#'if u are a queer person outside my own gender binary i made in my mind ur dangerous!!!' dawg?? okay the LMAO

[cericertain]

i've seen afab transfems and amab transmascs in our community spaces for years. saying someone's identity is "invalid" or whatever cuz 'well TERFs use that to make fun of us!!!'

yk what they also use? literally every other type of queer experience. this agument could be used against literally any type of trans person. hell, it culd be used against the mere idea of GNC trans people or NB people. what do you expect shitting on trans people about it will do? make the community conform to their views enough to be accepted? like genuinely,,,

that is NOT the legacy anyone's taking on. i have seen more good faith queer identities than i've ever seen "trolls" LMAO. + if you're so quick to roll over and let them make our terms fit what THEY wanna see? and not even defend your fellow trans people? that's fucked up.

anyways you cannot just say "well i see u as a TERF and u hate trans women actually!!🤓👆" to deny someones existence

If you call yourself an afab transfem, and aren't an actual transfem doing a bit, I will simply instantly slot you into the most dangerous categorization of person to me. I first saw the phrase "afab transfem" as a community of terfs making sock puppet accounts - their profile pictures were all transmisogynistic caricatures, their posts were all about how privileged they were to be transfems, and it was really a lot of vile shit. That's the legacy you're taking on - a hateful, vile group of people who see me and my sisters as jokes, as subhuman scum to be mocked. Do not call yourself an afab transfem if you have any kind of respect for trans women.

[sharkbath]

In defense of Sk8 the Infinity and queer coding.

I believe that summing up Sk8 the Infinity as “just queer bait” ends up lacking nuance and fundamentally does not understand the show and queerness. Queerness is not defined by a kiss.

Skateboarding in this show is a metaphor for love. It is intrinsic to the show’s message. (Most of) The character’s skating styles reflect their love languages and how they navigate love in general. Cherry Blossom went from impulsive and adventurous to cold and calculating because of trauma revolving love. Adam’s skating is abusive and brutal because it is the only form of love he has ever really internalized. Joe’s line here further proves this idea that skating is representative of love.

Beyond symbolism, Langa ran into Reki’s arms without any concern or knowledge as to whether or not he won.

Langa refers to Reki as his happiness.

Langa confessed his feelings for Reki to his mom in a romantic context.

Langa is blatantly queer there is literally no way around that. And he isn’t Shiro from voltron queer where the creators dropped the bomb on us outside of the show just to give him a two minute boyfriend who instantly dies. The show centers in on his feelings for Reki and weaves them through every aspect of the show.

Queerness isn’t only visible in kissing. Queerness isn’t just coming out. That is what queerness is to the straight gaze but in reality queerness can be subtle. Queerness can be gentle gazes. Queerness can be having your happy intrinsically and irrevocably connected to your best friend of the same gender. Not every queer story has to revolve around these grand gestures of romance and can instead focus on the subtleties of developing feelings for another. You have to go through a lot of mental gymnastics to conclude that this show isn’t queer. I understand that there is comfort in undeniable queerness in the form of a kiss or asking the other out but queer coding has just as much of a place in story telling and is just as valid. Queerness does not define itself in a kiss.

I’ve already posted something like this on one of my twitter accounts but I wanted to post it here as well. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and have a discussion on the nature of queer coding vs queer baiting and where in that spectrum Sk8 the Infinity lies. Currently though, this is my stance on the matter. There are other points to be made such as the fact that it’s public knowledge that Sk8 was having production issues so we have no clue if there was an initial plan for a kiss and such. But yea just by analyzing the text on its own outside of the knowledge of its real world creation, this screams queer coding a lot more than queer bait. Especially since it’s undeniable that Langa has romantic feelings for Reki.

(Edit: I am a bi non binary person. I believe I do have a right to speak about this. I also would like to point out that we also have to keep in mind that progress in lgbt spaces in Japan is different than progress in lgbt spaces in the U. S and going into this conversation with a U.S-centric perspective on the matter won’t allow you to fully grasp the situation. I am not Japanese of course but I do try to keep in mind the political state of lgbt people in Japan when talking about Japanese media and I believe you should too. I think it allows for a better understanding of why things turned out the way they are.)

[the-scarecrxw]

4, 6, 38

ALSO I MISS U TOO 😭😭

I’m so bad at talking to people but I think about you all the time 🥺

- @nsfwitchy2

ahhh yeah I miss u so much witchy!!! I'm very bad at talking to people too but legit you see anything you think I'd like just dm me! pop me a meme, art, etc, IDC!! I'm always happy when people message me :)

(cw for brief discussion of sexual themes, not gonna go all out on tagging this thing, just beware ig)

Past labels you’ve used? + What made you realize your current labels fit you?

oh my god I've gone through soo many. first I was heteroflexible. then bisexual. then pansexual. then pan aromantic greyasexual. then then Gender hit me. genderfluid. genderqueer. then I dropped the aromantic bc I truly have no idea wtf romantic attraction is. then I just said fuck it and went with non-binary. then I back pedaled to bi mostly bc I prefer the flag over pan's flag. then I went full tilt nb butch lesbian for awhile, then went back to bi hesitantly. then I started having dreams where I was born male and dressed femme and I was so happy in the dreams and so so sad when I woke up that it hit me that oh wait I'm kinda a boy, huh. I don't fuck around much with labels now, I don't stress too much about it. To anyone outside the queer community I'll say I'm a bisexual transman, but if I had to define I'd say I'm biromantic asexual transmasculine, T4T preferred. truly the dream would be to be gnc amab but we can't have that huh. the bi is cuz like... as woman aligned I never felt comfortable being attracted to men, but when I realized I was transmasc I very suddenly had my attraction to men turn up to 11. But I'm picky about what type of man i would date. like a cis men would make me cautious, especially if they're bi bc I guess I'd be afraid they'd just see me as the "best of both worlds" sorta shit, male but pretty and has an easy access hole. A cis gay man I suppose I'd be more comfortable with bc he wouldn't see me as a woman bc he's gay. I think I'd also have that bi worry with cis women but honestly I feel so much more comfortable around women vs cis men that I couldn't be too picky. Straight women who date transmen tho? beloved. Also I'm very trans4trans. would love to date another trans person. tres magnifique. the asexual is bc I realized I don't... like... sex. for myself with other people. in person. I'll sext, I do nsfw rp, I'll jerk it on my own with porn, but I have never been totally comfortable or able to orgasm with another person (well. I've only been there twice but ejfjshdb) But I'm also a naturally kinky person but those lend well to some of my sexuality. and the transmasc instead of transman is bc I still feel a slight ... kindred spirit with femininity I guess. I like "girl" talks with my girl friends sometimes. Also if I could be very gnc and still be seen as a man I would. so fucking hard. like fuck. so yeah. also I still have no clue about romantic feelings but I think that's the autistic in me.

Do you own pride merch? Would you like to?

I would like to! But only from queer small businesses honestly. big corp pride can go home. I bought my pronoun pin from a queer Etsy store, and I think that's my only "pride" stuff. I do have a few rainbow items, like a pair of suspenders and a baseball cap my mom bought for me that says "love" in rainbow on it, but I rarely have opportunity to wear either (and I don't like hats) OH I do have a mini rainbow flag I got years ago for free at my first and only pride event I've been to, and also a rainbow patterned washcloth for free from the statefarm booth they had at the event lmao. but yeah I'd love more pride stuff ugh

[eudaiii-mo]

I'm doing this now coz my mind got stuck on how i'd answer these qs:

1. nonbinary, genderfluid, trans, queer (obv.)

2. any ok but i'd want them to be used interchangeably. in doubt using only they/ them would be fine.

3. 25, this summer lol. i never asked these sorts of questions to myself before... honestly i think it was tumblr that made me realize lol

4. get out of school. u'll learn much more, much better on your own. u'll discover why learning is great and u'll have fun this way. please look into philosophy and math. pleasssee. u can still see ur friends. also ask ur dad whether u really have to move. i think moving probably hurt me more than it did good.

5. that they are strange or that they have to appear differently to normal, in such a way that it is obvious they are nonbinary. also that this kinda thing is majorly genetic. i think environment plays a huge role. and nonbinary isn't the weird thing, the weird thing is the gender binary.

6. uhmm idk i don't rly know many nonbinary celebrities. maybe elliott page, but idk much bout him lol

7. this is funny id rly know if i came out lol. i basically wrote that i use any pronouns on instagram. and i used the hearts in colours of the nonbinary flag on my profile during pride month. idk if my fam rly understands lol. also on the phone i told my dad casually whilst he brought up that topic that i don't feel like the gender i was assigned at birth. also now i changed my name on whatsapp to a shortform of my birth name that can be genderneutral. i don't rly know what ppl will think lol

8. oh i'm boring sry idk any

9. not that i know of. but atm i don't have many friends at all... i mean do i even have any lol. they all moved away

10. maybe utena from rgu. i say maybe coz i haven't even finished the anime lol.

11. lgbtq but just coz i'm lazy and ah honestly i'm not familiar with all these terms yeeet. but maybe i should use sth else idk

12. i don't identify as either just male or female. i don't feel like i belong in that binary.

13. i moved countries 4 times and went to 5 diff schools excluding kindergarden and college. not so fun fact though i guess

ok so fun fact: i love analytical thinking and concepts

14. i didn't. haven't found one yet. gna watch youtube vids recommending names... maybe... coz i don't rly feel like it lol... for now i'll use the short form of my birthname. don't mind the sound of it. meaning isn't great but ok...i worry that it will just remind me of the person i used to be and that fam or ppl who know me will just then still associate it with my gender assigned at birth. pros are that it's familiar and it won't be too weird to change it. i don't feel like explaining myself atm. just atm.

15. no partner

16. partner i guess

17. don't worry about it. u don't have to fit urself in any box. try out things and express urself however u feel at that moment. even if it sometimes takes courage, do what feels good and right.

18. ah idk all the flags, and could be more but: nonbinary, trans, genderfluid, pride flag, genderqueer, (wait is this just abt gender lol?...) otherwise also pansexual, demi-ace (i think i guess)

19. MUSIC. put on a playlist that makes u feel better. also go outside if it makes u feel better. and eat some fruit or veggies. and do what u love. be it watching tv/ anime/ movies or reading or intentionally learning some new stuff

20. idk idk idk i like all the ppls blogs who are nonbinary whom i follow

21. soo in recent years i've been feeling mostly agender or masculine. and sometimes...cute. but rather not feminine. if it's gender expressiob then atm i don't have any energy to put into that or changing that (through clothes etc) but i think i either don't care or i wanna look masculine or androgynous. maybe sometimes cute. lol

22. 1. i love that i am never bored. i always find sth i'm interested in. i've been basically alone for the whole of the pandemic and i've never been bored. if i can't do philosophy i do math, can't do that then i write, can't do that then i draw, or read articles or watch anime pr whatever or as i've been doing since summer: spend lotsa time on tumblr lol

2. i like it when i can make other ppl laugh/ am funny/ silly. also i like making myself laugh lol

3. i like that i try to do the ethical thing usually and that i care a lot about that kinda thing.

i also like that i am honest and stand my ground these days. i didn't used to do the latter. like i won't let ppl use me or treat me badly. basically out of necessity... i guess

that was 5 coz i love myself so so much. (jk :()

oh that's it

if smn else does this too i'll read it <3

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

Since over 400 of you agreed that it’s Nonbinary November, I decided to do something fun for my nonbinary kids and came up with this: 

22 Questions for Nonbinary November! 

1.Which labels do you use?

2.What are your pronouns?

3.How old were you when you came out to yourself as nonbinary?

4.What’s one thing you’d like to tell your younger self?

5.Is there a myth about nonbinary people that annoys you the most?

6.Is there a nonbinary celebrity you look up to?

7.If you’re out, how did you come out?

8.Is there a gender-related pun you like? 

9.Do you have friends who identify as nonbinary, too?

10.Do you have a favorite lgbt+ character?

11. Lgbt, lgbt+, lgbtqa+… which one do you usually use?

12. How do you explain the term “nonbinary” to people who have no idea what it means?

13.Tell us a fun fact about yourself (gender-related or random!) 

14.How did you find your name? 

15.If you’re in a relationship, how did your partner react to your coming-out?

16.Do you prefer partner, datemate, significant other or something else?

17.A piece of advice for questioning kids?

18.Which flag(s) do you use?

19.Any tips for bad days?

20.Do you have a favorite nonbinary blog on tumblr?

21.Feminine, masculine, androgynous - or none of those things?

22. What are your three favorite things about yourself?

If you’re on the nonbinary spectrum, you can copy those and answer them on your blog (and tag me!).You can do all at once or one a day. Feel free to skip any questions you don’t want to answer. 

I hope this will be a fun way for nonbinary people to share their stories and a way for others to learn more about the nonbinary community! <3 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[murder-conspiracy-blog]

LGBTQIA+ (and other orderings and additional lettering) - I get why this is popular given the history of the initialism, and I'm not really asking that to change because it is so recognizable and that recognition has done a lot of good. However, the constant addition of letters is confusing and in my opinion divisive about who is included and who is not represented in them. I like the acronym QUILTBAG better. Let me explain… First off it's a word, so is in a sense complete. Words all have origins, and while etymology is important, it is not the end definition and can change to include more and more. I'm going to explain the etymology as I understand it and find most respectful. And how I feel it works better in my mind than the current initialism. Please understand, while I make an argument I will never deny how recognized the current initialism is and how being individually recognized and respected has been more positive as a result. That is not in question, and I do not expect LGBTQIA+ to ever be withdrawn… I just sometimes wonder if we've outgrown it. Now lemme give you more details about what QUILTBAG means to me.

Q = Queer - Queer is for everyone and I personally like the idea of it being first. Though when L became the popular first letter I thought that was super cool because putting women first in anything doesn't happen enough and that constant erases the importance of women as a huge part of the world as a whole… and so 'L' being first is great. But when you put the all inclusive word somewhere random toward the end I think that buries the lead. Especially when you consider all lesbians are queers but not all queers are lesbians. Feel free to replace the word lesbians in that phrase with any other title in the initial soup that is our community. Some find it a slur or insulting but honestly it’s no worse than gay, and it covers a lot more. We're here! We're queer! Get used to it! Queer Nation is an inclusive thing… Or at least it should be. U = Unsure - You might ask why this should be in there at all and I will tell you this: Recognizing that a lot of us start out questioning why we're different and then the questions and sometimes fluidity that follows is important because almost all of us were unsure of who we are or where or if we belong at some point, a lot of us still are, some of us always will be. Unsure includes those who might be afraid to examine that uncertainty and bring condemnation down from their family, friends, and regional or religious communities. Sure you can use the word questioning here, but I think it leaves a lot out, not to mention is ruins my favorite acronym. But mostly it leaves out those searching for us, yearning to belong, not just questioning taking that first step in our direction, but unsure if they can or if we'll accept them, and we should keep them always in our thoughts and always be ready to welcome them even when they still don't or perhaps even never know. This should hold true when the ones unsure our ourselves, about what label the unsure fall under, or if we should help them find one, or unsure how to support some that don't want one or care that more than one or even none apply to them. Uncertainty is a part of all our personal histories in some way, do not erase it or you risk erasing our pasts and our future. I = Intersex - I love love love the letter 'I' being close to the front of the line because of all the other letters this is the one that if normalized can, should, and I hope will one day obliterate the binary. There are so many ways to be intersex that I cannot even list them all, but a few are, chromosomal things that go beyond xx and xy with variations such as xxx, xxxx, xxy, some include an o, plus many other combinations that I probably missed in research and science hasn't discovered yet. Or it could be that someone presents as female but has xy chromosomes, or their genitalia is ambiguous which is an endless spectrum. When you include intersex into a conversation about gender, that binary crumbles. Which bathroom should someone use? If you correctly and rightly include the term intersex and those who are intersex into the conversation, the 'solution' becomes so complex as to demolish the the idea that there is a binary or in the case of bathrooms, that labels even can be put on them. Hello Ally McBeal and the unisex bathroom. That show gave the world the perfect solution and even if on air today, that concept is still ahead of its time. L = Lesbians - I still love the idea that women are not pushed down the ladder just for being women. I like that they and every letter in this acronym have a place that is not decided for any reason by gender or sexuality but because they help make a cohesive whole. Lesbians have been some of the largest lifters of the community and the ones that held us together during times of struggle and death. They historically have not only rejected the idea of women as property but the gender binary with our butch babes not fearing the attention it brought them and the violence often associated with that attention and the lipstick loves that never feared standing beside them. T = Transgender - Much of the same that I said for Lesbians goes for our Transgender darlings, but I like that they are in the middle as well, and not in the forgotten middle child way, but when looking at a stand alone word, acronym, or initialism, your eye goes to the middle first even if you don’t realize it. I hate to skew the reasoning to only the sighted, especially because how I came to this feeling has just as much to do with keypads having a little bump on the five. We can get anywhere on a numeric keypad from that bump. And this might get complex so bear with me. The prefix trans means change to go from one thing or place to another, and they are the embodiment of the word… and we are trying to change the world and the minds of bigots. Those who identify as transgender have such a public bullseye on them. When you think about the trans prostitutes men seek out, you should know they are also the victims of more assaults, rapes, and murders than any other type of sex worker. That getting transitional surgery can be downright impossible if the person does not fit the mold cis doctors feel they should. That they get hate from our community, the community they should feel safe in, is a travesty. To me they're the home key, they run the entire gamut of our community and should be in the center of our circle so they are protected by all of us, just like they have protected all of us time and again throughout history. And I’m hoping that you will continue and help a group I’m just starting to learn about, Two Gender.

B = Bisexual - Another group (of sadly many) that so much of our community don’t recognize, believe, or welcome. They are often ridiculed or made to feel like an outsider where they should feel safe. Bisexuals are much more likely to be sexually assaulted than single-sexuals. They are subjected to public erasure by not just cis-straights, but by gays and lesbians, who in our community are the ones that have gotten to lead it, and like every group to have ever existed, have impressed their own biases and misconceptions on the rest of us. I believe that tide is turning and I hope that sooner rather than later the ones still being exclusionary become more compassionate and see their own hypocrisy and work to better themselves the way we all want the cis-straight world to better themselves and include all of us. Because our beautiful bi's paved the largest path into the idea that a binary does not exist so far. Everyone should be grateful they are breaking such a toxic false narrative. A = Asexual / Aromantic / Agender - The ideal behind the community is that sexuality and gender fall on a spectrum and part of that spectrum, just like the spectrum of color includes black and white and various shades of gray, the colors often seen as colorless, we must include those that are not sexual, do not desire romance, and/or gender does not apply to them. To not include them would destroy the very idea of spectrum, without them there is no rainbow. We need to educate ourselves and that education needs to include the spectrum that exists within just the amazing Ace part of the community. To deny them is to deny all of us.

G = Gay - while the last letter of this acronym, it’s one that must be there. The sad truth of a patriarchal society is that men are granted acceptance first. Men are the ones often noticed first, often heard first, and often the first to change the narrative. I will not deny there is still a lot of stigma against our gay men, many are hated more than their female counterparts in various ways such as being subjected to emasculating slurs, when you are not just men but some of the bravest men in the world. That includes those still in the closet. I want to thank the Old Guard for opening the door, without that we wouldn't have the chance to break down the walls. I want to thank my effeminate brethren for their bravery in the face of violence and ridicule. You also have helped break down the gender binary. Not that you aren’t men, like butch lesbians aren’t not women, but you make the idea that men and women have to hold to certain social standards of what those should look like, and that helps all of us. Though you’re still sharing your letter with the genderqueer, and that sounds like a fabulous group to share with. I hope you agree. But what about all the rest of us? What about all the other initials, letters and numbers? What about the polys and pans that are gaining momentum in destroying the social construct of the binary? What about the two spirits and the hijra third gender? What about all the others that don't have a letter, don't want a label, or fall fluidly under different ones or more than one at some point or other? What about us? What about our allies? To us and our allies, I say this bag is strong enough and large enough to hold us all. We are the thread of this quilt and we stitch it together with the strength of unity. Those that remove us as the thread endanger everyone. When someone picks and chooses what other representations should be allowed into the QUILTBAG because that unravels their own support and foundation and threatens the rest of ours as well.   With that in mind I'd like to bring in the army of kinksters, our BDSM babes, and use the first phrase I learned when I decided to be part of that community too [ Gasp! Could they be part of the QUILTBAG? I think so ] because the idea of Safe, Sane*, and Consensual is the strap, naturally made of leather and chain, holding up the QUILTBAG. Historically anyone today that is considered part of the LGBTQIA+ or QUILTBAG community were once automatically seen as part of the wonderful [but loathed] kinky BDSM scene, no matter what they were called at any given time. So why would Safe, Sane*, and Consensual be so important to those of us not overlapping into the world of kink? The truth is we need to keep ourselves, our partners, and our community safe, protecting every single one, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, mental stability, physical disability or anything else that is considered 'other' even within our circle. And we need to do this on a macro and micro level. I use the word sane in a *non-medical sense*, but in the broader sense that we need to be reasonable and understanding of social and political and personal climates, so we can make decisions about when to push hard and when a more conservative approach is needed to keep our people as aforementioned: safe. This includes respecting a person's choice to not push if that's what they need to do to keep themselves and those closest to them safe. And support the brave that put their lives on the line no matter how dangerous it gets for those that cannot, the future of us all here now and those yet to come. The word choice leads to the concept of consent. And consent is crucial to a healthy community. To voice consent, lack of it, or removal of it should be respected. To consider the ability to consent is another huge part of that. Allowing children to transition, say no, and be who they are is paramount, but they also are not finished developing, they are often malleable, and often easy to manipulate because they are still learning. To take away their rights or take advantage steals from them. The monsters hurting our children or anyone that is not in a position to stand up for themselves are not part of our alphabet. They steal choice, they steal happiness, they steal lives, and that we cannot, do not, and will never abide.   Another reason why the term QUILTBAG speaks to me is part of our community's recent history. If you do not know what the Names Project was, then I suggest you look into it, but a brief summary is that the AIDS crisis took so many of us, placed the blame on us, again swelling the stigma against us, but ignored that we were dying by the thousands… The Names Project got created and quilts were made with the names of the dead sewn into the fabric. Some of these quilts but certainly not all of them (and by no means all names get to be in a quilt because there were so many dead) were laid out in Washington D.C. forcing people to see us, to help us, to protect us from the cold of invisibility, hate, and ignorance. Our community, our QUILTBAG, is soft, caring, warm, and welcoming because we know what it means to be hated and unwanted; it is strong thanks to the mettle of its members past, present and future; it supportively holds us all, keeping us together and safe from those who would harm us… it is all this and more.

Or at least it should be. Sincerely,

Someone that Should Be But Is Not Accepted Under the LGBTQIA+ Banner P.S. I might also be making a literal quilted bag with a leather and chain strap to carry around

[spinnerprincess]

happy ace awareness week

i think you’re all probably aware that i’m ace by now, i mention it from time to time, but in case you’re not... heyyyyyy

you can find a lot of ace resources around, teaching you about asexuality, what it means, etc. i’ve been personally appreciating the hell out of lyd’s comics on the subject, the most recent of which is here.

this post isn’t for that. this post is for being aware of where i’m at regarding being ace. i would appreciate it if you read it.

hashtag lgbt/ace discourse ahead.

it’s been a weird year for me. a lot of good things have happened, and so have a lot of bad things. dealing with my asexuality has fallen into both categories. 

when i first encountered the term asexuality and adopted it for myself it was a very different time. i had made a friend who was ace. without going into detail, they were a little older than me, and were dealing with the aftereffects of a bad relationship where they felt harrassed and later assaulted by a partner. so i came into it with the full awareness that being ace could be rough and cause discrimination, etc. 

but honestly, in some ways, it was an easier time. back in 2011 asexuality felt less visible, but where it was visible, it was accepted pretty freely. some conversations around terms like “allosexual” began cropping up around them. i think i navigated them fairly well, and i learned a lot, and with everything i learned i grew surer that being ace was both a term that made me feel validated and comfortable, and the word that best defined my gender/sexuality experience. 

the worst thing i had to deal with was people who hated “aces prefer cake” jokes and the occasional “stop calling yourselves aces you’re not playing cards” which, meh, it’s just a cute shortening. i love it. didn’t stop then, won’t stop now. you couldn’t pay me to go back to a time when i thought sherlock was worth any attention (i at least didn’t fuckin ascribe to a lot of the shit like “oh he’s ace/aro and it excuses his bullshit” haha fuck off.). but. boy. sometimes i miss it.

this past year or two, it’s been shitty. first we had the tail end of the “queer” discourse. i understood some viewpoints coming out of that, but ultimately settled on feeling like it the people arguing to remove it from the lexicon were wrong. i think there’s some valid points to be made, but mostly found the whole argument tiresome. Let people call themselves what they want, and don’t use it for people you don’t know like it, or for the whole community. Done. 

and if I’m a little more hesitant to use it for myself, if i once described myself as queer freely and happily, and now do so nervously, backspacing it out of the text once or twice, that’s... something i hope to overcome.

but boy oh boy did that discourse just dovetail right into my personal hell. the kind of people who don’t want to see the community expanded, who want to stay on top and exclude people who aren’t being their kind of gay, immediately dug their claws into that argument about “queer” and didn’t stop.

i’ve endured months and months of ace discourse now and it’s... it’s been exhausting. i’m not even directly involved in it, but it’s still there. it’s constant. it’s insidious. 

what started as a counter argument of “queer is a great as a blanket word for people with complex identities, such as ace people” dove directly into “well, are ace people lgbt?” and didn’t stop. suddenly it was the topic of the season. early definitions said “yes” or “if they think they are.” more arguments. “well, heteroromantic aces aren’t lgbt,” became popular. i can see why. that kind of invisible distinction could play well into pretending you’re straight, after all - right? so went the discourse. ugh.

as that argument caught on, people with anti-ace agendas pushed it further. “so being ace alone doesn’t make you lgbt.” “kids can’t identify as ace, that’s sexualization.” “cishet aces just want to steal our resources.” 

i don’t want to go into all of these but. boy. some of them were presented logically, kindly. others devolved quickly into “aces are the worst and can die,” “ace people don’t belong full stop,” and even “lol look at me i’m a tumblrina i’m 13 years old asexual fictkin special snowflake” as the punchline of jokes that spread outside of this site. 

some ace people are assholes and of course stirred the pot more by being overtly bitter/turning things into oppression olympics type bickering over how aces have the worst, or whatever. some blogs people cited for examples of “terrible ace people co-opting lesbian stuff” or whatever else were literally from sockpuppet blogs making fun of ace people.

for a time, i even bought into some of it. i thought some of the early arguments, that heteroromantic aces shouldn’t be considered lgbt, might have valid points. but you know what? that’s bullshit. if you believe you belong, you should be welcomed with open arms. hetero aces experience some of the same shit i do. they probably also experience other shit. just because i don’t know what it is, or it’s different from mine, doesn’t mean it isn’t an alienating, and perhaps even queer, experience. their sexuality, as nuanced as it is, still sets them apart and they deserve support. we all do. 

it sucks to think that this shitty shitty discourse had me believing in a position that invalidated my own experience of aceness being the source of much of my queer experiences, for a while.

all this to say nothing of the invisible hate seeping towards aromantic people as well, lolololol. it’s not a big part of me the way being ace is but i’m probably somewhere on the aro spectrum and. great. thanks. i’m still so tired of split attraction model arguments. if it works for you, use it. if it works for other people, let them use it. is it so hard to believe that some people might experience things differently to you? or differently to how you would imagine? god.

my favorite part is when allo people started saying “allo is a slur!!!” when, get this: allosexual was pushed for and partially created by allo people who (rightly) didn’t want to be called “sexual,” like poc, and rape survivors. ace people adopted it into their language for their benefit, not for ours, lololololol

so. that’s the year i’ve been dealing with. i’ve had to unfollow a number of people i thought were otherwise cool over this. i haven’t gone a single month without finding someone i think is amazing, reading through their blog, and discovering with a sense of nausea that they would hate me. genuinely hate me. there’s no love there. someone who says “u shouldn’t follow me if you think ace people are lgbt lol” isn’t interested in hearing and believing my stories, my experiences, my life which is hard and queer and as deserving of support as anyone’s. they aren’t interested in treating me like a person. that’s... i mean, i think that counts as hate. yeah.

i still hesitate on the word aphobia, or, similarly, biphobia. i don’t know if it’s the right way to describe it, when the hatred you refer to comes from within a similar group of people with oppressed sexualities. i wouldn’t hesitate to say post from an allosexual person in favor of in corrective rape w/r/t ace people are aphobic. i wouldn’t hesitate to say a straight person who thinks bi people are disgusting is a biphobe.

but is that reality talking, or is it just me being unable to acknowledge that oppression is oppression, fear and hate are fear and hate, and discrimination towards aces, which i’ve spent the last two years being told isn’t real, despite experiencing it on a regular basis both in and out of community?

what’s the line between discrimination and oppression? if people’s everyday biases make it harder for ace people to live their lives, is there a point in determining that line?

i fuckin dunno. i’m so tired. i’ve spent a long year feeling like i’ve shrunk myself. i feel more comfortable lately talking about fictional ladies and my attraction to them, which isn’t sexual, and isn’t exactly romantic, but it’s... it’s something that exist. just recently i became comfortable feeling like i can use the term “wlw” for myself, which i fought myself for a long time on. being ace, being quietly non-binary were both things that felt like obstacles.

and the wlw community is just full of toxicity still. terfs have grown and drawn others to their ideologies, some of them using anti-ace tactics to do so, others using tried and true biphobic messaging and of course, who could forget the constant hammering of “trans women aren’t women” bullshit they like to pull. 

so that’s one triumph of the year. i’m nb, i’m wlw, i’m ace. i can say those three things and feel pretty comfortable in it. 

i just wish it didn’t also come at costs. i find it harder to express my ace life. i find it harder to feel positively about it. i don’t have the energy to deeply deal with ace headcanons lately. it feels like the online world is hyperaware of us now, if anything. everybody has an opinion. moreover, people feel entitled to an opinion, in a way they weren’t before. people feel like it can be their opinion that my ace experiences aren’t lgbt, or that my sexuality doesn’t exist or even harms theirs, or... i don’t know. what will be the next big reason asexuality is terrible/invalid/not lgbt?

if you bothered to read or hell just skimmed this long post... thank you.

thank you. 

i know i’ve been quiet about a lot of this. not all the time, but a lot of the time. i feel bad about that, a little? i want people to know what this looks like. knowing asexuality exists is so, so good. but knowing that ace people are facing right now, the movement of hatred that has swept across pockets of lgbt people in recent years, and having the awareness to try and combat it...

it would mean a lot to me, if it felt like more of that could exist.

[theletterformallyknownasq]

Xochi - August 17th, 2018

Me: So, this is the first interview for The Letter Formally Know As "Q". You are my first interviewee. Very excited to kick off the series with you. Can you tell our listeners who we are speaking with today?

Xochi: I am Xochi De La Luna. X-O-C-H-I D-E L-A L-U-N-A.

Me: This wasn't originally a part of the line of questioning, but, how did you get your name? Xochi: So, the names that I chose for myself. After playing around with pronouns, given and chosen names, I realized that my government name didn't really suit me. Especially because people didn't see me the way that I wanted to be seen when I went by that name. As much as I already had this understanding that that name also is me, and regardless of what people thought, I still wanted to align with that. I was also going through a really long period of not talking to my mother. Like a year or something. And so when I chose my [new] name, I wanted it to reflect indigeneity. Xochi from the Nahuatl language, which means "Flower" and De La Luna, "Of The Moon," because we're all children of the moon, we're all under the moon. So that really spoke to me. Me: How do you identify? Pronouns? But also feel free to include other ways that you define yourself. Xochi: I consider myself a nonbinary transgender person. I am agender. Some people might equate that with gender fluid, gender queer, and they would be kind of right. Because identity is in everybody individually, right? A nonbinary person might be different from another nonbinary person. Personally, I never really felt connected to any of these titles of what my father had taught me as being a man. Manhood. All that stuff and I never really quite felt part of womanhood either. Even though I was raised by my mom and aunts and great aunt. So, I don't think there is a binary. I feel like a lot of people feel all sorts of ways about their gender. What would bug me is if somebody called me like ‘man,' ‘dude,' things of masculine nature. If somebody called me 'girl' depending on the day, they wouldn’t be wrong. Me: I feel that. 100%. Feeling neither here or there. Speaking of, where is your family from? Xochi: My family is from El Salvador and I have a father who is half Salvadoran, half Mexican. Never met him. We came here as first generation immigrants when I was a baby and my mother was like 17. Me: And what brought you and your family to Minnesota? Xochi: Well, we had been living in Texas and my stepdad was a storm chaser - not in the cool way - he would chase storm damage from hurricanes and tornadoes and whatnot and get construction work - exterior restoration. And that's what brought us to Minnesota because there was huge amounts of work from this big tornado that tore through the suburbs like Apple Valley, Northside [Minneapolis], Bloomington, Minneapolis. All the affluent suburbs and parts of the [Twin] cities, so there was a lot of work. Well-paying work. People really do pay well here compared to a lot of other places in the [American] South where we were at. So my father came up here chasing and he ended up liking it. He ended up bringing the rest of the family up here. We bounced around a lot, but eventually came back to Minnesota because it was the best place out of all the other places when it came to school systems, to feeling safe, or at least my family's definition of safe. Me: What is your family's definition of safe? Xochi: That's a good question! I still wonder that myself. You know? Because a lot of my childhood was deciphering the culture that I was growing up in and the culture that I was being raised in. You know what I mean? Like there's two different cultures here. There's the American culture that I'm being raised around and that's what's influencing me when it comes to media and whatnot. And then there's also the other side of my immigrant culture that I'm also trying to decipher because I'm like a ghost of both worlds. My parents don't know how to explain American culture and American culture does not know how to explain to me about my immigrant culture.

Xochi: So I'm stuck deciphering all that. And to this day, I really don't know what their definition of safety is other than shelter. Being able to be fed, right? They really embody the values that the American people thought they had in the [19]50s, and they're still grasping onto that which I personally see as a society that's crumbling that wasn't made for us. Even though they’ve brainwashed us to think that we can and are able to adapt to this affluent white man society. Me: Or assimilate. So, what has kept you here? Not even necessarily just because of your family, but for yourself? Xochi: Yeah. After a while I was living on my own and I was tired of moving and having to build community because that's what I think is important. Building community. Because that's your chosen family. That everybody can feel good about how everybody is interacting with the world. Community is great for people like me who don't have a family. Not that I am not curious about other places because being the type of immigrant that I am under NACARA, I was granted a sort of asylum for Salvadorans. And so there's a lot of places I wish I could visit outside of the United States. I would probably go on a prolonged visit to another country, probably El Salvador or Guatemala or something like that. But I can't really leave right now. Me: So what do you do for a living? Xochi: I never really understood the term 'working artist' until it was pretty much forced on me. And what I mean is not that I didn't choose to be an artist and create artwork and whatnot. I couldn’t get employed part time. And I was kinda good at things on stage so I tried getting into a play. Second, third call backs. I felt pretty good about it and I kept doing it for a while. I was spending all this money, I needed to get into something. So I was doing side gigs like bike delivery and whatnot. Doing standup comedy and from standup comedy I ended up doing improv and from improv I ended up doing puppet plays with a troupe.They’re actually a band. They call themselves Bella Yaga and they also do puppet shows with their music which is how I got into doing things DIY. I went through a really big period of homelessness while I was trying to figure this out. A few months here and there, I got stable housing for like 1-3 months. Then the longest pocket was eight months and it was necessary to get to the point that I'm at where the art that I'm doing, the crafts that I've picked up on in the last couple of years, they're actually feeding me and keeping me housed, but it's taken a lot of work. And every day is a work day. Every hour unfortunately is a work hour. But out of all the other jobs that immigrants have to do, I'm lucky. That's how I see it. Me: What gives you joy? Xochi: What gives me joy nowadays? A lot of things. In my personal life, things going off without a hitch. Right? That's always a joy. But also my work affecting anyone else, that gives me great joy. Or like being affected by someone else's work. I'm not just talking about art like on a stage or my paintings. But like work in general. I wanted to meet with you at the Plaza because there’s a mural by these two different collaborators, these face murals of Pangea and they created this big beautiful mural of the community around here and around East Lake Street. I think it's awesome. That stuff gives me joy. People holding little celebrations or doing a ritual, that gives me joy. Partaking in people's rituals. Them taking a moment to teach me this passion of theirs gives me joy. Seeing people realize that the lies that society tells them that you know aren't real - that gives me joy. Society inadvertently or not tells you so many things, like “Only special people can do special things,” “only special people can create and only special people paint,” “only special people can do that kind of job.” When people realize that's bullshit and they just have to do the work to get there and they do it and they're thriving, or at least like reveling in the fact that they've realized something, gives me joy. Me: So with that said, what does Queer mean to you? Xochi: To me, this understanding that there are things that I'm interested in or identify that society doesn't believe half the time and Queer is just an easier way to combine all these different thoughts and feelings. Even though you know we all want to be seen completely and like complex individuals. But I feel like Queer is more than just sexuality. It's more than just identity. It's environment. It's a feeling as well. For instance - being transgender, being nonbinary, being pansexual, or bisexual nowadays - I don't know which one to use because people have their definitions for either and I feel like a little bit of both of those especially since I'm a nonbinary person. What does that make me if I like a man or a woman or a transgender person or a nonbinary person? It's not really a word. So we use bisexual, pansexual sometimes. I respect everybody who says that it's still a slur to them and they don't feel comfortable with it. But to me, it's a celebration. There's nothing wrong with being any of those things that people will lump under Queer and as an insult.

Me: And to follow up with that question, what do you like or don't like about the mainstream definition of Queer? Because you were addressing that in your last answer.  Xochi: What I like and don't like?  Me: Or you just don't fucking like it. I don't like it. It's not all encompassing of my identity and feelings. Xochi: There's a sense of dissatisfaction for me. I don't hate it. But Queer spaces that I've held here for the most part have been pretty good experiences thus far. Because I think once you get too comfortable with that idea that 'Oh this place is labeled as Queer, so it's going to be safe.' You go there expecting it to go a certain way. So that people start taking things for granted and then start breaking their own rules, right? Like, we go to a Queer dance party and no one's asking if they can touch you. Because there's this idea that you're at this Queer dance party, so you must be Queer and I'm Queer, so it's okay that I touch you because we're both Queer. Like no. Not at all. Doesn't make sense at all. I feel like that kind of goes into this whole gatekeeper mentality. Which is frustrating too because then there are some people that are using Queer as a fad.

Me: Like dress up. Costumes. Xochi: Yeah. I don't think I've ever personally ran into someone like that but, you know, when you start questioning everybody’s identity, it gets exhausting. Queer is a hard thing to define. Me: You said it was complex and layered. What you like about it is that it's not constructive or limiting, so, I hear you. How does your family's culture define Queer? Xochi: *laughs* I don't really think there is much of a distinction between Queer and homosexual [in my family’s culture]. My family's Latinx culture, which I have seen as a pattern in other people’s Latinx experience when I try to connect to people and try to make community for Latinx people. Because we're a massive umbrella. Latinx. I have my own issues with that umbrella too. From what I've talked to other the people in my own family, they don't really get Queer. They don't get anything past homosexual and lesbian. [My mother] is barely getting transgender. Which is cool that she's like really trying to understand that. And we've been doing it through the lens of talking about our ancestors, not just the indigenous ancestors but the Spanish. And then also going into this toxic celebration of the white patriarchy that I've seen in the Latinx media that I've seen in tele novellas that I've seen my mom uphold. So my mom's understanding of Queer is it's just another thing like homosexuals and lesbians. Even my Chicana aunts who were raised here in Texas and California, their understanding isn't 100% either. Everyone's proximity to a definition of understanding is very Queer I feel like. What was their first encounter with it? What was their next encounter? How did they internalize it? Was there a filter? Was it distorted? And those things are ingrained and no one's refuting you. No one's coming in and stopping and saying, “Hey this isn't it.” So, when someone does, they go, “no no -- consensus says something different.” Me: Two more questions. Xochi: Sure. Me: Ok. Technically three. Describe the moment you recognized your true form of identity. Like, what was kind of the tipping point that affirmed you, you're holding this, this is your truth, etc? Xochi: Ok. Yeah. It was after that whole moment of deciding that name, that chosen one, the name that felt complete. For a long time, I was like 'why would I change my name?' Like, this is the name that I was given and fucks with people’s ideas of what this name is and living that name for longer and being like 'no it really doesn't work.' And then going into that process of choosing the name that I have now because De La Luna was already chosen like a year before I made a decision to go by Xochi. I don't remember exactly who it was that I saw do their thing, but it was when I matched my first nonbinary person on Tinder. I was like ‘Oh great. Finally.” It's not just cis women who wants to try to validate their Queerness through me but they're seeing me as a human. This person is someone like me. So I went on a date with them. We've been homies since the start. It was really strange. It didn't lead to romance or any sort of sexual emotion but it was a nice day. We biked around, we helped out a couple of homeless people, and then I found out that they were an agender person. And I was like ‘oh what's that like? I consider myself gender fluid right now like but I'm also still pretty confused.’ And they explained it to me. And I can't even remember that explanation. I just remember being like 'that makes so much sense.' And that just ruminated in my mind. There are a series of people in this town that have influenced me in different ways when it comes to my gender. There is Cullen - who goes by Jenna Cis - who first did this gender fuckery bit in a basement that I saw. It was like this drag-like piece about some sort of wild child. Like, Russian wild child, disobeying their mother or something. It was just like ‘wow who is this person.’

Xochi: But then I see people like Marcela. Seeing Pedro Pepa - another dancer/burlesque and drag artist. The way that they embodied themselves in performance, this whole Agender thing really clicked and I was like 'that's it', you know? And then I was like I need a name. And so it took a while but then I chose Xochi. It doesn't strike me as one way or another. You could meet whoever and they could tell you their name is Xochi and you would be inclined to believe them. Some people still question me about what's my real name and I would of course respond ‘yeah it's my real name.’ I mean it's ancient. Me: And it's you! You affirm it. No one but you can affirm your truths. Xochi: Oh, for sure. People see it and they don't have any connotations of what this name means. So they’re like ‘is this name real?’ And I love that actually! I mean I don't care if they think it's real or not. Me: It's Queer as fuck. So, two more questions. What's it like to be a trans, agender, nonbinary, Latinx person that's living and working in Minnesota? How has this environment impacted you and your identity? Xochi: Well. It makes me question all the time if I have imperialist nostalgia. I'm not gonna lie, after a while getting the performances that I do sometimes, I feel tokenized. Not by one person or place necessarily, but just after a while, all these places wanted me because of this specific niche that I fill. So I felt incredibly tokenized. I really want that whole sense of people understanding and realizing and learning of the culture and also my identity. But how do you deal without tokenizing yourself? And that's something that Renato Rosaldo wrote about in an essay. Me: You don't feel completely seen? Is that what you're saying? Xochi: Yeah. Me: If you could address the most influential public figures and decision makers in the state right now, what would you say about your experience building home in Minnesota? Xochi: OK. If I had the people who I see as leaders in the community like Roxanne Anderson, people like Sharon Day, who has the New Native Theater, people like Lisa Brimmer, who now holds a huge position at the Cedar Cultural Center, and other people like that, right? With all the other public heads like Jacob Frey, I would hope that we could come together to explain to the people who are making the policies that aren't led by community and aren't led by people that are immigrants, people that are Black, Brown Indigenous, is so incredibly important. And that the way that everything has been going needs to change because it’s just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. With so many other things in the system and this government, it's just not really working. And for instance, 55% of the money that the arts board gets is sent to 12 organizations and those include the Walker Art Center and Guthrie and probably the Ordway because opera and ballet are super funded and they're very expensive works. Where places like Intermedia, Patrick's that closed that were holding these people who are underrepresented, underfunded public spaces, these places are closing or gone completely. It's a strange way to divert that money to those organizations, a way to divert that money into community-led arts. Seeing more things in public would be great. Because at least, in my opinion, most art is inherently political. That's one really great way to initiate change, for it to be seen publicly and through art. Things that are made, to change representation so that people get more comfortable with each other, sharing of each other's culture. It's not just Minnesota, but the entire United States. Immigration reform needs to happen and not in the way that the country has been doing for the last 100+ years. Right? It was built on immigration and it was built on imperialism and there's no space for that anymore. So why continue on with the way that things have been? Stop penalizing people for wanting to work. Stop making it difficult for people to live. Me: Yes. Thank you. So much.

[possibilistfanfiction]

hey jude!!! just read ur last anon abt being nb and wondered if u could talk abt ur own gender experience?

well basically i didnt grow up in a very open household, like rly Zero discussion of gender, so i know i Experienced gender entirely but i played almost exclusively with the boys in my class until probably grade 6 or 7, & at puberty, even tho i was a better athlete than most boys in my class still, i started hanging out with girls more, at recess, etc. i was always into androgyny, even if i had no idea (& i didn’t) what that was—i liked some femme things, absolutely, but i wanted nothing to do w skirts or pretty shoes. i wanted to be in adidas running sneakers 24/7 if i could help it, & i wore a uniform to school w the option of a skirt/pants, & im p sure i always wore pants. at the time this, to me, seemed more functional, & it was, but it was also, as i can understand now, something that made me feel Less like a girl, although not at all like a boy.

when i was older, 12, 13, 14, my parents wanted me to dress nicer, & i was v much into like american eagle shit, although by mid hs i was into some vintage stuff. one rly big odd style influence for me was mia wasikowksa in this weird movie called restless bc it was this v soft femme androgyny & i think for me this kind of gender expression became very important to see & understand. it wasn’t that she didn’t look like a girl, or that she wasn’t a girl, but she also sometimes looked like a boy, or wore boys clothes, but she wasn’t butch. idk this movie sent me for a loop honestly lol. 

& obviously my understanding of gender expression didn’t correlate (& doesn’t correlate!) w so many gender identities, & “passing” is extremely harmful as a notion, etc. but when i was younger my understanding of gender & sexuality was very limited & began to expand when i saw very femme but still andro ppl, even tho i couldn’t articulate it at the time. 

when i was a teenager i knew i didnt want to rly have a single thing to do w any boy, which made me sure i was a lesbian bc thats the only narrative i’d rly known abt queerness, or queer women, or even queer ppl who presented as femme. there werent any out lesbians at my school (no fucking way), & the only out queer kid at all was a white gay guy a year older than me, who was popular in the way white gay boys can be popular in high school. but i read voraciously, was fascinated by the crossdressing in shakespeare (paris in the merchant of venice was a particular fixation of mine?) & anyway. i knew i was queer, i knew i liked girls, & i knew i was outrageously uncomfortable w my body, particularly my breasts. for a long time i thought this was because i was ashamed of my sexuality, when i came to sort of understand that, but ofc now i know abt dysmorphia & dysphoria, so yknow. knowledge.

when i went to college i came out big time, & it became very important to me to both be queer & look sort of queer but not queer enough to be Queer—i wanted ppl to be like ‘maybe into girls, but maybe straight.’ as im sure many of us know, this was a lot of internalized shame abt a lot of things, so that sucks. however, i cut my hair which was like the first comfortable thing i had done for my appearance in a v long time, & also smth which my parents hated & i did anyway. i wore a Lot of rly femme stuff bc they hated it tho? so this was all v confusing for me bc my parents are v homophobic, & here i was in college starting to read queer theory & gender theory & falling in love w like. the most beautiful, brilliant girl, & also spiraling into a mixed episode after i got diagnosed w bipolar I, which sort of put everything else on the backburner for a year. 

eventually tho i sorted that out (as much as u can sort smth like that out) & i started to rly pay attention to androgyny. i went to europe & i think theres a whole bunch of nuances to fashion that exist there that certainly arent here, & i spent a winter in warsaw so there were aspects to fashion & expression there that were entirely abt functionality, which i was v attracted to. in college, as well, & especially after college, gender became smth i was v much invested in bc i was (& absolutely am) a feminist, so my place in the canon & zeitgeist was one as a queer female writer. it was so so central to who i was, & what i was writing abt. every single thing i wrote in college was in some way a balm, some sort of piece abt myself, learning abt trauma & the body. sorting through a lot of hurt. i could write a theory piece abt elizabeth bishop & reading it back now i know it was also abt me, that kinda stuff.

when i went to toronto i rly rly started being invested in looking critically at gender & my experience of it bc being read as a woman was smth that was grating on me, even tho i had identified as woman for so long, & had no desire at all to transition. i know 100% i am not a trans man, so that was confusing for a long time because i sort of knew there was a space between but it was very hard to conceptualize. eventually i sort of came to understand gender is a color wheel where cis boys are blue & cis women are pink & then theres literally a ton of other colors out there, so yknow. lots of different experiences of gender. some days i feel much more strongly like i identify w women (in mostly political situations, it matters to me to be read as “female” sometimes bc rights for ppl w vaginas AND trans women are FUCKED UP in so many places). some days i hate the idea of identifying as a woman. i also never want to identify as a man. so when i was in toronto i rly started to know a LOT of queer ppl w so many different expressions of gender. & we were all young & lovely & open & fucked up & we would get fucked up but we would also go read together in the park & wander around alleys in the snow & like. there’s a Muchness to toronto that i experienced that helped me, personally, understand these intersections between my own sexuality & gender & expression as much more than just a gay woman who isn’t butch & isn’t femme. i was rly lucky to become part of a community that identified as Queer, & so i became v much understanding of these different aspects of my own identity that fell outside of binary—my sexuality, my gender. Queerness is a vital & profound thing to me & i was rly able (& so fortunate) to have a close friend group of mostly queer ppl & then a few of the actual literally most incredible allies i’ve ever known & will ever know. 

so then from there i just rly kinda thought abt things & like i got a binder & stuff in TO but rly started to evaluate my dysmorphia & dysphoria (i had struggled really badly w an eating disorder in/post college) & was able to sort out that so much of it had to do w feeling uncomfortable in the way my body was read in the world. & that will always happen bc i LOVE makeup & i have a “feminine” voice & sometimes i love skirts & i shave my legs bc i like how it feels sometimes & i dont ever want to go on T—none of these things make anyone ANY gender, but ofc theyre coded as “female.” but i’m learning to just yknow educate where i can & take a lot of solace in the community of ppl i have fostered who support & understand my Being. i’ve also allowed myself to be invested in aesthetics & fashion & how much a role that plays bc like. yah fuck Yah i look cool shit bc my friends love it & absolutely i wanna wear the same vans maia mitchell has & i want a melodrama hoodie & i LOVE local toronto designers & their angsty patches abt sad songs & whiskey but i love fashion born out of histories that is connected to smth i can understand, like queer punk movements, or smth my friends & i share, like blundstones (which are gender neutral, which is cool). i’m fascinated in how ppl express their Selves, & we are so unfortunately Finite in our bodies in the sense that that’s rly how the world, in our day to day interactions, processes who & what we are. so i invest in the care of mine by trying to listen to it, trying to make it comfortable—& clothing is a huge thing that can do that. also its fun so anyone who thinks loving (ethical, cool) fashion is vain can eat my ass

anyway lmao now i have a p decent sense, atm at least, of what makes my body its most comfortable (even if that is v far from Comfortable at times). i love my tattoos, & i basically never rly want long hair again i’m p sure, & i love makeup, & if i could wear vans or blundstones every day for the entirety of my life at this point that would be incredible. those are easy things, & i try to allow my body, in its cultural place, to have access to them as much as possible, which is so important to me in a sense of having access to a physical space that matches my mental space of gender identity. politically sometimes i feel v v much a “woman” in terms of my lived experience, & i allow that of myself as well. sometimes when i write it’s important to me that my poetry be read as a queer person but also someone who is culturally coded as a woman, bc those are still always central concerns of my work—the trauma, the power there. but day to day i’m mostly happy spending my time obsessing over other things, like what to call this new genre of music halsey & lorde are making, or why my dog stevie is a Fanatic when it comes to ice cubes. ive come to enough terms w my gender, & my sexuality—& the expression thereof—that unless someone is talking abt gender, or someone asks me a question, it’s not smth that is constantly on my mind, which is. Nice. its so nice lol. 

also i would like to point out that i know my experience being non binary is rly rly white & western in so many ways & i get that. my cultural experience of non binary gender is also v much this like. ive felt frustrated before but never in my life have i felt scared to be non-binary while i was like out & abt in the world, bc i still pass as a cis white woman literally everywhere all the time (which has its pros & cons but like, still, a lot of privilege). so i do try to keep all of that in mind as well when i try to center myself & all that jazz

& who tf knows where all of that will take me. i feel like, bc ive learned to listen to my body & my brain so much better than i did when i was younger—even when they might hate themselves—i am so much better at filling up a space in the world that occupies smth healthy. which is not smth i take lightly, & i’m also so open to changes, as long as they feel good & beneficial & true. which is sort of new for me. who knows man ur mid twenties are a wild ride 

[this-is-the-salivation-army]

REVISITING THE PERMISSION FACTORY Scott Treleaven (2015)

You’ll have to forgive a few extremely unsexy paragraphs so we can get down to figuring out the lifelong, tenuous romance between punk and gay culture: how it got started in the 70s, how it got revitalized in the 90s, and why this unique relationship persists. It’s the story of how gay culture rescued the first would-be punks from the sexual puritanism of their parents, and how punk would later resuscitate the fury of a devastated gay scene. When I first got into punk music as a kid I found that I connected with a sensibility that seemed to exist nowhere else. What I could only later describe as “Weimar-esque,” punk seemed to have awareness not only of how sex could be liberating and daring, but how it could also be used to *entertain* without being sapped of its vitality. Whatever can be said about punk’s stance against normalcy and capitalism, punks knew the importance of putting on a show; it didn’t have to be a good show, it didn’t have to be a long show, but punk always promised that there’d be something genuine to experience. The fact that some twenty years on it would become relevant again, in a regenerated form as “queercore”, is a testament to punk’s original intent. And once again this reincarnation would come partly as vaudeville, and partly as social hammer.

Of all the ‘origin of the species’ stories about how and where punk got started, who its progenitors were and what historical and cultural factors came together to birth it, Jeff Nuttal’s appraisal in BOMB CULTURE (1968) rings most true for me. Written almost a decade before punk existed, Nuttall surmised that the somber and shell-shocked post-World War II generation would also have to deal with the profound moral schizophrenia brought on by a moment that annihilated the reassuring binary simplicity of ‘good guys versus bad guys,’ forever. The men and women raising children in the late sixties in the UK and the US, the children that would eventually become the first “punks,” must have had found it hard to countenance that the good guys who liberated Europe had gone on to commit the unspeakable atrocity of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Not only did it mean that the shadow of nuclear war hung over the world’s future from now on, but it begged the mostly unspoken question of how one raises a child with any kind of moral assurance when the supposed good guys were capable of the very atrocities they had fought against. Unlike the Bright Young People who emerged as a sort of upper-class, upbeat and insolent post-WWI phenomenon, the pervading air of nihilism and punk’s working class roots had more in common with the clownish despair found in Dada. The closeness of the US/UK alliance might also explain how mutual culpability created a climate that lead to punk’s simultaneous emergence in both countries. Always in the background, the same subliminal refrain, that the dominant culture no longer held moral authority.

The staggering austerity that punk emerged from made it seem like there literally was no future to be had. When I hear tales of kids playing in the bombed out ruins of an empire I think how it must’ve made the edifices of society seem as flimsy and impermanent as they, in fact, are. The only thing you could be sure of was that your young body was alive and filled with a kind of vitality that wasn’t mirrored in the landscape. Suspicion of tradition gave way to a thirst for what was outside, what was verboten. What the parents rejected the kids embraced. Reggae was alien, exciting and new; the Nazi paraphernalia that terrified their elders could be wielded partly for shock value but also to disgrace its symbolic power; and there was also a more pronounced cognizance that underneath the New York Dolls’ and Bowie’s slap was a frank acknowledgement of the wild frontier of gay culture and its influence on style. Along with the draggish maquillage, the bondage gear and the outright porn, what punk found thrilling in the burgeoning gay scene was its frank embrace of fringe and coded styles, its penchant for hidden venues, its gender non-conformity, and the inherent power in outsider camaraderie. After all, “punk” meant “gay” before punk meant punk. The queered sexiness that would become intrinsic to punk had the dual purpose of titillating the uninitiated while simultaneously ridiculing the uptight behind-the-plastic-curtains realm to which sex (or any arousing image outside of sanctioned smut and/or artwork) had been relegated by older generations. Punks were all about giving each other permission to flaunt, demystify and explore own their sexuality.

Eventually, after a particularly cold-blooded breed of Conservatism (perhaps there is no other kind) took hold at the end of the 70s, the virulence of its free market spirit had the effect of turning punk signifiers into just another load of feel good shopping experiences. Stock slogans, mohawks, safety pins and leather jackets became a uniform; anathema to the very things punk was initially about. While punk was defanged, an even more horrifying extermination of subcultural potential was taking place as the sexual libertinism and freedom that characterized the gay scene was ravaged by AIDS. Whereas the radioactivity from Hiroshima eventually dissipated, and the West somehow got back to convincing itself of its own decency, the AIDS epidemic was just getting started and the banner of morality was callously plied to create an exponential body count, and effectively ensuring a plague that could never be contained. By the early 90s the gay scene had gone back to adopting an attitude similar to the “clone” mentality of the late 70s; originally used as a way of signifying sexual difference and availability, the gay scene had now become cautious, conformist and grim as AIDS killed off most of the renegades and sexual astronauts. After approximately 500,000 cases of AIDS and 300,000 deaths in the US alone were reported by the mid-90s, gay culture was reeling and understandably desperate for some kind of homogeneity to patch together what was left. It was from this gloomy fray that queercore first emerged.

As punk had once turned to queer culture for its social-sexual strategies, now it was returning the favor. The blinkered gay and lesbian mainstream in the mid-90s felt neither inclusive nor progressive, or even particularly political, suffering as it was from what can only be called battle fatigue. Under siege for so long, the scene seemed to want to return to some kind of clement version of a pre-AIDS heyday where everyone could listen to mediocre dance music in the company of others who wanted to conform to the new gay normal. If the world was fair, the likes of Queer Nation, Outrage and Gran Fury would’ve thrived, but there was less room now for the libertine weirdos and troublemakers who might (or might not) have caused all of the chaos in the first place. Eventually two Toronto-based punks, G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce, would change everything by launching an incendiary campaign through zines, music and manifestoes, to call out the gays on their conservatism and to make the supposedly open-minded punks put their inclusivity to the test. Following their lead, queercore bands, zines and record labels – like Matt Wobensmith’s Outpunk – flourished. For me personally, as a twenty-year old punk recently transplanted back in Toronto in 1993 after a year of living hand-to-mouth in London, discovering that I could reconcile my music, my politics and my sexuality was a revelation. Already ideologically hopped-up on publications like RE:SEARCH, RAPID EYE and HOMOCULT, I’d also had a fortuitous meeting with queer saint Derek Jarman shortly before my return who clinched for me the idea that there was more to one’s sexuality than simply who you fucked. Jarman’s idea of queerness was that it was a blessing of sorts, a radiant kind of permission. It reinforced for me what I’d always felt: that being queer meant that you could slough off a past, an ideology and a trajectory, that's not yours to inherit and keep on forging paths that are as yet unimagined. And if that wasn’t punk, I didn’t know what was.

Graduating from art school in 1996, and with G.B. Jones’ help, I shot the world’s first queer punk documentary. More of a polemic than a who’s-who, QUEERCORE: A PUNK-U-MENTARY was an attempt to unify some of the politics and positions of the company of outcasts I was keeping. Combining these ideas with some stark pseudo-military aesthetics copped from postpunk bands like Psychic TV and New Model Army, I also started publishing my own zine, THIS IS THE SALiVATION ARMY. Rejecting salvation as a nebulous, ludicrous concept, *salivation* was where it was at; always on the tip of your tongue, something your body knows. And in the wake of the full on body-terror that followed AIDS, this kind of fluidic moniker was about more than just spit. Branding itself as a the mouthpiece of a full-fledged “queer pagan punk” movement with hundreds of members and everybody fucking each other, it didn’t seem useful, or poetically true, to tell readers that in reality it was just me with a gluestick, alone at 3am in an all-night photocopy shop. Another lesson learned from punk: print the legend. Aside from the hyperbole, the zine distinguished itself by trying to be an honest platform to discuss and celebrate sexuality in all its forms, and to this day it’s a point of pride to know that my readership wasn’t solely made up of horny homocore boys, but an equal amount of women, bi and straight readers, too.

Eventually the zine spawned a film of the same name in 2002 that would try to keep the myths alive alongside the truth. The fact that the zine and the film still get unearthed says something, to me at least, about its view of sexuality as something innately powerful, and the punk ethos at its core still gives the go-ahead to explore in the company of like-minded others; being part of an ongoing, swelling history is always better than being part of something unique. When punk first reared its head in the 70s, decrying sex as squelchy and boring was a genius way of disarming the shame-makers, the rockers and the doting hippies, showing a preference instead for anger and action over getting your rocks off and calling it a weekend. In the 90s however the slogan had shifted to take aim at the puritans and fear-mongers with a distinctly feminist pitch. The patches on people’s jackets were daubed with slogans like: You Say Don’t Fuck, We Say Fuck You!, Silence = Death, and Not Gay As In Happy, But Queer As In Fuck You! On the heels of this declaration that queers weren’t the filthy creatures that the religious zealots and right wing would have you believe, another reinvigoration of sexual awareness came in the form of a wave of punk-made porn. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the pre-selfie, pre-internet world, occupying pornography was a radical act. Like industrial musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti’s astutely aware ownership of her participation in pornography – usurping the male-made-for-male-gaze structure – the queercore scene wrestled its bodies away from the overly muscled uniformity of the Aryan sideshow freaks that populated gay porn and made images of their own. Like Warholian superstars, Jones’ and LaBruce’s zines and films launched a new blue generation and everyone, myself included, loaned their time and their bodies to one another in the pursuit of a new kind of radicalism. Suddenly you weren’t jerking off to the too perfect torsos in mainstream porn, instead you could find insanely erotic homegrown smut to get off on that also served the purpose of smashing the stereotypes purveyed by the other mags. The empowerment had positive effects on the models, too. Starring in a couple of centerfolds and films, I found that the lowly view I’d held of my weedy twenty-year old body started to vanish. Better yet, as I got behind the camera I learned to make other models snap out of their narrow views of what turned people on as we added our own brands of eroticism to the collective pool.

The notion that punk was anti-sex, entirely cynical or entirely nihilistic is overplayed. There would’ve been no bands, no shows, no pageantry and no studied provocation if that were true. Now that gay culture has become obsessed with the push for “equality” an ugly, overwhelming sense of genteel propriety has come along with it. The church and the army – the last places on earth a punk or a queer should be – are the mindboggling territories being fought for. When I think about the first time I saw Pete Shelley mincing around in the video for ‘Homosapien,’ even at the tender age of eight I felt that the elegant futuristic world he occupied was going to be mine too, someday, not the weddings and wars that were the destiny of my other little friends. As the 2000s kicked in, my hometown Toronto was a hotbed of queercore activity well past the time when most of the early bands had hung up their guitars and the zines had folded. The late, great artist impressario Will Munro organized a vibrant scene there that was dedicated to the idea that the sexual vitality of the queer scene aligned with the restless utopic cravings of punk could still come together to create something *other*, something *better*. The entire planet is currently groaning under the weight of conservative corporatism, and those thinly veiled fascists are floating the idea that there is no other way but theirs. The spirit of punk, if it truly did anything in the past, and if it can do anything now, is to keep kicking the can further down the road; to say, “This is bullshit and it’s not enough, we can do better. And if you can’t make it better we’ll smash it up and start over.” Sex, punk-sex if you will, can remind us of where that desire originates. It’s in our bodies, it’s innate and it says something more to us about our human place in the world than simply being on a conveyer belt through a shopping-mall-cum-torture-chamber.

– originally published in ‘SHOWBOAT: PUNK/SEX/BODIES’ (2016), edited by Toby Mott   http://bit.ly/2twFApe