#and its always like 'well no nonbinary lesbians or butch lesbians... well maybe they are ok but they are on thin ice... but not these-

[elizabethrobertajones]

summer scions!! I absolutely love the new portraits for all their smug happy expressions. Except Y'shtola, who is not going to deign to give a camera a proper saucy look because that's silly. Urianger is smirking twice as hard on her behalf.

Glam review under the cut!

I unlocked Alphinaud first of the twins and didn't know Alisaie had a little necktie yet, so I'm deducting a point from my first impression because the sheer delight that he had a silly little necktie of some sort no matter the situation delighted me so thoroughly. Since they're still engaging in matchy twin dressing to some degree, I have to assume they either like it and won't admit it after digging in so hard, or Ameliance sent them off with cute outfits and matching backpacks, and they still don't really shop for themselves.

He's got the practical watch/compass gloves which are good for a technically proficient Sage and probably the most practical gear he's ever worn except for when he was poncho Alphy, but wearing ankle-length jeans seem like the least weather-appropriate choice of the Scions if we assume their average skin coverage is a good weathervane for the temperature in Tural. I chalk it up to teenage awkwardness.

8/10 unless he and Alisaie chose their outfits themselves, in which case it's a 9/10

I think Alisaie is the only Scion to keep a single piece of their default gear, and those are her usual gloves. She's colour-matched around it.

Because of the gloves and boots, she looks the most ready for hardcore hiking, somehow, and her matching Alphinaud with a cute button down shirt with rolled up sleeves along with that particular choice of baggier shorts (when she normally wears more form fitting shorts) do give me the closest to butch vibes it's probably likely to get for main characters. So I'm giving her an extra point I stole from Alphinaud for the lesbian vibes.

9/10 or 10/10 if she made these choices all by herself.

Everything about this cracks me up, from his portrait above to the image of him tanking open shirted once he pulls mobs.

Believe it or not, he's getting an additional point for those shoes simply because the competition in practicality in tanking is G'raha.

I had a moment of excitement when I thought the necklace was pink because that's always a cute Ryne/Minfillia thing fanartists give him with ribbons and such, but once I got zoomed in on him it was red, so I guess he's just been shopping. Although, the turquoise shorts are her eye colour and the actual large diamond shapes are secretly Mothercrystal coded in those colours, which just cracks me up that you can pick out one of the worse days of his life (Urianger's grand Warrior of Darkness plan) in his Chill Summer Beach Vibes look.

Douchebag beach bro shell bracelet as well, which really makes me double down on him and Urianger spending way too much on tourist bait along the stalls in the Famous Turali Market. The hat and sunglasses are giving him one of the Most tourist-y looks thematically reflecting how a lot of the Scion guys were just here to hang out, narratively or literally. Maybe he's trying not to get such an intense tan again, which is the only reason he's not entirely topless.

11/10 I could not stop laughing when I got him and Urianger to 100 and Beheld The Brilliance in the same moment.

Please note the raised sunglasses in Urianger's portrait, which are not the model his character uses.

I am delighted that I had been incorporating that island watch into my healer glams on both the logic you need to know your clock positionals but also they're largely the smarty pants jobs (WHM being vibes only aside - it gets its own glams :P). And here's Urianger and Alphinaud both using watches.

Now, I had a moment of being vaguely disappointed he had trousers not a skirt or something else swishy and androgynous, but then I did realise that I, a nonbinary weirdo who relates to Urianger since he made me nonbinary, have actually gone to a couple of garden parties dressed in some variation of this exact outfit of light trousers and a nice button up. Plus, the earrings are in both ears, so no "Google, which ear is the gay one?", these are just straight up cute femme dangly earrings with his favourite little dudes on.

More importantly, the colours he's repping are those of Lopporit Radio. He probably tunes in every night for his broadcasts :')

Mirrored sunglasses for the guy notorious for keeping thoughts and plans close to his chest and choosing deliberately to be enigmatic even when it serves zero purpose except for I guess gender affirming care. (The gender is Weird Bitch.)

I can't tell how I feel about those dad sandals. I suppose it depends if he's wearing them like a fashion model (brand new and clean with perfect pedicured feet) or if those are REALLY dad at the beach-like and, since I'm not a foot person, this for me is only a choice between "not off-putting" and "AURGH".

9/10 the proximity to Thancred hauls him up several points of misgivings I had, and the lopporit shout outs are killing me :')

I unlocked Y'shtola last and holy fuck I am a lesbian. I don't even recognise where those boots come from, so either a really expensive glam or something I just have not stumbled on. She has toe rings I think? And painted nails? I have no idea if the garter (?) is part of the boots glam or a custom thing as result of not recognising the boots and how much of them is normal. I feel like they customised a lot on her anyway - the back of her top has purple beads that match her staff (not dyable on the real piece)

and I think the necklace has to be part of the top instead of a separate necklace piece with the way it hangs, AND the bracelets are a glove piece with the original summer glam, but I assume they're layered with the false nails, also in the glove slot. All in all it's giving the sort of effort which is starting to creep up to what I'd expect from the modding community not the game. I mean, not THAT good but getting close. Baby steps towards what fandom can make :P

She really is god's favourite meow meow.

Anyway I can't really judge this fairly because it's really hot and I love her so I'm just going to give it 100/10 and move on. :)

how did I get a picture where Estinien looks like he's stooping to get in the frame...

The fact he has Azure Dragoon Blue Top and then Violently Nidhogg Fuchsia shorts is the colour theory that absolutely killed me. When he lights up during his burst and starts glowing pink all over his shorts are like. Taking him over like the eye once did I think.

love a guy who can embrace his past trauma and dress to match all that has passed before and all that he intends to do now (kill something large and tasty, grill it on the beach, fall asleep with a beer in hand until the waves come in and wake him up).

I gave him that wooden bracelet in the glam he has on my desktop screen so once again I'm feeling weirdly vindicated.

Other details: no ponytail despite the warm weather because he's got enough ventilation. The fact there's cactaurs on his shirt when he's on record for eating them is amazing. We should imagine he's wearing his jobstone like that pendant (since he's one of the only guys with a confirmed jobstone despite being the Guy Without A Job notoriously that one time.)

Unlike Thancred's hat and sunglasses combo, which seems fun and boisterous somehow, he seems the most walled off of all the sunglasses wearers even though he's not the most mysterious. The visor really helps make it a sort of wall. Maybe just because his terse upfront personality and somehow despite his clothes horse habits THIS amount of whimsy seems the most out of character at first glance, but he DOES look uncomfortable to me.

Somehow I find everything about this outfit excellent for his character but also like maybe he was forced into it, everyone cornering him and telling him the Scion Beach Party was a mandatory work event and he was not allowed to beg off of it and he did put some work in expressing himself but also is going to go find a much quieter corner to lurk in for the day, when not competing with Thancred (can't grill, loves it) for the barbeque (Estinien can grill, would only do it because the threat of Thancred doing it wrong is too high).

confused 7/10 mostly because I think Krile is blackmailing him and not because I don't love everything about this.

Here's how G'reenha Tia can still win -

Anyway here's the deducted point for tanking in flip flops (PERFECTLY acceptable BLM gear btw but he's Mr Versatile.)

(I joke but the main character of my novels is a flip-flop wearing menace who could and would tank in them)

Between the padlock and key necklace and the woven bracelet right after we all went feral over the Thavnarian bracelets for couples thing so recently (and Corvos is just across the water!) he's absolutely dripping cutie pie love interest coding yet again.

(Also yes I know the lock and key thing is very funny because we were introduced to him learning he was a fancy key to a big door.)

Gains a point back because the other green g'raha thing is I'm pretty sure people use this shirt glam because it kinda looks like it has weed on it.

Don't quote me on that, vibes only.

Anyway he came colour coordinated (with his original eye colour and hair colour not the bright Allagan dalamud red dye that goes with his normal outfit) so so precise and neat, like he's going to some sort of formal event, and even with flip flops he really does seem incredibly put together like the twins or Y'shtola, just for full outfit cohesiveness.

As someone who would hold G'raha's hand on the romantic gondola vibe, 10/10.

3 out of 10 and a huge cringe if you would not. He's got to stop Striving.

Hey it's the star of the show!! Adorable hairstyle out, cute plot-important earring on, and wearing her exact character colours but adorable beach wear :)

I love that she looks kind of like she went to the girls for advice and got the top from Y'shtola and the shorts from Alisaie, and she probably was very serious and stressed about getting this right even though there's no rules and no one's judging her -

oops.

Anyway the ballet shoes are adorable and go with all the cute picto spins and twirls :)

I think the strict colour scheme does speak to the slight lack of fleshing out she got so far in the story (we don't really have any real character reason that picto in particular spoke to her and this glam isn't one of the many fun takes people had on how to dress to meet that brief ). I don't think DT did more than just repeat that she's serious and sweet and trying really hard to get out of her shell and be more fun and creative and also she's been practicing dodging really hard she shouts mid-Trust combat (bless her). But ALSO getting out of the shell is really hard and she only found out everything and got some closure in the final level 100 quests so there wasn't really much to do with her after that.

This is like her First Non-Plot-Critical Whimsy Moment and losing the hood or any cat ears entirely (and there are perfectly functional cat ears to wear in game) is a good step considering we know she wears it precisely because she needed a sort of advance PR campaign to make her look cute and approachable before she opened her mouth and started bringing down the vibe (serious scary children are SO funny though and i love that for her). Having the same top as Y'shtola is a good thing for trying to make her less childish and have her trying to show that now as she takes this huge step out from the background. I mean, it still has a slight sense of her costuming herself and pushing herself out of comfort zones as she always does, but it's 100% in character so I adore it.

1000/10 because Krile is great and there's so much going on here and it's so fun when a character's whole personality is a costume and then they're like aurgh wait do I even want that??

[love-ardour-anarchism]

I was going to make this a poem but I feel inept in that regard right now so buckle up for Just a Rant

I'm 28 years old and I've identified as so many things that I've stopped counting. And I don't think that any of them truly were "wrong" and that just adds to my confusion.

I thought I was bi, I came out as asexual when I realized other people thought about "sex" and I did not. I came out as demisexual when I met my first girlfriend and I realized making her cum made me feel good. I came out as nonbinary cause I realized I'm not cis and that felt like the "less radical" thing to come out as. I came out as a trans woman when I realized I wanted to transition and I thought that estrogen was just for women. I came out as nonbinary and butch when I realized that people's well-meaning "womanhood 101" felt just as oppressive as the endless choir of "how to be a man". I called myself a bambi lesbian when I found REAL ADULT LOVE for the first time and I did realize that I quite liked the label and the things that it contained. I spent years skirting the edges of identity and listening to weirdos giving me exclusionist talks until I threw all that in the bin and stopped giving a fuck what other people thought about the divide between "bi" and "lesbian" and what that all meant about who was allowed to be what and why.

I came to realize that to me "lesbian" is more about my feelings regarding EVERYTHING that society expects of me in terms of gender AND sexuality and that maybe if it truly came down to wording it I was panromantic.

I started exploring polyamory more and realized that most of my relationships had at least been partly queerplatonic.

My relationship with one of my partners started as as non-romantic, non-sexual and then gradually started looking more and more that way. We started being horny for one another, we had so much sex one time they visited me that I injured myself a number of times. Eventually over the years they lost their libido and I spent some time crying in therapy cause I thought that meant they didn't love me until I realized that they obviously do love me and if they desire sex or not REALLY shouldn't matter to me as an ace person in the first place.

I got into another relationship, with one of my long time best friends, and that ended up involving sex. I realized I'm not exclusively a top and a dom, I realized that maybe I wasn't just stone butch after all. I started exploring all that more.

Eventually my partner of 5 years came out to me as aromantic and I thought that my heart broke until they told me that they'd always felt that way and they just lacked the words. When we sat down and mapped out common ground I'd never felt as happy and I came to realize that love could change and still be whole.

I started getting closer with someone and I realized that I wanted to hold her hand and maybe kiss her. That budding romance came to be one summer long and there were countless talks of what "romance" actually meant because after my partner's coming out I started to deconstruct all that. I entered that connection prepared to get my heart broken and then the heartbreak never came. We've been together for over a year and we've redefined what "together" means multiple times and what remains the same is that we love each other.

I'm a service top. I'm a power bottom. I'm a switch verse. I'm a soft stone butch. I'm a bambi dyke. I'm a transfem femboy tomboy drag peasant. I'm a lesbian but not in the way that society thinks. I'm asexual, I'm aromantic, I'm so in love.

Does it make sense? Maybe not. But love is like a living being. You cannot rightly cut open its skin and dissect it without killing it.

[mommyclaws]

look as a lesbian I don’t get why it’s so awful to just want lesbian spaces?? We as queer people all have different experiences and we can have smaller spaces while still embracing the whole community.

Lesbians go through different experiences than bi non-men do. That DOES NOT mean “we suffer more” or whatever because I hate the whole oppression olympics shit. We are not attracted to men neither sexually nor romantically, and that’s what makes us oppressed in this heteronormative world. We go through harassment, corrective rape, violence, and conversion “therapy” because we are homosexual. If my dad ever found out I was exclusively attracted to women I would get kicked out. Why is it suddenly so awful and “gatekeepy” to ask us to have our own spaces? We still have sapphic spaces! We even have bi spaces and pan spaces! Heck, I see gay non-women are allowed to have their own spaces!

It’s harmful to be treated as a monolith. I’m not attracted to men, and saying im an “exclusionist” for this is lesbophobic. I’m not evil for being exclusively attracted to non-men. I’m not evil for saying we should have our own spaces while we’d still have sapphic spaces!

Words have meanings, and the lesbian label is important to me, for all of its history and all of my struggles. I’m tired of us all being seen as “big mean lesbians who hate men” so so much. It reeks of misogyny to me.

I am heavily disappointed, and I ask everyone to please understand why bi lesbians are harmful.

I'm disappointed you've missed the point of my post. I was talking about the history of different lesbians and sapphics being excluded and hated in our community through generations. The conversation wasn't about bi lesbians specifically, it was about the butches, transfemmes, Pan/Bi, Aro/Ace, nonbinary, and countless other identities that were or ARE still considered not "valid" members of our community at point or another. I was pointing out how this "Bi Lesbian exclusion" is just a repeat of past mistakes and in the retrospective it is rooted in radfem/terf ideology that claims sapphics have to present and feel a certain way to be accepted. I didn’t say anywhere that being attracted to non-men is evil, I didn’t call anyone a “big mean lesbian”. You’re putting words into my mouth. That entire post was about defending sapphic’s right to attraction and expression.

Lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, non cis women and etc can all be oppressed, harassed, hate crimed, rejected by friends/family and other terrible things for their non heteronormative attraction.

Some people are failing to realize these exclusively “one identity spaces" they feel are being threatened don't actually exist in real life. Sure someone can have like, a "nonbinaries only" discord server or a meet up with friends who are all the the same identity. But a majority of queer spaces in real life? They don't have those rules because theres no way to separate queer identities neatly like that- There isn't a need to. You're going to find bisexuals and pansexuals and nonbinaries and trans people and all sorts of other identities at the same lesbian bar, the same sapphic support group, the same circle of friends.

So what exactly are these "spaces" that every other identity has and lesbians supposedly don't? Maybe ask why bisexuals, pansexuals, etc also being in a sapphic space feels so threatening to some in the first place? They have a right to be there as well. We are a community.

A label can be used and defined as whatever the owner of the label is comfortable with! "Lesbian" has always been an umbrella term. It can be a singular identity or it can describe any sapphic experience or it can do lots of things, labels have always been flexible in this way. Someone using the label differently than another person isn't harmful. It's expression.

[alientopsurgery]

i had someone message me recently asking me what "transmasc butch" meant in my bio. i debated answering them for a while, wondering if it was an earnest question or a troll, but in the end i'm an over-sharer, so i though i'd give an explanation a shot.

when i was 15 someone close to me died. i had a lot of time off of school to grieve. i also had a lot of quiet time to myself, just me and my thoughts. i had never really had a deep self reflection before, because i was always busy with school or band or distracted by ADHD. i called myself a lesbian, but i never stopped to consider that maybe i wasn't even a girl in the first place. i came to realize i felt zero connection to womanhood. it's hard to explain, i guess. i suppose it's like a cis person trying to imagine if they were the "opposite" gender. i realized i had always been uncomfortable since starting puberty, but i had been ignoring it because "feeling weird" was "normal". in retrospect, i realized that i hated going from a relatively gender neutral body as a young kid to exclusively being seen as female, because of the puberty i didn't want. i hated that i was stuck being perceived that way, when it didn't match how i felt about myself on the inside. i hate the cliche of "trapped in the wrong body", because the only thing that made my body "wrong" was how others perceived it. i grew to hate my chest because it made me be seen as female.

anyway, i started off by saying i was nonbinary, and switched to they/them pronouns. i cut my long hair for the first time, and started binding. when i came out to my mom, she was concerned that i was going to get bullied, and seemingly tried to dissuade me from going public, but i'm stubborn, and did it anyway. i didn't care if other people thought i was "weird". they would either respect my decision or not, and if they didn't, i would correct them. i had a lot more confidence back then, being a moody teen.

after some time, i started to realize i felt a bit more on the masculine side. i called myself a demi-boy, but people found that confusing, so eventually i just started saying i was a trans man. i figured cis people already had a hard enough time understanding transgender people, and if i was a binary trans person i might get off a little easier. i switched to he/him pronouns, which i still use today. idk, they just feel right.

but after several years of calling myself a trans man, i had this terrifying thought creep up now and then. what if i wasn't actually a trans man? i had already started T, and undergone top surgery, so i was all in at this point. it took a while to realize, but i had bought into my own lie. i told others i was a man for so long that i believed it, and now those same kind of thoughts were coming back making me doubt my gender identity. i realized i was ultimately unhappy with the title of "man", like i had been with people perceiving me as female.

i'm still very much transgender, though. i do not consider myself female, or male. i think my initial instincts were right; i'm some sort of nonbinary. but i feel masculine, and very trans, so i call myself transmasc. it feels more complicated than that, but its the closest word i can get to. i added butch to it recently, i think it fits me as well, i feel strongly connected to butches.

i used to be very sensitive to people calling me she/her, but now i find it amusing. i think now that i'm not clinging so strongly to being seen as exclusively a man, i find it entertaining to see how strangers will perceive me. though if my friends did it, that would be a different story.

hmm. this might just sound like a bunch of incoherent rambling, but whatever. it matches the vibe of how i feel, too. it's very hard to describe in words how i feel about such a complicated and deep part of myself. sometimes i wish i had a simpler answer, but i also love the chaos at times.

[bi-sapphics]

honestly half of this “lesbians vs. bi women” discourse wouldn’t even exist if y’all could comprehend that material reality exists and what it actually means. you’ve all become so chronically online that you think we have completely separate experiences that can never ever overlap, and if they somehow do, then it’s not enough to mean anything. you think there’s this solid line between black and white with no grey in the middle and that’s just not so.

some lesbians mistakenly think they’re attracted to men via comphet, y’all seem to grasp the validity of that concept well enough. bi women can falsely think they’re lesbians, also because of comphet, which y’all seem to take issue with for some reason. bi women experience homophobia in addition to biphobia, just like how lesbians experience lesbophobia specifically in addition to general homophobia. bi women get called dykes - in other words, if you want to use your own argument against us reclaiming it, bi women experience what you want to call lesbophobia (maybe rethink your argument if that makes you mad lol). bi women participated in dyke marches and lesbian feminism (and still do). bi women use butch/femme and sometimes even futch and nobody irl actually cares (we do see it as more than just an aesthetic, btw). bi women get called and are sometimes considered lesbians (not to endorse mspec lesbians, but we do actually have knowledgeable experience in that field). it’s not just bisexuals who are always feminine and lesbians who are or can be masculine. also, some lesbians prefer to call their attraction to certain nonbinary genders bisexual and that preference is perfectly okay.

there is so much more overlap between us than often gets recognized, whether because y’all are too caught up in the discourse to realize it or because you just don’t want to admit it so that your biphobic & bimisogynistic narrative can continue to make sense for you. obviously i would say it hurts us bi sapphics the most, but lesbians are really selling themselves short too just because some of them don’t want to be associated with us just by embracing their full history, culture, and dynamic.

it’s not that we’re suddenly taking things away from lesbians by acknowledging what we’re actually entitled to as bisexuals, it’s that we’ve always been entitled to these things and your “lesbian-exclusive” cultures never actually were lesbian-exclusive. so i understand why it feels like something’s being taken away from you, but it never really was only yours to begin with and your insistence just makes you look selfish for no good reason. to put it bluntly, “lesbian-exclusive” and “bi-exclusive” aren’t real existing categories (except... y’know... different flags and the double moons symbol. but that’s kind of it). that’s not how material reality works. that’s a concept that is, ironically, exclusively online. you have to realize that “lesbian” and “bisexual” were never supposed to be separated in the first place. there’s no problem with appreciating that lesbian does have its own closed-off definition now, and that’s valid, but it’s just an unobjectionable fact that this isn’t how it was supposed to be without radfems intervening. lesbian separatism didn’t happen with the consent of bisexuals and that’s just a lie you’ve been told. sorry about that.

[somecunt]

I really wanna hear about people using this,that, these, and those as pronouns.

I don't know how any of those would work together. Well... some people use it/that as a pronoun. Also apparently it/its pronouns are slightly frowned upon in the nonbinary community good thing I'm under x-gender, so I don't have to deal with that.

But it's difficult because this,that,those,these involves distance. I'm not gonna talk about how these and those refers to multiple things, because that was the same argument for they/them, which was always dumb because people often use they/them without even thinking about it for gender binary people.

He/him/his

It/it/its

That/that/thats ?

That/This/Those ?

I find it interesting how problems are constantly forming.

Fuck Trans people

Fuck Nonbinary Trans people

Fuck Nonbinary Trans people that use Neopronouns

Fuck Nonbinary Trans people that use Neopronouns that are words

Fuck Nonbinary Trans people that use Neopronouns that are dehumanizing.

There's always an argument.

I think it would be great if forms had something like

Male

Female

Nonbinary

Agender

Genderfluid

GenderQueer

Androgyne

**Edit: Aporagender**

Other

I'm trying to get all the umbrella terms for people who don't really want to be under the label as just nonbinary.

I know there's bigender,trigender, demigender... maybe multigender would be a good umbrella term for those?

There's also where people feel like their autism affects their gender

Can someone make a chart or something of all the not rare genders but layer them as umbrella terms, cause if someone doesn't it's gonna end up being me. And if you don't do it well, I'm still gonna do it.

I'm coming to realize X-gender is a japanese thing, I did indeed find it through Japanese media but I felt like I had heard it long before. Like I'm 1000% sure I heard X-gender long before I heard nonbinary. Maybe I was thinking of 3rd gender hmmm.

Also why are gender nonconforming people marked as transgender, that doesn't make any goddamn sense to me and no one has ever bought it up. A cis butch lesbian qualifies as gender nonconforming and so does a cis femboy. I wouldn't call it a cis thing cause trans people can also be gender nonconforming.

I can understand stand how gender nonconforming people can face discrimination but shouldn't it be it's own thing?

The Wikipedia categorizes having a gender expression that is different from your birth sex as being transgender. This makes no sense.

Though, I was able to figure out a cis person could be trans I might have already bought it up in a previous post. This wouldn't make them transgender, but transsexual, a cis person that seeks to medically transition to any extent and completely identifies with their original birth sex.

I'd love it if someone, anyone really talked about any of this. I'm willing to discuss any of these things

[okidenshi]

Being a lesbian and also autistic, I’ve always had like. an interesting relationship with my gender- like when i was a kid i was really comforted when i heard about the term tomboy, and i described myself as such for a long time.

And like, i definitely also went thru that mindset that most women do where you just, despise everything associated with traditional femininity because obviously liking the color pink and wearing ugg boots meant you were “giving into the patriarchy” or whatever nonsense have you.

Tho my last two years of highschool, i realized that’s bullshit and i should live to do Girly Things if that’s what made me happy, and be unapologetic about it. And i was, i wore make up a lot and wore pinks and went to Starbucks and went to prom- and i loved it, i truly felt comfortable during that time. Now i had times were i would dress in flannel and jeans and shit cause i also knew i liked to look futchy too, but yea for the most part i was very feminine, and i was happy to express myself that way.

But... that being said, as I’ve lived outside of high school, i do wonder sometimes how much of that joy i felt about dressing that way came from the confirmation from others that i was doing a great job of fitting in with how girls are expected to dress an act. As an autistic person, trying to fit in socially is a struggle, and when we do it right, we are often praised by others and our own minds for doing so.

While that can be harmful for autistic ppl in general, being queer on top of that might also give the person (in this case.... me lol) a warped sense of gender identify and expression. On the side of my autism, there’s a desire to chameleon myself into society, and there is joy in successfully doing so, but that joy is, overall, short lived. As much as i like to Look Good, my first need as an autistic person is to feel comfortable in what i’m wearing. Even if i feel good wearing feminine clothes, the dread i eventually develop over having to wear clothes that are Nice Looking over a sweat shirt and loose jeans... it builds up, and eventually i think you can experience burn out from it.

But that’s the sensory stuff; i still acknowledge that, most of the time, i do have a desire to express femme-like. I like long hair, i like putting on short shorts and having round thighs and sleek shoulders an a softer face and wearing flowing dresses

And to be fair, I still adore the futch and butch Looks as well, and i often find myself yearning to chop my hair shorter and wear loose jeans and denim jackets and fingerless gloves. Like, the amount of times I think of Ellie from TLOU and just go “wow, i just wanna look like that” is quit often lol.  

But still, you can be a woman and dress masculine and feminine, i know that.

So....... why do i also find myself seeing men or male characters and thinking “god, if only i looked like that”? What about Frodo’s sharp jawline yet gentle voice and soft eyes made me think “thats me”, was there something about Danny Phantom’s clone being a girl and him being a man that made me so entranced as a kid when i saw it, why is it when i look at Cloud Strife in a dress do i ponder “is this what people mean when they say they experience gender euphoria?”

The idea of being a “man” or presenting masculine while not identifying as a woman or a man has been a off and on question since i was about 14, maybe even younger but 14 was when i had better terminology to think about it.

I don’t.... think i want to be a man, no, i don’t really like how that sounds or feels. I’m... ok with being a woman, but there are times were i dont really want to be a /woman/. I just want to be a body, a blank canvas to express a look or idea in that moment, and when i’m done with it, i have a “home base” gender to return to, something i’ve known and that i find familiar and safe. 

But yea... it’s confusing, and sometimes i feel dumb for thinking or talking about it, but it was been on my mind a bit the last.... while i guess??

Idek what terms to use. like.... technically i’m nonbinary, like by what i just described, you’d think that’s how i’d identify, but for some reason using that term doesn’t feel right for me. But i’m not a Woman either, i’m like?? a Queer Woman, yknow?

Sometimes i wonder if my sexuality is also just what i want my gender to be which i KNOW sounds ridiculous because they are two separate things but its just a thought i had. Like... women, yes, but. Queer about it.

Pronouns are also Wild, like i use she/her and honestly, even tho im like... and off-brand queer “woman”, i really do prefer she/her. They/them and he/him and other pronouns i’ve seen dont Feel Right, so um............. she/her will probably always bee the pronouns i use tbh. Maybe its my autism brains just liking familiarity, but they feel most comfortable to me even if im Not Exactly A Woman. 

Anyway...... this probably made no sense, but it was just on my mind i guess. TLDR; my gender’s just my name at this point and sometimes i think i wanna be a Boi but ehh?? eehmhmmmklsjdfl yknow?

[cumuluscrow]

dumb stupid gender stuff

i can’t believe i’ve actually resorting to making a read more tumblr post about this but sometimes life throws u curveballs

it’s so so hard for me to form coherant sentences about this topic, it’s just confusing and upsetting and i feel like the more i discover the less i know

i’m gonna refrain from describing my whole fucking gender journey but in essence, i feel like i see myself in a far more gender-neutral way, and i feel varying degrees of discomfort when i’m recognised as being female. that’s the long and short of it. i get that this probably seems like SUCH a minor thing to a lot of people (god there has to be a name for everything nowadays not liking makeup doesn’t mean you’re not female!! just be a butch lesbian or something you know). but it’s really not like that, i dont know how to describe it. this is NOT a ‘decision’ i made lightly, i’ve been torn up over this for years, and i know that i feel so refreshingly like myself when i just confess to myself that this is who i am. someone who is non-binary.

i’m trying to kind of... figure out metaphors and ways of describing the way i feel. it feels like i’m a spy with some kind of female disguise, going through life lying to everyone, and that brings a strange kind of disconcertment with it, almost as if i feel bad for lying to people... with like, my appearance??

i dont even know if this IS gender stuff. i might well turn out to be cis, when i finally figure this shit out in about 300 years time. maybe i’m just really insecure and fucked up (which i kinda am) and i’m subconciously choosing to channel my self-hate into my gender. i dont know! all i know is that i prefer to be seen and referred to in a gender-neutral way. that’s really all i know.

here’s the thing though, because this goes far deeper than me. how do you exist as someone who is non-binary? how is that possible? every single fucking aspect of life is gendered, society, science. the way you recognise people. when you see a person, you always notice 2 things - their race, and their percieved gender. you can’t not.

i feel like i can’t quite get across my point here. i think what i’m trying to get at is internalised hate. there’s a part of me that definitely hates me for this. like, just be goddamn normal for once in your life. i support non-binary people, of course i do, but there’s a part of me that eyerolls at the purple pixie cut, binder-wearing nb, and there’s a part of me that eyerolls at the sparkly eyeshadow-wearing, bearded nb, and i hate that. i hate that that’s in me, not only is it not very nice, but it makes things so much harder on myself and if i hate myself any more than i already do then my soul is gonna collapse in on myself and form a black hole. finally, i will be free of gender.

oh and then there’s the flipside, of course. my brain can’t give me a break because if it’s not thinking that sort of complex shit, its thinking that i’m not nb - not at all, you’re some snowflake attention seeker and you’re an asshole for appropriating other peoples terms. there are people who are actually nb and they’re nothing like you, they’re just not. they’re real and you’re some messed up immature little bitch.

then there’s the less deep stuff, the practical side of things.

i came out to my girlfriend a few weeks ago. even though she had a hunch, she was still really upset and i still feel terrible for messing with her feelings, or something

we’ve been best friends since we were in infant school. she doesn’t know how to change how she perceives someones gender when she’s known them so long. she was upset because she felt like she knew me, she felt like she knew my ‘soul’, that it felt feminine, or something (such an aquarius). she was upset because she knew she saw me in a way that might make me feel uncomfortable.

we can’t seem to have productive conversations about this. we just ignore it 99.9% of the time, and then we have conversations late in the evening where we both cry and we wake up the next morning and everything is the same. i still hear her use she pronouns in conversations with me (eg. i bet that person was stood there like ‘what is she doing’? the she in reference to me. bad example but i can’t think of any others.

here’s the thing though, i dont want to correct her. i dont want to make it weird, and i dont want to bring my issues into a normal scenario. after all, this is something we exclusively, only acknowledge in small, serious conversations late at night, i can’t bring it out into a normal scenario. and i think she’s the same. we’re both equally uncomfortable to acknowledge it.

which begs the question - where the fuck do we go from here?

oh, and other people. yeah, that’s a thing, too.

i don’t plan on ever telling either of my parents. talking to my dad about normal stuff kind of feels like torture at the best of times, and my mum, bless her, doesn’t really... get things. i’d rather her just straight up not know this, than have an inaccurate idea of what it was.

work colleagues? well, before lockdown when i was at work i had to listen to a conversation about how nonbinary people are all stupid, gender exists, sex exists, biology, blah blah blah (already something i’m extremely insecure abotu the concept of) i don’t know how to properly describe how unpleasant that is to stand and listen to, knowing that you’re the exact person they’re talking shit about. it makes dread curl up in your chest, it makes you feel sick, and it makes you too anxious to even think about speaking up. when i got home i just started crying

other family? well, i once had to sit and listen to my sister go on an anti-nb rant, too, equally unpleasant experience

all other family is shit. just shit. bunch of wankers i’d rather not talk to them ever

i feel like, i finally have a vision of a door in my mind that i’ve been looking for for years, but when i approach it and look through it’s just filled with so much anxiety and panic and distress that it negates that fact that i’m on the other side of that door, living far more authentically

i dont know what to do next. i really don’t, and i’m scared. i feel desperate to reach out and like, talk to some other nonbinary people or something. just, i want someone, in real life, to stand there and validate me, without there being any catch, without there being any negatives, without any other things at play. 

wow. this is so long

[analytickle-lezdom-in-space]

Welp, here we are

Tumblr is doing the thing.  It’s hard to say exactly what the thing is because tumblr is poorly executing it and poorly communicating it as always, but suffice to say, unless the decision gets reversed, we’re not gonna be able to do nsfw on this site anymore.  What will this mean?  Will be there a mass exodus?  Seems to be already.  WIll the site survive or will it lose all its userbase and sink forever?  It remains to be seen.  I certainly suspect there’ll always be at least a few users clinging to it to the bitter end.  

But maybe more important, what will I do?  *Shrug* I dunno, really.  Might leave entirely eventually, although probably not right away. This site can be stressful as hell at the best of times.  Plus, fewer TERFs.  Might find another site if a viable alternative really emerges, I’ll certainly try a few of the supposed alternatives out and see if I like where it’s going.  At the very least could be a supplement for tumblr.  I think that’s probably a good way to look at it honestly because a lot of people aren’t gonna wanna leave tumblr easy but no one is saying you have to leave tumblr to try out other sites.  You can keep your options open, try some different platforms, that way you have a safety net if things get cray-cray and also it provides more impetus for tumblr to actually make positive change for once because they know we’ve found other options and need them less and they can’t push us as far anymore without us jumping ship.  

I’ll definitely stay for at least a little while, focus more on text posts and advice stuff, still including kink, but minus any actual porn.  Probably will also focus more on fandom stuff and photography.  Might make an entirely sfw sideblog eventually and if so I’ll let mutuals i trust know about it.  

I guess if I do stick around long term, it’ll be for this:  When I started on tumblr, it was mostly just because I wanted to share stuff that I thought was cool. But I also wanted to use it as an outlet for parts of myself I had a hard time being open about, my queerness, my thoughts on social issues, kink, my polyamorous relationships, romance.   And over time I began to find that my experiences were ones that a lot of people didn’t really even seem to exist?  There was a lot of misunderstandings about transgender and nonbinary people, oftentimes from other trans/nonbinary people and a lot of people consciously talking about the world in these very exact and narrow ways that didn’t fit the realities of my situation and as i began to see that a lot of other people were also being excluded by these narrow definitions I decided that even if I didn’t wanna actively wade into tumblr discourse and argue with or call out people, I did want to actually talk about my experiences, do my best to raise up and signal boost the experiences of other marginalized and ignored people without speaking on their behalf, and just create a space for people to learn and have their preconceptions challenged.  

Because, I don’t really fit into a lot of the boxes people tend to put on our experiences even in social justice circles in a lot of ways.  I am a transgender woman, assigned male at birth. I don’t experience body dysphoria.  I am a lesbian.  I am a nonbinary woman, my identity does not exist within the gender binary.  I am GNC, butch in particular, and don’t perform femininity.  I have a beard, for God’s sake.  And I didn’t even change my name at first, and I’m still probably gonna keep my birth name as a middle name because I like my new name more but my old name still represents a part of my existence and I didn’t change genders and my old pre-transition self wasn’t me pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I just hadn’t fully learned who I was yet.  Every trans person’s experience is different, but the ones commonly presented as “the default trans experience” never represented me in a lot of ways, even among other trans lesbians. 

 And it really doesn’t stop there, I have ADHD, and BPD, and might be on the autism spectrum.  On a smaller, less social justice related scale my sex life isn’t especially “normal” either.  My trans identity doesn’t mean being submissive or playing along with traditional femininity and certainly doesn’t involve any backwards ass sissy kink nonsense. I am dominant, in and out of the bedroom.  I am the full spectrum kind of dominant, but not really into pain.  I’m a gentle femdom type but not into men despite 90% of gfd content on this site being male sub focused.  I like tickling, one of the more fringe but not actually very out there or extreme kinks that the rest of kinky tumblr keeps at an arm’s length for some reason.   I can occasionally bottom/submit in bedroom situations but that doesn’t make me less of a domme.  I am polyamorous and have a wide variety of different relationships with different people but they aren’t less special or intimate because of it.  I am a deeply religious protestant christian despite how openly sexual and queer I am.  I am a sex positive feminist but I want to protect the rights of people NOT to be sexual and promote sexual safety too, not just wild celebrations of sex without any consideration of who might get hurt.  I am an nsfw blogger but I try to make my space as friendly to ace people and easy to block the nsfw parts as possible and those things share space with random dragon age memes and music and my thoughts on animal welfare issues.  In ways from the minor to the major, I’ve always felt on here like I am kinda the standard bearer on a lot of issues, the only really prominent blogger in some of these communities representing for some of these backgrounds.  And there are others that don;t get much voice that I will never be part of being an able bodied white Christian perisex, allosexual/alloromantic, non-male-attracted person.  And I want to use my platform to listen to those people as well.  My therapist gave me a good piece of advice when she taught me that I can’t argue away the narrow minded and all I can do is just stand there and go “Whether or not you want to acknowledge me, here I am.”   And that’s what tumblr is for me.  A place to be the most radical thing it’s possible for someone like me to be:  me.  A place where I can make my existence and my experiences and the things I’ve learned known and other people can listen and learn, and where I can try to do the same with other people.  And  Ithink that’s valuable.  So I may just decide to leave yet depending on how frustrating tumblr decides to make things, but I am not leaving in the immediate future.  

I am investigating other possible ways to do what I am doing though, and make sure all of y’all can still talk to me if I get deleted or leave, so: 

I have kik, discord, skype, fetlife, whatsapp, and instagram, and I might invest in a snapchat at some point, plus i have email.  If y’all wanna talk to me, ask me about the possibility of chatting on one of those platforms

I’m looking into stuff like Ello or Pillowfort or Mastodon so stay tuned for my thoughts on those 

And I will keep on here in the immediate future at the very least.  We’ll see where I go from here.  I’ll try to keep y’all in the know.  Wishing you all happy trails wherever you go!  

[peppersbian]

June 17 2021

Posted to the Crockercore Instagram

Pronoun update lmao. Not that you specifically may care but i figure maybe me talking about my feelings will help other people with theirs

I've been struggling to identities what exactly has been my recent disconnect from my gender presentation. He/Him has always been atrocious, She/Her feels like a threat, and they/them feels empty.

I've been going by she and they pronouns for four years. I have been confident in these pronouns for four years. And only recently they've felt wrong and bad due to everyone saying shit like "cis she/they".

That's probably enough to make someone feel invalidated. I am not cis woman. I never have been. And to be perceived as such is wrong. But that's what people do now. As much as people will say "well obviously nb she/they's aren't included" the damage is already done towards people's reception if she/they pronoun users.

In addition to this, comes the extra intersection of being a lesbian. I don't enter men in my life or my identity what so Ever. This inherently separates us from traditional womanhood because of how the standards and perceptions of womanhood revolve around men.

Gender nonconformity is a major and intrinsic part of my identity. It may seem like an oxymoron to be both nb and gnc, bear with me. My nonbinary identity stems from this disconnection. I am not a ""woman"" therefore I am other.

But lately I have considered recently is if I have been using the label of nb to deflect from having to explain and face the loneliness that comes from no one truly understanding my experience and relationship to gender unless they too are a gnc person. And even then!!! I have met so many gnc people who can't understand and straight up disrespect my gnc identity in relation to my lesbian identity.

But adversely, I have considered if my attempts to distance myself from the terms "nonbinary" is a result of most people's perception of nb people as transmasculine agender people.

(Which is an extremely small portion of the nb umbrella that is totally chill and I love them but I'm incredibly frustrated that's what people think all nonbinary is).

I not am transmasculine. I am not agender. But because of my masculinity and lack of woman-ness, this definition will fill the gap in the eyes of other people. I do not want that.

Its frustrating. I do not want to be perceived as something I am not, but continually my identity will be pushed away to satisfy other's comforts.

I have been feeling this disconnection because I just hurt and feel alone. I've been scrambling to change my presentation because I want people to understand who I am. But that's never going to happen lmfao. It hurts when no one understands your experience. It hurts when they deny your attempts at expressing it.

Inherent aloneness. This is the birthright of butches. To paraphrase Stone Butch Blues: "when I looked in the mirror I wondered if I was brave enough to become the person I saw in it".

I am a butch lesbian. A dyke. That is my identity, holistically. A Gender and sexuality all rolled into one beautiful bundle that cannot be expressed separately from one another.

I wish I could say it doesn't matter how people perceive me. Because I care. I wish people would not see my as a woman for my agab. I wish they wouldn't see me as a "man" for my masculinity. I wish nonlesbians and even just generally nonbutches could understand what makes me fundamentally me. But they won't! Never have, and probably never will!

And this might sound like a complete bummer, but I see this as a *not* bad thing. Gender nonconformity is defiant. It has existed forever. It will continue to exist. And it currently exists in me. People's rejection of my presentation only indicates their lack of understanding.

And this essay probably cleared nothing up for no one! Hell, who knows maybe I'll get a few "nb lesbians can't exist those aren't real" reply's in my DM's. Yawn, get a life. But this is for me. This was cathartic.

Tldr: I don't give a shit any more, and I never should have. Pea brained motherfuckers just can't understand how ridiculously sexy I am.

Tldr^2: Lesbians hmu Awooga

Tldr^3: I'm going by They/She pronouns, and prefer masculine terms.

Tldr^4: read stone Butch blues by Leslie Feinberg (after checking content warnings)