#Talk to your fellow queers like they're actually people

[bigenderpolls]

Bisexuals who are not biromantic or vice versa are also Fully Bi. Aphobe, Biphobe.

Thank you for that. The wording was bad on that poll and I hadn't realized it until I had posted it. The wording should have been "bi across all forms of attraction."

However, this is not how to be an ally or how to call out behaviors in your own community. You cannot assume everything is in bad faith, especially from your own peers. You don't need to talk to me the same way you'd talk to some queerphobic bigot.

Poll got fucked up. I fucked up. I was more than willing to redo the poll with no problem. And, in fact, I will. I forgot the "no" option anyway, which was another really stupid idea on my part.

(I am also aspec in some ways but much less likely to talk about it now. So there's that.)

#stormy.ask #anon #bigender #biphobia #aphobia #People think I'm a pushover because I'm the YB3 guy. #It's a persona. #That blog is me behind a persona. #I don't take shit outside of what I do for YB3. #Talk to your fellow queers like they're actually people #and know when to call out real biphobia and aphobia #that is being perpetuated with the intent to harm.

[mr-ribbit]

gonna rant again bc im seeing a lot of trans women on my dash having to carry the heavy lifting to argue for their basic respect and a lot of other queer people who want to ??? get mad about that apparently. for the record as usual: im tme, im not speaking for anyone besides myself and my perspectives, but I am trying to reach out to fellow tme people to level with y'all from inside the house.

i thought we all got past the 'calling people gendered terms when theyve asked you to stop' thing in like. 2012. i swear we were allllll on board with not calling women dude anymore, nerfing sir and ma'am, neutralizing collective terms for groups, and all of that was like, during the onceler era. that's how we got off-putting shit like folx into the mix - remember???? why are we here again.

to those who I've seen claiming that they REALLY genuinely don't want to offend anyone, and that theyre trying to understand the dude thing, and they don't want to be seen as transmisogynistic when they aren't: ok. let's talk about it. step one, stop sending that really loaded anon to a trans woman you don't know, and close that in-group hatepost with 100 replies from people name-dropping trans bloggers they don't like. try to open your mind and assume for the duration of this post that I am not cynically trying manipulate thousands of tumblr users into making Bro the next big swear word, but a fellow queer human being who thinks you're all being pretty intentionally obtuse about an upsetting trend in our community

to be clear: this post is about the issue of trans women being called bro, dude, man, etc., particularly in recent tumblr discourse about transmisogyny, and the backlash they face if they get upset about it. this is also maybe moreso about the shitty ass excuses I see tme people make for why they supposedly can't stop doing this.

so let's go through some of the things I've been seeing people say they don't understand, supposedly in earnest, about this issue

"I DIDNT USE DUDE AS A MASCULINE TERM. I CALL EVERYONE BRO. MAN IS A GENDER NEUTRAL TERM"

I'm not actually going to exhaust my list of reasons why dude/bro/man are not strictly neutral, but you should be pretty aware that all words have context. Dude might be seen as neutral in many contexts, sure, but 'woman who is frequently called a man by others' is a situation where the context adds extra meaning to your words, just like calling someone "sweetie" might be neutral in some cases, but if you've got the context of knowing that's your coworker who's half your age, it's a bit less neutral. If you're not capable of reading that context and being tasteful about when you say dude, then you need to at least be ready to respond gracefully when someone asks you to stop. This is the part I'd rather focus on.

"BUT I DIDNT MEAN IT THAT WAY. IM NOT TRANSPHOBIC"

I think you should consider broadening your perspective *beyond* your intention behind the word. people may already understand that you meant the word neutrally and therefore didn't have transmisogynistic intent, but that's not really the entire scope of what people are saying. if that's your only concern, you're just trying to clear your record, not actually listen to what they're saying.

there are lots of words people don't enjoy being called, and in most cases, when they say 'pls don't call me that', people respect that and move on. even if the word isn't a slur, if it hurts someone's feelings, we all as a society have agreed that it's pretty shitty to keep calling them that. if your friend asked you not to call them 'buddy' anymore because their dead grandparent called them that, or something equivalently personal, you'd probably respect that instead of telling them 'but I call everyone buddy!!' right? even if you didn't really understand why it bothered them so much?

there is a prominent tendency for trans women to be denied this privilege, and when they ask not to be called dude or bro, people don't seem to respect this request as much as they would in other situations. when I accidentally use a gendered word and someone tells me they don't like it, I try to respond with something like "my bad, I didn't mean it as misgendering but I can see you were still bothered by it, so I'll try not to keep saying it. sorry!" and most people are willing to accept that. when trans women ask people this favor, a lot of people get VERY defensive, and treat the request as inane or unfair, instead of just apologizing and moving on. this is why people are upset when this happens, and it's why people are calling your actions transmisogynistic

also like you might not be doing this, but a lot of people DO use dude and bro in an intentionally gendered way to make trans women uncomfortable. it's a power play bigots use to talk down to them or otherwise maliciously harass them. do you know what arguments they use to defend that behavior when called out on it? 'oh I call everyone that' 'dude is gender neutral calm down' 'dont overreact its just a word'. by acting like this, youre all just giving credence to those same arguments.

"WELL THEY SHOULDNT GET SO MAD AT ME WHEN I DIDNT MEAN ANY HARM"

they can get as mad as they want!! also, are you sure they're 'mad'? or are they just expressing their feelings about a negative topic to you, and it makes you feel bad, so you have to make them out to be unreasonably emotional? how do you think they should have phrased 'dont call me that' to better spare *your* feelings?

also like, in most cases, these women do not knowww you. if your main response to someone saying you disrespected them is to say "I didnt mean it that way, I meant it in a friendly neutral way", well that's NOT YOUR FRIEND! she has no idea what your opinions are or what you think of her!!! she has no reason to assume you only upset her in a friendly way and not a bad unfriendly way! but she did get upset, and she did the one thing she can do which is *tell you what upset her* and your response is to say "well actually you shouldn't be upset at all"??????

and another thing:

it's not just the issue of using the word 'dude', it's because you're coming off extremely dismissive of women who have asked you to stop doing something that harms them, and because your argument is basically that they just shouldn't be so bothered by it. or that they're stupid, irrational, or otherwise crazy for telling you that it bothered them at all, just because you Technically used a gender neutral word according to Your Rules. be honest, does that seem fair? If people were calling you something that bothered you enough to ask them to stop, and they responded like this, how would it make you feel?

focusing solely on your intent and what the words mean when you use them is the same thing as saying "just get over it". no woman should need to Prove to you that 'dude' is gendered for you to care about what she's saying. the fact that you're asking people to do that sucks and makes you look bad, which is why people are arguing with you and calling you a misogynist.

especially those of you who are only doing this with trans women who are actively arguing with. you're wielding misgendering as a cudgel and we can all see it, grow up please.

#discourse cw #transmisogyny cw

[aceing-on-the-cake]

Compulsory Heterosexuality Info Dump

So because a friend of mine didn't know what comp het was and their internet history is monitored by their parents so they can't just use google, I'm doing a very quick research dive and giving you guys the results in case there are others out there who are in the same situation. I'll also be tagging blogs bigger than me because again, there might be fellow queers out their who are in the same boat as my friend and I want them to have access to this information.

So what is compulsory heterosexuality (or comp het)?

Comp het is in essence the societal belief and enforcement of being straight.

What does this mean?

In basic form it means that the only options presented to everyone, from the moment of birth, is that of a cis, amatonormative, heterosexual lifestyle.

You are given two gender options, these gender options determine the two roles you're allowed to fulfill, husband and wife, and you are told that these two roles are what will make you happy and are what you are supposed to strive for.

Meaning society, if you are born AFAB, tells you you're going to one day get married, it's going to be a boy, and this is what will make you happy. Almost everything in life is then seen through this lens. How attractive your are, how you are supposed to talk, how you're supposed to behave, etc is all considered through the lens of if a man will be attracted to you.

On the flip side, if you are born AMAB society tells you there are roles you have to fulfill as well. You are told you will one day want a wife, that you have to be able to have a job to provide for her, that you have to behave in a certain emotional way to be strong for her, that if the things you like are too feminine well then you're gay or a girl which is a problem because at the end of the day you're supposed to want the girl-fiance-wife.

This literally just sounds like the patriarchy.

Yes, it does, because it's caused by it. Nowadays people commonly know about compulsory heterosexuality from the Lesbian Masterdoc, but the term actually originated by Adrienne Rich in 1980.

Adrienne Rich in her article Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence put forward three ideas, 1) that heterosexuality and lesbianism were institutions themselves/possible political ideologies, 2) that heterosexuality as a system if not constantly maintained and upheld would eventually crumble and 3) that heterosexuality as a system could be opted out of and actively fought against whether or not you were actually attracted to women/non-women.

This is very different from the way we currently think of and define those terms, I am aware of that, but her point does still stand to some degrees that comp het, cisnormativity and amatonormativity all crumble when we stop rigidly enforcing the structures that uphold them, i.e., the patriarchy, misogyny, classism, and racism.

Ok but like what does that actually look like?

It can look like a lot of things, for a lot of different people. In the Lesbian Masterdoc you see comp het presented from a straightforward lesbian lens (of a 19 year old figuring out and defining their own sexuality guys, I'm not gonna sit here and critique it and rip it to death, go do that somewhere else).

This is therefore presented through things like women/non-women who were raised/socialized as women possibly having crushes on men, but they're always unattainable in some way (celebrities, fictional, someone real but they wouldn't actually ever be able to truly be in a relationship with, etc). It might also show up for lesbians as liking the idea of a man but being uncomfortable when one actually wants to move forward in the process. Or even sometimes it might show up as sexual fantasies with men but they're faceless, they're more an idea, or you're actually viewing another woman sleeping with him.

This presentation of comp het has made a lot of bi/pan/mspec people uncomfortable because they feel they too have experiencing comp het and when reading the Lesbian Masterdoc it's presented as if experiencing this is a straight shot towards being a lesbian.

And they're right that comp het isn't experienced by just lesbians. For mspecs who present feminine/as women this could be in the feeling that they have to dress a certain way to be presentable, but presentable is based on appealing to men. This can mean something as simple as women are expected to wear makeup, always, regardless of if they're looking to seek men's attention or not, because that's the base standard.

For mspecs who present masculine this can look like the inability to express themselves in an overly emotional manner because that doesn't make them "strong" and if they're not "strong" then they won't attract women, and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

For mspecs in general that can look like their queer looking relationships to be seen as a phase even if their mspec-ness is respected because of course they're eventually going to get married to a man/woman.

This can affect polyamorous cishet people in that they're seen as doing heterosexuality wrong because you're supposed to have the one partner and the 2.5 kids.

This can affect aspecs because they're told they'll never truly feel fulfilled if they don't have that boyfriend/girlfriend/partner to love them in a way that's so special nothing else could match up.

This affects all of us guys is my point.

How is this helpful to me?

Well for sapphics and lesbians (or sapphics/mspecs confused on if they are actually lesbians) this can be a helpful concept to consider because it can help you determine what relationships you truly want to pursue, which is the main point I feel is to be gained from the Lesbian Masterdoc. As she's put it "it's way more important to ask yourself if you can be truthfully happy with a man than if you’re attracted to them"

So if you're a sapphic who experiences attraction to men but you honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider the idea of comp het.

If you're Achillean the opposite of this can be true, if you've been attracted to women before but honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider whether comp het is working on you.

For mspecs this can be a helpful term to throw over the table back at your parents when they ask when you're going to get a "real relationship".

This can be a helpful term to consider when asking "am I forcing myself to wear mascara because I feel this is the only way I look presentable or do I actually like mascara."

Or it can be a helpful concept to look back on when undermining our internalized ideals of misogyny, towards ourselves and others.

This is a helpful term to put in our tool boxes to talk about the harm the systems of patriarchy, classism, and racism impose upon us.

Comp het can help us to understand why so many people look down on polyamory as a legitimate way of life.

It can be a helpful term for aspecs who are trying to figure out if they really want to date/have sex, or if they just believe these are the only things that will make you happy.

In general

Compulsory heterosexuality is just another term to describe a system we are all intimately familiar with. But by giving us the words to describe our experiences, it gives us the power to communicate those experiences more effectively, and to possibly understand why we're experiencing them.

This is just a bare basic knowledge post.

Honestly if you have the ability to, as in your internet history is not monitored in the way my friend's is, I encourage you to go on the deep dive through the sources listed below. Many of them are honestly only 30 pages long, that's a relatively short read, and understanding queer theory like this not only helps you to understand your own identity, but the ways in which you are connected to the rest of the fellow queer community.

Sources

Lesbian Masterdoc

Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Normativities Defined

Taglist

I'm tagging blogs bigger than me so that this has an easier time getting passed around as I mainly talk about aspec issues because I am aspec, but as stated above, I wanted to make sure that queer people who's internet histories are monitored and are only able to find information through tumblr safely could do so.

@our-queer-experience @our-sapphic-experience @our-lesbian-experience @our-aspec-experience @our-polyamorous-experience @our-pansexual-experience @our-unlabelled-experience @our-aroace-experience @our-mspec-experience @our-questioning-experience @our-bisexual-experience

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtq positivity #lgbtq history #queer history #comp het #compulsory heterosexuality #transgender #bisexual #pansexual #mspec #polyamory #queer

[star-anise]

So I've been watching this series of videos where a research-focused psychologist goes through Jordan Peterson's work to see which of his ideas and arguments are based on solid empirical evidence. I love it, even though she does mistakenly say his background is in counselling psychology (my field) when he's actually a clinical psychologist.

Anyway, that's got me thinking about Jordan Peterson, and how his response to criticism is, "People have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men — what a terrible thing to do, that is. [...] I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice.”

So, here's my theory: Young men of the 21st century have grown up in a culture that is specifically hostile and punitive towards them. However, I think that while girls and women can participate in this culture, it is as much or more the work of boys and men. And I think that the problem with Peterson is that he's not particularly good at helping his audience escape the maze they are trapped in--and he's absolutely opposed to any attempt to dismantle a maze that is actually of fairly recent manufacture.

Case in point: The metrosexual.

The word "metrosexual" was coined in 1994 by Mark Simpson, a gay writer whose settings seem to be perpetually fixed at "critique the shit out of it".

"Metrosexual" describes heterosexual men who might be mistaken as gay, because they are interested in things very common among gay men, including: Caring about whether they're attractive; caring about how their hair is cut and what products they use in it; caring about what clothes they wear; working out to make their bodies look better; frequenting nightclubs. To be "metrosexual" was, in some people's opinions, to be a "man-boy" searching for his "inner girl".

To be metrosexual was, in some ways, to be called someone who looked gay.

The term didn't really catch on until the early 2000s, when media became briefly obsessed with talking about which celebrities were "metrosexual" or not. In that era of hotly divided opinions over the acceptability of homosexuality and queerness, it was implicitly asking, "Who looks gay? Is he gay? Tell me, fellow broadcaster: How gay does this guy look to you?"

(They got to have their cake and eat it too. A liberal audience, desperate to gather as many LGBTQ+ people and allies as possible in their race for 50% acceptance of gay marriage, cherished any signs that people with social clout might be on their side. And a conservative one, watching the same discussion, would heartily enjoy seeing a rogues' gallery of degenerate Hollywood types paraded before them, their every effeminacy pointed out in loving detail.)

Which of course got us: The Retrosexual!

When everybody's helpfully compiling lists of all the things a man can do that look gay or unmanly, dudes who don't want to get the shit kicked out of them by homophobes know all the things not to do!

Therefore, being "manly" became strictly defined by what was off-limits. To be a Real Man meant you shouldn't care about whether you're attractive, or what soap you use, or how your hair is styled. You shouldn't enjoy dancing or get too enthusiastic about music. A Real Man cares about sports and beer and being on top! Dominant!! A WINNER!!!

And, so like, here's a secret: In Anglophone culture, we are very affected by the Puritan legacy that says pleasure is inherently sinful. Vanity and pride--caring about how you look and whether you're attractive--are literal gateways to the Devil. Gluttony, and therefore seeking pleasure at all, is another such. And in Puritan religious theology, women are inherently more sinful. Yes, it goes back to Adam and Eve, and how Eve was tempted into sin first. Long story short, things associated with women became associated with sinfulness, and sinfulness became associated with effeminacy. And for centuries, you haven't even needed to be religious to drink these attitudes from the groundwater.

Okay, that's not the secret, this is the secret: Pleasure is not inherently sinful.

And liking how you look and feeling attractive and paying attention to your sensuality and your emotional life and connecting with art in a real and vulnerable way can feel really good, if you're able to handle it well.

Being raised to be a Real Man in a world where masculinity is perceived to be actively under threat is so uniquely painful, I believe, because every attempt to define yourself as "not gay" means denying yourself one of life's pleasures, and telling yourself you never even wanted it in the first place.

And then those desperate to be Real Men found a way to take some of those things back in what is surely the most painful context possible: They are allowed strictly as tools of your heterosexuality and masculine need for dominance. You are allowed to care about grooming and dancing, etc, purely as a strategy in playing a game called "Getting Girls", where you either score or you don't, where not scoring means you're worthless and unlovable, and scoring is often... strangely unfulfilling and certainly not enough to fill the aching void inside of you.

The mistake both Peterson and his fanbase make is that they get to this point, and then think: The reason I feel so empty inside is... I just haven't gotten enough girls!

Maybe some guys get out of the maze by finding a woman who is allowed to care about things like affection and love and dancing and looking nice, and their connection with her lets them express all the other parts of their souls that didn't fit in the Real Man box, but can come out in roles like Boyfriend or Father.

But humans aren't telepathic, so relationships can only "fix" you so much as you're willing to do the work of nurturing your own soul in a safe environment, so for a lot of men the maze never ends, and sometimes they don't even get the fleeting joys of relationships or sex, since they're so fucked up about them!

At this point, I as a queer woman am like, "Solution's obvious! Dismantle the maze."

And Peterson, who has worked his whole life to achieve the status of Best Maze-Runner in All of Christendom, is clinging to it like, "NO! DOWN, YOU DARK CHAOTIC MOTHER! THIS MAZE GIVES MY LIFE MEANING! THIS MAZE CONNECTS ME TO MY FOREFATHERS! I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THIS MAZE!"

At which point, like... what can you do but just leave him there?

At least he's not in my area of specialization. The world would be too unkind if I had to deal with him in any professional capacity. I wish Clinical Psychology all their continued joy of him.

#feminist discourse #masculinity #jordan peterson tw #to be honest #the moment I learned he was from Fairview and went to the UofA I was like 'OH IT ALL MAKES SENSE' #it's not that all of Fairview is one way because Rachel Notley and other very fine people come from Fairview #but there is a specific breed of Guys Who Come From Fairview #Who Study Psychology At the UofA #Who Like To Monologue About Conservative Politics #I can't explain it #it's a type #iykyk i guess

[sevensoulmates]

I don’t have real coherent words after that Oliver interview so I need to hear yours. Because OH MY GOD

Vindication??? VINDICATION???? VIN~DIC~ATION???!!!!!!

Like we knew. We all knew. All the fans knew, and everyone working with the show knew. But the fact that they're actually talking about it? Being transparent about it? From Mr. PR Golden Boy's mouth to the masses? Mind-blowing.

To know for a fact that Bi Buck (and I'm assuming queer Eddie and queer Buddie) was talked about (again we KNEW but like now we know know, ya know)??? I mean Tim literally said years ago that all the discussions we have about buddie online are the discussions they have in the writer's room. The fact that they TRIED to give it us and were shut down. The fact that we still rallied behind them because we fucking. KNEW?!!?!?!

Like queer fans especially like....I'm not going to get into the history of queercoding/the Hayes Code, but anyone who's been around the block with queer media just knows that writers (not just 911 writers) have done their damndest over the years to give the audience queer characters while still trying to appease their homophobic bosses that control their livelihood and the life of their art in general.

It just fucking sucks that only now, when networks realize that openly queer media sells, that they're finally allowing writers and creators to finally tell their authentic stories.

911 is interesting. They're kinda like the elder Gen-Z/Young millennial cuspers. They started during a time when queer media was allowed some visibility but still had heavy sanctions placed upon it, and so they still dealt with homophobia and discrimination in underhanded and mostly invisible ways, and are living long enough to see the social transition into big profitable open queer media.

It's like...I've heard a lot of elder queer people question why some of their fellow elders are so "mad" that young queer people have it "easier" and can be more "open". The critique is "isn't that what we were all fighting for? So that younger people did not have to deal with what we dealt with?" The same goes for TV. I know a lot of people (like people who came from SPN or the MCU or Merlin or Rizzoli & Isles or Sherlock, etc) are seeing what's happening with 911 and they're experiencing this shock of like "we deserved this" and they did. But now they get to see the fruits of their labor come true for new(er) shows like 911 or RW&Rb or Heartstopper or Heartbreak High, or Interview with a Vampire or Good Omens or Umbrella Acadmey or Euphoria or Yellowjackets or the Haunting of Bly Manor, etc.

It's still a long battle, but occasionally, like now, we get to see these BIG wins, and it should be something to celebrate.

This, combined with the fact that we knew a queer Eddie storyline was also being discussed, tells me all I needed to know. And again, I already fucking knew.

Now all we gotta do is wait. We've already waited this long.

#911 abc #buddie #oliver stark #evan buckley #eddie diaz #media analysis

[our-arospec-experience]

Do you know that post from a queer person who grew up with queer parents and who said they can't really relate to many of the "typical queer experiences" because of it? Like the fear of coming out to your parents (even the idea of having to come out to them at all), growing up not knowing queerness is an option bc you never see queer people, feeling like there's something "wrong" with you?

I feel similarly about being aro. I never had to wonder whether what I was feeling was romantic attraction or not (bc I used to be alloro, so I could tell the difference when I became greyro and then aro), I never thought there was anything wrong with me for be(com)ing aro (bc I knew aromantics existed before I became aro), my personal "pan to aro pipeline" was literally just going from legitimately being panromantic to being aro, etc. I wasn't confused, I didn't think ppl were lying about experiencing romantic attraction (though I did think affective empathy was made up as a kid, but that's a different story), I only thought I might be a late bloomer bc I actually was, a little (not even significantly late, just a bit later than my classmates), etc.

I've seen people genuinely say self-loathing and thinking you're broken are "aro culture" (Youtube comment section my beloathed) and it makes me want to simultaneously shake some of my fellow aros and wrap them in a soft warm blanket bc that's bullshit and they deserve better, but they're also spreading the idea that it's normal and expected to have that kind of internalized arophobia and they gotta stop. It's not okay to define ourselves through suffering! It may be common, but it's not an inherent part of the aromantic experience! Yes, we need spaces to talk about the arophobia we face, including internalized arophobia, but we can do that without acting like it's inevitable, bc we deserve better than that!

I know I'm lucky, but dammit, lucky should be the norm! None of us should ever be made to feel broken for our orientation or identity, whether aro or otherwise queer. Isn't that the whole point? Isn't that what we fight for?

(This ask got away from me, sorry)

it would be nice if “lucky” was the norm, and we need to remember that all arospec experiences are valid, nice or not. I hope the rest of the community has been accepting of you (comment sections are never a nice place to go)

everyone is valid, no matter their experience!

#our arospec experience #arospec #aromantic #aro #Tw arophobia

[nicosraf]

You liked a Tweet about saying how wanting to dismantle the Christofacist System is genocide. Xtianity is and always has been genocidal to people like me you bigot. You can hide behind your book being Queer but we know

I wasn't going to respond because I'm still not convinced you're being sincere, but I'll be sincere! I can't find the tweet I liked, but I remember it, I think. This is the last time I'm going to respond to you. But I do hope you read this.

On Twitter, someone shared that a Tiktok user supposedly dreamed that all the Christians were taken away in a Rapture and the world became a better place. Someone quoted that tweet saying that wishing an entire religion was gone was a fascist/genocidal position, which it is! Even if the religion is awful, it's genocidal to want a group of people dead, you know, for what they believe. It's just the definition of the word. Don't be afraid of it.

I'm really fascinated by your use of "people like me" and "we know." Why do you think I'm not like you? You don't know anything about me. I don't know anything about you. I could ask, but you could lie, so I won't. I know that you know yourself though. So, why aren't I like you? And who is we? You are you in community with?

Is that community stronger than the one you hold with me? If it is, why?

Do you think I'm a Christian? I've never said I am. I've never talked about my beliefs. And I won't because they're personal to me.

"Genocidal to people like me" - I keep coming back to this. You know, I really know genocide. I worked as a reporting fellow, and I met a journalist from Kashmir that wrote about the ethnic cleansing conflict. We had a good discussion making comparisons between the militarization occurring there and with the displaced people I was working with at the time along the Mexico-America border. I've seen genocide. I'm familiar with the de-humanization, the treatment like your people are dirty and need to be kept out and eradicated.

In Mexico, priests are murdered a lot. Sometimes it's really violent. Dismemberments and hangings and all that. It's really dangerous to be a priest in Mexico, but in some communities, they run the migrant homes, argue with paramilitaries. You ask, "Why are you doing this?" And they'll say it's their faith, it's why they became a priest. They believe in goodness.

I knew a priest who was threatened by organized crime. They told him to hand over the Cubans in his care. He said he wouldn't. And then he was "disappeared", and it's been 2 years now. We'll probably never find him. I can still see him really vividly in my head. His glasses, his hands clasped together.

At the same time, my poor Mexico has only adopted Christianity through genocide, right? I've written about that too. The Franciscans and the children of the noble Nahua-indigenous people who worked together to destroy the indigenous religion; they ran into the villages and stole the wooden figurines and burned them. And, you know, when Hernan Cortes introduced a statue of Mary to the indigenous people, it's said that they took her and put her beside a statue of an indigenous goddess. Cortes was so mad that he threw a violent tantrum.

Historically, Latin Americans have been seen as bad Christians. I've seen why. In my home town, there is a statue of the goddess of death. Her name is Santa Muerte. At the same time, most people who worship her will call themselves Christian. Christianity means different things to different people, religion usually does.

Christianity is not fascism, actually. I guess I'll die on that hill. Christianity isn't the white American evangelicals you might know calling for rapture and apocalypse. To me, it's been priests in migrant shelters, it's been Latin Americans clutching their rosaries because they spent days kidnapped and tortured. It's also been something that is deeply heretical – a death goddess – but still Christian because this person has decided it is.

It's also a horror to me. I was put in conversion therapy. I will never be a regular person because of what was done to me. I was put in a Christian school where I was harassed over my clothes by nuns, saw violent homophobic and transphobic attacks in front of me routinely. I will never be comfortable with my identity because of Christianity. I will spend the rest of my life suffering because of what was done to me, by people I trusted.

But I know genocide. I know what it looks like, I know what it is. And if you want 2.6 billion people dead, then I'll say that's a lot of innocent people dead. That's genocide. A lot of those in the third world, a lot of colonized people who've made Christianity their own.

I don't know how old you are. For your sake, I'll assume you're my age. In which case, I'm not going to say "touch grass." Instead, just, please, volunteer at a migrant shelter, volunteer at a soup kitchen, work to protect the rights of un-housed people, organize a strike. Speak with your neighbors and ask them if they ever want to hang out, how their jobs are going.

A book written by a trans gay Mexican poking fun at Christian lore and exploring his interest in angels is not.... worth saying all this. Again, I'm not going to reply if you send me anything like this again. But I hope your week goes well. I hope that you go to sleep cozy. And if you're afraid of how scary things are for queer/trans folk, then I'm with you. I really am. You know, I self-published to avoid the book getting banned by fascist-Christians, and when I first announced ABM, I was harassed by Christians; they told me they would burn my book.

I hope you can find some peace in between all the fear. I wish that for both of us.

#mine #ask #maybeee #delete later #maybe ill turn anon off but only maybe

[jasper-the-menace]

Hey, since you're interested in scorpion biology, I thought you'd be interested in the idea of... intersex Chima scorpions! Well, sort of.

There's a specific character that's been bugging me a bit. Scutter is kind of the scorpion equivalent of a centaur; he has two torsos, one anthropomorphic, and another of the scorpion body. With scorpion anatomy in mind, it's easy to reach the conclusion that Scutter's reproductive organ would be heavily altered because of his body, making him intersex to a certain extent.

I hope this makes sense. I'm trying to look for possible trans rep in Chima characters (like in this example). What do you think of this idea?

Oh friend, you don't know the essay you just inspired.

You Opened This Can Of Worms, Now Lie In It

Some important bulletpoints before I get going, just to get all of my followers on the same page:

Disclaimer: I am a transgender nonbinary perisex individual. This means I am not intersexed (to my knowledge), I don't identify with the gender I was assigned at birth, and I don't identify as male or female. The closest thing to describing my gender is literally "no".

I am a strong advocate for making as many characters transgender as possible, regardless of "realism". That's why, in my own writing, half of the Scorpions are retroactively transgender (though they don't understand gender on the whole and most of them would probably be nonbinary if someone took fifteen minutes to explain gender, variable social constructs, and the concept of genitalia tying to gender roles) and also Razar is too on account of I said so.

Being intersexed does not inherently mean being transgender. There is a lot of discussion and individual choice between intersexed people about whether or not they're part of the queer community. It's a very individual thing, and I am not part of those discussions on account of not being intersex myself.

When it comes to humans and other beings with a level of sentience and sapience, the term "hermaphrodite" and its derivates are considered slurs. When talking about animals, hermaphrodite and its derivates are scientific terms. So in something like the Legends of Chima series and other humanoid-animal media, the proper term is "intersexed". (I noticed you used the term "intersex" in your ask, and I appreciate it!)

I know too much about scorpion mating and birth.

We're talking way too much about genitalia and gender tonight in regards to fictional characters.

I am genuinely delighted that you decided to drop in here to discuss this, because boy howdy do I have a lot of thoughts about transgender headcanons/representation and scorpions specifically! Scorpions are just. So damn cool.

Note for my fellow arachnophobes: There are no images attached to this post, but it's really easy to find videos of scorpions doing various things on YouTube, which is actually how I've been studying them.

Scorpion Sex, Mating, and Genitalia

Scorpions of both "genders" have genital opercula (singular: genital operculum), and their asses run up into their tails. In order to mate, they don't just do like horses. No no, buddy, they have a really weird, specific method!

In order to start wooing his potential mate, the male scorpion will lock chelae (pincers) with the female scorpion, and they will start to "dance". The male scorpion will drop a sperm packet onto the ground and lead the female scorpion over it. If the female scorpion is down, she'll basically squat and absorb the sperm packet into her body, which is then followed by a "mating plug" to keep it in while it does the fertilization thing.

(It's important to note that the courting process also contains "juddering", aka the male scorpion doing the dance that the stickbug meme did, and may also contain clerchical "kisses". Honestly, pretty romantic for an arachnid. And possibly tail-rubbing and sexual stinging. Scorpions are very kinky!)

(It's also important to note that some species of scorpions have been reported, though not reliably, to reproduce through parthogenesis.)

Post-coitus cannibalism has not been scientifically seen in scorpions, so the male scorpion is generally safe as long as he scadoodles.

Gestation in some scorpion species can last over a year, and different species can have anywhere from 2 to 100 little scorplings - the physical size of the scorpion is not necessarily tied to how many babies they'll have.

Also, scorpions give live birth!

The baby scorpion is essentially folded like a Fedex package and launched out of the womb. It will then unfold and climb on top of the mother to make way for its next sibling. These will hang onto the mother until their first molt, which happens as a group and launches them into the juvenile stage. After this, they will still stay with their mothers until their carapace finishes hardening and gaining color, at which point they hunt prey on their own and will wander off on their own terms.

Hey, Jasper, That's Pretty Fucked Up, But How Does This Tie Into Chima?

I'm getting there, hold your centaur scorpions!

This is where we get into the worldbuilding of the Legends of Chima series, the Character Encyclopedia, and our poor boy Scutter.

See, the Legends of Chima as a series is very much a product of its time. There is some rife ableism and questionable word choices in regards to the Crawlers (and Sir Fangar, but this isn't about him). According to the Character Encyclopedia, Scutter is "less evolved". There's a looong history of racism in using phrases like "evolution" in regards to other humans, so taking that and applying it to an animal world leaves us with some very strange dissonance, because it's used in Chima to mean animals turned into a more humanoid form by the Chi.

Because really, what is the Chi? It's a magical substance that, depending on how you read it, could be the animist spirit of the land (I say, as an animist myself), or it could be drugs. Or it could be any number of other things! I know one person who writes Chi as the blood of dead gods, which is metal as fuck!

Ultimately, it depends on how one is writing the Chi that makes the usage of phrases like "less evolved" more or less questionable than it was intended. We're all dragging around the corpse of a Lego theme across our writing desks anyway. And the way I go about answering the question of "what is Chi" is definitely different from others. (Again, see the dead god blood part.)

The question of whether or not the Scorpion Tribe, namely Scutter, would count as intersexed relies on 1) defining intersexuality in regards to genitalia arrangement (scorpions don't have penises and vaginas by default; and the Wikipedia article on scorpions just uses "genital orfice" or "genital opercula"); 2) determining if the Chi has magically changed how genitalia works for Scorpions (admittedly, I do this because I didn't want to have to use the term "genital opercula" over and over); 3) determining the humanization extent of the Scorpion Tribe as you write them (I lean more towards human than you do, just from what I've seen of your work); and 4) deciding if such terminology even exists in Chima.

But looking at Scutter and going with the assumption that the back end is fully scorpion... No, I wouldn't count him as intersex by default. Intersex implies landing between the two human biological extremes (which, as we all know, is not as cut-and-dry as high school biology taught us), when really he's kind of a secret third thing (a Scorpion who probably doesn't have either a penis or a vagina).

(Of course, there's also what you said, paraphrased to my own wording: the Chi may have just decided to fuck up this poor man's genital situation and do a half-ass job.)

That's not to say he can't be trans. I mean, I made Scorm and about half of the Scorpion Tribe trans already. That's also not to say they're not all trans by default, considering scorpions without the ability to think wouldn't have the concepts of genders anyway.

Okay Jasper, So How Do You Write Him?

So, here's the thing. I'm aromantic-asexual, and I also write smut and, to a lesser extent, romance, which means I think about fictional character genitalia too much. But thinking about Scutter has left me utterly baffled.

On one hand, I usually write the Chi as a magical animist force of the land of Chima on the whole, and part of that is that the Chi tries to get everyone on the same playing field, physically speaking, which is how we get retroactive transgender man Scorm in my Tales of Chima series.

On the other hand, look at him. Look at him. He's a centaur arachnid. I know he can pass the Harkness Test, but I still feel weird thinking about his genitalia. If I go with my theory of the Chi giving everyone penises and vaginas at random, then I don't want to think about how much that would get in the way for the poor boy! On the other hand, his lower body is still mostly scorpion instead of, well, Scorpion, so who's to say he doesn't have a genital operculum?

Too Long, Don't Want Details About Scorpion Sex

Alright, spoilsport. Here's your TLDR:

It genuinely depends on what the Chi does in your version of the story and how bad it fucks up. It depends on how dedicated you are to scientific accuracy. It depends on how much you want to think about scorpion genitals.

And being intersex is not necessarily trans rep, unless it is, unless it isn't. I'm not intersexed, so I'm not going to say what that falls on myself. There is an intersex pride flag that was created by Morgan Carpenter in 2013.

Trans characters can exist outside of being intersexed, you don't have to conflate the two in order to have transgender representation. Just hit the characters with the Transgenderinator 5000 Beam. Fuck realism, this is a series about walking talking animal people. Who's going to stop you? The fun police? Transphobes? Eat them.

Further Reading

Start at Wikipedia and go from there through its sources for anything of particular interest:

Intersex flag (in case you're curious about it and its history, which can also launch you into further reading about humans being intersex)

Scorpion (morphology section)

Scorpion (mating subsection)

Scorpion (birth and development subsection)

So, uh, yeah! Thanks for coming to me with these questions, it's really touching that you value my thoughts this much, and I love talking about my boys and scorpions and the complicated web! I apologize for any errors or too-crass sections, because I wrote most of this in one sitting after playing wayyy too much Skyrim today.

~Jasper

#answered #olivescales3 #legends of chima #lego legends of chima #lego chima #chima #scutter #loc scutter #scorpions #science #biology #queer #trans #transgender #intersex

[walrus150915]

Have you guys seen my other post talking about how Ambrosius n Ballister would look when they're middle aged?

Yea okay nvm I drew them together as old men yaoi again bc it's very funny

Ambrosius, you old rascal!👀

I love depicting older queer people being in love and living a calm cozy life with their families bc idk man... It makes me hopeful for the future

Ft. their kid Aquila and their kid-family friend-aunt-uncle-grandparent Nimona being annoyed with them (and I mean- wouldn't you be?)

By the way this post is framed I guess you could tell where I'm going with this

Headcanon time for the Boldheart household when Nimona is 1030yo, Ambrosius and Ballister are in their late 40s and their kid is a tween

- Nimona is a free traveler. She's done so many round-the-world trips that Magellan may choke from jealousy while burning in hell

- No matter where she is tho, she always comes back to Ballister and always shares new things she's seen and new friends she's made - people and animals alike. YES SHE HAS A TON OF FRIENDS SHE ALWAYS WANTED BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT SHE DESERVES!!! MY BABY😭

- She always makes her comeback a surprise: jumps from the roof on Bal's head, flies dramatically, knocks on the door to pretend she's a deliveryman or a postman

- Ballister works as an engineer bc the raw SKILL this fella used to build an arm WHILE having one is unmatched. "If you're good at something, you gotta proceed to get a career in this field, otherwise you're just wasting your potential" © my Asian mom (jk don't do this. I'm no professional artist but I draw bc it's my hobby)

- He probably worked on the deconstruction of the wall. The symbolism would be great + it'd make sense for his character!

- My man is overworking because of course he does. Nimona tries her best to slap it out of him but this man is a workaholic and nothing can fix it I'm afraid

- I have no idea what Ambrosius's job is. Sry😭

- I know it must be something artsy and something which doesn't bring much money. Ambrosius is BLOOMING at work tho. He's doing something he likes! Not something his parents made him do! And he's enjoying it! Knowing he'll get back home to his kid and husband and Nimona and hug them all sweetly!!

- Aquila is mostly B-student who's described as "Your child studies well, Mr Boldheart, but they need to be more active and social in the class"

- Aquila doesn't have much friends outside of their family. Their parents and Nimona are worried about it more than they are

- Nimona made it her undertaking to make sure Aquila doesn't feel the way she used to in a situation like this

- When she's in the mood, Nimona takes Aquila to school by using her powers. It's pretty much the norm for Aquila to arrive to school on the horse or on the back of an eagle or on the rhino lol

If we've started with Goldenheart, I guess we could also continue with them? (a tiny bit of spice under the cut)

- They're still disgustingly in love. Like it's cringy how in love they are

- They try to keep the sparkle alive no matter how repetitive their routine gets

- Slow dancing (which is actually just cuddling and rocking side to side together) in the kitchen? Kissing each other before and after work? Having romantic dinners from time to time? Yea that's their kinda stuff

- That sparkle also includes trying out new things in bed. They don't have as much energy as they used to tho😭 Instead of going two or even three rounds like they used to they'd rather just sleep WJJSSJJAJJWEJSJS

- [seahorse dad Bal since trans!Ballister headcanon is one of my favorites] Ambrosius's worshipping of Ballister's body increased 100x after Aquila was born bc THIS FELLOW MAN whom he loves VERY MUCH beared THEIR CHILD in his body for 9 months, how's that not amazing? A thing this man has for competence of his husband is insaneeeee

- I feel like their love life has only got better as the time went on

- As all parents do, these two learnt how to do everything very quietly

- Nimona could finally sleep calmly thank the creator they had a kid who made them learn

Okay I'm done with spice. Let's talk sweet (aka random ig)

- Bal cracks his joints a lot (grandpa LLLLL)

- Aquila DOES NOT have it good on Father's day

- Nimona teases Ballister for getting older (as a joke) but she's kinda worried about him, since he does get grey hair, wrinkles n stuff and. Uh. She doesn't. So-

I'M SORRY IT WASN'T MEANT TO BE ANGSTY

- Aquila is trilingual so real of them

- Yea the Boldheart household is multilingual. One could say something in English and the other would answer in Urdu no problem

I think that's about it. I blogged this earlier than planned bc I pressed the wrong button but I hope you enjoy this whiplash of my brainrot nevertheless

Heading to school rn. See ya when I come up with new things to talk abt wfvbhhnj!!!

#nimona #ballister boldheart #ambrosius goldenloin #goldenheart #nimona fanart #fankid #should i make a tag of them specifically at that point guys #idk😭 #hope you enjoyed the old men yaoi food i have for ya in the cafeteria today AHFJHKLL #sorry for random spicy stuff i add #I'll try to keep it minimal #aquila boldheart

[vaspider]

Tbh, everyone I see trying to come up with alternative words for Culturally Christian keeps reminding me of when white people got really upset about the term White Privilege. Maybe the term SHOULD make people uncomfortable. Maybe we shouldn't have to take the complaints of others about a term we created to describe our experiences as more important than our needs. As well-meaning as some folks have been, it's been so frustrating to feel like that aspect isn't being seen. We created this term to discuss our oppression and others keep coming to us about their feelings about it, their discomfort. We didn't get rid of the term White Privilege just because it upset a bunch of white people. Why do we have to get rid of the term Culturally Christian because it upsets people it describes?

I'm trying to be compassionate too but it's hard for me to be when it feels like most of the criticisms of the term have been in bad faith and that the criticism is centered around OTHER people's feelings rather than our need to describe our oppression. Idk it doesn't feel fair I guess.

I didn't really expect you of all people to react like this to me having a compassionate conversation with someone who isn't Christian, wasn't raised Christian, and was abused by Christians for not being a Christian, about that person not wanting to be labeled as being inextricably tainted by a religion that abused them for their whole life. That's not something I expected from you. Maybe you missed that part of the conversation, or maybe you read a good faith conversation as if it was in bad faith, idk, but this seems rather unkind for you.

I understand your frustration. I also think it that if I'm actually dedicated to tikkun olam, if someone also being hurt in this situation respectfully talks with me about how I'm hurting them with splash damage from these discussions, I really should hear them out. And if, in the course of that discussion, we talk through how to not only be more accurate with what we're talking about but how to be less hurtful to other victims of Evangelical Christianity, I think that's pretty good, actually.

The person you're talking about isn't Christian and never was, so your analogy doesn't really hold. That person didn't hold any particular privilege and was never part of the dominant group in the first place. Like... that's the whole point. They're also a survivor of religious violence. You assigning privilege to that person which they never received is part of the problem we were addressing in the first place.

Plus, like, isn't the desired outcome that people who are carrying ideas and mindsets which come from Christian hegemony work on shedding those ideas and mindsets? Labeling people - especially people who aren't Christian and doubly especially those who never were - rather than ideas means those people are labeled regardless of what ideas they hold. That seems counterproductive to me, and, again, hurtful to fellow victims to label them with an identity they don't hold. It's like someone calling a bi person a Spicy Straight because they don't look queer enough or whatever - they're assigning an identity that someone else doesn't have because it makes it easier for them to speak their pain, and ignoring the damage that does.

The best part of the conversation is that by the end of it, someone pointed out that there's already an academic term -- Christian hegemony -- which has been in use for a really long time, well before "cultural Xianity" came into use. It looks like it goes back at least 50 years. So because I was patient and compassionate with someone else who was victimized like I was victimized, I got to learn something which will make it easier to communicate in the future, since that term is widely established and it's easy to point to PDFs that define it, or articles with Jewish educators explaining it.*

Sounds like a win to me - I get to avoid accidentally hurting others who were hurt like I was hurt, I learned something, and now I have a better, clearer term and can speak more clearly.

I'm sorry it frustrates you. I don't think your analogy works, though, and I'm happy with using "Christian hegemony" to describe ideas and not labeling people. I certainly wouldn't like it if someone insisted on calling me Christian, because I'm not, so forcing that label on others who also are not Christian seems hypocritical and unkind. Someone can hold ideas they learned from Christian hegemony without being Christian, and saying it that way doesn't hurt me, so it's no great burden to me to use a more established, more accurate, less hurtful means of addressing my own hurt.

* I don't agree 100% with everything in these links, please don't send me asks or reblog this with nitpicks of the links, I'm not interested bc that's not the point of including them.

[olderthannetfic]

The original ace anons: "It sucks that in our lived experiences at college, ace people are presumed to have sex/want to have sex and even professors push that narrative, because some of us don't, and we're not broken because we don't."

Other anons: "I am going to turn this into discourse about how I'm more oppressed than you for being an ace who does have sex! Sure you never said anything about oppression and were just describing a personal experience sucking, but by God, if you think I'm going to let a fellow queer express frustration and not attack them and shove words in their mouth, you've got another thing coming!

And this, everyone, is why the "queer community" is a myth. Aces don't even support other aces if they're different. The idea of different sexualities and genders supporting one another is demonstrably false. You don't like your professor calling your lack of sexual attraction a treatable condition? You are now The Enemy of sex-having aces. Why? Because you spoke. You exist. And that's all it takes to get queer people to attack other queer people.

I don't have a dog in the fight - I'm pansexual and panromantic - but it never fails to disappoint (without surprising) just how much queers hate other queers. Even if you never say someone else is being queer the wrong way, even if you never say anything about them at all, just talking about your lived experience is enough to get people angry. Existence is angering. Your experiences are angering. How dare you talk about yourself and not about the real victim here, which is me?

This shit is why I cannot recommend enough making friends with leftist cishetallo people. I've never had them pull this on me when someone queer needed to vent; even total strangers online, when they aren't queer, have a higher chance of going "wow, that sucks" instead of "actually I'm oppressed and you've offended me by talking about your shitty experience".

Talking about queer experiences in front of queer people is almost always a mistake. The soon y'all learn that and give up on the myth of community, the happier you will be. No one hates you more than people under your same label.

--

I have found plenty of queer community offline. It just wasn't in college support groups.

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte. I saw a tiktok vid about Kit being forced to CO. It was essentially saying that speculating about someone's sexuality is bad because it's their private business. It mentioned Shawn identifying as straight and yet people label him as gay/bi. Which could easily apply to Louis too. I see this opinion mostly with young people, that if someone states they're straight then we should believe them and not question it. But these people are treating celebrities like regular people when they are closeted for different reasons. Celebrities are usually closeted because of money but the average person is usually closeted because of fear. Kit's situation was unusual but the vast majority of celebrities who have CO have said themselves that they were manipulated into hiding their sexuality. They were made to feel bad about it. Billie said multiple times that she was straight and yet when she CO she said people mistook her queercoding for queerbaiting. She was trying to communicate to her own community that she was one of them and they weren't getting it. Other celebrities have talked about this too, Dove was one. That people didn't pick up on her queercoding. Just because someone is pressured by their team into hiding their sexuality from the straight gp it doesn't mean that they're trying to hide it from their own community, hence why queercoding exists in the first place. To let people know you're one of them. These people who preach about how sexuality speculation is bad don't seem to understand the concept of queercoding. A celebrity, who has their sexuality speculated about often, wouldn't queercode and engage in queer culture if they didn't want to communicate with their community. Don't young people understand or pick up on queercoding anymore?

Hi, anon!

I think you're right that people don't understanding why people in the industry is closeted. Some apply the same reason they themselves are (or were closeted) to the celebrity. Some people still think it's bad or something less to be queer and think that people speculating is to hurt their favourite. Some people are protecting the celebrity's closet for them because they want their fave to succeed and they don't think they will unless they stay closeted.

Most closeted celebrities are only closeted to the public, because they believe it's neccessary to succeed, advance their careers and make money. Most celebrities wouldn't be closeted if that wasn't a barrier anymore. For a lot of celebrities it isn't a barrier anymore, like Billie. It's a strength and it can actually help you advance your career.

Celebrities know how to balance the queercoding they do and stay in the closet. Some are very closeted and others are in a glass closet. It depends on their situation and how they manage their closet. Trust the celebrity and the choice they've made. There is no need to ignore queercoding and not point it out. If celebrites are queercoding they need fellow queer people to pick up on it and they need that degree of self-expression within their closet. They need the validation and find acceptance in the queer community. Fandom shouldn't guard the closet door for them. Fandom can risk further closeting the celebrity and making the closet harder for them to deal with when their queercoding isn't picked up on and hushed down. If something is visible to you, or information is widely known, you're supposed to see and know about it. Believe me, they do know how to shut something down if they really want to. They've got PR teams for that very reason.

Like i've said before, there is a difference between outing someone and a celebrity feeling pressured to come out. With Kit it was the latter. He was cast on a show with an out queer cast (at least the roles playing queer). The queer community were ecstatic to finally get a queer cast playing queer people and representing most of the lgbtqai+ spectrum. Kit was the only one, or the most noticible one at least in a lead role, to not state his sexuality while playing queer. That breeds speculation. He wasn't giving the queer community representation. He is straight passing. He was seen holding hands with a woman right when the show came out, making everyone think they'd cast a straight man (or at least a straight passing man, who is in a het relationship) in a queer role. That will create reactions within the queer community. So he was put under an enormous amount of pressure to make a statement. If he didn’t want to come out i think he could have handled this differently. But he was very young, is still very young. So it's very understandable how he reacted.

It isn't and it will never be wrong to speculate if a celebrity is queer. Because being queer isn't bad and straight isn't the default.

#so sorry for the days late reply #i just now got the time to give you a proper answer #queer convos #kit connor #queercoding #not 1d

[softbutchthatlovesyou]

I want to talk about the terms White, Straight and Cis passing privilage... And how they're kind of inaccurate to the average passing persons experience.

It is not a privilege to have to shove down, hide, or escape a part of your identity for your well being and safety. It is also not a privilege to have people ignore oart of your identity for their comfortability. The only privilege is when people know and respect your identity unfaulteringly.

Mixed folks who have lighter skin or straightened hair aren't experiencing privilege. They're experiencing white people projecting whiteness and erasing their color. That is hurtful and any advantages are quickly lost if you dare argue with them on how they see you. It's also lost if you stand up for fellow poc or the issues their community faces.

Bisexuals who are having either Straight and Gay people assign them heterosexual even though many preach "don't assume or force anyone to out themselves." It's not a privilege I imagine tl be told that you look straight when you aren't. I as a masc butch I don't feel validated being called straight why would a bisexual?? Also with the ammount of families who project their want for you to be with the opposite sex/gender even after you come out is a major fucking loss actually.

Being cis passing means shit comments, the risk of being outed and then hurt, and other queers projecting their belief there is a "gay look" on you to the point where they'll act like you're on cis peoples side for "following the binary too close."

Personally I think it should be called _____ passing safety or something similar?

Because that's the main reason people hide themselves to pass. And it's the reason they don't argue when someone assigns them and identity. Is because of fear of backlash, harm, or even the risk of death.

Idk it's not fully fleshed (So feel free to add your own thoughts on the matter) out but privilege implies gain, and none of those really gain youanything. Especially if it can be taken at. moments notice if they learn who you actually are.

#gideons talking time #white passing #straight passing #cis passing #racism #colorism #bisexual #biphobia #transgender #transphobia #passing safety

[guitarsolosmakemefeellthings]

Idk if it sounds dumb or if anyone said it before buuuut:

What about a Steddie AU (probably modern day for homophobia reasons) based on something like Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing with the Stars or whatever it's called in your country. Basically a dancing show where famous people get paired with a pro dancer and have to learn a new dance every week etc etc.

Steve is the pro dancer, on the show since the first season, excellent at his job, loved by the viewers and pretty much everyone. Always patient with his assigned star, but can also be strict if they're an ass. There's been a few times times where people assumed he's having a thing with his dancing partner, because he's just having that much chemistry with some people. it's all rumors tho. he did have a thing with his fellow pro dancer Nancy but that's in the past (they're still friends and still dance together at competitions)

Eddie enters for shits and giggles at first not thinking he'd actually get chosen to be on the show with all his big badass metalhead attitude and his request to be dancing with another man. But he gets a call from his management and after a serious confirmation that 'yes I know what being on that show means and I really wanna do it!' he finds himself in a dancing studio a few weeks later. For the first show he and the other candidates get a randomly assigned partner and get started with an easy choreography and he finds himself actually enjoying the whole dancing part. (He doesn't get paired with Steve just yet but they get talking backstage)

After the first show they get paired together and that's when it really starts. The two of them instantly getting along, being equally snarky & goofy together but also serious. Steve has no trouble adjusting to dancing with a man instead, switching up the choreos so sometimes he's dancing the leading part and other times Eddie does. Eddie is a little uncoordinated at first, having no experience with dance besides a moshpit and jumping around on stage(and that hardly counts as dancing) but he's a quick learner.

The fans of the show love seeing the two of them dance together, Eddie loves pissing off the homophobes and Steve does too. Part of why they get along so good is because they bonded over being queer and everything that comes with it. Of course the rumors start once again because Eddie is a naturally flirty guy and Steve goes along with it. They get asked about it during the show and deny everything infront of the cameras. Not because they want to be secretive, but because they're idiots and literally didn't notice that they've pretty much fallen in love over the course of the last few weeks. They just chalked their entire chemistry and flirting up as part of their show.

In the end Eddie doesn't win the show (he's gotten quite good but he's not that good) but he does get a boyfriend and that's much better anyways.

#eddie munson #steve harrington #steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #can you tell i've been watching strictly come dancing again #that show is a guilty pleasure and well now these two get put in there #idk what to tag this as #steddie headcanon #my writing

[jmtorres]

i'm so fucking tired

i don't want to talk about the war i don't want to go ask people who's side they're on, whether they think one side deserves to be attacked

i do want to know if people i consider friends would turn on me if it came up. i don't want to bring it up in order to find out. but i also don't really want to be surprised later.

I joined a discord server for a fandom this weekend. like i am absolutely not going to bring up international politics on a fandom server, even if i were remotely interested in discussing the subject it is OBVIOUSLY not an appropriate forum. but it just occurred to me that i don't really know 99% of these people, they are new acquaintances not longterm friends, and i guess if all ever talk about is fandom it doesn't matter but wouldn't it be fucking weird to be chatting about your favorite slash pairing with someone and then someday find out they think you and your kind deserve to die

i've been loud about being queer on the internet for more than half my life, as a teenager i used it as a litmus test to see if people were worth my time. i don't feel like i can do that about being jewish and I'm trying to parse why. like i think? it's because? the assumptions people make are wronger? like: as a little babydyke on the internet, what were people going to assume--that my lifestyle was in defiance of god and i'm going to hell for liking girls? says more about what that person thinks about god than what they think about me tbh? versus if I'm loud and proud about being a jew in the internet now, a not insignificant chunk of people will either assume that that means I support genocide or demand that i perform being their idea of a "good jew" and denounce my fellow jews to their satisfaction. it's a whole different ballgame and i don't wanna play it.

i don't want to tag this i don't want randos in my notes about it but i don't want to throw it at people who are on tumblr for a good time so here's some keywords i hope you have filtered if you don't wanna see it. antisemitism. israel. palestine. zionism. discourse feels dumb but why not.

if you didn't know i'm a queer jew, i guess you haven't looked at my headers lately. if finding that out makes you want to ask me about my politics before it's okay to associate with me, please ask yourself why you think interrogating me is all right rather than actually doing it.

if you wanna reassure me i don't have to prove to you that i'm a good person, that would be kinda nice.

[xxrainbowvibezxx]

HCs for the Edenian girlies(someone stop her,she's thinking):

1)There's a skin from one of the seasons( I think) that gives Sindel fully black hair and.....Kitana really is her mama's twin. Sindel really said copy and paste with her and gave her her entire face(and body. They're shaped exactly alike. Slim figures,long limbs,small waists).

2) I like to think that Mileena either looks more like Jerrod(tbf, we're yet to see what he looked like normally,pre-Ermac) or one of her grandparents. A lot of questions got raised as Mileena got older because no one can figure out who she really resembles. Some say Jerrod, others say her paternal or maternal grandparents and still others say that she looks like one of her maternal aunts(so Sindel's sisters).

3) If Jerrod was a mess when the girls were born, it gets worse as the girls mature. Granted, they age quite slowly as Edenian Outworlders, but still. He has potraits done of the girls done regularly as they grow up (I like to think that he would be a patron of the arts as part of his royal work) among many other things. They lack for absolutely nothing as long as he's around.

4)But he's very big on keeping them grounded as people. They play with other kids(the young Umgadi recruits), they go to school with their fellow aristocrats(up to a certain age,when they start receiving private, specialized tutelage) and they live a relatively normal life within the palace walls.

5) Jerrod was well aware of Mileena's queerness from quite early on. He actually jokes a bit to Sindel about how liking girls seems to run in the family and that she passed the sapphic genes on to her. (I mean he didn't really react to or seem surprised by Tanya's presence beside Mileena in story mode. He just notes that she's an Umgadi,but not one he knows. So I think he knew that they were fruity.)

Omg, I love headcanons. Thank you for sharing them. I love hearing/ reading other people's headcanons, so keep sending them.

1. I think this is the skin you're talking about. And absolutely yes. Kitana is literally a mini Sindel. They literally have matching hairstyles.

(I headcanon that Sindel's hair was fully black when she was younger.)

I also noticed how Kitana is more slim and kind of petite, and Mileena looks more broad and has more muscle than Kitana.

2. I thought about this before. Maybe Mileena's looks are from Jerrod's side of the family. I really wish we could've gotten a flashback or human model of what Jerrod looks like. The only human pic of Jerrod is that painting of him and Sindel in the Great Hall. But, honestly, Mileena looking like her father makes sense to me.

3. Jerrod is the best girl dad and malewife, and I will stand by that. I can imagine those portraits being framed and hung on the wall.

4. This makes so much sense. I feel like Jerrod wanted the girls to have a sort of humble upbringing. Like, Mileena and Kitana don't act like snotty, uptight royals. They have a kindness to them that they got from their father and their no-nonsense attitude from their mother.

5. Him and Sindel knowing Mileena was bi but waiting until she came out to them. In the story scene, can you imagine the conversation they had before they met up with everyone else. He sees how close Mileena and Tanya are, and he's just like, I knew it.

Also, I want to add a headcanon. Mileena is a daddy's girl, and Kitana is a mama's girl.

(If any of y'all want to send your headcanons, my ask box is always open.)

#i wish we had more royal family scenes #mileena #kitana #sindel #jerrod #mileena mk1 #kitana mk1 #empress sindel #sindel mk1 #emperor jerrod #jerrod mk1 #sindel x jerrod #mk1 #headcanons