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#why must we blame other trans people for the situations cis people put us into
zapsoda · 2 months
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ok but blatantly and inarguably a lot of "accepting" parents would rather their children be ~nonbinary~ and/or ~nontransitioning~ than binary transgender, and this doesnt devalue exorsexism (not only because it is another form of exorsexism) but because it is a fact
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cangrellesteponme · 1 year
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Oh boy oh boy let's see let's see hmmmm
"Crossdressing"
lemme hear your thoughts on THAT trope friend <3
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my friend, you really came here asking for chaos. love that for you. i have Thoughts.
(obviously i'm going to mention and discuss transphobia a lot in this.)
TAKE CROSSDRESSING AWAY FROM CIS PEOPLE. this is a very broad statement but i like adding nuance last so bear with me.
i am sick and tired of disgusting amounts of misogyny, transphobia, gross bioessentialism, and stupidity that some people just HAVE to throw in everytime they touch the concept of crossdressing.
i am so done with the "strong woman must dress like a man to make use of her strength, and her dislike of feminine attire shows how good and clever (and detached from the lowly female ways) she is, but ultimately she is only worthy of love once she puts the dress back on and ends up with the guy who figured it out because that is the inevitable fate of all good women" trope. no exceptions. none.
i'm sure i don't need to write an essay on why the "man in a dress as a creature of ridicule, deception, and predation" trope is heinous and disgusting. i will get heated if i do so let's just not.
now let's get to the less infuriating (but unfortunately very rare) uses of the crossdressing trope.
i'm not dumb i know crossdressing is also a smut trope. sometimes the vibes are weird, but also sometimes some of y'all are really just very horny for any kind of gender fuckery, and that's. funny i guess. either way i don't care. have fun. keep putting lingerie on whole bears, you degenerates (affectionate).
i adore crossdressing as a fun thing characters just do because why the fuck not. in this house we love drag. we love wearing shit for the hell of it. we love just being a dude or a gal for a little while. we also particularly love characters with backstories that put a lot of emphasis on gender roles getting to break them just a little bit. (this is what gilles (makai ouji) could've been. but it's complicated.)
now, the best one: CROSSDRESSING AS A TRANS AWAKENING. perfect. delicious. never gets old. never. the amount of transfem marco diaz fics i have read about this is unholy. there are many other examples but marco is about as canon as it gets so it's the only one i'll dare mention. this version of the trope is so damn good i don't even have the words.
now that i've mentioned trans people i have to get to the angsty one: trans people crossdressing as their AGAB. the horror, the despair, the general "good lord this sucks" of it is actually amazing and i am an angst reader who will enjoy it and ask for more. (it's also very good as hurt/comfort with a gender-affirming bestie being there for the character). however i only like it if there's perfect clarity concerning the character's gender identity. (so even though butler!grelle slays... no. maybe if yana had been less transphobic... still, meh.)
so crossdressing can be an interesting trope to use, but 90% of the time it sucks. and i blame cisnormativity for it, because it makes crossdressing into this weird thing that must be reversed so that all is good and right again (cis character goes back to gender conformity, and all is well now) instead of just being there.
part of the problem is that to cis people, crossdressing is this faraway thing that can only be considered in comedic or disturbing situations, because that is the unknown. but for trans people, it's just a random fact of life: you can't avoid the gender fuckery when you are the gender fuckery. so the cis way of using the crossdressing trope is often transphobic (and all the other things i mentioned earlier) because it because it makes fun of, sensationalises, and dehumanises every person who lives in gender non-conformity.
so this trope needs to be handled with care. but it's manageable, i think. and when it's done well, it's never boring.
but would i write it? maybe in a very casual way. i'm more of a reader for that one.
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thebreakfastgenie · 1 year
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I mean... I don't usually put a footnote on every post I make saying (I am trans) any more than you footnote your posts saying (I am a cis feminist lesbian) or... any other identifier? I don't personally think it's really okay to jump in and cissplain transphobia just because no one announced they were trans. It would also be weird to mansplain feminism even if no one said (I am a woman) in their post. I think you also know full well that I did not mix you up with someone else since you went on to explain the context of how and why you did it. And just on a related note... if identifying transphobia in the feminist movement is so important to you, then why have you been going to such lengths to soften the blow of the impact transphobia within feminism has? Continually pointing out that it's bad but that it's not AS bad as other things. Saying that while it's bad, it comes from a place of "hate the sin, not the sinner". Making sure we know some TERFs don't even hate trans men, just misgender and bully them out of "love"? And don't fret - it could be worse! At least the people bullying you don't have societal power. This isn't meaningfully addressing transphobia in the movement. It's minimizing it.
Most of what you are saying isn't wrong. It is important to remember the power of right wing politicians. But also, TERFs suck, and sometimes they have a meaningful effect on our lives too.
Okay, yes, I’ll cop to being sarcastic with the “you must be mixing me up with someone else” thing, but can you blame me after this many asks?
I’m answering this one because it’s very important to me that it’s clear to anyone who may be reading this that I was not minimizing TERFs or saying it’s “not that bad.”
I may have erred in using “hate the sin love the sinner” as a shorthand. I assumed it was widely understood that that rhetoric was bullshit. It is hate, but it’s a condescending type of hate that claims to be for the victim’s benefit. A lot of trans people smarter than me have written about the way some TERFs talk about trans men vs trans women. That’s what I was referring to. I wasn’t saying they were truly acting out of love, and I’m sorry if my choice of idiom suggested that.
It was not my intention to minimize the impact of TERFs by discussing their relative lack of institutional power in the United States. I think that’s interesting and worth discussing. You can argue that bigots with institutional power aren’t necessarily worse, but they are different. The distinction matters to me.
I don’t expect people to identity themselves as trans in every post. But that also means the OP can’t expect that I will treat this as a situation where I would be cissplaining by responding to the post. And when OP responded to me they did not say I had done so. If someone wants to cite their lives experience in a discussion then at that point they do need to disclose the relevant identity, but that wasn’t happening here.
The original post was primarily about feminism, not transphobia. I brought transphobia up because the commenter I was responding to mentioned TERFs but didn’t mention transphobia, instead calling TERFs misogynists and patriarchs. My original point was that I think it’s better to call TERFs transmisogynists or transphobes rather than misogynists, even if they do harm women, because I think it’s important to highlight that what defines them as a group is their hatred of trans people. Focusing on TERFs harming cis women in my opinion carries the (probably unintentional) implication that their rhetoric isn’t bad enough if it doesn’t affect cis people. I probably would have let it go if that post hadn’t also called them patriarchs, but that pushed me over the edge.
I simply did not at any point come onto a trans person’s post and cissplain anything. Most of the discussions about transphobia have been on my own posts because I’ve been getting anons like this.
TERFs are bad. I believe that bigotry can be more effectively combated if we understand the nature of it so it’s important to me that we hate TERFs accurately.
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kcatta-wodahs · 4 years
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Trans, Enby, or anything not Cis MC + OM Demon Bros!
TLDR; they all fuckin love you okay you’re wonderful
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Lucifer
It happens right away honestly, as he is your introduction to Devildom 
You arrive suddenly in the student council, with no fucking warning, and with a bunch of people who are saying they’re demons. And like yeah okay sorcery obviously exists in your world so we can work with this but
He looks at a file, and states your deadname, and in a fit of bravery or just “i guess im here now” you correct him. 
The silence after that is palpable and every negative emotion you’re feeling as you wait shows up on your face. 
Lucifer only has a slight frown, looking at the paper, and at you, before it clears.
“Oh. Humans. I understand.” He marks something on the paper, and repeats your name. Your real name.
“Should I assume that the pronouns listed are incorrect as well?”
He calls for a RAD uniform that you’re most comfortable with, while Diavolo gushes over “HUMAN!!!”
Okay, cool, you’re hanging with demons now but at least they respect your pronouns? Guess this is your life. Your next question is whether you’re dead lol
So he knows the whole time, but it doesn’t change a thing! He loves you the same.
When you’re closer, he is very to-the-point about caring for you when you’re feeling dysphoric.
He offers you tips, makes sure you maintain your voice training even if you’re embarrassed about it, and always pushes you to express yourself how you want.
Hell maybe they use that princely riches to get you whatever surgeries you might want!
And he will *very clearly* show you how much he likes your body, however it is. 
After all, by the end of the game you belong to him, don’t you?
Mammon
When he's first assigned to be your guardian or whatever in Devildom, he didn't get the memo. 
Didn't read the paperwork, cause he's just like me and puts off homework for way too long.
So he doesn't know these pronouns of yours that Lucifer has fixed in the documentation.
Which means, unfortunately, you have to correct him when he first speaks to Levi about you.
What's funny about it is that he'll complain about LITERALLY EVERYTHING having to do with you and you being a human and UGH he has to take care of a FRAGILE HUMAN
But when you correct the pronouns he doesn't even fucking blink.
You don't even explain.
You just say the correct pronoun after he messes up, and then he repeats you and *continues complaining about you* but this time in the correct pronouns.
This is the first moment out of a million of "hidden endearing things about Mammon" that you will come to learn.
Later, when you're closer, he will always be there to stand up for you and put up a fight if anyone wants to give you shit.
He will defend you to the end of time. 
And he adores you. If he -- The Great Mammon -- adores you, then you must be perfect. So you can tell your stupid human brain to stuff it with the negative talk.
Leviathan
This one is written as AFAB
When you deny wearing the Ruri-chan dress for him, he's sad.
He KNEW you thought he was weird… and his thing for Ruri-chan was weird… and weirddmmm
So, you hesitantly tell him that… no, truly its not because of Ruri-chan
You just.. feel so sick when wearing dresses.
Something in you physically hurts, and you feel so *wrong* when in a situation where you're supposed to act "girly".
And you tell him that you don't really identify as female. You try to avoid that image whenever you can.
Levi is so touched that you would tell him and be honest with him.
He hugs you tightly and then turns beet red.
"D-Does that mean that you m-might.. kabedon… as Henry….?"
Cause he has that costume too and has never told anyone that he def would be seduced by his TSL hero.
You can get behind that one, and seeing how flustered he gets around you being yourself (through Henry?) has your confidence skyrocketing
This makes way to you flirting with ya boi 100% more often to see his adorable face.
Beelzebub
You go with him to work out, which is nothing really new, but this time he's looking at doing endurance training
...by swimming.
You have no idea what to do. 
He didn't think twice about it, either. He didn't assume there would be any problem at all. 
But for some reason your brain decided that his helpful and loving attitude wouldn't extend to this? Brains are silly when scared.
You try not to tear up when he questions why you've frozen in the doorway when he told you his plan.
You have no reason to be ashamed, or fearful, but the suddenness of the moment overwhelms you.
"I can't wear a swimsuit," is what comes out.
He pauses and then just looked vastly confused. He thought humans could swim..? Anyone could wear a swimsuit. You were wearing clothes right? What's the difference?
You wrap your arms around yourself, tryiing to soothe your nerves. "It's.. It shows too much.."
Then he looks you over, causing you to blush further, and he tips his head. "But you look nice."
Well if you weren't blushing before, now you definitely were. But it's not that. You hold your breath.
You try to explain without actually saying it, almost as if the word transgender has been blocked from your internal vocabulary. 
But this babe just insists that you look great no matter what. Is it scars? Like everyone here has scars, it's okay. Weird toes? You should see Belphie's. There's a reason he wears socks all the time. 
That almost makes you giggle, and you use that courage to say that you're trans.
He pauses for just a seond to blink. "Oh... nobody cares about that here."
He pulls you into a hug while you struggle for words. He tells you that you don't have to go swimming if you don't want to.
But he makes sure you know that he thinks you're wonderful. You're strong and brave and amazing. He will fight anyone who makes you feel differently. 
Asmodeus
This one is AMAB
It’s seeing Asmo be unequivocally himself that gives you the courage to do it.
You haven’t even told your human friends yet. Your human family.
You’ve known for ages, but..
Seeing Asmo flounce over to you wearing the most STUNNING evening dress has you weak at the knees, for reasons other than he assumes.
He assumes that you’re wildly in love as you duck your head and try to mumble something through your shaking breaths, and of course, who wouldn’t be?
But when he coaxes you to speak up for him, delight of a whole different kind lights up in his expression.
“Could you… make me as pretty as you?”
Oh, darling, he wouldn’t even need to try.
He dolls you up, hosting a lovely makeover session in his room. What he doesn’t expect is for you to start crying when you look at yourself in the mirror.
Asmo’s unshakeable confidence is shaken. He rushes over to you, trying to brush away tears and learning what’s wrong.
That’s when you tell him what you’d been hiding for so long.
The adoration in his eyes catches you off guard, and he takes your hands lovingly. “Oh, honey..” he mumbles, affectionate and sweet instead of seductive. “What’s your name?”
He takes you out shopping the next day, and is always ready to help you be yourself. 
He makes the switch almost instantly, and calls you the prettiest thing he’s ever seen even when you’re just waking up in the morning and kind of feel like a toad. 
(You blame him for those mornings, though, since he’s the one working so hard to *thoroughly* exhaust you the night before.)
Satan
This one is AFAB
You and Satan have begun meeting rather often for tea. 
It’s even gotten to the point where you’re both perfectly happy to sit in silence around each other. You’ve never been more comfortable.
But today, chaos reigns, and it has decided to make you clumsy today. Not even like, oh “that’s reasonable” clumsy.
No, you were enthralled in your fucking book, and you MISSED. 
Tea, all down your chin and neck, and you hear a snort of derision.
Satan is looking at you, very clearly amused. “Very graceful.”
You huff and puff out your cheeks at him to prevent from blushing. “Shut up. Do you have a towel?”
Looking no less amused, he just pulls a new shirt from the dresser behind him and offers it to you. 
You guys are chill. Good friends. Like. You don’t want to get up to go find a bathroom to change in. Your book is good and like Satan’s not about to be a creep, so you ask if it’s cool if you just change there, and he shrugs in response.
So, you swap shirts quickly, but when you’re dry he’s looking at you curiously.
“You have battle scars.”
You realize that you’d never told him. About your past, or your surgery, and you suddenly feel very self-conscious. 
“It’s- .. Not exactly,” you fumble out, realizing that now, instead of finishing your amazing book, you have to deal with *coming out?* Ughhhhhh. “They’re from a surgery.”
Satan’s eyes don’t leave you. “I’ve read enough about the human world to know what they are,” he said, then he nods to himself. “I didn’t know you’d had such a fight.”
You are either very, very impressed or very, very confused and you really don’t know which to lean towards just yet. 
“I’ve never been in a battle, Satan.”
“You fought to become yourself,” he answered, a small smile tracing his lips. “You never cease to impress me.”
Belphegor
The best part about becoming best friends with Belphie is the snuggle naps. It's the sweetest, calmest thing.
He is a little confused about why you insist on hugging a pillow when you nap with him, though.
He admits, its adorable. When he's big spoon he loves looking at you as you snuggle the big fluffy pillow. 
When he wants to face you, though, he wants to be closer, he doesn't really understand it. He doesn't want to make you uncomfortable but also.. why?
Eventually, he tries to get answers out of you by teasing you about getting closer *intimately*. 
He does expect the blush.
He doesn't expect the look of despair that you hide from him.
He's stunned for a moment before demanding to know why the hell you would look so sad about that.
You try to shake it off, but Belphie's nothing if not persistent and annoying when he wants to be.
He learns that you have been trying really hard for months now to hide your body from him. To keep your personal info private, even while snuggling. 
You didn't know how he would take it, after all. 
What if he got something he wasn't expecting?
Honestly, Belphie sulks after hearing this. He flicks your forehead and glares at you for doubting him. 
But he looks you dead in the eyes and reminds you that you could never convince him you were anything less than perfect.
If you expected him to be disappointed by whatever you hid during snuggles, he would never be. You would never be a disappointment to him.
Your next nap together doesn't feature the pillow between you, which makes your heart feel fit to burst while he snuggles you closer. 
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larstenobar · 4 years
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Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.
Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.
That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show. 
My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.
At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.
The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.
There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)
I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.
The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.
Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.
Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.
Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.
This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.
On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.
Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.
LGBT+ Characters
Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.
Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.
For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.
Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):
The afforementioned teacher
The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters
A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.
T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.
Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.
Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.
The next character is the Kink Man.
God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.
Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.
Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.
Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.
What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.
And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.
They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.
Islamophobia and Racism
Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.
Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.
There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.
There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.
Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.
And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.
Antisemitism
God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.
There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.
Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.
Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.
Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital
OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST
Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features
As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C
C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism
Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.
Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.
The following image is the Prophet Moses:
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And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.
But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.
Fatphobia
All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.
Sexism
God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:
youtube
Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.
Substance Abuse
The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.
The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.
I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally. 
While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.
Pedophilia
The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.
Slurs
Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.
Why make this post?
Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.
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nebris · 6 years
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The Rage of the Incels
Incels aren’t really looking for sex. They’re looking for absolute male supremacy.
Lately I have been thinking about one of the first things that I ever wrote for the Internet: a series of interviews with adult virgins, published by the Hairpin. I knew my first subject personally, and, after I interviewed her, I put out an open call. To my surprise, messages came rolling in. Some of the people I talked to were virgins by choice. Some were not, sometimes for complicated, overlapping reasons: disability, trauma, issues related to appearance, temperament, chance. “Embarrassed doesn’t even cover it,” a thirty-two-year-old woman who chose the pseudonym Bette told me. “Not having erotic capital, not being part of the sexual marketplace . . . that’s a serious thing in our world! I mean, practically everyone has sex, so what’s wrong with me?” A twenty-six-year-old man who was on the autism spectrum and had been molested as a child wondered, “If I get naked with someone, am I going to take to it like a duck to water, or am I going to start crying and lock myself in the bathroom?” He hoped to meet someone who saw life clearly, who was gentle and independent. “Sometimes I think, why would a woman like that ever want me?” he said. But he had worked hard, he told me, to start thinking of himself as a person who was capable of a relationship—a person who was worthy of, and could accept, love.
It is a horrible thing to feel unwanted—invisible, inadequate, ineligible for the things that any person might hope for. It is also entirely possible to process a difficult social position with generosity and grace. None of the people I interviewed believed that they were owed the sex that they wished to have. In America, to be poor, or black, or fat, or trans, or Native, or old, or disabled, or undocumented, among other things, is usually to have become acquainted with unwantedness. Structural power is the best protection against it: a rich straight white man, no matter how unpleasant, will always receive enthusiastic handshakes and good treatment at banking institutions; he will find ways to get laid.
These days, in this country, sex has become a hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, and, like any hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, it often makes people feel very bad. Our newest sex technologies, such as Tinder and Grindr, are built to carefully match people by looks above all else. Sexual value continues to accrue to abled over disabled, cis over trans, thin over fat, tall over short, white over nonwhite, rich over poor. There is an absurd mismatch in the way that straight men and women are taught to respond to these circumstances. Women are socialized from childhood to blame themselves if they feel undesirable, to believe that they will be unacceptable unless they spend time and money and mental effort being pretty and amenable and appealing to men. Conventional femininity teaches women to be good partners to men as a basic moral requirement: a woman should provide her man a support system, and be an ideal accessory for him, and it is her job to convince him, and the world, that she is good.
Men, like women, blame women if they feel undesirable. And, as women gain the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners, men have generated ideas about self-improvement that are sometimes inextricable from violent rage.
Several distinct cultural changes have created a situation in which many men who hate women do not have the access to women’s bodies that they would have had in an earlier era. The sexual revolution urged women to seek liberation. The self-esteem movement taught women that they were valuable beyond what convention might dictate. The rise of mainstream feminism gave women certainty and company in these convictions. And the Internet-enabled efficiency of today’s sexual marketplace allowed people to find potential sexual partners with a minimum of barriers and restraints. Most American women now grow up understanding that they can and should choose who they want to have sex with.
In the past few years, a subset of straight men calling themselves “incels” have constructed a violent political ideology around the injustice of young, beautiful women refusing to have sex with them. These men often subscribe to notions of white supremacy. They are, by their own judgment, mostly unattractive and socially inept. (They frequently call themselves “subhuman.”) They’re also diabolically misogynistic. “Society has become a place for worship of females and it’s so fucking wrong, they’re not Gods they are just a fucking cum-dumpster,” a typical rant on an incel message board reads. The idea that this misogyny is the real root of their failures with women does not appear to have occurred to them.
The incel ideology has already inspired the murders of at least sixteen people. Elliot Rodger, in 2014, in Isla Vista, California, killed six and injured fourteen in an attempt to instigate a “War on Women” for “depriving me of sex.” (He then killed himself.) Alek Minassian killed ten people and injured sixteen, in Toronto, last month; prior to doing so, he wrote, on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” You might also include Christopher Harper-Mercer, who killed nine people, in 2015, and left behind a manifesto that praised Rodger and  lamented his own virginity.
The label that Minassian and others have adopted has entered the mainstream, and it is now being widely misinterpreted. Incel stands for “involuntarily celibate,” but there are many people who would like to have sex and do not. (The term was coined by a queer Canadian woman, in the nineties.) Incels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof.
If what incels wanted was sex, they might, for instance, value sex workers and wish to legalize sex work. But incels, being violent misogynists, often express extreme disgust at the idea of “whores.” Incels tend to direct hatred at things they think they desire; they are obsessed with female beauty but despise makeup as a form of fraud. Incel culture advises men to “looksmaxx” or “statusmaxx”—to improve their appearance, to make more money—in a way that presumes that women are not potential partners or worthy objects of possible affection but inconveniently sentient bodies that must be claimed through cold strategy. (They assume that men who treat women more respectfully are “white-knighting,” putting on a mockable façade of chivalry.) When these tactics fail, as they are bound to do, the rage intensifies. Incels dream of beheading the sluts who wear short shorts but don’t want to be groped by strangers; they draw up elaborate scenarios in which women are auctioned off at age eighteen to the highest bidder; they call Elliot Rodger their Lord and Savior and feminists the female K.K.K. “Women are the ultimate cause of our suffering,” one poster on incels.me wrote recently. “They are the ones who have UNJUSTLY made our lives a living hell… We need to focus more on our hatred of women. Hatred is power.”
On a recent ninety-degree day in New York City, I went for a walk and thought about how my life would look through incel eyes. I’m twenty-nine, so I’m a little old and used up: incels fetishize teen-agers and virgins (they use the abbreviation “JBs,” for jailbait), and they describe women who have sought pleasure in their sex lives as “whores” riding a “cock carousel.” I’m a feminist, which is disgusting to them. (“It is obvious that women are inferior, that is why men have always been in control of women.”) I was wearing a crop top and shorts, the sort of outfit that they believe causes men to rape women. (“Now watch as the level of rapes mysteriously rise up.”) In the elaborate incel taxonomy of participants in the sexual marketplace, I am a Becky, devoting my attentions to a Chad. I’m probably a “roastie,” too—another term they use for women with sexual experience, denoting labia that have turned into roast beef  from overuse.
Earlier this month, Ross Douthat, in a column for the Times, wrote that society would soon enough “address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed or despairing.” The column was ostensibly about the idea of sexual redistribution: if power is distributed unequally in society, and sex tends to follow those lines of power, how and what could we change to create a more equal world? Douthat noted a recent blog post by the economist Robin Hanson, who suggested, after Minassian’s mass murder, that the incel plight was legitimate, and that redistributing sex could be as worthy a cause as redistributing wealth. (The quality of Hanson’s thought here may be suggested by his need to clarify, in an addendum, “Rape and slavery are far from the only possible levers!”) Douthat drew a straight line between Hanson’s piece and one by Amia Srinivasan, in the London Review of Books. Srinivasan began with Elliot Rodger, then explored the tension between a sexual ideology built on free choice and personal preference and the forms of oppression that manifest in these preferences. The question, she wrote, “is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question.”
Srinivasan’s rigorous essay and Hanson’s flippantly dehumanizing thought experiment had little in common. And incels, in any case, are not actually interested in sexual redistribution; they don’t want sex to be distributed to anyone other than themselves. They don’t care about the sexual marginalization of trans people, or women who fall outside the boundaries of conventional attractiveness. (“Nothing with a pussy can be incel, ever. Someone will be desperate enough to fuck it . . . Men are lining up to fuck pigs, hippos, and ogres.”) What incels want is extremely limited and specific: they want unattractive, uncouth, and unpleasant misogynists to be able to have sex on demand with young, beautiful women. They believe that this is a natural right.
It is men, not women, who have shaped the contours of the incel predicament. It is male power, not female power, that has chained all of human society to the idea that women are decorative sexual objects, and that male worth is measured by how good-looking a woman they acquire. Women—and, specifically, feminists—are the architects of the body-positivity movement, the ones who have pushed for an expansive redefinition of what we consider attractive. “Feminism, far from being Rodger’s enemy,” Srinivasan wrote, “may well be the primary force resisting the very system that made him feel—as a short, clumsy, effeminate, interracial boy—inadequate.” Women, and L.G.B.T.Q. people, are the activists trying to make sex work legal and safe, to establish alternative arrangements of power and exchange in the sexual market.
We can’t redistribute women’s bodies as if they are a natural resource; they are the bodies we live in. We can redistribute the value we apportion to one another—something that the incels demand from others but refuse to do themselves. I still think about Bette telling me, in 2013, how being lonely can make your brain feel like it’s under attack. Over the past week, I have read the incel boards looking for, and occasionally finding, proof of humanity, amid detailed fantasies of rape and murder and musings about what it would be like to assault one’s sister out of desperation. In spite of everything, women are still more willing to look for humanity in the incels than they are in us.
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rage-of-the-incels
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In the way you said it
Whenever there’s representation In a manner that can be called queer Your tone and comments turn so nasty Your mouth curls up into a sneer It’s in the tone of your voice as you watch it The characters just interact You don’t openly say what you think But empathy for them you lack.
You openly mock certain groupings Try to engage me as well But it’s not funny the stereotyping Your unsaid sentences manage to tell.
Yes two guys on tv had some pet names But so do the straight couples too Exactly what part of their relationship Is considered taboo to you?
We stopped watching more than one show Because of the relationships within Now forgive me, but we’re not religious So you can’t possibly see it as sin In fact when the words you don’t say The laughter that openly rings About two girls in love or a transperson Are the reason no one tells you things.
According to Mulan its not genitals That define if you are a man It’s got more to do with the moon and storms Than what’s inside of your pants.
In the same vein a woman can be Anything she should so choose But neither or both, intermittently Are an identity, regardless of your views.
The person you like, love or lust after Can be any gender at all It’s really up to the individual involved To make that judgement call.
No they don’t advocate child-abuse Nor what the media will say But two legal adults consenting To be together will not ruin your day.
It’s odd to hear the hatred inspired And experience the lack of empathy felt Towards two or more characters in media Dealing with circumstances dealt.
What’s the difference between the relationships If they are straight or something else? The shows all deal with their complex situations And give sappy scenes designed to make you melt.
Where’s the empathy lost on the way, When the young woman decides on a wife Over some boring love interest dude to order Who was clearly stifling her life?
When the character realises his friends are attractive In a more than No Homo way Why the sudden disinterest in watching or reading Anything that features ‘a gay’?
The thing is it’s all just labels designed to Try to categorise what differs from the norm To be honest, it’s a tad frustrating Orientation is not as simple as filling out a form.
Some people feel nothing romantic Others for multiple persons at once Some people want to go out on a picnic by a lake Or hold hands with their love over lunch.
They are not all heterosexuals, Nor, to be fair, are they all cis But the reality is what’s it your business To feel that you can judge them for this.
It’s so tiring hearing what you say, Even more in the derision of tone As if, by pretending to not be disgusted You are doing ‘all those people’ a boon.
Well the reality is passive-aggression... Tends to be more the latter For if it lent more towards the former You should hardly consider this a matter.
Representation is important to those Who rarely ever see themselves in stories It covers more than orientations And frankly, The Straights™ are just getting boring.
Can we take another white couple Another comedic romance Where the premise is either believes in love And all the chemistry of a dead plant?
Perhaps it would be nice for once To hear the ‘B’ word on the screen For trans, POC and Disabled to have Their own heroes, that is the dream.
It’s so easy to mock and despise those Whose life and barriers you cannot understand To understand the fight that has led to, Two gay characters being  able to hold hands.
Tut if you must, but it’s happening There are shows in the world just for those Whose existences and viewpoints are usually marginalised The age of Baby Boomer draws to a close.
In this society different is frightening Labelled as wrong or obscene How can the haters be so sanctimonious Considering their hands are not clean?
The conservatives voted in a man who Who pays people to kiss his posterior But even compared to his childish ilk Your negative commentary comes across as inferior.
So you don’t like to see two people kissing,  Unless it’s a woman and man, Somehow the merest things are sexualised, When you view two women holding hands.
If a man calls his partner babe, Sweetiepie, Darl or Megatron, The reality is, what is it to you, Take a look at your flaws, reflect, move on.
You don’t want to see it in public, And you question their ability to work in certain occupations Many don’t want to have them near their homes And actively exclude their ‘wrong’ neighbours.
How will that look on your final report, Before the great lord almighty? You know, the guy you always tote out, To sanctimoniously condescend ‘righteously’.
All people are humans created equal It is the society you uphold that picks and chooses Who meets the questionable standards Or normality, and decides based on birth, who loses.
You claim that tolerance is key when, Dealing with anyone falling under ‘those people’ Because in your mind and your manner and words, They cannot possibly be equal.
Some see them as sub-human, Because of orientation, ability or skin But the reality is that the hatred inspires Bands the minorities together as kin.
They find their own spaces, and shows and representations Despite the prejudice that suppresses The evidence of inherent biology, their individuality To choose the narrative of psychological messes.
Perhaps you should date a boy instead, Lesbians often are advised. Is this about not having a father figure? Of gay men, a rhetoric that never tires.
Bisexuals, Aces and the followers of Pan Hear just as many ridiculous ideaologies As if the only conceptual path In life, is monosexual monotony.
We ask of the ace what is wrong with them, To not want certain contact or touch, Always ‘jokingly’ stating, That without sex what is the use of love?
The Pan, Poly, Bisexuals prefer certain people Sometimes two or more at a singular time It does not automatically assume adultery, And yet the association is always put to mind.
You laugh aloud at the very concept, Of a woman with breasts, and a phallus instead Of what you think should perhaps be, Situated between her legs.
Likewise when a young man has to wear A binder to suppress his chest, There’s always someone out there who dares Ask why ‘she’ is not in a dress.
Have you ever considered it is not, Nor ever really has had anything to do With your thoughts or beliefs, not your business It is their lives, and does not include you?
From the generation that endorsed a series Filled with abuse and assault Don’t blame the gays for your follies 50Shades was the heteros’ fault.
To be blunt, it is just so tiring To see and hear people of all types demeaned Because the ideology of difference disconcerts you And therefore must be obscene.
The fact is your words do unseen damage To people you pass everyday Mockery and condemnation build walls And turn friends and family away.
How could they tell someone like you, The person with a poisoned tongue That they fit the categories of those you condemn Your words wound both old and young. It is always a joke, a laugh, lighten up now ‘You need to stop being so severe, You and your silly internet culture, Where everyone thinks they’re ‘queer’!’
Back in your day... you start with, As young people more informed roll their eyes You claim that ‘x’ never existed Never considering they did, in disguise.
Even now people cannot be open, Holding hands in public tends to invite Someone lewd to proposition or harass them Tongues wag if you dare stay the night.
So of course historical figures, then and now, From Achilles to Sappho, were very open In fact you’ll find that their lives were revised By the straight archaeologists who cloaked them.
People have been people for a long time, It didn’t overtly matter to many If your husband or wife, or mate for life Wore a toga, dress or barely any.
Recently people have gotten hung up Moreso than ever before About which people you SHOULD be with And it’s really quite the bore.
Men have loved men for forever, Entire societies founded on this ideal And women have loved other women Since before civilisation was real.
Some fall into either category, both at once Or then again neither, these individuals exist And have done so, sucessfully For long enough to do without your ire.
Ancient Egypt buried their people, With great ceremony, purpose and pomp Their transgendered persons always honoured correctly, Would you dare to claim they were wrong?
Evidence and history have heroes,  Many of whom have been ‘revised’ For societal consumption as ‘everyday heroes’ Hiding their non-standard husbands and wives.
Look to Hercules and the Gods of Olympus They had a rolicking gay time But dare ask a historian about certain art And they’ll have heterosexualty in mind.
The purpose is to say, here That the reality is, all through history, we existed... Beyond tv and comics and other media It’s not a new fad that we twisted.
So sneer if you must when the two girls kiss, Or put down your book in disgust When the two male characters realise their infatuation Was not with the anticipated one.
But the story and characters are still there, Whether you choose to consume But perhaps consider this instead, livelaughlover They were not created for You.
To see yourself represented, Be it on page or screen As something other than the punchline or villain Feels like a wonderful dream.
It gives a sense of belonging, Normality in a world that blatantly refutes The existence of people outside of a bubble But some media actively salutes it.
An encouragement meant for the groupings Who need to see those people existing at all, The two boys on a date, the transgirl in a promdress Just humans, seeing, doing, being, normal.
So perhaps before you sneer or comment Perhaps before it’s ‘just joking’ Think about why you are acting that way,  Who, in society or family, are you quoting?
Why would you consider this person contemptible Below even basic empathy and compassion When exactly did hatred and bigotry Suddenly rise into high fashion?
They are not the heroes we need, my friend But they are the representation we deserve So let go of your prejudiced ideals They are nothing you need to preserve.
- - - -
I don’t know what this is, but sometimes you hear old people complaining and it’s so tiring...
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acehet · 7 years
Text
really long reply like WOW
@rebelbaze​ ty for responding but reading through your responses is really hard because you’re using the reply feature for a lot of replies. the reply feature is fine for 1 or 2 responses, but anything more than that fries my brain (i’m sorry!). i’m going to try to reply anyway
I mean? I identified as ace for years because of internalized homophobia and a lot of ~ace elders encouraged it by saying that since I was scared of having sex with anyone, I must be ace and all that. And there are multiple blogs cataloging HUNDREDS of experiences ike mine.”
yeah no i 100% agree with you there. those ~ace elders~ were completely incorrect in saying that you must be ace solely because you were scared of having sex. 
anyone trying to directly pin an identity on someone, as in “you must be ___ because of ___” is completely in the wrong and i’m sorry that happened to you and make you confused.
there’s a difference between giving people resources and giving advice and possibilities to help them find an identity on their own, and saying someone has to be something because of a reason.
http://hate2breakittoya.tumblr.com/tagged/mogai-hell-denial/chrono A lot of these are about MOGAI politics rather than just the ace community but it's still worth perusing the tag to understand what we mean
asexuals as a whole aren’t to blame for mogai politics. the ace community isn’t at fault for people labeling themselves as homoromantic/bisexual just to end up being wrong about it. hell, even i called myself biplatonic a few years back because i like being in relationships and having girlfriends and boyfriends, and then this discourse happened and i dropped the term cuz so many other people were shamed and ridiculed for the same exact thing. and then i started to think it was stupid too because i’m super impressionable (but that’s not the point)
there are people entirely comfortable with having split attraction or silly identities, not everyone who is, for example, heterosexual/biromantic (i choose that one specifically for a reason i’ll explain in the notes) is that way due to compulsive heterosexuality or internalized homophobia. it could be because of past trauma that makes them uncomfortable being in certain intimate situations (romantic or sexual) with one gender in one way but not the other, or just having different comfort levels with different genders because of who they are, or just because that’s how they are as a person.
it can be internalized homophobia or compulsive heterosexuality for some people, i am absolutely not denying that, but that’s not always it. people are just different, and an entire community of people shouldn’t be shamed for the outlet of their identity because just because for other people it was a form of denying themselves. 
but if people are comfortable with something and they’re perfectly content with it, why make issue with it? but if they’re having issues with themselves because of it or are struggling, i feel that’s when you should step in and say “hey i see you’re having problems with your identity and confusion/hatred over it. if you want you can talk to me and i can help you figure things out or just give you some resources to help you figure it out on your own?” or something along those lines.
a group of people as a whole shouldn’t be the blame for someone’s internal issues that are there in the first place because of society’s pressure to make people straight and cis.
http://sleepdontvisit.tumblr.com/post/159156864205/regreceipts-aphobe-voice-mogai-tumblr-held-a ANd if you have xkit or the time to just individually go through the tags on this post, LOTS Of reblogs have comments/tags added, where they talk about how the acec ommunity kept htem from dealing with trauma/overcoming internalized homophobia
again the ~ace elder~ is brought up and throwing identities at people. since this is a thing that is happening to people, i will say i am on your side for this and that putting a label on someone is entirely wrong and not at all helpful.
but, i do have to disagree with a part of this–
““I think I’m attracted to men but whenever they hit on me I feel like I’m about to die.” And y'all will say “sounds like you’re ace and just like them romantically” or “you’re lithromantic” instead of saying, “hey, it’s possible you’re struggling with compulsory heterosexuality. Have you ever considered you might lesbian or attracted to girls?””
forcing a label on someone, like “you’re ace and you like them romantically” and “you’re lithoromantic” are wrong, i’m 100% with you there. but if it were phrased differently, like “hey, if you’re comfortable talking more in-depth about this, we could figure out if you’re actually attracted to men or just find them attractive, because there’s a difference, and a possibility you might be asexual or just dealing with some stuff. have you considered anything?”
i feel that’s just as valid to say as “it’s possible you’re struggling with compulsive heterosexuality and have you considered you might be a lesbian or attracted to girls” because it’s offering the same advice, just different possibilities for identities. 
i feel this is more of a thing where people jump the gun on assuming someone’s identity, and not actually an intent to force someone to be something solely because they’re manipulative and want to force someone into being “one of us, one of us”, but regardless i will be on the lookout for more of this in the future, since this is a thing that is happening and can absolutely confuse people and force them to internalize some stuff. 
And like, if you need resoursce about the OVERWHELMING amount of sex shaming/serophobia/homophobia in the ace community, I can come up with those too. Like? I literally stopped identifying as ace because of how disgusting the community was and how uncomfortable it made me feel. But a lot of it isn't direct "you can't be gay!! you're ace!!" and it's more the sex shaming that peopel struggling with internalized homophobia flock too. A young gay person will feel "I can't have sex with girls, that's disgusting!!" and see the ace community talking about how disgusting sex is and be like "wow, I must be ace" when really... nope they're just struggling with shit.
(i had to google what serophobia was tfw) i have seen for myself receipts of asexual people making inappropriate comments towards HIV+ individuals or situations, and that is absolutely something that we have to call our own out on. i’ve seen posts on my dashboard of other inclusionists telling people “hey don’t say that shit” in regards to these serophobic posts, and even the infamous “i hate gays on this site” post. so it is something we’re aware of and are trying to correct, but it’s hard to see everyone and everything. it’s disgusting and shouldn’t happen in the first place, but unfortunately it is there. 
but for my own personal anecdote, and it’s something i’ve spoken about in the past too, but there was also a time last year where i stopped identifying as asexual too. it wasn’t because of the ace community, because again, i don’t really associate with the ace community aside from on this blog, but it was mostly because of exclusionists and family members.
the discourse was really really bad from what i saw last year, and i wasn’t involved. i unfortunately followed the wrong people and all i saw were a lot of posts about how asexuality wasn’t an identity but a modifier (????? what is my orientation modifying i don’t have anything else) and even posts about how it wasn’t an orientation at all because it doesn’t say who you’re attracted to (yes it does– i’m attracted to nobody.) and people attacking me personally for being asexual (i might still have screenshots if i can dig them up from my old account tbh) and i really felt like i had to forcibly change my orientation since at the time i felt like i couldn’t be asexual. like i wasn’t allowed to be.
This isn't comparable to people accidentally identifying as gay when tehy're bi or anything else bcause there is no society that shames not being gay, y'unno?
i really disagree. there are asexual and/or aromantic people who won’t identify as such because of society, and the general atmosphere of lgbt+ spaces right now because of the discourse. and also historically asexuals were a part of the bi community until we split off (here’s a post with sources that explains is better) and a lot of us misidentified as bi because of such and because a lot of us just liked all genders the same way without realizing we were asexual. (which btw is NOT the bi community’s fault!! just circumstantial confusion).  and i even had my brother’s ex fiancé a couple months ago shame me for being asexual and try to tell me i was actually bi because i had a girlfriend at the time and had a boyfriend right before i dated her. 
society shames asexuals as well. seeing as how there were consummation laws in place requiring couples to have sex or their marriage could be under annulment. (wikipedia article) (here’s a tumblr post explaining it more)
also this was in a broadcasted tv series shaming asexuality
youtube
(tumblr post talking about it more because tbh i don’t watch house)
society shames asexuality too, and if i didn’t discover i was asexual when i was 12, i would probably still unfortunately be identifying as bi and feeling wrongly about it because of how much aphobia i see in my daily life now. not just online, but with how family tries to pressure me to find love or how people pressure me into relationships irl to ‘fix’ me. 
i’m glad i found out about asexuality (and being trans) so young because if i hadn’t, i would still be identifying as something entirely wrong for me. because as i get older i see more and more how horribly LGBTQIA+phobic people are and that would have pushed be further into the closet. i identified at bi when i was 10 because i saw it and because i liked everyone the same, i thought i was, and it was before i saw how bad biphobia could be. seeing all the aphobia as i got older would have had me denying my asexuality more and more, because i know for sure if i had discovered being trans later than i did (13, before i really saw and internalized transphobia) then i would have internalized it and never came to terms with it.
sorry for all the long paragraphs, i like to jabber ahaha, sorry if anything is worded poorly. i’m terrible at wording.
thank you for having a very civilized debate with me btw!! i’m kinda out of spoons right now after writing all this so if you respond i might reply tomorrow! or the day after tomorrow cuz i gotta dogsit tomorrow and that might take up all my energy. i say that because i might still be reblogging things, just to tired to have discussions. y’know?
have a nice night btw!
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