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The notion that straight people who approach sex unconventionally are comparable to gay people is predicated on a conception of gayness as sexual deviance. It’s homophobic.

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Anyone can alter things like body hair, make choices about their presentation, and have a say in their own medical decisions.

I want to clarify some things about dabbling in low dose HRT though.

The most immediate change on HRT is likely going to be emotional, not physical. Some people report feeling calmer or happier, although I'm sure that can vary from person to person.

With estrogen there's wider window of time before physical changes are permanent. I've heard between 1-2 months. There is a medication you can take in tandem that will block breast growth.

With testosterone bottom growth is often very immediate. Some shrinkage may happen after discontinuing, but bottom growth is fairly permanent. Finasteride can be taken to prevent hair loss and the growth of some body and facial hair. Low and slow T is more likely to give you lower and more permanent voice changes. A high dose can thicken vocal cords rapidly, leading to "trans voice".

Hoping this helps folks make informed decisions!

I know that HRT gives you secondary sex characteristics in one direction or another, but we HAVE to stop telling nonbinary people that they “can’t pick and choose.” Of course, you can’t tell your testosterone that you’d rather not grow chest hair, but there are things you can do!

You could go on T so your voice drops and start shaving so you don’t grow a beard. You could start HRT and then stop once you get the permanent changes you like. You can pursue sterilization instead of bottom surgery. You can get top surgery without being on T. You can go on E and work out a bunch to bulk out your muscles. You can pursue laser hair removal or electrolysis to remove unwanted hair, with or without HRT. You could even just start hormones to see if you like it and then stop if it isn’t to your taste.

Obviously, you can’t order secondary sex characteristics a la carte, but we have to stop being so awful to nonbinary people. We should discuss the options we have, not shut down the conversation with “that’s what you get.”

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It would be great if the "lesbians are valid for not wanting men" posts ever took off as much as the "lesbians can fuck men!!!! Lesbians should give men a chance!!!" posts. Wonder why that doesn't happen

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"My working definition of queer is queerness is that which accepts queerness." Cishet people can be popular icons within the queer community but that doesn't make them queer. Would you definine any other aspect of a person this way? It's a description of ones sexuality or gender, it's not just a subculture based on vibes. Like c'mon.

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That blazed post about an “afab transfem” tumblr community that I just got. That’s 100% bait, right?

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There's definitely a time and place to vent with friends but I think these are two different scenarios. A woman, especially a trans woman, venting about her oppression, not wanting to interact with men, and saying "ugh, I hate men" is not the same as someone down the bioessentialist rabbit hole going "males are inherently violent" and "male socialization makes you XYZ"

Also, like come the fuck on. Who do you think bioessentialists are lumping in with men when they say shit like that? Cuz, I don't think it's trans men they're talking shit about.

i just really dont understand this whole "you cant say you hate men or you'll scare your transmasc friends and make them feel unsafe" thing im sorry like i have plenty of transfem friends and mutuals who are "misandrists" or "transandrophobes" and it has never bothered me at all and i know plenty of other trans men who feel the same way

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“I can no longer leverage transmisogyny to have myself included as a woman in certain spaces predicated on the explicit exclusion of trans women through that same logic of biological sex and this is transmisandry”

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I need people to understand- if you see random ass comments that are like "oh I love *PRODUCT*! *PRODUCT* is so good!" that's advertising. They're trying so hard to get people to use ChatGPT.

guys. please

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that quote like “god gave us transness for the same reason he made grapes but not wine; yeast but no loaves — so we may partake in the divine act of creation”

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You realize that people who get migraines are also medically suggested to avoid other foods with higher levels of MSG, right? You know that doritos and a metric fuck ton of american snack foods have MSG, right? It's not just Chinese food. MSG does not *cause* migraines, but it can trigger them in people who already get them. Can y'all not be shitty about avoiding food for medical reasons? Do you seriously think it's not a costly fucking inconvenience to avoid it? Bigotry absolutely played a part in spreading misinformation about MSG, there's no denying that, but for fucks sake not everyone that avoids it is on some psychosomatic trip about it.

always sad how much chinese food has to advertise itself as no msg because of basically a racist misinformation campaign. bring back the msg i unironically want it. i want it to taste good. i would go to a place that proudly advertised its use of msg no fucking problem

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the two most important pieces of information in the bi/pan debate and many people have not even heard of them

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A violent reminder 💖💜💙

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the thing about modern lgbt identity politics is… it’s just that. identity is about the word you choose rather than a material reality. “oh i just chose pan because the flag is prettier and i guess gender doesn’t really matter to me idk.” okay how does that have a distinct material reality from bisexuality

lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and nonbinary tell you actual information about how a person lives and how they wish to be perceived, received, and responded to. “i’m ace and because of how this word has been watered down in the last two decades, i might be down to fuck” tells me nothing. new ways to be bisexual aren’t being invented and yet every week there’s a new word for it, none of them actually saying anything new. we have new flags being shit out every other day, a good percent of them just a remix of one deemed problematic a month prior. i think i saw someone arguing about the saturation percent of the new “gay man” flag.

and it really does all just stem from privilege. if you haven’t fought to exist as you are, it’s all just a fun label—a “hi my name is” sticker on your pin covered jacket. it’s a t shirt you bought on target or etsy if you’re radical, lol. there’s no political heft or bravery or meaning.

like… no one is out there fighting for your right to… be bisexual but like in “i like genders equally like way. there is no separate panphobia besides bisexuals pointing out the label sucks. ace activism is jsut people online correcting other well meaning people who said ace means you don’t want sex to say “actually some of us love to fuck” and the rest of it is people harassing lgbt people who don’t want to hang out with cishets

because that’s all the lgbt community is to a lot of you… it’s a place to hang out. it’s a form of social capitol with gen z where the more identities you collect, the cooler you are. it isn’t defiant. it doesn’t define how you act, it’s just a badge of quirky dishonor.

just like TERF is a word you smear onto others because it’s just that—a word to toss around to win internet beefs, no concern for the actual cost of transmisogyny, the literal death count.

and i’m so fucking of people pretending it’s petty to care about this. to watch lgbt people throw around slurs because they’re just a new word they learned and they’ve never felt the weight of it. to watch people focus more on create hyper specific words to describe their abstract feelings than they do on liberation and rebellion. it’s all just words… words on a screen for most of you.

it’s so fucking pathetic and self centered and vapid. what’s the point?

so you made a new word for being attracted to multiple genders and you think you invented being attracted to nonbinary people… okay… how does that affect legislation? accessibility? homeless shelters, scholarships, PrEP access, clean needles, lgbt specific hotlines…

so many words and yet nothing is being said

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I think we as queer people all know the “oh” moment where you realize you’re not straight/cis but no one talks about the “goddamnit not again” moment where you thought you completely figured out your gender/sexuality only for you then to discover another label and have to start the whole process over again

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“I’m afab and I use my birth name and she/her pronouns bc it’s easy but I don’t really care about my gender at all!” You’re cis. What you’re saying is you’re cis. Why do we have to complicate things.

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I hate every single person who dragged this horse carcass back into my ask box, just begging me to beat it but here we fucking go.

I think the thing that aggravates me soooo much about a lot of ace rhetoric and ace terminology is the fact that 90% boils down to “different than the norm” and no one fucking knows what the norm is. Unlike concrete identities like gay, straight, bisexual, and trans, it’s just completely abstract and relative.

It’s an ace spectrum so it’s less sexual attraction than normal. Queerplatonic relationships are platonic relationships that are stronger or stranger than normal. Oh, we’re ace and we want to fuck but it’s different than normal, we’re aro and we want to date but it’s different than normal.

What the fuck is normal?

Aces and aros clearly do not know. They cry “amatonormativity” where romance and sex is the norm, ignoring the fact that society does not want or normalize gay love. It is not accepting of women owning sexual desire and acting on it. It doesn’t want interracial couples to fall in love or for disabled people to be openly sexual. It doesn’t think trans people should be raising kids in the nuclear family or that they can even be part of the nuclear family. Amatonormativity is not real.

There is no normal. There is no running average of sexual attraction or romantic attraction. There is no “typical” romantic relationship. No one is meeting a sexual ideal. There is no framework of “asexual but can fuck and suck and even feel sexual attraction sometimes” that makes those people oppressed but makes those who feel sexual attraction but don’t ever want to have sex or are incapable of sex oppressors. A gay person who feels sexual desire does not have social leverage over a straight person who doesn’t… or even over another gay person who doesn’t.

There are INFINITE variables sex and romance that COMPLETELY change their social context. Who is feeling it, who they are feeling it for, how they are feeling it, how they intend to act on it, IF they intend to act on it, how often they feel it, when they feel it, WHY they feel it, and how it is received changes ALL of that.

There is no normal. A cishet demisexual can recreate the nuclear family and uphold “amatonormativity” while a nonbinary bisexual girl can choose to never date or have sex and… suffer no consequences because no one fucking cares if she’s dating or not. No one cares.

A cishet man who wants to fuck women but not date them isn’t defying any norms. He’s not special for not wanting commitment or not being able to feel “romantic desire” which is a complete abstract.

LGBT identities do not exist in contrast to the norm. They exist in contrast to oppressive social classes. They exist in an oppressed/oppressor system with fairly concrete definitions, even if someone may fluidly change identities with time and introspection.

A gay person isn’t someone who “feels gendered attraction outside the norm.” A bisexual person isn’t someone who “feels normal and abnormal attraction.”

And yet 90% of asexual identities, which claim to be a sexual orientation just the same as gay and bisexual, aren’t “does not feel sexual attraction” but rather “experiences sexual attraction but abnormally.” Less than normal. Needs more emotional connection than normal. Feels a normal amount but wants to act on it less than normal.

We get it, Jughead. You’re a fucking weirdo.

But you’re not oppressed for it. Nor do you understand what normal is.

None of you know what normal society is. You don’t leave your house so you compare your life to television shows and fanfic and create an identity out of your life not matching those you see on the screen.

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White people really finessed tf out of identity politics like my god you have to give the devil credit