#Ed is non binary in the sense he has more important things to be worrying about haha

[coockie8]

what are ed and roy like after they get married?

Immediately after tying the knot, Roy talks about and introduces Ed to people as his "wife", in a kinda joking jab at what a notorious Wife Guy™ Hughes was, but when it turns out Ed really doesn't give a fuck about gender, like, at all, Roy sticks with it 'cause "wife has more kickass than husband" and it helps him feel closer to Hughes, who he thinks would be thrilled he's finally "settled down with a good wife" :)

[hellomynameisbisexual]

So You're Feeling a Little Bicurious. We're Here to Help!

8 expert tips for exploring your sexuality.

BY ZACHARY ZANE OCT 18, 2019

After years of wondering if I could ever be intimate with another man, I decided to hook up with a dude my freshman year of college. I figured this "bicurious" thing clearly isn't a phase, since I'd been thinking about it for a few years. The only way I could know for sure if I was actually gay or bi was if tested the waters.

So I did. Alas, I got so drunk in order to have the courage to hook up with another man that I ended up puking midway through our encounter. After the experience, I could not tell you if I was gay or bi. Overall, the experience was "meh," like any really sloppy, drunken hookup regardless of gender.

The thing is, I went about hooking up with a guy all wrong. I had expectations about what I should feel, still struggled with internalized homophobia, and didn't realize that sexuality is a spectrum. I think that's why I felt even more confused after hooking up with a guy.

Still, I'm glad I did explore, and it did eventually lead me to embracing my sexuality, though it took another five years. Nevertheless, there were definitely things I could have done to better prepare myself for exploring sexually with other men. Things I learned years after the fact. Now, with the help of two sexuality experts, I'm going to impart what I wish I knew and had done before (and after) hooking up with my first guy.

1. Start with porn.

You don’t need to jump headfirst into penetrative sex with a man. Porn is a great way to explore your desires in a manner that’s accessible and private.

“As a starting point for acting out sexual fantasies, many people turn to pornography because it offers a ‘safe’ way to explore, especially if you’re a little afraid of acting it out or don’t know how to go about it,” says Dr. Justin Lehmiller, research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author Tell Me What You Want.

For bicurious men specifically, Lehmiller notes there are plenty of pornos out there which feature bicurious themes. “So that’s probably the easiest starting point for getting a sense of what you do and don’t like,” he says.

2. Move to apps and chat rooms.

"Apps and chat rooms using sexting and video chats are great ways to explore how you feel about engaging sexually with men before jumping into the deep end and scheduling your first hook-up," says Jor-El Caraballo, a licensed mental health professional who works largely with LGBTQ+ clients. It allows you the opportunity to engage with other men sexually without doing anything IRL. (Grindr and Scruff are two good apps to use.)

3. Have a bisexual MMF threesome.

If after watching some bi/gay porn and talking to some dudes on apps/chat rooms, you’re thinking to yourself, alright, I think I could potentially be into this, it might be time to consider having a threesome with a woman and another man. In Lehmiller’s research on sexual fantasies, he’s found that a lot of bicurious guys report fantasies about mixed-gender threesomes. “I think the appeal of this scenario is that it seems less intimidating than hooking up with just another guy,” he says. “A lot of bicurious guys worry about what it means for their sexuality if they experiment with another guy, so being able to explore that with a woman present might make it less intimidating.”

4. Work on reducing internalized shame.

Exploring bi-curiosity isn't just getting out there and doing it with another guy. “It's important for men to understand that we live in sex-phobic and homophobic culture that helps shape what we see as possible for ourselves and our desires,” says Jor-El. This means that we first have to explore how much of our reluctance might be attributed to cultural attitudes and how much of it is solely our responsibility. “Naming that societal homo- and bi-phobia first is an important step,” he says.

5. Educate yourself.

One of the biggest ways to reduce internalized shame and to better understand how your sexuality might not be binary or stagnant (meaning, specifically, that you're not always exclusively gay or straight) is to educate yourself about sexuality. Alas, sex education leaves quite a few things to be desired here in the United States (and abroad, too). Instead of discussing how we come to form our sexual identity, some sex-ed classes never get beyond condoms on cucumbers—or teach abstinence-only curriculum.

"Because we live in a culture that has [negative] perspectives on bisexuality and same-sex attraction, it's important to gain exposure to alternative perspectives," Jor-El says. There are two books in particular Jor-El tends to recommend to his clients. The first is Brene Brown's Daring Greatly, which tackles shame resilience. The second is sexologist Dr. Chris Donaghue's book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture.

6. Recognize you might not have a big “aha” moment.

When I got to college, I decided I was going to finally explore my same-sex attractions that had been gnawing at me for the past few years. Without going into too many details (you can read about my full experience here), I left that first encounter feeling even more unsure of my sexual identity. I thought I was going to have this big “aha” moment. I’d kiss his lips and immediately realize, “Woah… I’m gay. I’ve never felt like this when I've been with women.” Or it would become crystal clear I definitely wasn’t into men. Neither happened. In fact, I came to the conclusion after the experience that I was straight, and it took me another five years of hooking up with men to embrace the fact that I am bisexual.

7. Talk to a therapist.

As always, it can be helpful to explore this in the safe space of therapy. "With a LGBTQ+ affirming therapist, you can talk through aspects of your sexuality that seem daunting or frightening to deal with on your own," Joe-El says. "This space will give you the security of a confidential and non-judgmental space where you can make your own decisions about what works best for you without outside pressure."

Personally, seeing a therapist was the most helpful thing when it came to exploring and eventually embracing my same-sex attractions. By the end of my third session, I began calling myself bisexual.

8. You can try it, not like it, and you're still straight.

There's this notion that if you so much as kiss a man once, you must be gay or bisexual. This makes it particularly scary and seemingly "binding" when you explore. You fear that if you experiment, and don't like it, people will wrongfully assume you're closeted. You fear that rumors surrounding your sexuality will haunt you for the rest of your life, but here's the truth about experimenting: If you come to the conclusion after hooking up with a guy that you're straight, then you are just as straight as a dude who's never experimented. One sexual act does not define your entire identity. Period.

Now if you're someone like me, who comes to realize, oh yeah, I really can get down hooking up with other men, then welcome to the club, my dude. Your world is about to get a hell of a lot more fun.

[astarion-dekarios]

@everyonewasabird​

No, I don't mind talking about this...! I recognize however that it is a sensitive subject so I am going to activate my Insurance Policy and put it under a cut so, disclaimer this is all just My Personal Opinion and subject to taste and you can like what you like etc etc.

Warning: Trans Les Mis Opinions Under The Cut

So there are ... several different things that made me reluctant to try to engage with this element. Maybe things have changed since I last did so! Maybe they haven’t! But in any case these were Super common tropes and themes that I used to see around all the time and which bothered me personally (you can call it squick if you want), and actually made up a majority of the trans les mis content so I just disengaged entirely.

1. Trans [Enjolras] Pregnancy. This is perhaps the biggest one. Trans [male] pregnancy is kind of a sensitive topic at the best of times. In my Personal Opinion, the idea of Enjolras getting pregnant is so wildly incongruent with who he actually is as a character and the values that he has, and is a major squick for me. But this used to be so common that if I saw trans Enjolras mention, 90% of the time it was followed up with something about pregnancy.

It basically gave me the impression people were making Enjolras trans solely and exclusively so they would have the “excuse” to write mpreg & thereby reducing trans people to their body parts but also... body parts that are even more upsetting to be reduced to if you’re trans, lol. This happened with other characters too but 90% of the time it was Enjolras. If you want to write mpreg please [seriously please] don’t feel like you have to make one of them trans for it to “make sense”.

2. Feminization Of Enjolras. Enjolras looks quite feminine physically! I don’t actually mind if people lean heavily into that, in fact I quite like it when it’s done in the sort of Romantic Androgyny Makes You Beautiful fashion. This one was [almost] exclusively seen in modern AU content, which I try to avoid anyway because it’s just not really my thing 99% of the time, but it did actually make up a significant portion of Enjolras Content and a large Percentage of Trans Enjolras content.

What I mean by this is: a) depicting Enjolras wearing short skirts, crop tops, and/or lipstick because Fuck Gender Roles. Trans people are not obligated to Fuck Gender Roles & once again this feels to me personally incongruent with Enjolras’s characterization ... It’s fine if you are a trans guy and want to wear these things. But the conspicuous Lack of characters headcanon-ed as cis men who were wearing these things bc Fuck Gender Roles was... well, conspicious. Presenting trans characters as if they Have To completely ignore “gender roles” & “trans men can be feminine too [in fact they should be] [but cis men can’t]” actually wraps all the way around from Fuck Gender to... just feeling extremely uncomfortably binary gender essentialism.

       b) depicting Enjolras as extremely weak, not knowing how to fight, etc. This one actually feels both transphobic And misogynistic ... the fact that he looks “like a 17 year old girl” doesn’t appear to make him weak or incompetent in battle in Victor Hugo’s original novel, so ... :/ Again, just uncomfortable.

3. Non-binary Jean Prouvaire. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s fine. But the fact that it became such Widely accepted fanon to the point where people have actually “corrected” me when I used he/him pronouns to refer to Prouvaire is A Lot. Why this character specifically? Again I can’t help but feel like it’s because of a belief that cis men cannot be “soft” or like poetry or flowers or whatever. (Never mind the debate about whether or not Prouvaire is in fact Soft; he is almost invariably depicted that way in this case).

The other element to this is flattening and reducing gender and gender expression (especially in the case of non-binary people) solely to the use of pronouns. However instead of actually engaging w/ things I personally find interesting, most of the Prouvaire Trans Content appeared to be centered around the use of non-binary pronouns (they/them) (to the point where I have been “corrected” on it in the past), despite the fact that this makes no actual sense given that he is actually French and they/them pronouns are not a thing in French (at least not France French) (yes there are some people experimenting w/ gender neutrality in French language but there are more people in France who are in fact non-binary but for whom that does not center around pronouns; the specific they/them pronoun focus feels extremely anglophone).

Again like, this is ok, I understand that some non-binary people for whom this IS important (and that’s fine!) project onto Prouvaire and like, that is part of fandom, a lot of it is inherently personal. But also it is in my opinion an extremely uninteresting way of depicting gender-- along with the comparison of Jehan vs. Jean as being the same as a trans person’s chosen name... like that’s not what it is. It is, as a dear friend once said, more equivalent to that guy in your foreign language class who insists on being referred to by their foreign language name even outside of class; or your renfest nerd friend called Gavin who insists on going by Gawain.

These are the three Main things. As I’m sure you can tell by this rant, a lot of this is obviously personal taste. It’s fine if people like these things. But I don’t and some of it makes me profoundly uncomfortable, and the fact that it made/makes(?) up the majority of trans les mis content just turned me off of engaging with it totally. I am sure there is good trans les mis content out there, I have even read some of it in the past, but I am not interested in wading through a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable in order to find it haha. Hope this satisfies! I am in fact willing to talk about these things so don’t worry about pressuring me by asking or w/e.

[coockie8]

"ed is non binary in the sense he has more important things to worry about" i literally love this so fucking much 😍😭

Some Military Rando: So are you, like, a boy or a girl?

Edward: Yeah sure, whatever.