity which I don't really vibe with? I also see a lot of talk about how people can't be a NB lesbian, I don't think this is true personally(?) but if it is I'd be really sad to have to lose that community. It feels kind of silly to question this at 25 like it's almost as if it's too late to even think about it. Ugh sorry I hope this isn't really weird I just don't know where to start with all of this. (2/2)

//

well so im queer is how i personally like to identify but within that i would say that im an NB lesbian. i wrote O (in gaf au) as nonbinary immediately before i was like “huh wild i was exploring smth here”. and i don’t think there is any one way to be Nonbinary but u should know that the white stripe on the trans flag? that’s us, mate . technically, i believe Monica Helms (she’s the creator of the trans flag, the blue pink & white stripes) says it is for people who are transitioning or who have neutral gender?

i don’t know how much i can help u with this. that’s not said to be mean, it’s just that im a person who is intensely . bad at being a person. i feel like im pretending to Be someone, be human, in every aspect of my life all the time so to give someone advice on smth so personal is. impossible. everyone experiences things, it seems, differently. we each have our own distinct framework through which we examine & understand the world & ourselves. a kaleidoscope of all the colours of our own experiences & conversations & opinions that distorts & reconfigures things in beautiful & vastly different ways. that being said, sometimes pieces line up for us.

i think christina @ gaygeeknerd on Twitter said it in a way that resonated with me . i hope they don’t mind if i repeat it here.. basically they said (& i will try to reblog with the thread later) that they didn’t know if they/them & the identity of nonbinary was the perfect fit for them but “I know when someone uses they/them for me it means they care and want me to be me”.

that resonates with me bc when i think abt myself, my gender is not smth that is at the core of who i am. it’s a non-important aspect of who i am (until, ofc, i am reminded of it). it’s always been unimportant to me in a way that goes beyond “i don’t like being told i can’t do smth bc im—“ if that makes sense? it is dissatisfaction with gender roles, certainly, but it’s also a disconnect with the entire concept, which is i thought maybe i would connect to more if i understood more, & listened to trans voices regarding how they knew, but nothing has resonated with me so much as those simple lines “I don’t know if this is right but [...] when someone uses them for me it means they care”.

sometimes im worried. about whether who i think am is because there is smth wrong with me. i don’t think that is unfamiliar concept to anyone, certainly not someone who is asking me the questions that u are. but im 25 & i only started questioning this a few years ago, & my sexuality a little while before that. & i think a lot of things about the state of freedom being not only the ability to behave & present the way u want but also to have people see u behaving & presenting the way u want & supporting u in those ways. bc we don’t exist in a void & perceptions of being, of having a self - being Seen - is important, maybe necessary, in having a gender bc the custom (not the right word for it but heyo let’s push on) is that it is a binary & I must be one or the other so to have someone see me & use they or them is the confirmation, the assertion of being not of the binary. that being said - trans women & men know themselves that they are the gender that they are. if they have that certainty, then gender does Not require another person, just for the Self to know what the Self is. in which case, my opinion on gender being smth that is Viewed is entirely incorrect & it is smth that exists only when i am seen.

there’s this conversation i remember seeing somewhere, im not sure where, that is smth like, “if you want to be a girl, you’re a girl.” that helped me a lot bc it opened up this idea to me that if the construct of being non-binary is so very very appealing to me, if it makes me feel more realised...maybe that’s enough.

i don’t think this will help but i hope it does. sorry i couldn’t give you any solid help. i hope when your answers come that the experience is kind & that some weight is lifted from your shoulders

[fierceawakening]

@baixueagain I don’t know the person you’ve been posting about today, but something very, very similar happened in an online circle that I was in some years back. A person claimed to be intersex and made a lot of social justice sorts of posts about intersex and trans rights. They described themself in a way that sounded a little odd to me--basically said they were anatomically equally male and female in a way that didn’t jibe with any intersex condition I had heard of. But I went with it because I’m perisex/the oppressor, and who goes around sniffing for weirdness in someone’s personal story? And they claimed to be seeing a doctor routinely for HRT of the sort matching their gender identity (nb transfem), which why would I doubt that?

They started to have friction in the relationship with their partner, and they started posting that they knew they lie a lot about a lot of things, and didn’t know why but it was mental illness related so please forgive them. It was very, very weird. They made posts about how they’d had a serious lying problem all their life--how they were so desperate to be loved that it was just easy to promise they’d paid the rent or make up an interesting past than to tell the truth, and how they were “working on it” but couldn’t be sure they could change.

Partner dumped them, big posting everywhere about how they’d lied about EVERYTHING--finances and the rent were the big ones, but gradually the partner found out there was no endocrinologist. The routine appointments were the partner driving off to nowhere and hanging out there for an hour and then coming back home with stories of doctor visits. The only thing that apparently was real was one visit to a plastic surgeon to ask about breast implants, no other gender therapy, endo appts, or any such. (Which don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people have to do those things to “really be trans,” I was just baffled at the lengths they went to to maintain the ruse. Why say you have XYZ doctors when you don’t, when no one in your social circle is even a transmed? Why even?)

She found out later that the person had always presented as male with other partners, never said anything about being trans or intersex or nonbinary, and just had some slight gynecomastia. The partner recalled that she had at one point talked to them about gender blurred spiritual figures, and suddenly found herself wondering if the person had just... spun a tale around man-boobs to make themself seem interesting to her, and then it got bigger and bigger.

She contacted some of the person’s exes, people they had told her were evil and out to get them, and found out that they had a pattern of these sorts of big lies about their whole life story. But the lies had been different--never about being intersex, and the person had never described themself as anything but a cis man. I don’t remember what the other stories were, but they were similarly elaborate. So detailed that people figured “Okay, that’s unusual, but that doesn’t mean they made it up. Who would do that?!”

She found out that there had been some mental health appointments, but they’d been for talk therapy, not gender therapy. She described contacting this person and being told “no, that’s not what I do so isn’t what they’re seeing me for. I can’t divulge details of their diagnostic history, but I’d advise you against dating this person.”

It was really destabilizing for a lot of us, including me, though I only knew the players online. I recall that we ultimately kinda consensus-decided it seemed like the “pathological lying” part of sociopathy, though of course we didn’t know that for sure. (FWIW, this experience and the confirmation from a couple professionals that sociopathic behavior can indeed look like this is part of what’s led me to the idea of avoiding most sociopaths.)

Even though the person had made a big mea culpa post and confessed to a “lying problem,” soon after the partner left they started demonizing her as a transphobe, saying the whole misunderstanding was about not wanting to date a trans woman. I had to stop talking to a few people I’d respected because they were repeating that any mistrust of this person was rooted in refusal to respect their gender, even though we’d all read the confession that they could and did lie all the time.

So I don’t know. Just putting this here so you know you and your social circle are not alone in this experience, and it’s bizarre as fuck when it happens.

[steponmepinkjun]

I NEVER FINISHED MY STORY OMG. ok so i left off at being too proud to tell my friend she was right and kpop fucked hard. the difference between u and me is that i’m too good of a liar. too good. i kept up the “i hate kpop it’s cringe” facade for ALMOST TWO WHOLE YEARS, I SHIT YOU NOT. why? bc my dumb ass, extra ass, dramatic ass self thought “ok if i’m gonna have to deal with the embarrassment of admitting i’m wrong, i better do it in such an extra ass way it’ll knock ur socks off so hard that YOULL be the one embarrassed not me.” the original plan was to learn the entire choreography to bts dope, bc it’s the song that she told me to listen to and inevitably the song that got me into them, but later switched to bts fire bc i saw too many of those “choreo matches w any song” videos, and then her birthday party came up. and here’s the real kicker. her birthday is April Motherfuckin Fools. so it would be So Perfect for me to reveal my kpopism as a birthday present And a april fools prank in one. so i was Set on the Reveal being on april 1st, but the day rolls around and god that choreo is so fucking hard and i am Not a dancer. never have been. so i abandon that and go ykno what… i’ll do it Next Year. BC MY BITCHASS WAS LIKE NO THE MOMENT IS TOO PERFECT TO DO IT ON A NORMAL ASS DAY ITS GONNA BE ON APRIL FOOLS ON HER GODDAMN BIRTHDAY OR NOT AT ALL. a year rolls by, i’ve told most of our friends except her and they’re all in on it, i’d made so many subtle kpop references to her without her realising they were fully intentional and had too many scares where she almost figured me out but i lied my way out of it, and i’d given up on showing off with choreography bc i couldn’t make that shit look good. i’m not a dancer. i am, however, a rapper, and a damn good one, so i inhaled the agust d mixtape and decided i’d just rap the eminem of kpop’s anthem at her face. in korean. and change the lyrics at the end (if u haven’t listened to agust d, the bridge repeats “i’m sorry” a lot) to “i’m sorry i kept this from u for so long” and “i’m sorry i actually ult got7 not bts” (this was like the april after skz debuted ok i was holding onto got7 for dear life knowing full well skz we’re going to convert me smh) and the best part? she never saw it coming. her official present was a cd with a bunch of kpop on it but she thought it was just a personalised mixtape for her so i told her to play the first song out loud and she knew the song Instantly. it has a long intro so she was like “i guess u did listen when i recommended u this song!! i knew you’d like it since u like rap so much!!” and then i started rapping and i shit u not. she started SCREAMING. like the initial reaction was her jaw dropping and then instinctively covering her mouth but when i kept going and she realised i wasn’t fucking around she just fucking screamed like a banshee. at the end during the sorry bit i threw off my jacket to reveal a got7 shirt on the inside and she fell off her chair and started rolling around on the floor. needless to say it was every bit as satisfying as i thought it’d be LMAOOOO afterwards her ass was like “I CANT BELIEVE U HID THIS FROM ME FOR OVER A YEAR” and when i tried to explain my ego couldn’t take the “i told u so” she was like “you know i wouldn’t have made fun of you for it right? i would just be glad you’re not hating on my boys anymore” so basically i’m a big dramatic fool and she was always too good for me.

don’t mind the weird spaces here my ipad is being all fucky wucky w me rn. damn sad to hear ur sideblog experience didn’t go so well, i’d have shown u the cool side of the fandom if i knew 😤😤 leading u thru the cursed halls of kpop stan tumblr like a sketchy tour guide that’s actually 3 small raccoons stacked on top of each other like a trench coat, like “over here we have the fanfic writers that honestly need to publish a book, over here we have the gif makers that are responsible for my entire camera roll, if we take a quick swerve past the death threat anons and the twt fanwar screenshots - mind ur feet bub the 14 year olds were tryna make a grab for ur ankles - ah here’s the holy grail of shitposts, you might be here for hours, to the right we have the weird aussie side of the fandom that projects our childhoods onto chanlix but also all the members as we decide what their life in australia would’ve been like, and down there is a secret trapdoor to the blogs w endless random headcanons that will make you laugh, cry or blush depending on if the author woke up and decided to choose violence today. enjoy your Stay!” but then again i’m not so active on tumblr anymore (ngl you’ve become the highlight of my tumblr experience these days, interaction wise,) so maybe all my Local Hotspots are inactive now. i know a bunch of them are, it’s sad. “i don’t fw stan twitter for the same reason i don’t hang out in meth dens” oop. guess i’m a meth addict. no but i get u i rly do, it’s a hellhole out there, but the fact that things get shared and spread a lot easier than on tumblr and how short most things have to be (therefor keeping up w my adhd attention span without having to resort to the mental torture that is tiktok, with the added bonus of not always needing headphones.) that i just. couldn’t leave if i tried. maybe i should try being active on tumblr again but it’s a dying site in comparison.

“their music doesn’t consistently hit for me as much as skz” i’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore. what. what. you don’t dramama ramama ramama hey? you don’t feel a little jealousyyyyyy, naega anin? you don’t shoot out, shoot out, shoot out, or aremdaeun love killa love killa? you can’t be your hero du du du du du du du du du dududu? u disappoint me. literally like everyone i know who likes skz music likes mx music like it’s a rite of Passage. they’re kindred spirits, monsta x music is like skz’s music’s cool but mildly heterosexual older brother. neither of them know what a bad song is it runs in the family. and both their music runs in my VEINS. whenever i describe my music taste they’re always the first two that come to mind, skz being my number 1 bc they are my best boys but mx bc of the Flavour. pls listen to the entire the code album then get back to me 😤🙌 ok but fr ur so right they are 7 of the finest men i ever seen (yes i say 7 bc i’m including wonho cause he deserved better and i’ll die on my ot7 bullshit.) like don’t get me started on them either LOL i LITERALLY downloaded that one insta video of changkyun working out his back n arm muscles w his tattoo showing bc i needed that shit saved for Science. they could do Anything w me like frfr. yes vixx is the bdsm contract group i’m telling ya they wildin. or at least they were. it’s been years since their last comeback idk what they’re doing anymore tbh. and yeah that makes sense, savouring the hyperfixation i feel it, but also i’m so attached to skz that i never let it die. like i hyperfixate on other things and other groups but i will Always go back to skz cause they’re my homeboys. hell, they’re my home. being a predebut stay i’ve spent more time w skz than most of my actual family members at this point. but that’s just me you do u boo xx just know that if ur anything like me ur never letting go once skz it’s been my longest lasting fixation cause they hit like Nothing Else Do. ik i’ve already said that but i cannot stress it enough. they’re really special. i’m gonna stop here before i get all sappy and emotional bc i really love those boys so fucking much and i don’t drop the L bomb often. SIDE NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO SEE UR LIST OF GROUPS RANKED BY THORSt. i need to judge ur Taste. and omg cat&dog is such a guilty pleasure song bc the lyrics make me cringe so much bc while pet play can be fun they be doing it in more of an “i’m an innocent soft dogboy uwu” kinda way that just Does Not Sit Right with me. it comes back to the objectifying of asians that asians themselves don’t help in industries like these and maybe i’m looking too far into it when rly it is just wholesome n cute or maybe they are into some pet play shit idk idc i will bop to the song regardless but i will not acknowledge the lyrics nope.

YOURE RIGHT THO SKZ’S OPENNESS IS IN FACT, A BIG DEAL, i’ll grab them for u if u want but i found these twt threads of skz supporting the lgbt community and i just felt a special kind of happiness man like sure the delusional part of me likes going “haha they’re gay” bc my brain likes to imagine them as my polycule of mlm boyfriends bc sometimes thats what gives me the serotonin to get me thru the day ok don’t judge but also bc it’s nice knowing that yes i’ll never know them personally, but at least i can support them knowing they’d respect my gender identity and my pronouns, they’d respect who i choose to love, and that’s already more than the general public can say so shit, it is special! it’s special that they don’t treat being cishet like the norm - they constantly remove gender from their songs and speech entirely, they don’t assume all stays are female anymore, we don’t talk abt the babygirls incident cause we got babystays in the end outta that ok, and it’s just. so refreshing and important to me bc i can’t get that anywhere else!! like my semi ults are the boyz and while i love them very much and there’s no way all 11 of them are straight i refuse, i do get just a little bit sad whenever they she/her their fandom by default and call them their girlfriends n shit even tho i do still identify as a girl, i’m also genderfluid/nonbinary/transmasc, and i have a very love/hate relationship w my womanhood and rarely use she/her pronouns, cause it’s like, do you not see me? see us? the ones who aren’t cishet women? i mean i know kevin does bc he congratulated a fan who came out as nb but it’s just not the same as the openness we get w skz. like how do i trust cishets i could be supporting them as a queer person when in reality they’d call me a slur. what would i know, behind the screen? so it’s so good that skz go the extra mile to make it a safe space for everyone. this is already long enough i will reply to the second half of that ask in another message… tomorrow cause it’s 1am and i’m tired gn -felix bi anon

I'mma have to start putting these under a readmore so that i don't absolutely make everything who is still following me for some reason go totally fucking insane 😂

NDJDHWJJAHFNAKBSJSBFBHHDBDNAJD YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE FACES I WAS MAKING READING THIS, I WAS FUCKING CACKLING AND GASPING EVERY OTHER SENTENCE SO HARD THAT I SCARED THE CATS NDJWHSHSB the fact that you went "oh you want me to get into kpop? Give me a hot minute, and I'll give you a whole ass private concert for free" biduehsjdbd biiiiiiiiiiitch you're a fucking ICON, I stg I could NEVER 😂 (and not just because I couldn't find a tune if you gave me a printed set of Google maps directions and that I embody the steriotype that white people can't dance, like my sister kept sensing me tiktoks of the whole "dance like a white girl" trend going lmfao look it's you and eventually I was like "sis please this trend has me feeling like being white is a disability and these mothafuckers are being ableist 😭 also I could NEVER be that on beat so yall ain't even doin it right 😭😭😭😭"). Tbh if I told one of my friends (lol what friends, i got jokes) to get into Skz and they showed up at my bday and performed the entirety of I Got It I would simply shower them in money and go "aight everyone else go home, you are no longer needed, you are being laid off, your position has been eliminated, we're downsizing, the company is moving up and you're moving out, you are not qualified for this role any longer, best of luck with future endeavors" 😊

I think part of the reason I can't deal w Twitter is the exact reason I refuse to leave tumblr, in that I've been on tumblr since 2006 and twt since 2008, and tumblr literally has not changed at all, not even a little, whereas going from the early days of twt where there were no corporate sponsorships or ads and you had to manually copy and paste someone's tweet and @ them to retweet it, to how it is now, like 90% ads and showing me shit from the timelines of people I don't even fuckin follow n whatnot, it's just not enjoyable. Idk how anyone finds anything on twt, it confuses and frustrates me because I am old and have not adapted well to technology changing 😂 But arguably, the skz fanbase doesn't want me on skztwt anyways so like it works for both of us lmfaooo. I am old and cringey, and also still think of twt as stream of consciousness whereas tumblr is your teenage bedroom where you can decorate the walls with anything that interests you. I do really love the nonsensical kpoptwt shitposts tho fhshsbdjjss like it is a very specific flavor of mental instability that I enjoy immensely 😂 OH and also I initially misread part of that and thought you were saying you actually irl do meth and I was like 😳 WHAT DO I SAY TO THAT. HOW DO I HANDLE THIS. Like how do I express like "I wasn't being judgy of people who use substances cause I've been there but I was just being insensitive 😳" And then went back and reread it and was like WHEW, IM JUST AN ILLITERATE FOOL 😂😂😂😂 ejeywhdhrhjwbfbdjshdhdhd I spent like an hour bwign like "IS THE REASON WE GET ALONG BECAUSE THEY'RE ON METH???? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION??????" hrhehshe I am literally a fuckin idiot it's fine

It's not that I don't fw them, it's more like... Okay so like there is no situation in which I am going to skip a skz song if it comes on shuffle. You will not ever catch me NOT in the mood to listen to Sunshine, if God's Menu comes on we are THROWIN the meager amount of booty meat I got hither and thither, I could be in the happiest mood of my life but if Ex comes on I will stop to SOB. And I'm not like that with most music, so mx just falls into the category of "there is a time and place." Idk why but it just doesn't forcibly grab hold of my heart and ass the way skz always does. I really don't WANT my skz fixation to ever end, but I know that eventually it'll stop giving me dopamine bevause my brain is my worst fucking enemy 🙃 like my arcana fixation is to date the longest running hyperfixation I've ever had, going on almost three years, and I used to not be able to spend every single second of every day thinking about Asra, but now... I just feel nothing when I look at arcana stuff. As you can probz tell by the fact that I hardly post arcana anymore 😂 So I know that eventually all my happiness will end, it always does, I can never stay just as obsessed with something as I was for long. I CANT SHARE THE LIST BECAUSE I DONT *HAVE* TASTE YET 😭 I'm basically just compiling a list of any group someone tells me I should look into, ranked by how strong the kitty purred upon googling pics of them 😂 My mom read my ass to FILTH over txt lmfao she was like "they're not that adorable. Maybe your standard for adorableness has gone down with You Know Who still on hiatus 🤔" bfjwhdhd like MOMMAAAAA THE LIBRARY IS CLOSED 😂 she attacks me any time I even hint at stanning other groups, she is a skz purist and stans skz only, unofficial Momma Stay of All Stays keeping me in check lmfao.

I feel like skz really do follow thru on their promise that they're a safe space for stays, it's nice to see that they hold space for anyone and everyone in their fanbase and do it in a really simple and elegant way, I feel. Like they never make it seem like "okay here are the fans and here are the token weirdos that were only recognizing to make a buck off of them" the way a lot of artists make it feel like 😑 like they don't go out of their way to act like it's some revolutionary act to do the bare minimum of not shitting on certain parts of the fandom, if that makes sense. They feel very "yeah, of course we love all our stays, this is a welcoming space for literally anyone, that's how it should be, that should be normal," instead of like "Hi fans we love you 😊 and special shoutout to you ell gee bee tee folk, make sure to buy my rainbow merch after the show!!!" you know? Like, they're the friends who would never make you feel weird or different for some shit, the friends that take the attention off you if something they know ur sensitive about comes up, instead of weirdly snapping at whoever brought the unfomfy thing up which ruins the mood and makes you feel tiwce as bad, yk? They just give off this vibe that they, and the space they create with their music, is just a genuine and chill place to be and hang out and relax and bond. I feel like they'd be the friend group that is so goofy and sweet and silly and accepting and lovely and always makes you feel loved and excited to be alive 🥺 They are all good noodles 🥺🥺🥺

[curtashiism]

🎵People let me tell ya 'bout my best friend!🎵

More accurately, let me tell you  why I am the luckiest person alive for having met my best friend, @grassysvu67.

Kath and I met in 2013. We were both hardcore Raul Esparza fans back in the early days of Hannibal and Barba from SVU.

So we started talking and became really close. We've gotten each other through loss of relatives, mental breakdowns, losing jobs- all kinds of things. We visited each other a few times, and a few years ago we even moved in together! We have a dog, cat, and guinea pigs together.

We've even been mistaken for a couple more than once. My family has basically adopted Kath and hers has adopted mine. We joke that she's my grandma's favorite grandkid.

From the start I was open with Kath that I was a lesbian, but I didn't identify as nonbinary yet. A few years into our friendship, Kath figured out that she was bi. But it didn't come easy for her. She had a lot of doubts and it took a while for her to feel safe-

Safe enough to apply that label to herself around me, and then safe enough to publicly come out. We got through it together like best friends do!

Fast forward to a few months ago, when I finally realize what all these doubts I always had about my relationship to femininity meant.

I finally realized I'm nonbinary. And Kath accepted me right from the start. It was as simple as her asking me what the difference was between nonbinary and genderfluid and what pronouns I want. She listened to me lament how I can't ever come out to my family of origin.

She supported me and listened to my struggles.

And then, tonight, when I was talking about the struggles of being a nonbinary he/him lesbian she asked me again about nonbinary identities. She admitted she doesn't understand a lot of it yet. I said that's okay!

But she said no, I want to learn what your identity  means to you. It's important to you!

So I explained everything I know about nonbinary identities (like the difference between nonbinary and genderfluid, neutrois and agender, and how an nb person can use gendered pronouns.)

I told her how my own identity fits into this, how I'm not male or female, but not completely neutral either. And that's why the label "lesbian" still feels right for me. Because gender is a spectrum, not a binary or trinary.

And she listened! And asked questions!

She knows this is important, this is who I am, and she wants to understand because I'm her best friend.

And that means the world to me. And that is why I'm lucky to have Kath as my best friend and found family. She's kind, she's compassionate, and I love her to death.

Everyone should have a Kath in their lives.

By the way, folks, she's also single, so if any of you are interested, ask her. But be nice to her or I will fuck you up for hurting my big sister.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hi, I was told by someone that I shouldn't use "NB" to refer to myself or others as nonbinary individual because "NB" already means "non-black". Is this, like... true? I always preferred using it over "nonbinary" or "enby"

Lee says:

The acronym “NB” does already stand for non-Black in some contexts, yes. But NB can also stand for non-binary in other contexts.

As someone who is both Black and non-binary, I’ve seen it used both ways and I’m usually able to figure out which meaning of the acronym is being used depending on the context.

Of course you should clarify how you’re using the term if the context doesn’t make it evident, but I don’t think that either group has exclusive claim over the acronym- it’s okay to use it to stand for either thing.

Take New Brunswick, for example. The postal abbreviation for the province is NB. Should we be throwing hands with all the people in New Brunswick and the post office because of that? 

There are lots of times when two communities independently come up with an acronym to describe something and it just so happens that those acronyms overlap. Does that mean that one group is “stealing” the acronym or shouldn’t get to use it? 

I get the old western movie vibes from this kind of conversation like “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” but in this situation we aren’t two groups of people in the same town fighting for space, we’re in two separate towns which have the different names but the same nickname, and one town is suing the other because they said they came up with the nickname first so they get to copyright it, and the other town says they came up with their nickname independently and it has a completely different meaning so they should still get to use it. And the people living in the two towns are just like “Ok we get it, it’s slightly confusing, let’s just,,, move on with our lives because neither town is using the nickname in a way that’s harming the other!”

[Edit: turns out there are two New Brunswicks, one in Canada which is where I was referring to and one in New Jersey that I forgot about bc... it’s Jersey... (I’m from NY so i legally have to say that) but this is actually a good example of exactly what I’m talking about y’all! Multiple things, same name, it’s okay!]

So if you think that the way you’re using the “nickname” (ie acronym) is confusing because you don’t think the context of the post makes it clear whether you’re referring to non-Black or non-binary people, just… spell it out as the words “non-Black” or “non-binary” to introduce the term. Then feel free to use an acronym if you’d like to. 

Enby is a shortened version of the word non-binary (pronounced “enn-bee” because it’s how you’d say the acronym NB) but there are non-binary people who don’t like being called “enby” because they feel it’s infantilizing for some reason. 

I guess maybe they see it as analogous to the childhood form of the gender, like girl/boy/enby versus the adult form of the gender, like woman/man/non-binary person, but I don’t really know because I also haven’t seen a big push for it to explicitly be recognized as an age-defined term that’s explicitly meant to be used for younger people and exclude adults so I think it’s just the connotation of the word (as mentioned in a 2014 post on our blog here).

Some people are proposing trying to create different abbreviations for non-binary instead of using the NB acronym or enby version, but of course then you run into the “nobody knows what you’re talking about” issue because there aren’t any standardized abbreviations the whole community is aware of and supports.

But yeah, as a Black non-binary person myself, I don’t think it’s honestly a big deal because it doesn’t hurt us in any way that I can think of. It’s not like NB is a slur or offensive word referring to the Black community that non-binary people have decided to appropriate as a self-descriptor for their own identity, it’s just a way to say the phrase “non-Black”. 

And while using “NB” to mean non-Black has definitely been a thing in both academic writing and community discourse, people haven’t been using it as a hashtag on a large scale. So nonbinary people dominating the content posted in the NB hashtag hasn’t erased our organizing or our conversation on the topic or suppressed our voices in some way because that was never a particularly popular hashtag in the Black community to organize with, so it isn’t like the non-binary community came by and “colonized” the tag.

The fact that a different community uses the same acronym to mean something else doesn’t mean we can’t discuss the ways that non-Black folks discriminate against and oppress Black folks anymore.

I do have to say I find the usage of both NBPOC (non-Black people of color) and NBPOC (Non-binary people of color) is more of a potentially irksome overlap as NBPOC is a tag that was used more often with the original race-related meaning, but overall I feel like there’s a lot of things that we could be doing to uplift the Black community (and to specifically support Black non-binary folks) that is a better use of our time than trying to put the genie back in the bottle with the gender-related NB acronym because it’s so widely used at this point and trying to undo that doesn’t actually provide a vast tangible benefit that I can see. So why spend our activism or mental and emotional energy fighting over this issue?

This is just my opinion, as one Black non-binary blogger, so I can’t speak for the whole Black and non-binary community in its entirety. But that’s the point; there isn’t a huge consensus on this topic in the Black community and one person can’t speak for all of us about what we believe because we have different beliefs! Some folks have strong opinions on the NB acronym on either side of the argument about whether it should be used, but even more people (like pretty much everyone else in my family IRL, especially the Black adults) simply don’t care or think it’s particularly important.

Saying “listen to Black people about Black issues!” is the right concept in a way- it applies when the majority of the marginalized group of people is on the same page about the thing, and it helps to recenter the lived experiences and need of the marginalized group in question instead of speaking for them or over them, but what do you do when you’ve got three different Black people who are all equally affected by the issue telling you three different things about the topic and then three more who couldn’t care less?

Sometimes you can look at the other opinions the person holds and see if what they believe with generally matches what you believe and see if they’re informed on the topic to decide if you think their opinion should hold more weight than the other people’s opinion, but there are people who will have great takes on a lot of issues but just don’t get it right on That One Thing, so what then? Usually people end up just listening to the Black person who is telling them what they already agree with.

Hypothetical: You’re not part of a marginalized group. Within the marginalized group, there are two groups of people, both equally affected by the thing in question, with one group of people asserting opinion A and one group of people asserting opinion B.

Assertion A says “X thing is harmful, do Y thing instead!”, and assertion B says “X thing isn’t harmful, and I have no issues with Y alternative either”, then I’d follow the wishes of group A if you genuinely can’t tell which situation is occurring and don’t know if the thing is harmful.

That’s because listening to group A means you potentially avoid a negative outcome whereas group B believes nothing negative will occur either way so you’re hedging your bets to do the thing that’ll create the least harm.

So if the alternative Y isn’t bad then it doesn’t hurt to switch to it and avoid potentially creating harm. But if group A doesn’t propose an alternative Y to the X thing, or there’s an issue with alternative Y that makes it problematic itself, then it gets confusing again.

Following that logic, if you’re NB (as in not-Black lol) and genuinely can’t figure out what you believe, when in doubt, you can just spell out the words “non-binary” and “non-Black” instead of abbreviating it because typing out a few extra characters avoids the whole issue altogether!

So even though I personally believe it’s fine to use NB either way and that the whole fuss is kind of silly when you put it perspective with the actual issues we should be advocating for, it’s fine if you want to use an alternative acronym or abbreviation to refer to non-binary people. (Followers, feel free to suggests alternatives that you’ve heard of!)

It’s also true that replacing the term “non-binary” with an acronym isn’t necessary in the first place; you can just write “non-binary” or make a shortcut on your phone (this will expand your acronym or abbreviation of choice into the entire term) if you don’t like wasting time typing.

[uncloseted]

lately i've been VERY confused about gender and sexuality (not mine, just in general, although more on that later). so i always called myself a lesbian because it made sense, im a girl i like girls. about 2 years ago i had a lot of internalized homophobia and i tried to be as feminine as i could so people would think i was straight. and i remember one time i thought "what if i'm a trans man and i'm doing this because i feel like i have something to prove". +

but then i thought "nah, i can't be a man (or non binary) i like girly things too much". but that's awful too. ellen always wears suits and has short hair and she's still a woman. jeffree star likes girly things and he's a man. but now i don't even know what IS a girl/woman. i mean i didn't choose to be a woman and i never had a chance to be anything else. but i don't think i ever wanted to be. even if i identified as "agender" and i still looked and acted the way i do know, society would still

be seeing and oppressing me as a woman, so at least to me, personally, it feels useless. but also, a lot of nb people (most of them are afab) identify as lesbians. it's very confusing. i never had any kind of dysphoria although i felt uncomfortable with my body, periods, and sex but i always thought it was because of shyness, anxiety, internalized homophobia, insecurities and beauty standards. and i have a friend who's studying psychology in university and she told me dysphoria does not exist

trans girls. i think it depends on, like, how "far" they are in their transition?. i think i could be attracted, physically and emotionally but i couldn't have sex with someone with a penis. and i know even the most trans-positive people will tell you that it's ok to have a genital preference and not want to date trans people. but it still makes me feel horrible because it's like i'm seeing nb people as "more woman" than trans women. but also in all honesty it's very hard to "tell" cis people

from nb people. if you showed me a picture of jeffree star and jonathan van ness (or elena and syd from one day at a time, or amandla stenberg and king princess, or sam smith and harry styles) and asked me which one is nb, i wouldn't know. i would probably say jeffree. so i agree that monosexual (straight/gay) people will inevitably be attracted to nbs because nb is a spectrum, and also some people (I think all of us, in some way? maybe it's a controversial opinion) are gender non-conforming but

but don't identify as nb. does that mean we should change the definitions of gay/lesbian, since any gender could have any type of body and look as feminine and/or masculine as they want? do sam smith, jvn, vander von odd/sasha velour/gigi goode (all genderfluid drag artists) have male privilege despite not being men?. should we change the words feminism, sexism, misogyny, male privilege, etc for something more accurate?. honeslty i think a lot of this confusion is actually intrusive thoughts

and me just being an overthinker in general but it's been causing me so much distress that now every pronoun feels wrong and i can't even masturbate. please forgive the rambling, the buts, the incoherence and the ignorance. thanks in advance. oh and please tell me if this comes through in pieces and i will send them again

So there’s a ton to unpack here, but for the record, I’ve had this exact train of thought, too.

I want to preface my answer by saying that I’m not a gender scholar and I haven’t read nearly as many academic works as I’d like to on this subject, so this is coming very much from my personal opinions and less from an evidence-based/academic place. I also want to say that if pressed, I would describe myself as a pansexual gender anarchist (as in, attracted to people for who they are instead of their parts and I think we should get rid of the concept of gender entirely), but I think that sounds a bit wanky, especially since it has almost zero bearing on my everyday life. So I think the concept of sexuality and gender is maybe different to me than it is to other people, and my perspective on this topic might be unusual in that sense.  If anyone reading this thinks what I’m saying is bullshit or problematic, please join in the conversation! I would love to hear what you have to say.

For me, the more I think about gender and sexuality, the more i don’t really “get” either concept. Gender has begun to feel (to me) like one of those Buzzfeed quizzes where you answer a bunch of questions and they’re like, “you’re rocky road ice cream” and you’re like, “I have no idea what that implies except for it’s the collection of traits I chose from the options above”.  

What I mean by that is that gender is a social construct. No traits are inherently masculine or feminine- things that are considered masculine in one culture can be feminine in another and vice versa. 

Especially now, when we’re really moving towards disentangling gender from our world, I wonder what’s left to take the place of those items to define what gender is.  Gender used to be like “feminine is cleaning, nurturing, creating (or Barbie dolls, dresses, and makeup), and masculine is destruction, being powerful, and being ambitious (or football, beer, and video games)”, but clearly that’s not what it means anymore. Ellen’s suits are feminine suits by virtue of the fact that she IDs as female, even though suits used to be considered a male thing.  Jeffree Star’s makeup looks are male makeup looks by virtue of the fact that he IDs as male, even though makeup used to be considered a female thing.  I’ve heard some people say that there are as many genders as there are people in the world. At that point I think we’re just using the word “gender” as a synonym for “personality”, which is fine, but I think we need to be clear about our definitions and what these words now mean and imply about a person.

Going along that train of thought, if gendered words don’t really mean anything anymore, I don’t see the point as identifying as a particular gender, at last not in the abstract.  In practice, our world still sees gender and cares about it, and other people’s interpretation of our gender has very real consequences.  As you say, even if you identified as agender, society would treat you as a woman because you present in a way society considers to be “traditionally feminine”, and as a result, you would be oppressed in the same way women are.  This is why I said that my position on gender impacts my life zero percent.  I can identify as a gender anarchist all I want, but at the end of the day I still get passed up for opportunities because the way I present is read as female.  Likewise, nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth do have a degree of male privilege (or at least, can access male privilege), depending on how well they “pass” as a man.  Sam Smith likely still experiences some male privilege, because they look (most of the time) like what society might consider traditionally male.  Someone like JVN probably passes less frequently, due to his long hair and frequent wearing of what we might think of as traditionally female clothing (skirts and dresses and high heels).  However, the flip side of that is both Sam Smith and JVN risk being even more marginalized than female identifying, female presenting people when they do dress in a gender non-conforming way, because nonbinary identities are less understood and less accepted than female identities are. 

So now that we’ve considered what gender means in relation to society, maybe let’s consider it in relation to our bodies and sexuality.  This is a bit of a minefield so I’m going to try to tread carefully, but again, feel free to call me out if I say something problematic... 

I don’t think being uncomfortable with your body, especially feminine features of your body that are widely looked down upon (for example, periods) or sexualized (physical features like boobs, butts, hips) necessarily makes a person trans or nonbinary.  As you say, those feelings can be a result of shyness, anxiety, internalized homophobia, insecurities, beauty standards, and dozens of other things.  However, it is something many trans or nonbinary individuals experience.  So the question then becomes, where are those feelings of discomfort coming from?  Are they internal to you (as in, your body physically feels like there’s something wrong/those features shouldn’t be there) or external (you feel shame for having those features because of the society you grew up in)?  It can be really hard to detangle internal influences from external ones, given that people who are assigned female at birth learn to hate our femininity and female bodies from a very young age.

I would say that if those feelings are internal to you, then that’s what referred to as gender dysphoria.  Gender dysphoria is a real, ICD and DSM diagnosable condition, and there’s some evidence to suggest that there’s a neurobiological basis for it.  My (very controversial) hypothesis is that gender dysphoria is like other body integrity identity disorders, where there’s a mismatch between the brain’s map of the body and what the physical body actually looks like.  I want to make it clear here that I don’t think being trans is a disorder.  I don’t think it’s bad or that all people who are trans have a body integrity disorder.  I don’t think you need to physically transition to be trans, or that we should pathologize gender/gender expression, or that gender is a binary (hopefully that last one is obvious).  I just think if society has less stringent gender divisions and a less binary understanding of gender, fewer people would physically transition, but some people would still experience a mismatch between their idea of how their body’s sexual characteristics should look and how they physically are.

So then, what does that mean for our terminology?  I think in the context of a world where the meaning of gender is changing, gay and lesbian just refer to genitals (people with penises attracted to people with penises and people with vaginas attracted to people with vaginas, respectively).  Or perhaps we need to separate it out further- maybe you can be romantically and physically attracted to female and male presenting people, but sexually attracted to only vaginas.  Maybe that would fill the gap between being interested in a person romantically and being interested in having sex with their genitals, where you’re attracted to someone without yet knowing what’s in their pants?  In general, though, I think labels should exist to be useful.  I don’t know how useful it is to have a term for “I'm attracted to you, given that you have the genitals I’m sexually attracted to.”

I think under that framework of centering labels like gay and lesbian on genitals, a lot more people are pansexual than would identify that way if you took a poll right now.  In general, I think a lot of people never recognize that they’re pansexual because they aren’t in contact with nonbinary or trans people that they’re attracted to frequently enough to know they don’t actually care about genital preferences.

When talking about other labels like feminism (the advocacy for AFAB and female-identifying/presenting rights), sexism (prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, generally towards female identifying/presenting people. but also towards gender nonconforming people), misogyny (dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against AFAB and female identifying/presenting people), male privilege (the system of advantages or rights that are available to men and male identifying/presenting people solely on the basis of their sex/gender presentation), etc., I think those terms refer to the societal construct of sex/gender that is still prevalent in our culture.  We perhaps need to start using other words to describe discrimination against nonbinary people, but I think the existing terms continue to serve a purpose and it’s not time to retire them just yet.

I don’t know if any of this is at all helpful or if I’m expressing my thoughts clearly.  Maybe it will just add more confusion to your existing thought process, but I hope it helps to minimize your distress at least a little bit.  Ultimately, all of this is kind of made up, so don’t beat yourself up too much while trying to unravel all these different threads. People spend full academic careers and sometimes their entire lives trying to figure out what they believe on these issues.  It’s okay to not have it all worked out or to not be sure in your ideas.  Even for me, this is just where my thinking is right now.  Maybe in the future it will change with new information I learn or as my feelings towards myself change.  Try to let yourself think of this as a journey instead of something you have to already have figured out.

[kingsofeverything]

Hi Lauren! What would that list of questions for people who want to parents be? I'd love to now for my future self,we're thinking in being mothers in 2-3 years and we are going through all the cons we can find, right now we are pretty sure se want to, but more information is always good! Hope your day gets easier for you. Thank you on avance, you are a lovely person, your kids are really lucky to have you

hey soooooooooo i’ve been holding onto this ask for like 2 months and i’m sorry! i’m going to answer below a cut 

i’m not exactly sure what i posted, but i think it was a tag post, and i was struggling with the holidays, and 4 sick kids, one who wound up with ear infections in both ears (baby’s first ear infections, except they’re 11 years old). 

i think what brought on the post originally was that my spawn -- my 2nd born, who is like 11 3/4 years old now lol -- is going through some hard times. they came out as pan and nonbinary this past summer, which wasn’t unexpected. when they were small, they preferred to wear their older brother’s hand-me-downs and got their hair cut short and wore baseball caps most of the time. they liked for people to think they were a boy. so i think they were maybe 7? when i sort of introduced the idea of trans and what that means. 

when they first came out as nb (after coming out as pan), we talked about therapy as something they might want/need. but at the time they were having food issues (still are but not as bad). another thing that was an issue when they were very young, they had pica (still do but not as bad) and we had their blood checked etc to make sure there were no vitamin mineral deficiencies. but last summer and before that, it was more about sneaking food, overeating/eating their feelings, etc etc etc. SO THERAPY AT FIRST was supposed to be about the food issues, then the gender stuff, but it wound up being more about depression, anxiety, and self-harm thoughts. 

here i think is where i was when i made that tag post. for months, we kept all of the sharp things in the house (knives, scissors, razors, everything) in a locked box. i had to sign an agreement with their therapist that i would do these things and that i would tell her if there were any expressed thoughts of self harm etc. before having kids and when they were little, i never never never thought about the prospect of one of them wanting to hurt themselves or actually hurting themselves. (even with my sister attempting suicide at 17 years old and being in a mental hospital for months and me being the one to care for her afterwards because my parents “couldn’t handle it” and with depression/anxiety/addiction etc etc running through my family and my husband’s family). 

and i think that, when people start thinking about having kids, the things people always point to as far as ARE YOU READY FOR THIS are baby things. like the sleepless nights and the behavioral stuff and potty training and stuff like that. and yeah, that stuff isn’t FUN lol but raising older kids is much much much harder. 

dealing with severe illness or death in the family and handling the grief of more than one person? HARD AS FUCK. in the past few years, we’ve lost both of my grandmothers -- one after years battling alzheimers in which we all watched her deteriorate, the other suddenly like 2 days after xmas, and then last summer, my aunt died. she was in her 50s. she battled liver cancer for years and then suddenly the doctors told her to make her arrangements, then within like a month, she wasted away and was gone. and i had to and still am carrying the emotional labor of dealing with this for myself and my kids. and everyone grieves differently. it’s been really hard. 

but i think that when i made that tag post, i was mainly talking about my spawn (that is what i call them because daughter and son don’t fit and they think it’s hilarious) and their self harm stuff. they are also the type to be very sensitive to the world around them. they are naturally clever and quick and empathetic. they carry their friends’ sadness and worry too. they worry about the state of the world and politics and stuff that i had no clue about when i was 11 years old. and i’m still dealing with it. i will forever be dealing with it! and i know it’s the culture of today’s YOUTH (THE YOUTHS!) to joke about death and wanting to die and suicide even. and i get that. like i totally do get that. but being on the parent side of it is different. last night, they jokingly said that they wanted to die a few times. i took them aside and said that it isn’t something that i’m comfortable with them joking about, especially not in front of the twins who are 7, and especially not when they’ve been in therapy for 6 months specifically to deal with these thoughts. i said don’t joke. they said they weren’t joking. and i burst into tears. i have to tell their therapist about this now. and i can’t stop thinking about it. it’s all i’ve thought about since they said it at like 6pm yesterday. 

i’ve gone out of my way to tell them and show them that they are loved and wanted and important. we have strategies for dealing with these things! we’re doing the work of therapy! woo! but also????????? sometimes i wonder if i’d have decided to have kids if i really knew that these were the sorts of things i’d be dealing with. and i honestly don’t know. (to be clear i’m talking about the self harm stuff. idc about the pan and nb stuff. that’s totally not a bad thing and not something i ‘deal with’ if you know what i mean? i hope i’m making sense). 

one of the other things that sort of brought on the thinking (i’m kind of remembering about the tag post and the situation as i’m answering this ask lol) was that my spawn has friends who are gay, friends who are nb or trans, and these kids DO NOT have a supportive home life. their parents? one example is a kid whose mom told them “you will dress like a girl. you will act like a girl. you will call yourself a girl. i don’t care what you think you are.” and they told my spawn (so glad they have my spawn to talk to!) and we had to go to the guidance counselor at the school about it. thankfully their school is so so so supportive! we’re really lucky there. another example is a kid who is gay being screaming at -- locked in the car with their mom and being screamed at that being gay is horrible and that they better be straight unless they want to die???? WHO SAYS THAT TO A KID. 

and so i think partly i was just like......... why do these people have kids??? 

soooooo i think for you, anon, you’re fine. you care enough to plan having kids years in advance! you care enough to ask what you can do to be prepared! 

ugh also that tag post was made right after the older twin fell down the stairs and knocked himself out and had a gran mal seizure and i honestly thought he was going to die in my arms. and like? i don’t think that’s the sort of thing anyone should have to ask themselves. or think about. pretty sure i have ptsd from that. 

i’m sorry because i feel like this is not what you were hoping for. i know there are a lot of pinterest type quotes/sayings that people laugh off because they really are laughable lol but it is true that having a kid is like having your heart outside of your body, in that i love them more than i thought possible and they are not and should not be under my control. they do their own things! they are their own people! as they should be! but when they are hurt, i’m hurt. mentally, emotionally, physically. when they’re sad, i’m sad. when they’re happy, i’m happy. my emotional well being depends so much on their emotional well being. and that’s just the way it is. 

sorry this is so long and if you have any specific questions about parenting stuff i can try to answer.