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Idk how common this is among trans people, especially nonbinary ones, but... More than transitioning from a gender to another, I feel like I've transitioned from cis to queer. I switched from cisnormative masculinity and femininity, to queer ones.

I feel more comfortable now wearing masculinity like a butch or a faggot. Displaying the feminity of a dyke or a femboy. They feel more genuine, fun, flexible. I can play with them, mix them up.

That's what my trans journey ended up giving me. And I love it.

#yeah #gender #nonbinary

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From its earliest days fundamentalism has drawn a line in the sand over scripture versus science, and some of its young people eventually felt they had to step over the line, and then they kept right on going.

Still the decision to leave was almost always wrenching, because it could mean becoming an outcast from one’s family and community. Also, fundamentalists are frequently taught that no one is lower, and will burn more terribly in hell, than a person who abandons their true religion. What then gnawed away so mercilessly at the apostates that they could no longer overpower doubt with faith?

Their families will say it was Satan. But we thought, after interviewing dozens of  ‘amazing apostates,’ that (most ironically) their religious training had made them leave. Their church had told them it was God’s true religion. That’s what made it so right, so much better than all the others. It had the truth, it spoke the truth, it was The Truth. But that emphasis can create in some people a tremendous valuing of truth per se, especially among highly intelligent youth who have been rewarded all their lives for getting ‘the right answer.’ So if the religion itself begins making less and less sense, it fails by the very criterion that it set up to show its superiority.

Similarly, pretending to believe the unbelievable violated the integrity that had brought praise to the amazing apostates as children. Their consciences, thoroughly developed by their upbringing, made it hard for them to bear false witness. So again they were essentially trapped by their religious training. It had worked too well for them to stay in the home religion, given the problems they saw with it.

–Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians

#ideology

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Picture this: Dragons using their caves to age cheese. Dragon Cheesemakers!!

The dragon coiled his enormous body, completely blocking the entrance of the tunnel that lead to the caves.

“No,” he snarled, smoke pluming from his nose.

The cheesemonger pinched the bridge of her own nose. “Look, I explained this to you at the start,” she tried once more. “I make cheese.”

“Yes,” the agreed, nodding his scaly head.

“Then I bring the cheese here.”

“Yes.”

“Then you store all the cheese in your cave, keeping it at the perfect temperature and humidity.”

“Yes.” He sounded particularly proud of this part.

“And then when the cheese has ripened,” she concluded. “I come to pick the cheese up again.”

A thunderous scowl clouded his maw. “No.”

“But that’s how it works!” she cried in exasperation. “I make the cheese, you store the cheese, I sell the cheese, I make more cheese!” She peered up at him. “You do realise I cannot bring you new cheese until I have sold this cheese.”

The dragon considered this for a moment. “Ah, but what if—” he began. “What if you go and make more cheese. And bring me the cheese. And I put it in my cave, with the rest of the hoard. And then I keep it there forever.”

“No,” she said flatly.

It was remarkable how much a dragon could look like it had just swallowed a lemon.

“You can’t keep cheese forever,” she insisted. “It will spoil and go bad!”

“You said it would get better and better!” the dragon roared indignantly. “And I take good care of them! With the air flow and the humidity and the temperature!”

“And that is great,” she said, trying to smile through her frustration. “But when a cheese is ripe, it’s ripe! Then you should not be kept anymore, it should be eaten.”

The dragon scraped it’s formidable claws against the stony ground and sulked.

“Look…” The cheese mongering business did not tend to require a lot of sweet-talking, but she was making an effort. “I’m sure the cheeses that aged in your cave are the best cheeses people have ever tasted. When they find out how delicious they are they will want us to make loads more. Maybe several caves’ worth!”

The reptilian eyes stared at her with disgruntled, reluctant interest. “Several caves?”

“If we’re lucky! And I could make so much cheese that I could bring you new cheese as soon as I pick up the aged cheese. Your cave would never even be empty!”

This seemed to strike a chord. The dragon lifted his head a little.

“And that would really be much better for the rest of your hoard,” she continued with fresh inspiration. “Because if you leave cheese too long, it might go bad and spoil the cheeses next to it too!”

A nervous ripple went through the beast’s scaly body, but he clearly was not convinced just yet. “But what sort of a hoard is it if I have to give it away,” he complained.

“Well! Cheese is not just any old hoard! It’s a developing creation! And you will have a hoard that is constantly developing too. Constantly changing, but, if we do this right, never shrinking.”

The dragon looked at her solemnly, wavering with uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn’t hold it against the poor thing, it must be a difficult concept to wrap his head around.

“And I will tell you what,” she said encouragingly. “If business is good, I can start investing in some really good crumbly cheeses. You can keep those in your cave for five whole years!”

“That is quite a long time for humans, is it not?” he said, sounding a little more cheerful.

“Very long. Especially when it comes to cheese. Cheeses that have been aged that long are very expensive.”

In retrospect, she should perhaps have led with that. Gourmand or not, a dragon was still a dragon after all. A glittering, toothy grin appeared on her recalcitrant business partner’s shout and he moved just enough for her to move past him into the mountain.

“Tell me more about this expensive cheese that crumbles.”

She hid a smirk. “If you help me carry some of the current ones out, it would be my pleasure.”

#stories

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@political-beauty (insta)

Millions of people went out to the streets this week all over Germany to protest against right wing extremism. The protests were sparked by a media report that emerged in January, reporting on a 'conference' held by rightwing extremists and neo-nazis, which also some members of the far-right party AfD attended, where they discussed a 'masterplan' for mass deportations, mainly of people who are not 'ethnically German'. The AfD is currently polling at around 20% across Germany, which would make it the second strongest party. It is particularly strong in some eastern German states where elections are being held this year and there is a risk that they could become the strongest party there. To prevent this, people are hoping that by then the AfD could be categorised as anti-constitutional and thus be banned. Millions of people have signed petitions to this effect.

The video shows hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Berlin last night, 21 January. They're chanting an old protest song which (roughly) goes: Resist, resist the fascism in this country, on the barricades, on the barricades, resist!

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some people say there’s a red string that connects fated lovers

#art #aromantic

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#poetry #this is beautiful #gaza #palestine

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feel like y'all would like this article about how the devaluing of platonic relationships has a lot to do with Western culture:

#My god this is sad #aromantic #queerplatonic #cultural imperialism yay

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My (recently married, alloro ace) friend sent me this article tonight. I highly encourage everyone to read it, especially aspecs and people who are otherwise nonpartnering or sexual minorities. The women featured in this piece are awesome and so is their community-organizing game (which is why anarchists and people interested in mutual aid should read this too).

I reiterate: aromantic+asexual liberation and women's liberation are inescapably intertwined.

I hope everything these Korean women are doing takes off and expands to other communities and continents, because I cannot WAIT to join a No-Marriage Women's club.

Me and the girls destroying marriage and the nuclear family: 🎉🍾🪓🔥🎆🔪🎊🎇🪓🥂🔪🔥🎉

#asexuality #this is lovely #i want this so badly

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This is how the golden age of piracy ended.

#I love this #stories

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It’s an Ursula k le Guin free your mind from the idea of deserving kind of day

#quotes #ursula k. le guin

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#Aah the ever given #I miss those days #Simpler times and such

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by Robin Wechsler

#So beautiful #Art

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“Jealousy, turning saints into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis. But it's just the price I pay, destiny is calling me. Open up my eager eyes, 'cause I'm Mr. Brightside.”

MR. BRIGHTSIDE (2003) The Killers

#This video gave me such a bad case of gender envy #But my god the music is so good #the killers #mr brightside

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Oh, this is incredible.

Improv swing dance to a Todrick Hall song?

And they killed it!

*thanks to the people who pointed out my oops

#West coast swing #This is so good #Love it

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Living an Aromantic Life

This is my submission for the September 2023 Carnival of Aros prompt: Visions of Aromantic History, hosted by arotechno this month. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for taking the time to read this.

Some time earlier this year, I had decided that I would like to go out and live an aromantic life. Mentally, I had made up a distinction between simply ‘identifying’ under aromanticism as a concept, and actively living a life which is notably aromantic in character. 

Of course, that begs the question: what exactly does it mean to live as an aromantic?

As a concept, being ‘aromantic’ is rather new, evolved from modern ideas of romance, marriage, and relationships. As such, I often feel like I could see myself in a varied multitude of situations. Perhaps I would have been in an arranged marriage, running a shop with a husband I saw more as a business partner than as a lover. Maybe I would have been a nun, unpartnered with anyone. Or maybe I would have been a Golden Orchid Society member, either partnered with another woman, or living independently. All these set-ups and situations are formed inherently by their time and place in history. And I can see bits and pieces of who I am in all these hypotheticals. 

And well, it’s nice to know that there was likely a past for people like me. But what does it say about the present? And how would one like to be remembered in the future? That’s the eternal question. After living my life and meditating on that question, I think… I still don’t quite have a perfect answer. But I do still have an answer, based entirely on where I am presently in my life. 

Society is heteronormative and amatonormative. As it is, marriage to one partner of the opposite sex, followed by the birth of children, is seen as a crucial life goal that everyone should aspire towards. Even if people say that one doesn’t need to be married or have children in order to have a happy life, society is still very much structured with this form of family in mind. Our ideas, laws and systems around housing, elder and childcare, education, healthcare and more are set up with this assumption in mind. It is a societal problem. And it screws over countless individuals who do not lead lives in accordance to this societal ideal, among them including many aromantics. 

For that reason, I feel like with where I am now, ‘living an aromantic life’ would mean trying to fight against these systems. 

I am trying to engage in activist work in my country. Trying to learn some useful skills. Things related to healthcare (my area of work) sure, but also things like learning and improving in different languages, learning to transcribe. All things which will be useful should such a skill be needed. They’re all baby steps now. And someday, I hope that we can abolish all oppressive systems within our societies. Including the heteronormative and the amatonormative. 

And under a society like that, no doubt our ideas on romance and love and aromance would transform as well. I, for one, would love to bring about that future. And I hope that, whatever I do now, I will do it well, do it proudly, and do it such that in the future, if there is someone like me. Someone who internally feels similarly around feelings of romantic love. I hope that this hypothetical person can look back on what I do now, and feel some pride at seeing themselves. 

#I like that distinction #Between being and living #Like i am currently partnered #In a very un-classical way sure #But that doesn't mean i can't live my life in a way #In a way that goes against amatonormative ideas and structures #Aromanticism

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friendlinghood: a proposal

skip to "terminology" if you don't want the long explanation

QPRs are really difficult to talk about because of the way the modern queer community has kinda framed it as like "dating but without romantic attraction"

when that's not entirely true

I mean, you COULD say that's a kind of QPR but it'd be a mistake to frame all of it that way. this is in large part to internet misinformation and shit as well as amatonormativity from which a lot of relationship discourse is framed against

queerplatonicism, from my pov refers to what is essentially the natural byproduct of queer and neurodivergent people having close friends

the queer community has been aware for a while that its members would have close friendships that in some way violated traditional social norms for behavior outside romantic relationships or family, etc.

when you sit outside the neurotypical and patriarchal norm, the conventional social understanding of what relationships are kinda breaks down for you

you display levels of closeness and intimacy and affection that are "inappropriate" for neurotypical and patriarchal society. in most cases they're not formal relationships, but natural evolutions of friendships between queer and neurodivergent folks

cishet people actually do have variants on this like the concept of "blood brothers" where two men who love each other basically make a pact to always have each other's backs and be their support and they do the whole movie thing where they mix blood to bind them together (it's a very cinematic thing, but the point is it exists in the popular consciousness)

"romance" and "friendship" each refer to a set of social norms and expectations. there's like a whole narrative constructed around those concepts and people internalize and have their own versions of them

a lot of people probably have friends they want to fuck or kiss or cuddle or declare their undying affection for but it'd just be "weird" within the social boundaries of acceptability and so people pigeonhole their relationships into either friend or romantic partner.

queerplatonicism (from my pov) is essentially accepting or practicing relationships which are neither platonic or romantic or even strictly familial. many queer people have them with other queer people they're close to. if you know queer folks then you probably know what I'm talking about - the friends they have that they're not dating but seem intensely attached and close to. they usually have weird names for each other that go beyond friendship like they'll jokingly call each other wives and husbands and siblings and partners... but it doesn't feel quite entirely joking. they'll express a lot of physical affection in the casual way you might typically ascribe to romantic partners. they'll prioritize time with those people as much as any romantic partner they may have etc.

straight and cis people and neurotypical people obviously experience them to some extent, it's just that patriarchy was built around cishet neurotypicals in particular, so it tends to cling to their mindsets more strongly, and once you're already outside of the "bounds of normalcy" by being queer, ND, etc. then it's a lot easier to feel like it's okay for you to be in relationships that aren't "normal".

because like the idea of loving someone with your entire fucking being... it's so tied up in these cultural ideas on how to behave about those feelings and it never made sense to me, because if you just let yourself feel those emotions you start to realize there are people in your life that maybe you love so much more than friends. but "more than friends" is so washed up in romance that you force those feelings down and think "this is fine, I'm happy with being just friends, what else can we be?"

maybe I don't want to have sex or hold hands on a ferris wheel or get. married or kiss or any of that. maybe I just want to exist in the same room as that person know that that person is in my life and know that person cares about me just as much as I do them.

terminology

I've started to use the term "friendling" in my day to day life, now. the term is a portmanteau of "friend" and "sibling" and "loveling" (the english cognate of the German word "lieblings" which can mean "favorite", but is also a term of endearment).

to me, it's probably the most accurate way to describe the Everything All At Once feelings that are simultaneously your weird friends that are your found family and also "romantic" but twisted beyond recognition where the term stops meaning anything.

I'm just throwing this word and explanation out there for anyone who feels like me and wants to use it too. not exclusive to queer people or neurodivergence or anything, I just think it's often easier to be cognisant of those feelings when you are queer and neurodivergent.

that being said, I do NOT want this to be folded into another "attraction label". this is, as far as I can tell, not a unique form of attraction but quite literally the opposite. it's an abstraction of the core impulses of attraction that ALL humans experience without the labels or social structures built around it. I do not want the language that I've spent so long trying to find for my experiences losing all of its value and being reapporpriated into the amatonormative, allonormative, and cisheteropatriarchal framework.

"friendlinghood" - is what I see as an attribute of relationships and the extent to which they deviate from socially conventional definitions of a relationship.

"friendlingship" - used grammatically like friendship. referring to any complex relationship acategorically.

"friendling" - used grammatically similar to friend. referring to those involved in any complex relationship acategorically.

all of this shit is nebulous and doesn't really mean anything beyond what meaning you choose to give it. I think any relationship can have some amount of friendlinghood and I don't think there's a clear line between friendlingship and friendship or romance or family, because it's not a type of relationship in the first place. it's just silly words I made that helped me.

language and labels

so the biggest problem with terminology like this is you can end up creating labels. my point was to create personal terms for myself and my relationships because that's what helped me personally process my own feelings.

that's not to say everyone needs or benefits from them. you can just vibe and do whatever you want and many people are happy with that.

I don't think words like this being codified and standardized really helps anyone. it's unavoidable that we as humans like articulating feelings, but the entire point of my interactions with friendlinghood is about certain things defying labels and language. language in this sense is just a tool, it's a hammer for a nail. it's not embodying the concept itself, it's just useful shorthand.

I will still freely refer to friendlings as close friends, best friends, found family, and other words. as long as I know the intention behind it is all that matters. I just needed that initial bit of language to articulate the feelings before the other words felt right to me.

#Interesting thought #I like it

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Sometimes corporate speak is good.  For example, Space X calling their rocket explosion a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week

#I love a good euphemism