#...why would i *want* to go from being denied queerness from cishet people to have the same thing happen but from other queer people? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

am-i-the-asshole-official · 6 months

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AITA for yelling at someone, making them cry, and indirectly making them loose their friends

This happened several years ago but it plays on my mind sometimes. Everyone in this story is 15/16 at the time, in our last year at secondary school, UK. (🏎️ for finding this)

Myself, my girlfriend at the time [F], my best friend [B], F's friend [D], and a few of our other mutual friends were hanging out at lunch break. There aren't enough chairs at the table so F and I leave to go get extra. I come back and nothing seems amis.

Adding in some context now. No one in this story is cishet. We were all painfully awkward queer teens who haven't figured ourselves out yet. So we were all bottom of the social ladder, very much 'losers'. Me and F were, to my knowledge, the only 'same sex' couple in school. So by this point I'm used to people constantly making remarks about our relationship, but that's usually from ppl I didn't know or care about.

D is the only person, at this point, at school who's openly trans and genderqueer. They got a lot of hate for it. A lot of people harassed them and they didn't have many friends. I think for transparency's sake I have to say, I didn't really like D, we just didn't jell, but I made an effort to be kind and include them bc it's hard being queer in secondary school and I'm not gonna add more hate to that when me not getting on with them was my issue not theirs. And as a fellow victim of bullying I wasn't gonna exclude them from our friend group

Back to the story. As soon as we're back in classes, B tells me that D leant over to them while me and F were gone and said that it's "so sad seeing A and [OP] together" because "I took F's first kiss" and "poor [OP]". I trusted B's word on this as at that point we'd been best friends for several years, they weren't a shit stirrer, and had no reason to lie. In fact, they were confused D even said that to them since they were barely friends and knew B was best friends with me and would tell me they said that.

Hearing this really annoyed me. While I knew F and D had dated in the past, that didn't and shouldn't have effected mine and F's relationship in any way. And they'd been broken up well before I knew either of them. It's none of D's business who F kisses, and it's a shitty idea that because they'd dated before their later relationship first didn't mean as much. It felt very much like a dick thing to think never mind say about me and F. Also, B was my best friend, who did D get off to shit talking me to my best friend?

Anyway. Usually at the end of the day, several of us walked home together, and this group included D. I get to the spot we usually wait first and when I see D I confront them. I ask them why they'd say that and if they've got a problem with me. They don't deny saying it or really explain themself at all, they just look guilty. At first I kept calm. I knew D was F's friend and I didn't want to put a wedge in their friendship because of any issue I had with D. But, I keep asking why they did that, and if they've got something against me. If they're gonna shit talk me yanno. Then D starts crying.

I know it probably shouldn't have but this made me really mad. So I start yelling at them, saying something along the lines of 'so you're going to be an asshole to me and then you're gonna start crying?' and 'you started this, why are you crying?'. They start saying something along the lines of 'I didn't mean it like that' so I ask how did you mean it? And that they knew it wasn't something fine to say, because they said it behind my back and not to my face.

By this point, other people are watching, some of which were our mutual friends. I keep demanding they explain themself or at least apologize to me, but instead they run off crying. I don't follow them. If they're going to remove themself from the situation then fine.

People start asking what the hell that was about and I explain briefly to the people I knew and told the people I didn't to mind their own business. Someone I don't know tells me Ds gone to the head of year and I tell them I don't care, let them, I didn't do anything wrong. (This later amounts to nothing as no teacher ever comes to speak to me about this, so I doubt D did go to the head of year at all)

Eventually the people who were curious about what happened leave. All of the group who walk home together show up, including F. I explain to F what happened and they're upset that D said that about me, but wasn't happy to hear that D left crying.

For the rest of the school year, D ends up avoiding me. Literally staying out of my way, moving if I even glanced over at them. I thought they were overreacting. I never threatened them, and they were the one who chose to be an asshole first. I felt they were making this much more than it needed to be by avoiding it all together. We barely had an argument before they left, but anyone would have thought I'd attacked them or something. But because I obviously was always around F, D didn't have anyone to hang out with anymore. F was their only real friend and their other sort of friends were in our friend group.

No one told them they couldn't hang out with us anymore. (I'm pretty sure because they started avoiding me, I never ended up speaking to them again.) I know they still spoke to F still, but it seemed like their friendship was heavily damaged by it all.

D later ended up dropping out and finishing the school year through home schooling. I believe this was in large part due to the harassment they got for being genderqueer openly. (I remember on several occasions standing up for D and telling people to stop being transphobic assholes behind Ds back after this argument happened. Just because we didn't get along doesn't mean was gonna let that shit slide.)

I feel like I could be the asshole because due to this whole situation, D stopped hanging around their friends and through that lost a lot of the support they had. And obviously, I did make them cry.

On the other hand, no one stopped them from hanging out with their friends. They chose to avoid me and the situation. A situation they started by being a dick to me with zero provoking. They never apologized or recanted what they said. It's hard to feel bad that they lost their friends because they were being a shitty friend

Luckily, from what I know from friends of friends, D is doing better now and is around ppl who support them

This got a lot longer than I wanted but I believe I got all the details in there.

So, wita?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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red-hibiscus · 3 months

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BL characters I relate to most as a mentally ill gay trans man

Daisy from SCOY

Surprising no one, I, a trans person, relate to Daisy. They're outgoing and seemingly don't care about how people view them. They know they're visibly queer and they normally don't mind it (from what I see). But at the end of the day, society does affect them. They're hesitant to believe Touch genuinely cares and is attracted to them despite Touch being an absolute green flag who is very direct with his flirting. Even after, Daisy was worried about people would view their relationship with Touch and tried to become Day, a more masculine version of themself. Impossible of course and they broke down emotionally exhausted. I feel that so much because I also don't believe it when people, especially cis gay men, are attracted to me. I've caught myself trying to change my behavior to be more masculine (as I'm a bit on the nonbinary side of things). It's bad, but I know how Daisy feels.

Wang from 180 Degree Longtitude Passes Through Us

As a 26 year old trans gay immigrant in a country that doesn't want me, I have a shit ton of pent up anger that has been building up since I was a child. I've calmed down over the years, but I can still be stubborn and argumentative when it comes to politics and human rights. I'm also a linguistics major, thus an academic.

Wang is so much like myself and like a lot of people around me. Like me and Wang would be close friends irl I know it. We're young and stubborn. We're angry at the older conservative people around us, too much sometimes. So he lashes out. Many of his points are correct, but they're not hitting. Partially because the people he's talking to don't want to change, partially because he himself is stubborn. People like us yearn to be free, to be ourselves and to learn. Wang has a passion for the humanities like myself. Yet he knows society really only cares about STEM fields. I've compromised and am getting a master's in computational linguistics. Even though really I just wanna learn as much as I can about sociolinguistics.

Karl from Gaya Sa Pelikula

I haven't watched GSP in a hot minute, but I do remember feeling very seen.

So in the show Karl has his gay awakening, tries to internally and externally deny it, and eventually let himself be free to feel everything and be himself (at least in private).

Now I didn't have a gay awakening, but I guess you could say a trans awakening. In middle school I felt different, I suspected maybe some flavor of LGBT, but wasn't sure and I was too afraid to think about it too hard. Come high school I secretly wanted to join the LGBT club, but was afraid. Then I was essentially adopted into the LGBT club and dragged into the friend group during lunch because I was a loner like everyone else. At the time still "identified" as a cishet woman. As time went on people started to suspect. "Why are you in the club?", "why did you cut your hair", "why do you dress like that?", "your voice is low for a girl haha", etc. Much like Karl, I was not ready for any of that. I was still struggling to make sense of it all and come to terms with it myself. So I kept rejecting it and every time it hurt.

I kept rejecting it until I couldn't. Until someone I resonated with so much came out as trans and it clicked. My trans awakening was complete. I became able to be more myself, but only in private safe spaces. I wouldn't come out and live as a man until after high school and it was terrifying.

Adachi from Cherry Magic

I've only watched the jpn ver, but I'm sure that character remains the same.

I'm anxious and used to be quite shy. Now I'm just awkward. I'm really bad at seeing the good in myself cause I feel like I'm wandering around aimlessly in life. Not that impressive. So when people compliment me I think "haha they're just being nice" (refer back to me never believing people are actually attracted to me).

Adachi is the exact same. He has the same routine every day. Just going through the motions and not really thinking anything of himself. But then Kurosawa comes along and the ability to read minds. Adachi then realizes "wait, someone I respect so much actually loves me? And thinks I have a lot of good qualities? Makes me wanna cry." And me too Adachi. I'd be the same.

Jared from 7 Days Before Valentine

Jared, my precious baby, is described throughout the show as kind, but weird and different. We later learn that he has dyslexia, and honestly he seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. Even if he isn't, he has a behavioral difference people pick up on and then shun him for it.

I too was seen as kinda weird growing up. Maybe it was the autism, maybe it was the social anxiety. Probably both. And then of course there was the gnawing feeling that I was different than everyone else and it turns out it's because I'm trans.

So when Jared said that people didn't talk to him because he wasn't like other people it hit me so hard.

Myungha from Love For Love's Sake

The whole show is sad yet cathartic for me. Myungha is depressed yet spends his time comforting others. He has a hard time loving and receiving love. If you give him a fictional character who is very similar to him he will love them and see all the good, but he doesn't see it in himself. Relatable as hell.

I have an incredibly hard time being honest with my emotions and letting people love me and express attraction. Mostly in a romantic/sexual context. Dpdr is cockblocking me. So dating is hell, but I'm lonely and yearn to not be.

Probably if you put me in a situation like Myungha I'd also go "yep, that right there is my blorbo" and then not realize that all the things I like about the person and make me care about them are things I have.

Honorable mentions:

Both Akk and Ayan from The Eclipse

Nozue from Old Fashion Cupcake

Oh-Aew from I Told Sunset About You

Cher from A Boss and a Babe (I headcannon him as autistic)

Amber from DNA Says Love You

Uea from Bed Friend

Mitsuomi from Restart After Come Back Home

Jao from SCOY

Maybe I'll make another post for those later

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cardentist · 1 year

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Context: [Link] (highly recommend reading even if it’s long) I debated where I should put this, but with the length of this post I want to put @nothorses master post about transandrophobia right at the top [Link] if this post is too lengthy for you or you'd like to read more after chewing on this then I Implore you to open that link and hold onto it.

I don't want to call out this person in particular, I'm certain they don't mean any harm by it and it's not within our best interests to pick fights with people who have (in this commenter's words) Nearly all of the same beliefs with some minor squabbles who are willing to support each other anyways.

but it's exactly Because I'm certain this person means well that frustrates me.

years ago I would've said something along the lines of "this is no different from saying 'I'm not homophobic because I'm not afraid of gay people.'" that it's nitpicking Accurate terminology by breaking it into pieces and judging the words its made up of individually when they're obviously intended to be seen as a whole. trans Men face oppression for being trans Men in a way that cis men do not, just like trans Women face oppression for being trans Women in a way that cis women do not.

but that was a long time ago, the perspective has changed.

"trans men can't have this term because it's too close to affirming cishet white men when they say that they're oppressed for being men" was a talking point back when "transmisandry" was the terminology that was landed on. and while my thought process about that was the same I Understood the kneejerk reaction. because there Was a concerted effort by certain cishet weirdos to make "misandry" a term that made them systematically oppressed by women, and more specifically was used to Deny the existence of misogyny (very ironically from how they acted).

(that said, I have my own reasons for liking that term even if I do see the problems with it, I understand why it was chosen at the time. which I get into here [Link])

"transandrophobia" was coined Specifically to avoid that connotation, to Denounce the association and address that frankly (on the surface) Reasonable kneejerk reaction while still being recognizable and serving the same purpose.

but the talking point about it remained Exactly The Same, completely unchanged despite the change in association. because the point was never About it evoking something unpleasant (though that certainly helped with swaying bystanders in the conversation) it was about the absolute refusal to believe in the concept of people being hated For their manhood. in masculinity intersecting with oppression More than just as a neutral trait.

now, what I'm Not going to say is that the concept of androphobia is a systemic oppression that's upheld by the majority or any governmental body. not mine and certainly not any that I've heard of. but I will Also say that conflating the Recognition of a sentiment that real people express With systemic oppression is not only unhelpful (there's a lot of things that aren't systemic but still matter) but has Also been used to gate keep minorities by exclusionist groups Plenty of times before.

such as when people stopped being able to insist that asexuals don't experience trauma for being asexual At All and instead insisted that it wasn't Systematic and therefore they didn't belong in the queer community. no amount of studies, no amount of personal accounts, no examining of actual law and actual acts of oppression from governing bodies or places of work would sway them. because as long as they could say "It's Not Systemic" they could dismiss it out of hand. when, really, even if they were right it shouldn't matter. if someone experiences trauma they deserve to have the source of that trauma taken seriously no matter the underlying cause. they shouldn't have to Prove that it's important enough to justify caring about.

but to get to my point 9 paragraphs in from where we started, the idea that anti-masculinity or androphobia or anti-man sentiment or Whatever you want to call it Doesn't Exist is pretty ridiculous coming from within the trans community for Several Reasons.

terfs hate trans women because they're transphobic, but they Also hate trans women because they're radfems. a core tenant of radfem ideology Is The Demonization Of Men And Of Masculinity. they think trans women are dangerous Because They See Them As Men Trying To Infiltrate Women's Spaces. and Yes that is obviously transphobia, but the way they talk about trans women is Not magically disconnected from their view of manhood or masculinity or Men As A Group. though Undoubtedly they will side with cis men if it gives them the opportunity to attack trans women, in part because it Is that intersection of Both anti-man sentiments And transphobia And misogyny that has them frothing at the mouth to hate trans women.

(see this: [Link] for a more in depth discussion on radfem ideology as a whole)

and the thing is, someone might be tempted to say "well their hatred of masculinity is Obviously tied to trans women, so there's no point in acknowledging it as anything But transmisogyny." and in fact, that's not a hypothetical at all, it's the default relationship people have with this concept.

but this mindset affects everyone, Especially otherwise marginalized groups.

radfems seeing men as Inherently And Biologically Violent, as rapists and unthinking monsters, Absolutely And Undeniably affects how they treat people of color (Especially black people). white women stalking black men and calling the cops on them because they see their existence as Dangerous has been a Thing for as long as cops have existed (it's the Reason that cops exist) and has been Documented as a current issue in the wake of black lives matter and the murder of black men by the cops. it is an attempt from white women to have black men murdered, to cause violence to them without having to physically implicate themselves, all while using the perception of themselves as inherent victims (small and docile and innocent) with the perception of black men as monsters.

and it Should go without saying, but this Obviously Is Not Saying that black men inherently have it worse than black women. recognizing the oppression of one demographic within an oppressed group Should Not Inherently Mean pitting them against other demographics within that same group. we should just be allowed to point out an experience that some people can have and let that be a neutral (if important) statement. the things black women go through because of Their intersection of racism and misogyny are well and truly Horrific, I certainly don't need to prove that.

and In Fact, black women are victims of that Same intersection of racism and androphobia that we see both from terfs and from white people everywhere. because "womanhood" Almost Without Question means "White womanhood," to have black traits (or to have Non-White traits) is to be closer to masculinity in the eyes of racists.

when terfs post a picture of a cis woman and harass and mock them for Clearly being a trans woman who will Never fool anybody it's universally because the woman in the picture has traits that aren't traditionally upheld as the standard for white women. it's misogyny, it's androphobia, it's transphobia, it's racism. because these ideas Aren't Inherently Separate. they Build on each other and they affect Everybody, because people who think this way don't just turn it on and off like a switch when they're attacking the "intended" target.

and All of these ideas come together and inform the situation with trans men, both on this issue specifically and As A Whole.

just the same as we see that intersection of transphobia and misogyny and androphobia with how trans women are treated (combined, of course, with other relevant aspects of an individual) we see much the same with trans men.

the difference is that people inherently Recognize that what's happening to trans women is more than Just ideas of transphobia (more than Just wanting people to stay the gender that they were assigned at birth), but they recognize Only the misogyny aspect. so when the same conversation is turned onto trans men people don't know what to do with it, Especially when combined with the (unfortunately common) denial that trans men experience Misogyny either.

that complex web of interlocking concepts, and in some cases the Idea Of intersectionality At All, are Denied to trans men. who are then minimized For the perceived lack in complexity (in their oppression, in their identities, and in their lived experiences).

"why not just call it anti-transmasc sentiment then? people might take it more seriously." even Ignoring Everything I've mentioned so far, the Reason I'm not happy with this is because trans men Are attacked (harassed, oppressed, however you want to phrase it) Specifically For Their Identities As Men. and as much as I Also want to establish that behavior and sentiment As stemming from transphobia, I Also don't think we benefit by erasing or softening that idea to make it more palatable to people who don't want to believe it.

this was a response I got to that post I linked at the very top of this essay. I trust that anyone reaching this point has an idea of how silly this is in context, if they haven't read that context themselves. and in fact I wasn't going to acknowledge it at all (I only have this image on hand because I took it to have a laugh with friends). but it's a Convenient and Simple illustration of this exact issue.

the hatred of trans men in trans, queer, and activist spaces is informed and Justified by the hatred of men as a whole. because If you can convince people that trans men are Inherently a privileged group you can justify presenting anything they do as attacking those less privileged than them.

Men are violent, Men shout down women, Men are misogynists, and so a trans man pointing out the existence of his own oppression while actively acknowledging the oppression of nonbinary people and trans women (Only making the point that it's unhelpful to try to quantify this oppression as a tier list and use that to inform how you treat individual people) that trans man is Actually just a Typical Violent Man Exerting His Privilege To Oppress Poor Women.

it's, very ironically, a silencing tactic to avoid addressing the oppression of a minority group to the benefit of the person doing it.

a trans man's manhood is a weapon that is Constantly used against him, and I Might (Might) be willing to call that "anti-trans masc sentiment" if I didn't know where it Stemmed from.

the relationship between radfems and the queer community is, to understate it, Fraught.

for most people who consider themselves to be trans allies, it's Easy to see that terfs are, you know, Bad. to understand that they're a transphobic group and Therefore dangerous. but by-and-large that'd Main and Only thing that that's understood about them.

and to an extent, that's because people believe that that understanding is Enough. that it's Enough to dismiss it out of hand and refuse to look at or Think about what terfs have to say. which is Understandable.

the issue is that no matter how much they Believe that terfs are bad and wrong, they're Still Vulnerable to being influenced by radfem ideology, talking points, and Active Intentional Manipulation if they don't actually know the Details of what it is they believe and how to spot them.

as a Very basic example, people who Believe "terfs are bad because they hate trans people" but Don't understand "radfems are bad because equate men and masculinity as being Inherent Violent and therefore inherently harmful to women" can see something like "men don't belong in women's spaces" and Not Understand that something they may be genuinely trying to consider or understand Is Radfem Rhetoric.

that specific example is, at this point, commonly understood as a terf dog whistle. but it's largely Only understood as a stand in for trans women and called out as transmisogyny.

which is a problem when, say, someone looks at a trans man talking about his experiences is oppression and trauma and says "this Man is shouting down women! this Man is being misogynistic and stealing spaces away from women! this Man doesn't Belong!" and Not Understand That It's The Same Idea. Because the person being targeted Isn't being misgendered (Most of the time), the exact Same silencing and othering tactic is used Effective against trans mascs while not being Recognized as that At All by the majority group.

sometimes these things happen because people passively absorb radfem rhetoric, integrate into their own way of thinking, and then use it against other minority groups without understanding what they're doing. sometimes this is done Very Intentionally by terfs trying to spread their own ideology and break up and cause rifts between groups.

this is not a hypothetical, this is Repeating History that we see over and over again with exclusionists in queer spaces. masterposts at the time had Dedicated Segments talking about the ways these groups shared ideas between each other, between radfems, even when the individuals Don't hate the same people [Link 1, Link 2]

there were Documented Instances of terfs Admitting that they had secret aphobe accounts that they were using to try to indoctrinate ace and aro exclusionists into their beliefs. there's documented instances of terfs admitting that they got to that point By Being indoctrinated through ace and aro exclusionist beliefs and talking points. we had terfs Openly comparing their ideologies to exclusionists Explicitly to recruit them. [Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5]

Because if you're Willing to accept that these ideas Are True, that the Logic that terf ideology is based on is Sound, then you're More Likely to accept when that same logic is pointed at another group. they target people that you're more willing to hate to pull you into their beliefs entirely.

and some people will go on never hating trans people (or never hating trans Women or trans Men or Nonbinary People or Binary Trans People, whatever the particular poison they're drinking), but it doesn't suddenly become Okay when radfem ideology is being used to hurt groups that aren't common sense associated with it.

what's more, these exclusionists groups Hated when you pointed out that connection. would spit and yell and call you bigoted for Daring to make the connection, even when (at it's peak and Most Ridiculous) they were quite literally taking posts originally written by terfs and replacing "trans women" with "ace people." Word For Word. which means it Never got addressed, no matter who pointed it out or how obviously wide spread it was.

and it's Tiring to have to say "if you can't care about how this affects trans men then at Least consider how perpetuating this idea puts trans women in danger" But It's True.

if you let people perpetuate the idea that trans men are Violent, that they're Oppressive, that they don't Deserve to have their own spaces, that they Inherently talk over and erase other oppressed groups by talking about their own issues and asking for compassion, if you Let people say "this group of trans people is Inherently Lesser" Because They Are Men, Because Of Their Closeness To Masculinity, Because Testosterone Or Maleness Is Inherently Corrupting

the jump between Which trans group you think of this way is not as difficult as one would hope. and if we're Never able to address it for what it is, address it As radfem driven androphobia And transphobia And exclusionism then we're going to Keep creating spaces where people are vulnerable to indoctrination. to radfems, to terfs, to exclusionists, to Extremist Reactionary groups of all kinds.

and beyond all of That, as alarming and Important as it may be, it's Also worth noting that radfems (and even Terfs Specifically) Do use androphobia against trans men, even as they force feminine labels on them.

Yes there are the obvious direction that terf oppression of trans men takes. treating them like confused women and trying to indoctrinate and detransition them to Save them or Fix them (which, in itself, is a type of violence). and there's the Resentment of "the frigid uncaring woman trying to identify out of her oppression to instead oppress other women," which isn't a sentiment totally Removed from the issue with how trans mascs can be treated in queer spaces (quite the opposite really, punishing trans men for daring to Be men by equating them with privilege and thus treating them as both an outsider and a threat).

but there Are instances of terfs treating trans men as outright Predatory. as a threat to Them and as a threat to the "poor confused women" that get "manipulated" into "the trans cult" by the trans men they Couldn't indoctrinate.

trans men are vulnerable little girls that are too stupid to know what's good for them and have to be converted Saved, they're the poor lesbians being stolen away from the beds of Deserving radfems women, up until they're Too masculine. until they have beards, until their voices are deep, until they stop wearing makeup, until they're balding or their waste changes or or or-

then they've Mutilated Their Bodies, then they're Frightening, then they're Aggressive and Invasive and Need To Be Dealt With, then they're Ugly Men even as radfems try to deny it.

the feminine trans man is a mark, he's a damsel in distress that radfems want to isolate and indoctrinate. the masculine trans man is Frankenstein's Monster, he's an ugly brutalized image of masculinity, the picture of what radfems hate othered away from what they're a Picture Of by radfems' transphobia. Uncanny and hated just the same.

this isn't "worse" than what terfs do trans women, it's not "better" either, It's The Same, It's The Same.

transphobia, misogyny, and androphobia in a Melting Pot to create a horrific buffet of oppression and abuse. manifesting Differently in different situations and between different people, and yet Fundamentally Connected through the beliefs and ideologies at play.

taking away one of these terms used to Describe this phenomenon doesn't Help, it obfuscates the fact that these things Are connected. which Worsens our ability to Understand them and Address them.

these ideas are Important, not just for trans men but for All Of Us.

and while I'm here, I'd like to address the Other issue I have with proposed alternatives like "anti-trans masc sentiment," Even when proposed in good faith.

if we were to go back and reexamine the terminology for the queer community as a whole and assess if these terms are the most Efficient they possibly could be, would we change them? would we stop using a term like "homophobia" if softening it could make it more palatable? make it easier to introduce the concept to people on the fence? make it easier to ask people to address their own biases without alienating them? if we did away with terms like "internalized homophobia" and instead asked people to address their "complex relationship with gayness" would we be able to get More people to listen?

maybe we could, Maybe softening the term would instead lead to people taking these ideas Less seriously exactly Because it's less direct, Because it's soft, Because it deliberately seeks to Not draw a reaction from a reader. I genuinely couldn't say how this would play out in practice, though we'd probably see both reactions to a degree and thus endless discourse about its effectiveness as a term.

but that's ultimately overshadowed by the Bigger Picture (though, more accurately I could say that it also Informs that bigger picture).

and that's Unity. Cohesion. Communication. Community.

the point of creating terms like this is, of course, in part to give minority groups the vocabulary and perspective necessary to convey their experiences to people outside of said group. and this purpose is endlessly important of course.

but More than that it gives a Community the ability to open a conversation with each other, to take their experiences as Individuals and create a melting pot where they can get a bigger picture of what We As A Group, As A Community, Experience.

this is completely invaluable in every way. it's what allows people to find each other, to know they aren't alone. it allows people to move conversations forward, to unravel complex ideas in a way that Can Acknowledge a vast array of often conflicting and yet Connected experiences. to be able to Build a community together, when lacking a physical space to inhabit, we need Words to connect us. both in passing as neighbors and to Find as Strangers.

when you take a community that already has established terms and you try to popularize an alternative, Especially while encouraging people to Stop using the previous terms, you Split Up that line of communication. people who congregate around one term Won't be in conversation with people who congregate around another, which inhibits the community's ability to grow and deepen.

people who Dislike a term (because it's trying to take something away from them, because they've been told that it's morally reprehensible) Won't engage with it, so posts that are tagged with Only that term will not be found. and even If that term is (unrealistically) universally adopted over time There Will Be A Period where people are simply ignorant of it.

and this is Very Much So used as a weapon by people who Don't want these communities to unify. who Don't want them to talk to each other and Get Ideas. and the smaller, more tentative, less supported a group and term is the more Vulnerable they are to this tactic.

this was and Is used Regularly by exclusionists, though I'm most familiar with how it was used by ace and aro exclusionists Specifically.

they would argue Endlessly about how Anything the ace and aro groups coined for themselves was Bigoted Actually. "aphobe" was attacked by Insisting that it was a term used by autistic people to describe their oppression (a lie, and a ridiculous one at that. there's nothing bigoted about the same term being used for multiple purposes). and "Allo" faced An Endless Barrage of never Ever accepting any term, no alternative, because They Didn't Want Ace People To Be Able To Define The Group That Oppressed Them, because they didn't Believe in that oppression.

Exactly in the same way that transphobes tried to argue that "cis" was really an acronym for something bigoted and so "cis" should be abolished as a term. Exactly in the same way that people argue that "transandrophobia" is offensive Specifically Because they don't believe that trans men are oppressed for being Trans Men.

the point is that they will never accept a replacement term, no matter what. if there Isn't an issue with it (by coincidence or from a certain angle) they will lie to invent one. it's Already Happened with transadrophobia being the intended replacement for transmisandry.

because the Point is double. First to break up the intended target community to hinder conversation around an idea that you don't want to exist, to make it harder and harder for it to be found and (by extension) Understood and expanded upon. and Second to prevent communities from being able to solidify In The First Place.

this wasn't the only tactic that was used to hurt ace and aro people, but it Can't Be Denied that the affect that it had as a whole was devastating. it's been Years since this whole thing started, since it died down even, and the ace and aro communities have yet to recover.

it's Easy to fall into the trap and say "well if we just get the term Right this time then it'll be okay ! if we Fix It then they'll stop!" but it Is exactly a trap. the point of phrasing it like this, of making it about bigotry or about the term being Problematic, is Both intended to demonize the group for having the Audacity to create a term for themselves at All, And to take advantage of well meaning people within the targeted community to do the leg work for them.

it's about silencing, it's about destabilization, it's about Breaking Apart communities so they can't Grow.

"Meet me halfway," they say. you take a step forward, they take a step back. "Meet me halfway," they say.

#discourse #trans unity #transphobia #transandrophobia #transmisogyny #androphobia #transmisandry #it's been a while since I've used that tag #but it feels appropriate here #long post #Really Long Post #when I started this I didn't intend for it to be Even Longer than the post it's in response to #Engages In Toxic Masculinity By Being Incapable Of Expressing Any Concept Or Idea Without Writing A Peer Reviewed Essay #actually while we're here #can I just make fun of that anon I got a Little Bit #shout out to the Very feminist take that women don't type essays

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queer-muslim-culture-is · 8 months

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does anyone relate to me as a queer muslim?

Just wanted to put a disclaimer that I personally am not acting on it but I did find a way to reconcile my queer identity and religion <3

I grew up mostly thinking I was straight but in my teens I didn't label with heterosexuality anymore. I was never really passionate about queer activism but I recall being uncomfortable with homophobia at masjid and gatherings but I never thought about it too much until may 2022

That is May 27 2022 to be specific, the stranger things release date. Im not going off topic lol I promise. So basically I converted from being a mileven shipper to a byler shipper after watching. This was when my queer religious crisis started. I loved Mike and Wills relationship and I thought it was so beautiful from the way they treat each other. I was reading fanfics, watching edits, reading analysis 24/7. How could it be wrong

I knew that the logic with ''Sinful'' actions is that even though you desire benefits coming from it, and you intend good things to come out of it, the reason why its a sin is because unseen harmful effects come out of it even though that's not what we intend. ''But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.'' I could deal with the fact that queer actions were forbidden cause that meant you don't hate the sinner or the ''Sin'' but only the fact that your action has ''harmful unseen/unknown affect'' that you just have to trust in God that its there and that he would only make harmful things forbidden. For example: Promiscuity is a sinful behavior in islam, and God considers it disgusting because it is harmful, but in Jannah all the harmful effects of your desires are removed, this explains why alcohol and hoor al ayn, music etc exist in Jannah. So can I act on my queer desires in Jannah? I made the horrible mistake of going to cishet people with this question and obviously they said NO. I was so fucking pissed and mad and I felt guilty for being mad because it felt like I was questioning Allah. But mostly I was hurt because God is not who I thought he was and I felt ignored, betrayed, neglected, and I took the queerphobia as my image of God. It just made me even more pissed off when people said '' you will get something better'' why can't I get what i asked for and be treated normally like everyone else with their forbidden desires? After suffering an entire lifetime of homophobia and abstinence, God wants to brush this issue under the rug and ignore it even though it becomes a part of who a person is, where is the justice?? At that point I felt like if I couldn't get queer liberation in the next life for myself I would want it for someone else and I would fight for it. I had mercy in my heart for queer people. So this does not make sense cuz GOD IS THE MOST MERCIFUL, more merciful that any lgbtq+ activist on this earth, so God surely must out mercy me

I went through a religious crisis period for 6 months just constantly soaking up all the queerphobic media online from muslims. I felt sick reading all of it and I felt my heart drop. Why do muslims deny that queerness is not a choice. Why do these scholars have rights to speak on issues they've never experienced. How can a person tell another person how they feel. How can you deny centuries of queer people and why do some muslims make fun of queer people, hate us, think were disgusting etc. I really never felt any righteousness or respect from these people yet they say ''respect not support'' tf? I started getting depressed, failing in school because I took these people and modeled my image of Allah based on them. Why wont I get what I want in this life or the next? So my love was considered ''disgusting'' for no reason.

Then months later, everything changed. I started talking to God everyday and treated him like my therapist and I vented out all the pain of queerphobia. I did scientific research on queerness and found out that is generally innate/unchangeable and internalized homophobia turned into anger towards queerphobic people. I was just crying out to Allah wishing that Queer Love could be honored and respected one day and that slowly, naturally it turned into me making dua to Allah that queer people could act on it in Jannah. I for some reason thought it would be more acceptable to ask for queer relations without the sexual aspect lmfao my puritarian era. So anyways I slowly started making Dua to Allah often and asked all the time for queer liberation in the next life and for people I knew in real life, online, my moots, queer muslims who passed away etc. I turned the anger of queerphobia into calling out to Allah to ask for liberation for the queer ummah. I eventually also asked for the sexual aspects as well lmfao. I remember one day I prayed tahajjud and asked Allah for queer people to be with their lovers in the next life and to be themselves (gender identity) and I asked for a sign. I even talked to Allah about my love for byler lmfao dont judge me ok I was crying my ass off at the van scene where Will confessed to Mike. So anyways the ''Sign'' as I saw one day I was cleaning my room and read a book that said that Allah would never guide a person to make a dua if he didn't want to answer it. I was shook and long story short I learned that God is what you make of him and you must trust God when you make dua to him. Another Sign I saw was that I was a video literally explaining this concept in a tik tok another time after I made tahajjud and asked for the same thing again.

My perception of God has fundamentally changed and I am so grateful. Byler endgame 2024 <3

im just gonna quickly note that this blog *does* support acting on your queer attraction and i, as the mod, have multiple partners. i choose to interpret the stories that supposedly ban queerness otherwise (some of these interpretations are or will be shared in #resources) and that any harm that comes from it can either be mitigated (safe sex practices) or is the result of bigotry

but thank you for sharing your experience anon. genuinely happy that you managed to reconcile both with yourself and Allah :]

and hey, i get what you mean abt the fanfiction part skdfjh ! some of my earliest experiences w queerness were reading queer fics on ao3 and feeling,,, something. something i couldnt quite identify till years later. fics exposed me to queer romance, helped me come to terms with my allosexuality, and even helped me experiment with my gender in a way. i owe a lot to fic writers

#queer muslim experiences #queer muslim #queer #muslim #tw homophobia #homophobia #tw internalized homophobia #internalized homophobia #not queer muslim culture

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burningvelvet · 1 year

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this is a long analysis on titanic (1997), re: my last reblog on titanic’s depiction of rose coming into her own sexuality, being sexually dominant, & actively pursuing jack romantically, + LGBT themes, feminism, & the cal/jack/rose triangle as a freudian representation.

—this is one of the great and unique things about this film and also i’d like to point out that although we see jack liking rose first, rose is the one who actively pursues him every step of the way which is almost never seen in films. the roles are almost always reversed. she’s the one who lies to protect him, she’s the one goes to see jack again on the deck under the guise of thanking him, she’s the one who snatches his art book and asks about the nudes, she’s the one who asks to be drawn and specifically drawn nude, she saves him with an axe, she’s the one who initiates sex, etc.

i despise it when people talk about titanic like it’s the most boring cishet movie of all time when it’s one of THEE most progressive/subversive imo (in terms of popular mass media). jack is one of the only major male romantic figures i’ve ever come across who never says anything sexist even in jest, who never dominates their scenes together whether emotionally/romantically/sexually, and who genuinely helps the female protagonist become a better person rather than vice versa. i can’t even think of comparable male characters, so yes in a way he is the perfect example of a manic pixie dream boy. i would go as far as to call their dynamic a subtle gender role reversal and i don’t know why this isn’t talked about more.

there’s also been a lot of queer interpretations and analysis on titanic which i think is apropos. jack and rose have been seen by some as being butch-coded/lesbian-coded ever since the movie came out, and you can also make a case for rose representing (metaphorically or literally) the experiences of gender-envy or being GNC, especially in the scene where jack nonjudgementally teaches rose to “ride like a man, and spit like a man” — and she says “why can’t i be like you, jack?” — etc. — jack actively encourages her to go against the gender norms and i don’t think it’d be a reach to say that he would be supportive if she was LGBTQ+ and vice versa & that they’re both clearly allies regardless of interpretation. Take for example Rose’s line to Kack: “I know what you must be thinking— poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?” & Jack’s response: “No, no, that’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could’ve happened to this girl to make her feel she had no way out?” — As Rose says, Jack “sees” people, and validates/recognizes them in a way that is similar to the queer theories on queer kinship, allyship, & solidarity. Rose and Jack find each other and feel kinship for each other through their mutual progressive/bohemian values in a way that is commonly experienced by LGBT people finding other LGBT people, which is heightened by Rose/Jack’s mutual attraction & their blooming relationship being socially frowned upon (due to classism + Rose’s engagement).

I also think it’s important to point out that sexuality is a core theme of the movie in general, & this is esp important considering it takes place in 1912. From Rose’s Piccaso painting of the prostitutes, to Rose’s comment at the table about Freud re: male overcompensation, to Cal slut-shaming Rose, to the nude French prostitutes, to Rose saying she’d rather be Jack’s whore than Cal’s wife. The theme of being a “ruined woman” is rampant. Many of Cal/Rose’s scenes are laced with subtle sexual implications with him wanting Rose to be sexually submissive/passive/exclusive/available (“do not deny me”) and her clearly not being interested in that role (Cal asks her why she didn’t come to his rooms late at night when he asked her to, and he’s always the one initiating contact, & she clearly hates him). It is also very clear that Rose sees her wifely duties as performative, and to some extent her gender itself is performative (see: the scene where she watches in anxious disgust as she sees a little girl being taught how to act like a lady through table etiquette, and Rose immediately runs off to Jack). I also think it’s ironically symbolic that Cal gives her his mens coat toward the end, and we see pictures of young her wearing pants and riding horses “like a man” as her and Jack fantasized, etc.

I also think it’s intentional that Jack is slightly tomboyish/androgynous looking, younger, and open-minded, whereas Cal is older, dominant, and represents a sort of Byronic “tall, dark hair, handsome, rich” version of masculine appeal. There’s also the split in politics, class, etc. — they represent opposite ends of male sex appeal while both being attractive. The love story wouldn’t be effective if Cal was unattractive bc his sex appeal is necessary to the narrative. Jack and Cal’s contrasting versions of sex appeal are what make this love triangle so effective yet conflicting (aside from their differences in personality and Cal being abusive/Jack being supportive) because the contrast between Jack/Cal highlights and brings out Rose’s sexuality and her transgressive sexual desires. She refuses to be sexually passive for Cal. In nearly all of their scenes together, Rose and Cal are constantly competing for sexual dominance through their dynamic—whereas with Jack, Rose doesn’t have to compete for dominance bc Jack accepts her for the way she is and actively lets her take the reigns and sexually guide him, and Jack feels comfortable in the role he plays. During the drawing scene and in the car scene, he’s presented as being shy and nervous but is still clearly enthralled by her, whereas Rose is suddenly the comfortable/confident/more knowledgeable one, even making jokes when Jack reacts to seeing her disrobe. Typically in cishet romances, the roles would be reversed, which is what Cal desires—that’s Cal’s tragedy, that in the end when he searches for Rose during the sinking and then later on the Carpathia, he’s mourning a fantasy of who Rose was, & tried molding her into a submissive version of herself & destroying her dominant/masculine side.

For these reasons, I believe Jack also represents a part of Rose’s subconscious mind, and that the lines “he exists now only in my memory,” “it was the ship of dreams, and it was, it really was,” are symbolic of this. I see their relationship as being more importantly a deep bond of friendship and a connection between two kindred spirits than being solely romantic. To use a Freudian model, Jack helps bring out Rose’s “id” whereas Cal tries to supress it and bring out Rose’s “superego,” and Rose ends the film by forming a healthy “ego”—this is what makes the Cal/Jack/Rose love triangle so riveting and effective, because it represents this clash of values and this tug-of-war thru this Freudian Trio.

I’m considering turning all this into an actual academic essay atp lmao

#analysis #film analysis #titanic #titanic 1997 #film criticism #media analysis #rambling #my thoughts #writing #opinion #lgbt #feminism #academia #thoughts

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erigold13261 · 1 year

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Anon who can’t draw here. Why do you think NSR and Psyconauts characters all look so queer(affectionate) and attractive? (Attractive as in top tier character design) i would like an opinion of an artist

Love you!

Well it all depends on the person looking I would say. Someone who is a bigot and likes these games would deny that any of them look queer. Others might say a character is horribly drawn if they aren't sexualized. And then some people sees a "bad" character design (one that seems to be universally hated) and still love it to bits.

However, I do think that a large portion of the eccentric-ism of each game, in both design form and storytelling form, is a huge factor of why "less normal" people like these games (so people who aren't cishet or neurotypical). Both games really play with shapes and colors along with darker topics (even if it's just implied). So already there will be a disproportionate amount of "not normal" people already in these fandom spaces.

That alone counts for a large portion of people seeing these characters as queer, which can affect the media as a whole as people who look up fanart/fic of these games are now seeing more queer headcanons or art that shows off things they didn't realize were subtly implied or referenced to in the game.

But also, with in-game reasons, I would say Psychonauts having a canonically gay couple does help make other characters look queer, or at least accepting of queerness (which helps people see those characters as some flavor of queer even if it's not fully implied or something). Then there's the fact that those games talk about mental illness, healing, getting support from your family, love, all things that a lot of queer and neurodivergent people want in media without it being made a joke or villainized. (Plus the added angst is something that really helps people connect and possibly project onto characters).

Similar reasons for NSR, where the game kinda promotes shipping in the sense of Sayu talking about love and May with 1010 (and all the retweets and shares from Metronomik being cool with ships) so already there will be people who ship queer relationships, which then get promoted by the game company, leading people to see this as a soft canon. And even though I think Eve is the only confirmed queer person (She's demisexual, but correct me if i'm wrong about the others being or not confirmed) there are still a lot of queer coding in these characters (one being Neon afraid to dance/not liking his body and wanting to make 1010 look more masculine, which can be seen as trans-coded, at least to me).

The story itself of NSR is also something that resonates with queer and neurodivergent people. It is about overcoming an oppressor, making amends with friends and family, learning how to communicate, dealing with mental illness as well. The story itself is a big factor of people liking this game, since gameplay can be lacking at times. The characters have depth but also allow for a LOT of manipulation in their story and behavior as they are not as fleshed out compared to like Psychonaut characters.

I am starting to lose focus. I probably have more to say about NSR but I'm gonna go into the design/visuals for now.

Design wise, the characters are unique. Psychonauts plays around with shapes really well, especially when constructing hair and facial proportions. And NSR, though a bit standard in how it presents bodies, still has unique silhouettes and character designs (especially with DJ and Mama), not to mention the colors are vibrant and not natural (psychonauts tries to stick in a more "realistic" color palette at least in the real world but still plays around with their colors).

So like, the attractiveness/top teir character design, comes from strong and unique proportions along with cohesive color design. Shape theory is also a really good thing that goes into character design. Like my favorite thing about NSR is how physically different Eve is, even though she is a human (supposedly) she is built differently to show how she feels like an outcast. And then you have characters like Helmut who, even though still fits in with the rest of the cast, is extremely big but still shows off how soft he can be instead of being intimidating with his size (also love the fact that he's probably the biggest extrovert and still has anxiety/panic attacks).

Even just the color of the characters is important. 1010 have super bright and saturated colors to them, but only one color each and black and white covers most of their body to give breathing room to their designs. As Sayu's phases progress, more and more colors appear, but all the colors are complimenting each other instead of fighting for dominance.

Looking just at Helmut, both mental world and character design. Lots of colors and shapes are being used, but nothing is fighting for dominance a lot of the time. You are still able to see where you need to go most of the time in the game, and Helmut's design has a breathing room for the eyes to rest on (such as the black of his coat and his face area).

So yeah, the combination of character design (visual and vocal) and the story really are the main contributing factors for a lot of these characters being well liked and either queer-coded or canonically queer. Hopefully this made sense, I basically just woke up so yeah lol.

#nsr #no straight roads #psychonauts #eritalks #noart #asks #it's literally just game design #good design is what gets people interested #and then the fandom takes over #so many characters aren't even implied queer #but fandom skews that perception a lot #main point #i never thought of z/imelu being trans #until a mutual showed me the light #and now all of n/sr is queer for me #lol

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eulangelo · 2 years

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genuine question, what do you think is the root of transmisogyny? or rather, do you think fearmomgering about the inherent predatory nature of men ISN'T part of transmisogyny? or do you think this only targets trans women??? because men of color are also very much affected by this rhetoric

i dont even know where to start but is extremely obvious to me that you take your info on what terfs are from tumblr only and never looked into anything beyond what's passed around in tme circles. the core aspect of terfs' ideology it's literally there, in the acronym. it's a movement for trans exclusionary radical feminists. it's a movement centered around excluding trans women from feminism. terfs hate trans women because they want to be recognized as WOMEN, they want to be included in feminism, and terfs do not want that. that's it. that's what it means to be a terf.

terfs are absolutely obsessed with the idea that trans women want to invade their spaces, they will do anything in their power to avoid that, which is why they may happen to hurt other people: lots of terfs hated self identifying queer people because it was often a label used as a safe tactic by trans people to avoid outing themselves as trans to a possible hostile stranger, so some terfs started going by "lesbian not queer". it would still be wrong to say that queer people are the main target of terfs, as they are targeted literally only because of their hatred of trans women in the first place. some terfs may also target bi women because they think they are impure or traitors to political lesbians, but then again there's plenty of bi terfs. like there's plenty of cishet terfs. or transmasc terfs. because the only thing that unites all terfs is their shared hatred of trans women and their will to exclude them from feminism.

now, knowing how these people think and operate, you'd be safe to assume that a bigot is very seldom only bigoted in one way, which is why it is not at all surprising that terfs are most of the time racist, ableist, fatphobic, and whatnot. because they centered their whole movement and manifesto about excluding trans women they had to come up with ways to differentiate cis women from them, by giving obsolete, misogynistic and racists definitions, that are shared by whom? you guessed it, mostly fascists and white supremacist men who share their exact beliefs. terfs have always partnered with men, right-wing, fascist, white supremacist men. their husbands, their boyfriends, brothers, coworkers. they loved them because they shared their hatred for trans women (because cishet men also live in constant fear of being "deceived" by trans women, so of course they got along very well with terfs), and helped them kill them, and still do nowadays. terfs still love men when they help them in their transmisogynistic crusade, whether they're cis or trans, because we also can't ignore the hoardes of transmasc terfs. it is written literally nowhere that terfs have to target men, because technically they have no reason to. men dont want to get into womens sports teams or to be included in feminism, it's trans women who are asking for that kinda recognition, which terfs want to deny at all costs.

now since we've cleared up that terfs are violent bigots in general it is no surprise that they will harm other people. women of colour or jewish women first of all after trans women (trans woc / trans jewish women in particular) because they dont conform to their cissexist whitecentric standards, and they target them too with misdirected transmisogyny. men of colour too, because they will see them as predators. and trans men, because they see us as traitors who betrayed our sisters by joining the side of trans women, who brainwashed us with their trans ideology and whatnot. still, their transmisogyny is at the root. and that doesn't mean they aren't capable of harming us, it means we aren't their main target.

Edit. just clarifying that i'm a tme person so this is just me explaining what i know about terfs in the most objective way i can, based on their history and the testimony of multiple trans women. if any trans woman or transfem person wants to add on this feel absolutely free to do so, as it is never in my intention to act as an autority on something that i know doesn't affect me.

#sks #transmisogyny tw #i know this is long as fuck but i wanted to give u a detailed enough response so that maybe u learn something and give me a break #long post

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cas-coding · 1 year

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It's project onto dean hour so get ready for my nonsensical thoughts on his trans experience <3

I assume it's a somewhat universal experience, or at least to some degree, trans mascs enjoying something as a child that was societally (arbitrarily) seem as for girls, feminine etc etc. Point being, I think one of deans intrest that he tamped down and denied was a love of dance. Hear me out, the ballet shoes ep for one. The previous two people who were influenced by the cursed ballet shoes had an interest in dance right? But not the guy who sold them, so why did dean get influenced by them? Aside for that source material justification, I think more importantly ditty dancing and heros journey should be addressed. SO dean loves dirty dancing right (please let me know if you've seen it, I have a whole other dean tangent about this !!) Aside for Swayze being hot as hell, it's a movie that even makes me want to dance, he learned his moves from that movie. Then we have the fantastic dance sequence in heros journey with the lamp, him saying "I always thought I would have been a good dancer" he clearly loves to dance right? I like to think overtime from childhood through these three examples it was one of those things that dean learned to embrace, as he became more accepting of himself he embraced those things from his childhood that he shoved away in an effort to avoid anything "girly" yknkw?

Idk if any of that made sense, I'm no writer. I just like imagining a dean who heals and embraces all his interests that he forced himself to shove away and becoming happier and healing. I just love happy healing dean (this is why i love your work <3) We love projecting the trans experience on to Mr. transdean <3 Do with this nonsense rambling as you will.

okay i think we're literally the same person bc the dancing episode was literally one of my favs for dean's characterization. like he has so many repressed interests and whether it comes off as 'ive repressed my gay' or 'im transmasc and repressed all my fem interests' like theres something going on there. now youve got me thinking about a ballet au where cas is a ballet dancer and dean works tech on one of the stages for the latest show cas is in and dean messes around onstage when noone is there and cas is like wow youre good! and dean is like thanks i dont do ballet anymore bc its for girls and i am a boy. and then cas reignites deans passion for dance <3

anyway canon dean is so transmasc coded/queer coded how did the writers ever even minorly get away with saying hes cishet like what

#asks #dean winchester #trans dean winchester

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unproduciblesmackdown · 4 months

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some threads woven together flawlessly. or fumbled with intently until it's like Look [holds out a cat's cradle] but no. it's good & real

smthing "i can't believe it's this Telling!" about Romance(tm) being multiple times hearing this sentiment like. "okay talking about relationships right. dating has always come easily to me / i've been lucky / i'm Good At romance: i was not single for more than 5 consecutive days from the autumn of '34 to Now. but it wasn't until my late twenties 90 yrs & dozens of Romantic partners into it that, for the first time ever: one of those relationships was actually like, good." and it's like damn i can't believe it's that Telling. that the remarks have this would be twist / punchline (not actually delivered as such. it's not unexpected to them?) that still gets framed thusly as being Successful in dating. spending eons with a bunch of people involved in bad relationships, but you weren't Not dating

also reminded in terms of [i don't really have any podcasts i'm listening to] like one i was like "hm i've heard some episodes. i'll put this one on in the background" then dropkicking it out the window like 10 min in b/c irrelevantly this Guest was like "real talk. ugh it's sooo cool to be poly nowadays 9_9 everyone has to be poly but i'm Naught into it!!! i guess i Feel too much. i want PASSION and DRAMA!!! this is just like how pop in the late '00s / '10s was all 'feminist' telling you to be independent sluts well i care about true LOVE" and like. i don't remember but i don't think they were a man, i'm quite surer they were queer, it was just so fucking lmfao like would you get thee fuck out of here. we actually don't live in "it's like it's illegal to be monogamous :(" world you're not Edgy now b/c you're insecure about what you see as "trendy" but don't Get / don't want in on. you're not going against the grain for being like "maybe i Do want to settle down with my soulmate" like great news that's normative. pick another queer group to Project on b/c they'd rupture your idea of the Bounds of queerness where you're like "ugh they're so mainstream & ruining it for us True queers disrupting the cishet agenda (arguing for queerness to be on The Terms Of said cishet agenda)" e.g. ohh the cishet agenda is pro asexuality!!! (it is not. even if it was? is the Queer Agenda for some people to have to deny their own sexuality & "have" to have sex a certain kind of way with certain people? up next "bi women: gender traitors, why not Choose to (have to) have only certain kinds of sex w/certain people :)" trans people gender traitors We decide what everyone's gender is, bit fucked up of you to be deciding your own huh, what Assumptions are you making you sicko?? you Have to identify / present xyz certain ways or you're failing to be the gender vanguard like we are) like what if the queer agenda was about everything we Can do. we Can have this sex w/these people sure, & we Can: Not do that w/them. like oh no what if cishet men were able to get their hands on the gay resources only when we recognize Aro/Ace identities can ppl Say "yeah i'm....hehe....Not cishet"? legitimate question Yeah What Then. oh no. god's wounds What If you can just say you're trans now & change your pronouns every day. like yeah let's let everyone do that. what if we all did. oh no lol. oh my god more people are talking about polyamory like they're allowed to talk about polyamory & if my monogamy isn't Assumed ""normal"" & i might feel like it's thus more in question?? well don't mind me as i get defensive by way of Derisive & start scoffing & spitting at the queers making the rest of us look bad but we're Really fighting the fight out here (doing what we were already doing but now feeling extra smug & self satisfied about it?)

like "ohh i have too much Emotion for that" like who said you didn't. why do you think polyamory involves less emotion or passion or desire or commitment or whatever. it sure doesn't posit it necessarily requires More either. it posits that it is not monogamy. & like christ Congratulations then. congratulations on having too much of a heart. that is then used to sneer & backbite like i forgot that this person on this damn podcast also brought this up b/c a friend or acquaintance who was poly made whatever kind of proposition & here they are on some podcast going Ugh & talking about how they have too much passion, despite years of top40 telling them, according to them, that feminism is sluttiness now (again this is. according to them. Groundbreaking circling back to bog standard misogyny) & isn't it so groundbreaking in turn if a woman were to sing love songs? imagine. you can have emotions & passion & drama taking the parking spot a stranger wanted. You could've brought the monogamy with a poly partner, when the Agenda for it is always distilled to Exclusivity, like, bring your own, huh? like your own Feelings & Passions & Commitment. but obviously it is the assumption that the poly partner is the Inadequate one there who would be causing any relationship to be Lacking. b/c they sure didn't frame it as some matter of fact Mismatch or else try to start being outright about how poly people are, like the bisexuals, these sluts (feminists!!) who are only giving you Part of themselves when you deserve All Access to your exclusive, locked in partner!!! & like good lord do you ever? with your Reliable kinsey endzones binary gender soulmate for life, do you?? locking them in what, why. excluding what, why. accessing all of what, why.

Romance(tm) being defined by Exclusivity defined by entitlement to as much of this other person as you want, to ensure that exclusivity: compare w/the boundless potential Threats or already Violations to thee proper romantic relationship. spending too much time with other people, sharing too much with them, getting too much support, feeling too much towards them, valuing them too much, to say nothing of what could be considered "intimacy," which then yeah sure includes "well no kissing or sex" but yknow again that does need to be a bound you even accept, monogamy style, & even if you do, that All Thee Rest of it can be attributed to "well you shouldn't be talking to them / having these friends / doing these other things b/c that's a slippery slope to Romance (kissing, sex)." that the exclusivity is so often inevitably defined by, when pushed to it, Exclusion, e.g. like if everyone i loved was held at gunpoint & it's like only One of them could be Not Shot baby it'd be you like tf is this scenario?? gee it'd suck if everyone else died but baby as long as it's not you like The Hell. that it's about Everyone Else being shut out & Less & Lacking & deprioritized thusly in specificass hypothetical winner take all tournaments of disposing of loved ones like what in the christ. & this being an Isolating logic like well that soulmate should be Enough. & the instruction like, yeah any & all feelings passions desires wishes wants needs hopes dreams? file that away under "to be fulfilled by the One True Romance." it'll fulfill Everything in your life!! if it doesn't umm cough must've been doing it wrong. turn your discontent into Passion. philosophically muse on how Fulfillment may have eluded you but maybe just maybe we all still come closest in struggling through a marriage for a few dozens of years & also perhaps parenthood! surely. and don't even think of considering if this cosmos of the nuclear household is not in fact the distilled essence of all that one's life can possibly contain

of course two people can have a long term intimate relationship w/each other exclusively & it not all necessarily play into some nuclear family cisheteropatriarchy agenda moment lmao, but this is just the same as like. yeah people Can exist in ways that some rando today could look at & deem "are they not cishet" but where this is also not of the cishet agenda(tm). b/c ppl Have to be cishet(tm). & Have to be finding their monogamous cishet lifelong spouse. & sure Have to Not do otherwise, so why Wouldn't there be the narrative that all passions & emotions & desires & wants & needs & chance of fulfillment is a matter of the domain of Romance(tm)? the idea like oh you enjoy talking with someone? Love. you're excited / interested / affectionate? Love. you're dtf? either Love or else held to be the other side of the same coin: marked Lack of love(tm). wild that Stimming in enthusiasm is used in this Romance framework lmao as like a recognized Normal nd moment. love the enthusiasm. you could be stimming even more, about more. you could be enthused even more, about more. you Could. you don't Have to, But You Could. you don't Have to be involved in a way you consider some degree of intimate enough to have a particular classification on that basis, but you Could. you don't want to? alright awesome how many versions of a person there can be on this earth. why would one want to define it as "having" to be monogamous though b/c you're Too Legit to be poly. Too Legit queer to respect asexuality. Too Legit trans to respect someone's gender expression/identity being a casual, dynamic, easy experience.

also always noticing like "oh right, another day's work giving Others' feelings legitimacy & priority, & not my own" back in college times when like a couple of times having to outright or gradually* deflect acquaintances whom i'd interacted with trying to go for the dating route. & then nominally having to presume that they are the uniquely burdened one here like oh way to go (did not do fuckall), what is more Legitimate than disappointment re: Romance right. except it's like now hang on i'm also the one going "i thought someone was interacting with me trying to be friendly :/" like lol, no. & as though then taking on this impossible unilateral responsibility to demur from seeming [i want to hang out & interact] interest now on the terms of both neurotypicality (also normative) & amatonormativity. & being like "??" like what would someone even have particularly strong feelings about when i prommy i did not yet feel comfortable bringing even like most of the range of my personality, or comfortable in general w/what i Did bring, what's the basis of this lol. making up a guy. & like we are all performing we are all perceiving & interpreting without a direct channel into someone else's interiority. but like where's Any genuine intimacy leading into this lol? like still a No even if so but at least it'd be less perplexing. & if there isn't even expected to be any then also still No. tf was this one guy trying to start shit over buying textbooks & by start shit i mean keep trying to talk to me when crossing paths on (community college!) campus until i'm like no i don't wanna go to a movie b/c i don't really know you from adam, & he's like "well isn't that the point of dating, to get to know each other" like No this isn't cishet amatonormative marriage speedrun "i'm so good at dating i wasn't single for 93 years! each relationship was shit btw!" central get out of here. luckily he did. rando guys in public & semi public barely count yet also fully count

another thing that's different but the same is it's kind of jarring like another thing you Can do but it rankles within me like i hope to just like. someone being like framed as Superlative Exceptional....like great lmao such a broad thing & common thing & i am fully aware like "Uh Oh Eesh when i am imagining it applied to Me. i do not like it" like how we are [it takes all kinds]ing and [no accounting for taste]ing & all these things we sure Can do. but i do tie it to just like. arguing for people's worth as A Thing on this bitch of an earth where some people get to see others' lives as less than theirs & the supposed cure for this appealing on Merit. where even the Personal, Individual protection against this is "well, just find the one person who is like 'you're Everything & btw i'd drop dead without you like what would be the point of Anything'" like now what tf is reassuring about that lmao....this Other audio experience i forgot where i was already just not that interested but it grated hearing someone assure us that like oh this person's webpage is so Intriguing i Have to talk to this person. another thing much more formal & established being this ode to someone being like So undeniably extraordinary & incredible & superlative etc, like, lovely ode to someone, but i do reflect like eesh i just really do not want that. no ironic "xyz would've hated this!!" like just do not. i'm so Not about merit(tm). i'm so not about anyone Needing to be considered superlative or extraordinary by even One other person. so not about rising Above anyone else as the evidence of worth. so not about praising anyone by assuring people they're Not "Just" [another xyz. a victim. passive. content to abc.]....so not about being stuck in isolation with the immediate Family as one's only support (against The Family: as like. a political deal) until the only other way to exist is to escape, &/or be pushed into, the marriage, aka thee romance (against Romance: also a political deal)

where in romance(tm) is there Not this narrative about how you'd better find all the support & fulfillment you need in your whole self & life & being in This. where is there not "ideally" isolation. where is there not exclusivity as the definition. with this also ofc assuming the "correct" monogamous approach. & the cisheteropatriarchy. like yeah sure people Can do xyz that would resemble like ah the cishet lifelong monogamous partnership, & Not be of that agenda. like there Can be ppl who would be perceived cishet by someone to whom "cishet" has any meaning but like, without that agenda. we had & can have all our phenotypes without the concepts of white supremacy / antiblackness around which to categorize "race," we have all our bodies w/o there necessarily, inevitably being ableism. & in the meantime against the [we Have to xyz] & the Normative & the assertion of "merited" deservingness & the isolating & authoritarian & controlling & extractive & prescriptive & limiting, & plenty of other things....polyamory like supposed "opposite" of aromanticism but it's peak harmonious when like, it is also very much outside how romance is "supposed" to be, to the extent of like ohh it doesn't count b/c it is so uncontained by any Definitions. ohh i could never be polyamorous b/c they're Diluting themselves (there's the Isolating & Exclusivity definitions....the Most romantic relationship? baby idgaf if everyone else in my life died. you wouldn't either re: all your loved ones, right. why are you talking to them again. or hanging out with them again. or saying Love to them again or changing your plans for them or listening to them or etc etc. & of course you couldn't kiss anyone else, why Wouldn't this relationship crumble away if that weren't the case??? lol) like okay you're not polyamorous, that others Are is good for you. ppl being trans is good for cis people; no genders as constraining classes. ppl being ace is good for allo people; no compulsory sexuality. people being bi is good for everyone; same. etc etc etc. that They can exist as themselves unhindered = you can; that they can't, you can't. you're not Too Good to be them; acting/doing Better than someone else is acting/doing is like, about choices lol. versus [oh it's not even a choice i Couldn't be poly....b/c i'm too good for that] like. now what does this do for anyone exactly. but make you feel more secure through feeling superior b/c you're hearing more often more casually more proximately about different choices people are making for themselves

anyways surfacing from [my god. writing a post now] & i would like to emphasize "aromantic sure but & also anti-romance i mean it. like politically" & "lovelessness let's gooo. politically as well like can we Not with the affective-centric"

#long post qpqp like middlingly but i'm not reading all that; i only wrote it #remembering i could've touched on [o7 tales of like ppl who Would want to date but know they can't count on it b/c of societal/cultural/#structural obstacles / isolating factors] relevant...why exactly should it be miserable meaningless kys territory to be single for anyone #again truly amazed like no Lol XD from ppl going ''my very successful love life. i was in bad relationships nonstop for 19 yrs'' WHA? HUH?#also it's a Zzz for ppl who Supposedly are like ''ohh if you're not happy single you'll never be happy in a relationship''#like...vaguely in theory but this is just invoked to place individual blame & still say You Gotta Get That Relationship Though Still #dipping sliiightly outside amatonormativity to still bolster it ''if you're not finding Success(tm) in Love: idk it's your fault ig?''#like saying ''ooo ppl don't love/respect you if you don't love/respect yourself'' (a) why not? (b) yeah ofc ppl Should be able to be happy #w/o a partner they Should be able to appreciate themselves w/o anyone else's judgment & approval. but they shouldn't (i) have to assume #they'll be otherwise unsupported in this? do it All Yourself (ii) shouldn't be blamed(tm) for the lack of support they already have #& then that these sentiments Are then like ''haha but find that partner though. don't be Too happy single lol'' & ''hey don't be That self #confident no wait stop Get Approval'' like ohh Now people will like you :) you're still supposed to theoretically care about Needing that #you just need to also be blaming yourself if it doesn't happen! b/c Good People are guaranteed being personally liked & loved to the max #& the max might be 1 person of a particular gender agrees to fuck around w/only you. maybe some cazsh friends from work/school exist. whew

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dreamhot · 2 years

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i wanna talk about a couple tweets i saw in particular, actually, because they bring up an argument i've seen a few times now:

[id: 'dream stans need to understand that not disclosing ur sexuality on the internet isnt the same as being apart of the queer community. unless dream explicitly states that he is queer (which he hasnt) then its perfectly fine to assume he has cishet privileges and that he shouldnt say things or act in a way that would be ok for queer ppl to do but wrong for cishet ppl to do. unless he makes it clear that hes queer, he should be held accountable as a cishet person. but holding their creator accountable is such a foreign talent to dream stans']

there are several levels of ignorance to these tweets, least of all citing dream doing something that's wrong for cishet people to do - i genuinely have no idea what op could be referring to, cos last i checked the most dream does is flirt with his friends and like pairing fanart on twt. however, my main focus is on the bit about how it's 'perfectly fine to assume he has cishet privileges' until he 'explicitly states that he is queer'

no one needs to be reminded that cishet is the 'default' in society - we've talked about this before, and it's generally understood that obviously most people are gonna assume someone is cishet. and while this probably isn't off base for much of the population, you can't deny that it's an easily weaponised dismissal tactic against people who aren't labelled. 'cishet passing privilege' is an accusation i've had to deal with in the past as i figured myself out, and all i can say is that it did a lot more harm and self-repression than any good. it's almost as if dismissing someone's experiences because they're not expressing their queerness 'correctly' is ... damaging!

these people also love to bring up how dream's expressed in the past that he's not part of the community. to that, i want to ask if they've ever had a phase - particularly while having identity realisations about themselves - during which they were pretty sure they weren't cishet, but that they weren't queer enough. i know i certainly did. for years it was difficult for me to consider myself part of the community, all because i was faced with so much rhetoric about what it meant to be xyz. i knew what i liked, and i knew that i was having certain other epiphanies, but i still struggled with calling myself queer because it felt as though i hadn't earned it. which is a super fucked up way to go about things, and i wouldn't wish that experience on anyone

so do you think these people might stop to think about how this man, from an admittedly privileged and potentially non-accepting background, might have a difficult time calling himself part of the community? why the constant accusations of qbaiting and faking it for attention might make him reticent to call himself anything because he might be concerned that he wouldn't be enough to get these people off his back? and how it could be possible that this 22yo guy is still figuring shit out and probably isn't gonna benefit from people continuously treating him as cishet?

it's all about acceptance and letting people explore their gender and sexuality at their own pace until it comes to someone these people don't like. i guarantee you they wouldn't be so readily flinging this exclusionist rhetoric about if it was one of their faves overtly stating that their sexuality is ambiguous.

dream has said he isn't straight, and these people need to stop treating him like he is just cos he isn't 'out' in the way they feel he should be. it's just goddamn embarrassing.

#smile.txt #discourse cw #long post

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spitblaze · 3 years

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Hey, so I saw you talking about this a bit ago and I’m a little confused and not sure who else to ask (cause I really don’t wanna annoy you). But I don’t understand why some people are ok with kinks at pride, I’m not some hetero asking I’m actually bi myself, and my sexuality especially, tends to scrutinized by heteros and oftentimes they say "oh so it's all about sex with you guys!". So I guess that's why I’m a little confused as to why we should be so openly showing off our kink side when there's minors who may wanna march with us. I get that there's fashion based off kink clothing, and that children's media shows it, but I'm not really sure if that is right either and that we should be doing that. Tbh I’m not sure. It's a tricky slope. I guess what I’m trying to say is, when we're sometimes seen as a bunch of perverts I’m a little confused as to why some people would openly wear very revealing clothing. I'm genuinely naive to the subject and want to learn from someone Ive seen defend the subject, my friends who are also LGBT+ seem to be against it but I think they're all naive too. None of us actually really participate in the community despite our sexualities/identities. Thanks for reading this.

So...I've noticed this thing I've seen going around the queer/LGBT community, these ideas that if we listened to the stereotypes people have about us and do our best to prove they aren't true, to stop saying things like 'born this way' to keep people from attempting to genetically engineer queerness away, to make sure that there aren't any trans/nb people with unconventional or cutesy identities or pronouns to prove that being trans is very serious, to just...act as harmless and non-abrasive and quiet and agreeable to cishet society at large, they'll be happy with us and maybe hurt us less.

I don't really know what else to call it, so I've been calling it an 'oppressor appeasement complex'.

This idea that we can capitulate to the people who already hate us, who already think we're weird and gross and deviants, people who are dedicated to not listening to us, and it will make them tolerant somehow. That piping down and acting like '''''Normal People''''' will make people whose goal is to make us stop existing will just...stop.

Here's the thing, though.

This has...never worked.

Bending over backwards and denouncing parts of your heritage, rejecting your culture and your people, and acting like part of the oppressor group may make them less wary of YOU, but at the end of the day you'd just be 'one of the good ones' at best. And if that's the best you can get in their eyes, then...personally, I don't know if that's worth it. Shitting all over your people and your culture in the name of appearing 'civilized' to people who consider us savages doesn't seem like a useful way to spend what little time I have on this wet rock of ours.

And as for 'kink'- I want you to think real carefully about what constitutes that in the context of pride. It's people wearing leather harnesses and pup masks and weird, revealing clothing. Which can be a lot, I will not deny that it's not always great to realize someone is wearing fully assless chaps, right in front of you. And on that note...have you...ever seen people at pride going farther than, like...wearing it? Have you ever seen people st pride just raw dogging on a parade float? Have you seen dominatrixes stepping on participants? Have you ever seen anyone going farther than wearing leather and flirting or making out, at pride, in clear view of children? It bothers me too that gay culture and queer culture is considered to be for 'adults' and that it's 'too raunchy' for minors to know that people who don't abide by cisheteronotmative society exist and are happy, but do you think telling people that there's a limit to how subversive they're allowed to be will help with that? There's no slippery slope here, Pride started in the 70s, and if people haven't started wearing emetophilia pride gear or having orgies on the parade route now, in the 2020s, where everyone is way more open and chill about sex than we have been in DECADES, I don't think they ever will.

And on that note- the idea that minors should never be exposed to anything even sex-adjacent is...kinda weird? Like I'm not saying we should start handing out porn at pride, and I think that the people selling penos-shaped dildos way out in the open at pride festivals should maybe like...keep those under the counter, perhaps, but saying that kids who see people wearing pup masks and harnesses and assless chaps will be scarred or corrupted or whatever is...a weird insinuation. If kids don't know what the leather means, they will think it looks cool, like they're a villain or punk rock or something. If someone who does know what it is sees it, what do you think is gonna happen to them? I mean-seriously, how do you think just *seeing leather bdsm gear* is going to irreparably alter minors? Will their idea of sex be changed forever? Will they be forever scarred by queer culture from seeing a guy in a pup mask? I'm genuinely at a loss as to what a lot of you think the grand consequences of teens, or even kids, seeing kink gear is. If someone has a great argument, I'd love to hear it, otherwise I don't know why there's such a huge stink being made about this in order to...idk, not weird out some teenagers?

Listen. I don't blame people who feel uncomfortable around leather, or around sex, or around the idea of a bunch of guys with their asscheeks on full display. You're allowed to feel uncomfortable. But like...it feels weird to just completely publicly shut down this HUGE part of queer/gay/LGBT history just because some people are uncomfortable, right? What if we just never sold lingerie in public again? That makes people uncomfortable, that's exposing minors to sex-adjacent things. Not to mention- if we REALLY want to be welcoming to minors, why do so many events and spaces in LGBT culture involve alcohol? Queer bookstores are getting harder and harder to find, and gay bars are often the easiest place outside of the internet or school to find other members of the community, but like- the incidence of alcoholism in the LGBT community is MASSIVELY higher than most other populations.

TL;DR- Why do you people think everyone is gonna burst into flames when a 16-year-old sees a pup mask? Why do you think this is only a 'slippery slope' away from people going full nude at pride?? And why are we more focused on gay expression in terms of child-friendliness when most non-pride queer spaces require you to be 21 or older to even enter in the first place???

#spitblaze says things #long post

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wolf-queer-discourse · 3 years

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Adventures in Aphobia #1

So I was scrolling through Tumblr the other day (a regrettable mistake as always), and I had the great pleasure of seeing this joyous post.

*deep breath*

Not gonna lie, posts like this make me real pissed. Pissed because the person who posted this exists in a space where they feel comfortable enough to post this online. Pissed because these posts are so common and often face little backlash. And pissed because there’s nothing better than allosexuals condescendingly explaining to asexual people why they’re dirty attention whores who invent their own oppression. Ace people deserve to be defended against this horseshit. Young people see these posts, and it’s extremely damaging to have your identity be nothing more than fuel for people in discourse to mock you and demand you bled in order for them to notice your pain.

Anger aside, many people do not see why this post is wrong, so why is it? Let’s unpack this clusterfuck of bigotry:

“would love to see substantive evidence of systematic “aphobia” that isn’t actually just misogyny, toxic masculinity, or rpe culture.”

God damn, we are not mincing our words here XD. A few things: systematic in bold, which tells you if you do not make a blood sacrifice on the altar of queer pain you will not be taken seriously. Potential nitpick, but systemic and systematic are not the same thing. I believe systemic is the word they’re looking for. Systematic implies a lot more intentionality that can be hard to prove. Systemic merely means that systems, in their current state, do aphobic things, which they absolutely do.

“Aphobia” in quotes is absolutely rich. Not only will this person refuse to acknowledge systemic aphobia, which is only one type, but this poster casts clear doubt upon the mere concept of aphobia in and of itself. We love to see it.

There’s a lot to unpack here. The statement, as clearly condescending as intended, is sort of correct, though it doesn’t mean a whole lot. Systemic oppression is about the systems in a society (government, healthcare, etc) discriminating against people. Systemic oppression is not bigotry faced on a person-to-person level. In short, systematic oppression is something a person experiences in their overall life, while personal discrimination is experienced on a personal level by people who are not singularly in control of the systems. This post boils down the negative comments ace people face into being called “weird”, which is an understatement for sure, but calling a gay person weird isn’t systemic oppression either.

It’s still bad and discriminatory.

This is such a snotty way to dismiss aphobia as some mere, insignificant comment with no meaning as if it doesn’t reinforce society’s painful aphobic views in the same way casual homophobic comments reinforce heteronormativity and society’s hostility toward gay people.

Ace people face discrimination in healthcare, most notably, which is systemic discrimination, but the systemic discrimination of asexuals really ought to be its own post if I’m to nosedive into it. Even if ace people faced no systemic discrimination, it wouldn’t make this point anymore correct. Discrimination is a perfectly valid reason to feel disregarded by society, and often only ace people are denied the right to feel this way and are instead gaslit into admitting what they face is no big deal and they’re just making it up for attention.

The experience of being pressured to have sex when you’re allo vs ace is very different. The vast majority of allo people do not plan to be celibate their whole lives. Many ace people do not want to have sex, ever. “Waiting for sex” in much of western society and in Christianity is seen as pure and honorable. Yet being asexual and never wanting sex is seen as a deviant disorder and people are accused of robbing their partner of sex forever.

There’s really a specific flavor of sexual pressure that is unique to ace people. Sex being to “fix” someone or because they “just need to try it”.

In this respect, aphobic sexual pressure is better compared to that faced by gay people and lesbians. Lesbians especially often can face this same struggle, men pressuring them to have sex because they think lesbians just need to “try it” or to “fix them”. I can imagine this poster would have no issue acknowledging lesbophobia being the root of lesbians coerced into sex with men, yet she does not give ace people the same.

Imagine if someone said (and knowing our fucked world, someone probably has): “Lesbophobia doesn’t exist. It’s just misogyny. Straight women are coerced into sex too!”

It’d be pathetic bullshit. Toxic masculinity, misogyny and many other issues can all tangle into combined messes with other forms of bigotry. Lesbophobia is an experience that deserves to be recognized apart from misogyny, even if the two are linked. Please stop erasing ace people’s experiences with this when it’s not the same thing.

Honestly, though, this post, as trashy as it is, if anything, is perhaps, really asking: Is there any type of aphobic experience that’s inherently exclusive to ace people?

I still wager to go say, yes, yes there is, but I must make an important point first:

Most experiences of queer discrimination are not limited to queer people.

Homophobia and transphobia are both experienced by cishets in certain instances. Feminine straight men can be victims of homophobic harassment. This does not disprove the fact that it’s homophobia just because a straight man is the victim of it. A tall cis woman with broad shoulders and a lower voice may be the victim of transphobic remarks or comments. The basis of these comments is rooted in transphobia, however, so the fact that the victim is cis does not erase the transphobia.

People who argue that experiences ace people complain about can be experienced by allosexuals are not poking a legitimate hole in doing this. Certain experiences related to aphobia can and are experienced by allosexuals. If you do not acknowledge this, then homophobia and transphobia aren’t real because cishet people have sometimes experienced them.

Despite cishets sometimes experiencing queerphobia, most of us acknowledge that their experience of that bigotry, however unfortunate, is not the same as that experienced by actual queer people. It’d be quite homophobic for a feminine straight man to claim he knew just as much about the gay experience as an actual gay man. Similarly, when allosexual people relate experiences that were rooted in aphobia, it’s overstepping a line when they claim asexual discrimination isn’t real because they experienced elements of it too.

Cishet (cishet including allosexuals) people do not experience their doctors telling them their sexuality might be a disorder or caused by trauma. Allo queer people can experience this with their sexualities too.

“using sex appeal to sell products is misogyny, it is not engineered to gross sex-repulsed people, it is meant to objectify women.”

This is a strawman thinner than my last nerve. Uh, what? What ace people are you seeing that literally think sex appeal was engineered to gross-out sex-repulsed people?? I don’t think this is a core argument??

Yes, sex-repulsed ace people sometimes complain about sex appeal in media being uncomfortable. But that’s it. Every time an ace person shares a discomfort of theirs doesn’t mean it’s the entire basis of their oppression. For the love of God, let ace people discuss their experiences without being blow-torched over not being oppressed enough with an individual discomfort.

BONUS ROUND

(This was in the tags)

“Completely vilifies celibate individuals”

...no…? What…? Huh…?

The most charitable interpretation of this vague accusation is that the poster means celibate people face aphobia as well, due to not wanting to have sex. I have no idea how this “vilifies” anyone, but that aside, as said before: people who are not queer can face aphobia. Also worth noting that society treats celibate people way better than ace people, which is really another example of aphobia. Celibate people can be told they’re missing out (which could be at very least related to aphobic ideals), but they’re rarely called broken. Celibacy is seen more as a respected, controlled ideal in allo people, but when ace people want to do it, they’re just mentally ill.

Anyway, the post was aphobic trash, and it needs to be debunked more often. Mocking ace people online is not a good look anymore, guys. Don't be ugly.

#discourse #queer discourse #LGBT discourse #Adventures in Aphobia #ace discourse #asexual discourse #aphobia #ace discrimination #asexual #asexuality #LGBT #queer #ace #rant #aphobes have no shame but they should #imagine having a brain smoother than a banana peel

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transhawks · 3 years

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Let's talk about Mineta and masculinity. Just my thoughts as bi trans man.

Real talk, I've said for years Mineta was disappointing because Horikoshi could do a lot with him. He could have easily subverted the 'funny drawn comic relief' with him because clearly Horikoshi has commented on insecurity in personal life and as a man, knows that there is a lot of pressure on young boys to prove that they are capable of attracting girls to other boys.

That men who can't get girls are derided as weak, emasculated, and ostracized but that is a very acceptable form of bullying. We judge people by their partners a lot in society and teen boys who don't fit conventional standards of attractiveness get the message that unless a girl likes them, they're not real men. That's why you see this bitterness in nerd boy culture - there is a societal expectation on men to be virile, and why so often 'nerd media's has sexist tropes that focus on the 'undesirable' man getting the girl.

It's the thought process that fuels everything from 80's scifi tropes that gave us 'alien/not from here girls' to 2010s Isekai anime that really have a ostracized nerdy boy becoming their own power fantasy. It's the foundation of incels - which in their original conception and meaning are 'involuntary celibates', mostly men who are 'denied girls' and therefore everything else that comes with that. We have a society that priorities romantic relationships, where families are assumed to be blood-tied, and this does indeed cause real issues in how people who cannot or do not want to achieve that live their lives.

What I'm trying to say is, yes, Mineta's behavior was always disgusting. You have every right to hate him for his actions, but there's complexity here, too. And part of me really hoped it was for a point. That finally someone would write character whose growth meant realizing that his worth as a person was not about getting girls to like him and being girl crazy, that the perversion was a bad way of expressing his insecurities and frustrations. And working through that.

And, surprisingly if the translation is true and the Japanese fandom is right, we ...just might have? I mean I'd want to see an apology from Mineta about his behavior, but if Horikoshi just did all that because Mineta wasn't just facing this sort of pressure and societal expectation as a straight man, but also a queer man, well, that's... Shocking. But not as untrue to real life as many people think.

A lot of people younger than me (I graduated hs in 13) and might not understand how common closeted and being downlow was recently in the US. In Japan it's much more like that now. A lot of queer people do end up performing heterosexuality 'in excess' in both denial and cover up. All those jokes about 'compensating for something' did and do have some basis. When straight male masculinity is general dependent on virility and asserting dominance, is it any wonder that an attempt at performative cishet masculinity ends up being far more toxic than the usual? It is born out of insecurity and, added in the queerness, fear. To be seen as weak or effeminate is very much a big fear on boys' minds, because it comes with repercussions, loss of status. There's a safety that being out removes from you.

So I understand there is a lot of anger about 'of all the representation, Mineta..' but actually, this is incredibly realistic and not as bad as you think. Not all queer characters are meant to be likable. And perhaps coming to terms with their queerness is essential to them stopping bad behaviors and becoming better people - and that is representation.

There is a lot to be discussed on how damaging our narrow views on masculinity are for all genders, and there is also a discussion to had about how many of us queer and trans people often perform 'roles' or present in ways that mask our insecurities with confidence. Sometimes it's like sliding into two different sides of the spectrum - when closeted, performing rigidly the gender roles we are supposed to confirm to, and often when first coming out, going all the way to be as visibly loud and as possible/or rigidly conforming to the new gender roles if you're trans and binary. Is it really so surprising a young boy confused about his sexuality went out of his way to try and prove he was the straightest boy there?

I see many people wish it was Aoyama as a very clear cut and confident 'GNC' boy, but the truth is, wouldn't that just gather the 'we already knew' comments? What about those of us who didn't know?

So, while I still think so much of Mineta's harassment played as a joke was awful and in line with a lot of the other sexism Horikoshi routinely puts into his own manga, I ask people to think a bit more about what it means to be a queer boy when they express revulsion at the fact 'it had to be Mineta'.

There are way more insecure boys with unconventional looks who find bad ways of coping with their queerness than you think and a lot of the commentary I am seeing veers into that reinforcing 'eew no one wants him'. Yeah, I don't think many people would want the Mineta who climbs onsen walls to peep, but Mineta does not have to be /that boy/ down the line. And maybe feeling something for Deku is helping him do just that - and isn't that what we wanted from Deku, who has changed so many of his friends into better people? Isn't that better than Mineta staying what he was?

#bnha #mineta minoru #there is a lot of good rebuttals in my mind to this from a feminist lens so i don't mind discussing this #i just think there's a bit of a misunderstanding about how stifling and frankly dangerous masculinity is to young boys #or the masculinity that's prioritized #however i do acknowledge like many things this growth comes at the expense and comfort of women

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southslates · 3 years

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a rant about the saturation of zvkka fandom

as a tyzula shipper i get really surprised by how the most popular lgbt/wlw atla ship before the renaissance fell off when it started; to the point where tyzula fandom still exists but it’s much smaller and constantly made fun of for being abusive

and i think this is in part because of purity culture, where there can’t be nuance in anything and therefore tyzula is abusive and we can’t ship it! but i also think that as @army-of-mai-lovers outlined in this amazing post ty lee and azula aren’t love interests for any of the boys in the show, especially sokka and zuko, so content for them doesn’t need to exist because they simply don’t need to be sidelined. most tyzula content that exists is tyzula centric; not maiko or sukka or kataang or zutara centric, but tyzula centric. it explores ty lee and azula as characters because their chemistry is seen

you can see that most of the popular wlw atla ships in the renaissance are at least partly characterized by their relationship w zvkka, and clearly i have a lot of problems with that fandom, least of them all being the times i’ve been called a homophobe for disliking it. and one really large issue i have with zvkka fandom in general is its saturation of atla content to the point that it’s sidelined into a different au, that so many shippers see zvkka in atla when it just . . . isn’t there. it wasn’t the most popular ship before the renaissance because for fourteen years there just wasn’t . . . anything there. and i don’t know why it’s gotten popular, likely the help of some big name blogs (including the one that came up with homophobic katara) and the fact that fandom has started to really tend towards mlm ships more and more, and honestly good for zvkkas, the ship is cute, but uh

essentially just that even though zvkka has been the largest atla ship with the renaissance, it is not the most popular atla ship and it likely never will be because of that lack of longevity. there’s a lot of issues with misogyny and migratory mlm ships in fandom and i really, really see it here. zvkka fandom =/ atla fandom, atla has always and should always be more than about ships. of course i stick to mainly zutara/tyzula corners of fandom, which are super far removed from zvkka fandom in general for obvious reasons, but it’s almost sad to be entrenched in twitter and general tumblr fandom where people who’ve joined with the renaissance characterize zvkka as such a large feature of atla when atla as a fandom has always been surprisingly great with its characterization of women (atla specifically, ignoring lok etc). i’d never thought that the subtle misogyny would increase in the year 2020? and obviously as a zutara shipper i know that our fandom has had its issues with mai before, i am the last person to deny that, but i think that we are growing past it and trying to be better

one thing that i really hate seeing here is the idea that zvkka shippers “solved the ship war” by making zvkka larger than the kataang/zutara ship war. and i ship both zutara and kataang and one reason i absolutely hate this take is because i am in love with the fact that for fifteen years, whatever side you were on, atla discourse was about katara, what the brown woman in the show deserved. you can’t solve a ship war by shoe-horning her into kataang because that’s easy for your ship, because you’re just throwing away her agency and the entire point of the ship war. i actually pity a lot of people who mainly ship kataang because kataang; a ship between an asian monk and brown woman, which is canonically good representation, which is canon, is being pushed aside and made a sideship for a completely fanon mlm ship

maybe there’s a fetishization aspect in there? like i hate to make broad claims but the amount of zvkka nsfw for one, and then all the incredibly racist tropes i’ve seen there; the infantilization and feminization of zuko and the way sokka is supposed to be a big strong man or something just reeks of racism, especially when written by white people. it just strikes me as mischaracterization and the input of certain characters into boxes, because people don’t want to ship sokka and zuko, they want to ship mlm insert one and two. and i hate this because their dynamic is super interesting, canonically! i’d love to see how sokka with a plan and on-his-feet zuko work together :)

i mean fetishization is kind of prominent in internalized misogyny presenting itself as wanting two men to have sex to exclude women from the narrative, and in the post i mentioned above the op’s point was that atla fandom’s misogyny presents as unique because they don’t hate women, they just treat them like they’re really one-dimensional, and at the end of the day everything must come back to the dynamic between two guys who were intended to be cishet (i headcanon zuko as bi but i’m not stupid, this show is from 2005, it is what it is)

anyway i don’t know where i’m going with this! but i absolutely love atla wlw and i wish that the female characters could be analyzed further in depth than they are, and i’m still at a total loss to why fandom-- made by women, for women, and often queer women-- is willing to maintain so much misogyny in the guise of upholding queer rep in fanon ships with gay men.

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aoitrinity · 4 years

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The “Me Too”

DISCLAIMER: I am about to put forth further speculation about a major Destiel-related event from this season, specifically the confession scene in 15x18. This is 100% pure speculation and I do not claim to have any insider knowledge AT ALL. If you are not in a place to read such things, please go take care of yourself instead of reading this. Do not cause yourself any additional pain.

If you are here to be an asshole and call me delusional...uh...I mean, go for it, but like I really don’t get what that’s doing to make your life better? If shitting on people’s desire for understanding a TV show brings you joy then uh...that says more about you than it does about me?

With that out of the way...read below the cut for my theory about the “me too” line.

I know I just unloaded my theory about the finale on all of you the other day, and that I should probably give you all a break in between my bouts of theory-dumping, but I had to get this out here tonight.

If you somehow haven’t seen it yet these last few (painfully exhausting) days, there is a rumor going around of a cut in episode 15x18 of a specific line--a “me too” that Jensen supposedly recorded during the 15x18 sequence, which would have given us all textual validation not only that Cas is in love with Dean, but that Dean is in love with Cas. Various people have been trying to confirm or deny this rumor since it surfaced. We all figured it would have happened during the final scene, with Dean crying, alone. It would have been there in place of the crying, and we hypothesized that Jensen had to dub it over with AMR of his sobs. It was an interesting thought, but we had no real proof it ever happened. I, for my part, started to assume it was entirely false.

But then tonight, on the Latin American CW, we apparently discovered that in the Spanish-language dub of 15x18, they had taken Dean’s last line to Cas, “Don’t do this Cas,” and dubbed it as “yo a ti”--translated to “me too,” seemingly confirming to us that the line did exist!

I watched the clip of the dub excitedly, hoping for some secret new shot that we had been robbed of in the original episode, but the “me too” was simply dubbed over Dean’s line of “Don’t do this Cas,” which is definitely something Dean very clearly said in the original recording. That wasn’t a dub, Jensen said that line.

So what gives? Where the heck did the “me too” come from?

Well, as apparently I am wont to do recently...I talked @winchester-reload‘s ear off and was eventually hit with a stroke of realization.

I don’t think the “me too” went in the crying scene. I think Dean said it to Cas’s face, and we were robbed of it.

Before I go any further, I want to again remind you that this is PURE SPECULATION. PLEASE JUDGE FOR YOURSELF AND ALWAYS BE SKEPTICAL.

So.

The original end of the scene runs as follows:

Dean: Why does this sound like a goodbye?

Cas: Because it is. I love you.

Dean: Don’t do this, Cas.

*a longing exchange of looks, with Cas smiling through his tears even more broadly than he was earlier*

*the Empty appears and Dean starts to panic*

Cas: Goodbye Dean.

*Cas throws Dean out the way, smiles at him one last time, and is taken*

Now that always struck me as a sort of weird exchange because...I mean, Dean can tell Cas not to “do this,” but whatever he was going to do that would get his ass taken by the Empty, he had clearly already done. But I originally handwaved it as Dean begging Cas not to go and leave him again by dying, even though it was too late, because I was too entranced with the beauty of the scene and of the performances to imagine anything otherwise.

However, after this Spanish-language dub story broke this evening, I started to wonder if the exchange had initially gone a little bit differently.

What if the “don’t do this, Cas” was pulled from earlier in the scene?

I would have originally imagined that it actually went between the “Because it is” and the “I love you,” but in the leaked shots of script we got a few days ago, there doesn’t seem to be any line there--Cas goes straight from his “because it is” to the “I love you.” Thus I conclude one of two things: either the line it was adlibbed or added by Jensen on the spot, between the “because it is” and the “I love you,” or it was dialogue that originally came earlier in the scene.

Either way, what matters is that I think that line, “Don’t do this, Cas,” was moved to after Cas’s “I love you” in the final cut and replaced the “me too.” I think the initial episode probably followed the Latin American dub instead, and went like this (with the one line inserted where I feel it best fits, though again, it could have come from earlier):

Dean: Why does this sound like a goodbye?

Cas: Because it is.

(Dean: Don’t do this, Cas)

Cas: I love you.

Dean: ...me too.

*a longing exchange of looks, with Cas smiling through his tears even more broadly than he was earlier*

*the Empty appears and Dean starts to panic*

Cas: Goodbye Dean.

*Cas throws Dean out the way, smiles at him one last time, and is taken*

Well.

Doesn’t that all hit a bit differently now? Doesn’t it now make sense why, after Dean’s line, Cas starts smiling more broadly than he was during the entire rest of the scene? Doesn’t it make sense now that when Dean turns to look back at the Empty emerging, there are way more tears in his eyes than there were in the prior shot? Doesn’t Dean’s body language line up better between shots if we read it this way? Doesn’t it make Cas’s sacrifice hurt both more and less at the same time, because he could go to the Empty knowing he was loved in return? That he had the one thing he wanted most?

To me, at least, it does.

Unfortunately, I think that, similar to what I speculate happened with the finale...they were told by the network that they had to cut Dean’s reciprocation because the CW panicked about coming off as too gay at the last moment. You can read all about that in my other post.

Anyway, here’s more food for thought. Remember @oceaxe-ifdawn’s post about how she had spoken with a cast member about how the script for the finale was being frantically rewritten in March, the weekend after they finished shooting for 15x18? Why would they suddenly have to start tossing out their own ending in MARCH? TWO WEEKS before they were supposed to start filming the finale?

What if it was because that was the moment when the network started to pivot? If their contacts on set told them how very beautifully homosexually gay the scene was, and that was the moment that the CW decided that they couldn’t risk losing a very specific (conservative, heterosexual) part of their fanbase and needed to start toning down the gay before it got out of hand? And since they couldn’t obviously go back and reshoot anything for 15x18, given everyone then immediately went into quarantine for COVID, they had to remove Dean’s reciprocation from the script and replace it with another, earlier shot, that could have FEASIBLY gone in its place. But they couldn’t take Cas’s confession because it was entirely necessary to the whole plot of the season (and that, I think, was a fucking genius move by the writers to at least get us this much--god bless you, Bobo).

And this way, the CW could actually have their cake and eat it too--they could claim they were still being accepting of queer people (look, we let Cas confess his affection for Dean!) while avoiding the potential loss of their favorite cishet male audience (whom they really want to transition to Walker after all of this is over because MONEY) that they might suffer if that audience discovered that one of their two “traditionally masculine” lead characters was in love with another man this whole time.

The only reason they didn’t carry it all off is that, when they needed to send the script over to the Spanish-language dubbers for recording, there was some sort of screw-up. They somehow forgot to have the dialogue swapped out back in March and the lines were never replaced in the dub script.

And that is how we got the “me too” line from Dean in Latin America tonight, a line that we had heard rumors existed, but had no actual evidence of... until now.

I’m sorry to have pulled you guys into this theory with me, but... It just lines up too perfectly. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, yes, but sometimes that cigar is actually a dick. A big, beautiful, gay dick that your stupid homophobic TV network executives are censoring because they are afraid of the reactions of their more conservative viewership.

On the plus side, I think that this more than ever confirms that Destiel is and was always canon. Textually. Reciprocally. 110%.

And the CW fucking robbed us of it.

#supernatural season 15 #spn finale #destiel #destielgate #speculation #fuck the cw #trust the story #we were robbed #i hate that I keep having to sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist in order to make sense of what happened #god forbid they had just KEPT TO THE FUCKING PLAN THE WRITERS HAD SO BEAUTIFULLY SCRIPTED #that would have made too much fucking sense #and been too beautiful #and too perfect #no #we had to have some fucking executive fuckery #i hate it here

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