#and used their queer identity as a shield

[dayvan]

Tbh no idea what post you're talking about but I agree always. I've seen so many posts lately along the lines of I'm a white transgender person the most oppressed minority of all so Do Not listen to the people calling me racist and genuinely unless the people calling them racist are insane terfs/transphobes they are always in fact a bit racist 👎 no minority frees you from being white sorry

it basically boiled down to "instead of talking about how white transfems are racist, how about we talk about literally anyone else, we have it hard enough as it is" and this is being gracious to her point honestly, she explicitly states that 'nobody talks about how white gay men, trans men and butches are racist', which is so extremely wrong and she would know that it's wrong if she bothered to engage with nonwhite queers outside of her dashboard bubble.

but of course as soon as people of color outside her bubble started weighing in on how trans women are not exempt from being called out on their racism it devolved to "ohh the TMEs found this post time to double down". typical. this is why i think it's useless to engage at all. terminally online trans people don't want to listen, intersectionality is a joke to them and they don't interact with people outside their ingroup unless they absolutely have to

[olderthannetfic]

/post/767033281734688768/i-hate-the-convos-about-passing-but-i-do-think I'd love to agree with this, because it touches on a point I've made constantly in response to "but bi people in f/m partnerships don't need to worry about being with their partner in public," which is "true, but to say they're privileged because of that also means closeted gay people are privileged, and a non-passing trans man with a cis male partner is privileged, and a lot of people would be mad as hell if you said that." It's not that individual instances of privilege in comparison to other queer people never occur, but deciding "x identity is inherently privileged" isn't actually a conclusion you can come to because of that. Any passing privilege, whether it's bi people in f/m partnerships, closeted gay people, non-passing gay trans people with cis partners or passing straight trans people with cis partners, inherently relies on your identity being secret, and being forced to lie about your identity just to maintain privilege isn't privilege in the same way cishets are privileged. It's not "privilege" in the truest sense, it's...survival? Which I feel is what this anon sort of fails at recognising, even if she recognises that any passing privilege is conditional and you can pass and also be oppressed, because like...at the end she says we all need to band together as a community and lift each other up, but that sentiment is sort of incompatible with the earlier sentiment of "people that pass, now is our moment to put ourselves on the line to help the less privileged!" and like...that's actually just going to endanger the people that pass. It's not actually the responsibility of people that pass to be allies or human shields right now. Can't we, you know, call on FUCKING CISHET PEOPLE to step up to the responsibility of being allies right now? There are way, way, way many more of them than us anyway. For most people that pass, there are still going to be many aspects of their lives affected by queerphobia. If op can acknowledge that, and she did, then she might be able to see why "people that are only suffering slightly less than other queer people, it's OUR RESPONSIBILITY to be allies right now!" might feel dismissive. (Also as people in the notes pointed out, "aroace women aren't affected by abortion bans" is a very very very ignorant opinion to have. I'm getting sterilised despite being aroace because, you know, rape exists, and aroace women face high rates of corrective assault.)

--

Cleaning out my inbox from a couple of weeks ago.

Finding all the asks I didn't read for obvious reasons.

[erela-tsisdu]

Really sucks I had to leave my Mastodon instance but I just cannot be in the same space as an admin saying Jews believe in fairytales to commit genocide.

[nearisqueer]

Something incredibly interesting and telling to me about three high profile video essays about plagiarism or specific plagiarists coming out at the same time, two by men and one by a woman, and the two name and shame but the one specifically hides the identity of the man who stole her work in case she winds up blacklisted. Very curious. Worth considering.

[autolenaphilia]

This post has been in the back of my mind ever since i saw it last year because it is a mask off moment for a usually more subtle transmisogynist. : I blacked out the account names being accused in the screenshot above, because i don't want to be spreading fake transmisogynistic callouts around even to be criticquing them.

Like "trans women are sexual predators who use their identity as queer women as cover to prey on children and other vulnerable people, and liberals are too afraid of being called transmisogynistic to stop them" is like the basic transmisogynist narrative. It's literally the terf narrative about trans women. This is the real terf rhetoric, not trans women criticizing (trans)misogyny.

Yet it is still so common among ostensibly transfem-accepting liberals/leftists. Like trans women using their identity as a shield against legitimate criticism of their predatory behavior is such a common trope in queer spaces that claim to be against terfs. This is because TME people use hating on terfs as a substitute for dealing with their own transmisogyny.

This is extremely common among people in the callout culture transmisogyny fandom like the screenshotted blogger.They go for this line about "transfems using their identity as a shield against genuine criticism" all the time when their obvious if lightly veiled transmisogyny is pointed out. This is their main argument, their own shield against criticism. And it rings very hollow when these people call out transfem after transfem as sexual predators based on them liking harmless kinks like fauxcest and CNC, literally using old radfem arguments against kink.

What this sort of thing is, is the denial that transmisogyny even exists. A claim that instead of being an especially oppressed class of women, we are actually a privileged group. And terfs here are open about saying it's because we are men and have male privilege. The more subtle kind of transmisogynist, the "trans women are women, terfs dni" crowd, leaves the trans women have male privilege bit unsaid but implied.

And of course it's false. As people are surely aware, being transfem makes you more likely to publicly accused of being a sexual menace. And they are most likely false accusations. Accusations against the privileged and powerful, like cis men, are seldom false. The social power that these men wield make it dangerous for any victim to come forward.

Accusations towards members of marginalized groups like transfems, however, are easy and safe to make, because they don't have that kind of social power or privilege. Their position in any social setting is tenuous, and it's easy to turn the group against them to exile them. Transfems don't have the power to defend themselves even against the flimsiest of accusations, while privileged men can defend themselves even against the most well-documented ones. Transfems are instead more likely to be victims of abuse, and then DARVOed by their abusers, being accused of abuse when they were actually abused.

The fact is that transfems can "scream transmisogyny" but few TME people, including other lgbt people, are not likely to listen.

And this is not a "white girl" problem despite what the screenshotted post implies. This problem is far worse for black transfems suffering from transmisogynynoir, and other non-white transfems. Read writings written by black transfems like Position of Guilt: Black Hot Allostatic Load by Anonsee Storyweaver.

[aroaceleovaldez]

okay last one for the night but. honestly i really hate how the franchise has been using loyalty to Rick as a shield for so long. If Rick was involved in a project or not doesn't matter, especially not anymore.

ReadRiordan and the publishing for the franchise has been using this tactic for ages - they obscure if any writing related to the series wasn't written by Rick unless it's special circumstances. It's near impossible to find out who the ghostwriters are (Stephanie True Peters and Mary-Jane Knight). TSATS was promoted as the first time we got a non-Riordan (Rick or Haley) author working on one of the companion novels despite having seven already existing ghostwritten books in the series. The only reason Mark Oshiro was emphasized so heavily for TSATS was because they also work as a sensitivity reader for topics such as queer identity, and Rick had received backlash in the past for being a Straight Cis Old White Guy repeatedly falling into bad habits (that he hasn't broken out of) with certain characterizations that he kept doubling-down on or retconning into oblivion. The show emphasizes that Rick was involved, but the LA Times article brings into question exactly how much he was involved, and it doesn't even really matter either way. The ReadRiordan site actively avoids putting any writing credits on their articles (or art credits...) or anywhere on their site.

Practically the entire fandom unanimously agrees the musical - which had zero involvement from Rick - is the best adaptation of the series so far, including the TV show. Some of the best writing to come out of the series recently was the stuff ghostwritten by Stephanie True Peters (Camp Half-Blood Confidential, Camp Jupiter Classified, Nine from the Nine Worlds, etc). And yet when promotional stuff is posted about CHB:C, there's clearly coded language used to hide the fact that Rick himself didn't write it. Yes, that's how ghostwriters work, but at this point we should really stop pretending "Rick Riordan" isn't just a pen name for a group of authors like "Erin Hunter" and that Rick is actually writing everything in the series. I can easily look up and see which Animorphs books were ghostwritten, and who those authors were. I can find every "Erin Hunter" easily listed on official sites. And yet most people don't even know the Riordanverse franchise has ghostwriters at all.

And the franchise is still trying to use the "Tio/Uncle Rick" stuff. Author loyalty and marketing parasocial relationships isn't going to save the franchise when the author himself can't hold up his own original themes or even keep basic series bible details straight, and especially not if the editors are barely if at all doing their job. And please at least get a goddamn series bible by this point.

[hazel2468]

You know, to get political for a second.

It hasn't escaped my notice that every time someone brings up the presidential election. There is ALWAYS an early 20-somethings queer person in the comments or replies going on and on about how Biden won't help Palestine, about how Biden is doing a genocide, about how "Israel this and that" and like...

You're all fucking idiots for falling for this. You are. Because those people saying that shit are either the morons we see protesting who can't answer which river and which sea they're screaming about or who don't know what Hamas' charter says, OR they're the same fucking bots who appeared all over tumblr back before the 2016 election to try and convince all of us, using the hot political topics at the time, not to vote Dem. Because they had a vested interest in us not voting Dem.

And just to speak on the whole Palestine thing here... Do you really thing. That Trump. The racist fascist who openly wants to be a dictator. Who is buddy-buddy with Netanyahu, the other racist fascist who wants to be a dictator. Is going to do anything other than give Bibi the fucking green light to do anything he wants? If you think that Trump is going to be better for your "Pro-Palestine" movement (which, btw, is in quotes because the vast majority of the idiots supporting it don't know jack shit about what's going on and don't actually care about the Palestinian people, seeing as they have a habit of cheering for the terrorist organization that uses them as human shields, steals their money and aid for their own devices, and they have a lovely habit of attacking actual Palestinian peace activists who call them on it and ignoring what they say they actually need so...) than Biden? You're out of your fucking mind.

Holy shit I am not going to sit here and watch people fall for the same BS they did back in 2016. Israel and Palestine is the hot-button topic right now. Every time you see someone talking about how Trump has promised to roll back all the protections that the Biden/Harris admin has put in place, every time you see someone pointing out that the Republicans LITERALLY have a plan to fucking turn our country into an Evangelical hellscape, there is some fucking numbnuts in the notes, probably with a pride flag in their bio, wailing about "Genocide Joe".

And you all need to ask yourself why the hell there are all of these nearly-identical blogs. All doing the exact same thing every time someone tries to point out that another Trump term would see people literally dead and our country fucking torn apart, possibly forever. Use your fucking brains.

[chucktaylorupset]

goddddd it’s fine!! its fine!!! its okay if if 12 year old girls decide they’re asexual and look back and realize that actually it was just puberty and the gross sexualization of women that alienated them from their feelings of attraction and actually now she feels she was always allo. That’s allowed! That’s okay! Its not the end of the world if some of the people coming home to the label of asexuality are actually arriving at a way station onto what will be a better place for them. Cause you know if what she wanted was to feel she had the language to give herself permission to not be obligated to engage in sexual acts, to not exist as a sexual foodstuff for the consumption and digestion of others, If she needed the world asexual to shield her like that that’s okay!!! Cause whats important is she found a way to not do the things she wasn’t ready to do. What you wanna say no? No, you are obligated to figure out your attraction to others and the torture of its existence in a complicated fucked up world with language that doesn’t always sink home. Who is she hurting. Oh yeah it’s on a twelve year old to never be wrong about who they think they’re becoming, it’s up to a twelve year old to find a permanent state of self, it’s on a twelve year old to figure out the uncomfortableness of becoming a sexual being on their fucking own. Cause yknow if she’s wrong then people are going to use that as evidence that asexuality is a phase as if people looking for an excuse to dismiss other people’s identities would just not exist if we all perfectly performed our fucking labels like they’re the audience that decides if our fucking rock opera gets to hit broadway. Like there’s a fucking quota on how many times a person can be wrong about a label. I’m bisexual!! And if I’d just allowed myself to think that it’d be okay if I was wrong about being bisexual, or that it was okay if it wasn’t permanent, then I would’ve taken the first step to realizing I was actually a long term bisexual all the sooner.  There isn’t a fucking deadline for figuring out the perfect label for yourself, there isn’t a fucking surety purity test at the door. God, and all these trans kids and people agonizing about if they’re really trans or if they’re just faking it, as if that’s important when transitioning makes them happier! But no, we gotta make a philosophical argument from the ground up for what it means to be queer every fucking time so you don’t get it wrong cause god forbid, can you imagine

[wheneverfeasible]

Cheerleader!Eddie AU pt. 1

POV: Eddie

When Eddie found a sobbing Chrissy in the restrooms after school, where he had been about to tag some stupid shit about one of the football players who had left him with a bruised face a previous week, he hadn’t expected it to lead to them becoming friends, her breaking up with her shithead boyfriend, or him joining the cheer squad.

Yet here he is, wearing the stupid school colors and his long hair tied up in a ponytail to match Chrissy’s, even down to the identical green scrunchie. Chrissy was lucky he loved her. Platonically, of course. They’d kissed after everything, figuring that’s that the thing between them was, but it ended up being like kissing a sibling (or so Eddie guessed, not ever having had one before), but quickly discovered that whatever middle school crush might have existed was well and truly gone.

Everything else was just right, however, and if such a thing as platonic soulmates existed, then Chrissy was well and truly his. She had to be, to get him to agree to this stupid shit.

He wasn’t an official member of the cheer squad at first, nothing more than a glorified backup, but he helped her in all the practices and learned all the moves and somehow, without realizing when, he started performing at games and pep rallies. Which didn’t help the queer rumors from spreading, even when Chrissy acted like his beard at first. Because the rumors would have been galling if they hadn’t been true.

Don’t get him wrong; he liked chicks too. But there was something to be said about seeing a pretty boy on his knees.

He played it up, taunting the other team and his own with blown kisses and suggestive hand motions with his tongue in his cheek, but he had cheerleader privilege, and Chrissy’s best friend privileges, so he actually managed to avoid anything more than pointed words and threats, which he then always turned into a kink thing to make the jocks uncomfortable.

“Oh, you’re right, Princess, I look amazing on my knees,” he cooed with a wink when King Steve himself deigned to be one of the insulting masses. Of course, all Harrington had said was that he should stop messing around and get back under the pyramid during cheer practice instead of poking fun at the basketball players on the other side of the gym.

Harrington always flushed whenever Eddie got too weird, too freaky, too queer, and it was quickly becoming one of his favorite things. Chrissy teased him about it when he’d go out of his way to harass Harrington, telling him to stop pulling the king’s pigtails, which he vehemently denied doing.

No way. Nuh uh. Not King Steve. Gag him with a spoon, or whatever they said in the movies Chrissy always made him watch.

Soon Harrington started snapping back, however, but with an amused smile on his face. More than that, he’d snapped at Hagan to leave Gareth alone when he’d come to playfully jeer at Eddie until they could head to Hellfire together. (Chrissy had actually taken DnD up too eventually, much to everyone’s surprise, though it was less surprising than her Level 7 Chaotic Neutral homebrew half-Orc male Barbarian whose tragic backstory was only known to Eddie so far, seeing as he had helped her craft Uragoth the Undaunted.)

To say that Eddie was surprised when Harrington of all people protected a freak was an understatement. And then it kept happening. Harrington always stepped in if he saw any freak or nerd being bullied, he even used logic, pointing out that Eddie was both freak and cheerleader, so going after the freaks was going after him and the cheer squad, and did any jock really want to piss off the cheerleaders?

A jock using logic? Unheard of!

Eddie was a little flattered though to think that his freaks had best friend privileges as well because of him, that he could be the shield offering them protection simply by straddling the line between the two sects at school.

Harrington never stopped snarking with Eddie, however, always calling him a freak but always with that smile that almost spoke of something…fond.

And then it was the day of the big game, the championship, and Chrissy was giggling as she tried to pretend like she was having second thoughts, even as her hands never faltered getting him ready. They, and the rest of the squad who had slowly warmed up to Eddie, had scoured the rule book to make certain he could do it, smirking amongst themselves at the surprise they had in stock.

Eddie waited at the end of the line, waited for their introduction, and then he was running in with the rest of the cheer squad, his pale and hairy legs flashing beneath the short green skirt. Gareth and the rest of the freaks screamed, sending out wolf whistles and making enough noise to draw the attention of anyone who might not have noticed yet.

Eddie only had eyes for one person though.

Harrington’s gaze was fixed solely on him as he jogged out wearing the female cheerleading uniform, a bright pink high on cheekbones and his mouth agape, and Eddie thought he had even seen the guy swallow as his eyes took in Eddie in a skirt.

The game went exactly as the cheer squad had hoped, their secret routine putting Eddie front and center, and he took great enjoyment in rolling his hips suggestively and blowing his kisses and winks as he taunted the opposing team, resulting in more than one fumble when he distracted them. The fact that Harrington seemed equally distracted seemed something else entirely.

As well as the fact that Harrington roughly fouled the player from the other team that Eddie had pointedly flirted with during their halftime routine.

Hawkins Tigers won in the end, easily, with Harrington scoring the final winning points like the king he was, pointing at Eddie right before he took the shot with a wink. Eddie rolled his eyes, almost hoping Harrington would miss in retaliation for the tease. Instead, Harrington ended the game as the buzzer sounded with his last three-pointer and the crowd went wild.

Typical.

Less typical, however, was how Harrington strode through the crowd right after, bypassing the celebrating teammates and cheerleaders and fans that had streamed onto the court, to head straight for Eddie. Eddie was given just the barest moment to wonder if he was about to be hate crimed when Harrington’s hand landed on his back, the other cupping the back of his head, and he was spun into a dip as Harrington leaned in for a kiss.

Except Harrington didn’t immediately kiss him, he hovered above his lips, his eyes looking into Eddie’s asking for permission, and really…what more could Eddie do except wrap his arms around Harrington’s neck and close the distance?

If later that night Eddie was still wearing that skirt as he and Harrington came to an understanding, well, no one needed to know.

And if the next night it was Steve wearing the cheerleading skirt…that was between him and his king.

Part 2

[violexides]

9/11 [handshake] holy fucking bingle: 

people (especially white queer people) diverting a conversation about America’s Islamophobia and racism to instead make jokes & center their own struggles in a dialogue that is distinctly not about them. 

like i have found the sheer comedy of “holy fucking bingle” and “i stay silly :3″ extremely funny, and i think there is a lot of conversation to be had about exclusionist discourse, 

but i think there is a strong LACK of conversation about the Islamophobia and the racism that is prevalent in the TSA. with 9/11 people tend to joke about it in a way to be like a “gotcha nationalists!” but the people making those jokes are majority non-Arab, non-Muslim, non-Middle-Eastern, just unrelated people making light out of an event that has killed and harmed and affected millions of people. me included. 

it shouldn’t feel like a constant fight to get people to fucking listen to Muslims Arabs & Middle-Easterners when we talk about our struggles in this country. however I feel like especially in the queer community, a lot of people would rather talk about their experiences with homophobia than address any of the biases and stigma they uphold against us. 

look i am not going to shame people for laughing at holy fucking bingle, i don’t think that’s the point here. but i need people to care about the Islamophobia of this country. I need people who aren’t Muslims to think about why they feel as if Islamophobic policies hurt them more than actual Muslims, why they hide behind their own marginalized identity to shield the fact that they have Islamophobic and racist beliefs, etc. 

i’m tired of knowing that literal children are on the No Fly List and people are ignoring it to talk about exclusionism. honestly. 

[hyperlexichypatia]

In general I think "Who is allowed to reclaim what slurs" is among the most pointless, niche, irrelevant debates to take up oxygen in progressive spaces, especially when the "slur" is actually a community-preferred alternative to pathologizing language (I don't want to enforce "Only fat people can say 'fat'" or "Only mad people can say 'mad'"; I want thin neurotypicals to stop calling us "obese" and "suffering from mental disorders").

I used to care about this. I used to be strongly of the opinion that it's only okay to use "as reclamation" a slur if you, yourself, are actually the category of person being described, not just someone "mistaken for" or "called" that.

The main reason I felt that way was because of my deep revulsion of non-intellectually-disabled neurodivergent people using the R word, and shielding themselves with "But I'm dyslexic/autistic/whatever, and bullies called me that, so I'm allowed to use it!"

And I used to actually care about arguing "No, just because bullies called you that doesn't mean you actively live under the structural oppression of people labelled intellectually disabled," which is true, just as it's also true that a not-queer-at-all cishet guy who got bullied and called queerphobic slurs in high school because he wore a pink t-shirt one day isn't actually gay and doesn't actually experience any structural queerphobia once he leaves high school.

But that's not really the problem.

The problem is that the debate is being framed around "Who counts as what?" or "Who is allowed to say what?" rather than "What are they saying?"

The problem isn't whether any given person "can" "reclaim" a slur, it's that people use their identities and positionality as a shield to argue for the oppression of other people.

That non-intellectually-disabled neurodivergent person, are they saying "I was bullied for being different, so I support and empathize with anyone who is oppressed for how their mind works"? Or are they saying "I'm The Relevant Positionality too, so I'm ALLOWED to say that Those Other Ones shouldn't have rights"?

Particularly in queer spaces, there is such an emphasis on positionality and a hierarchy of oppression and a stigma on comparing experiences or equating experiences, and it's all centered around who can use what terms, or "slurs," even though the problem is that all terminology used to describe queer people is a slur, because we live in a queerphobic society that uses queerness as an insult (begging people to learn about the euphemism treadmill).

The more important question than "Is this person the right kind of queer to be allowed to say this?" is "Are they speaking in favor of queer rights or against queer rights?"

Because some of y'all, I swear, if a bi lesbian said "As a lesbian, I think lesbians should be hunted for sport" would spend the next 6 months debating whether a bi lesbian counts, and if a straight man said "I'm a straight man, but I think hunting lesbians for sport is wrong," y'all would admonish him for speaking over lesbians.

[erela-tsisdu]

While I have seen plenty of antisemitic zoomers from browsing Tumblr (and other websites), I'm actually real tired of people singling them out as being uniquely antisemitic when I've seen just as many millennials & gen xers spreading blood libel & kissing Hamas & Hezbollah's asses.

In fact, most people I've had to block for supporting terrorist groups have been over 30.

The Mastodon instance I left recently for antisemitism was mostly filled with people over 30.

My mom is in a lot of leftist gen x groups & has lost friends over defending Jewish people.

Gen z is not unique for antisemitism, and I'm honestly tired of people somehow acting like it is when I've been seeing people older than me claiming Hamas wasn't radicalized until recently, Jews (((zionists))) are a plague & use zionist money to spread propaganda. Oh, and that Jews have believed in fairytales since biblical times to commit many genocides.

[interstellarsystem]

Experiences With Being Out as a System

So, our parents know we're a system. It's all good, they understand that when we suddenly speak like someone from London that it's just another guy taking the body for a spin real quick and that they don't need to question it too much.

The thing is... They don't know our names, or anything about us as individuals. We don't have enough open communication with them to actually discuss the inner-workings of the hundreds of little guys in our brain and who they are or what they like, but even if we did, it's not actually important to them. It almost seems like it's swept under the rug.

Our mother said that she doesn't get why she should have to know anyone else when we're all "us". We're all just a collective to her still, a bunch of bits that make up her child, even though she knows we're separate. Her child, the original, isn't here anymore. But the thing is.. some of us want to get to know her and the family individually. Even beyond just being seen as who we actually are, we want to be a part of it aside from being treated as someone who is gone. But it's not a thing they understand despite our explanations of what it means to us, even despite the fact they know the original is dormant and has been for years.

The most anyone in our family knows about us is our mother, and she only knows anyone with a voice similar to Sark as "the american one". She doesn't know that there's even multiple who sound similar to him.

Technically, we're out as a system. Effectively, though... We're still closeted. Though not really because we're staying in it, moreso that we left but it follows us around like a shield within our own household, but it's not shielding us. It's shielding them from us.

Our experience with talking to medical professionals has been hard because of this--sharing bits about ourselves has been scary. It's scarier to show them pictures of our nonhuman headmates and say "that one is me", but it's never actually been bad when we've mustered up the strength to do it. One of them looked at Mal and saw his horns and said he looks like a faun from Greek mythology. Even though he's not, a positive response like that was empowering. That same one said Filigree's hair was cool. Little acknowledgements about who you are when you've tried to be seen before is great.

With our IRL friends, we expected the situation to be similar to our parents. Swept under the rug like a taboo and given weird, uncomfortable looks when spoken about. But it's been completely different.

We get asked who is fronting, we get acknowledged as separate people, hell, we even felt comfortable telling them about our actual fictive identities and letting the ones who wanted to follow this blog (hey guys if you're reading this <3) get access to it. They acknowledge our nonhumanity and nonhuman parts, share things about our sources with us because it reminded them of us, etc. Sometimes, now, because we've been open about it, we get people actually ask "is x fronting" and we say yes and they say "I knew it".

That specific feeling of being recognised even when your outward appearance doesn't change is absolutely amazing. Little manerisms, little ways our voice sounds even when masking accents out in public, even the words we choose to use are tells toward who is actually controlling the body and they pick up on it--even things we might not recognise we even do. Sure, there's hundreds of people in here and people won't know every single one off by heart, but the ones who are out here often are being recognised and that, to me, is amazing and validating to all of us.

I guess the point here is me sharing our experiences, but also.... You will be able to find people who see you for you. You as a system, you as a nonhuman, you as a disabled person, you as a queer person--you'll be able to find your people. And you know, I hope you do soon--because the feeling of being known is great.

[kingofanemptyworld]

Rin, identity issues, and the complications of being an isolated, alienated teenager

It feels sort of weird to say but I generally don’t head canon characters as having particular sexualities. Whatever people go for in fics is usually fine with me - gay, lesbian, bi, pan, something more general like queer. As long as it makes sense for the story they’ve built and the character they’ve shaped to fit it, I’m good. Unless you’re ignoring a canon LGBTQ+ sexuality, in which case, yeah, I’ll take issue with that.

But anyway. Rin.

I’ve got my personal ship for him (BonRin my beloved), but regardless of the pairing I see him as bisexual. He’s so open with his infatuation with Shiemi, and okay, sure, fandom likes to ignore the love interest in shounen for the most part because we’ve got gay ships to peddle. But I don’t see the point in that unless it really reads like it’s a front, or a result of a character suppressing themselves for one reason or another. And with Rin, I think it’s pretty clear his affection for Shiemi is sincere. You technically have the in-universe evidence of the demon that brought out his true desires to back that up, but even without it, Rin likes her. It’s complicated because of Yukio and Shiemi’s own inexperience with romance, and yet I never once doubt he really likes her.

That being said… he’s very appreciative of the guys in his life, too. (Peddling my gay ship here) Bon in particular, considering he’s often admiring how cool he thinks Bon is, that his haircut suits him whether it’s the blonde rooster look or the undercut. If you don’t want to see it as romantic interest, that’s your prerogative, but to me Rin comes across as seeing cool and cute as different traits he finds attractive (in Bon and Shiemi respectively).

I also think his bisexuality would fit neatly into his narrative struggles to “pass” throughout the early parts of the series. Rin has grown up as the neighborhood problem child, ostracized for being violent, and eventually he decides he’s fine with just his brother and his father — and the rest of the monastery, presumably — for company. (Except that’s absolutely not true and clearly he’s starved for friendship and support.) People looked at him and saw a monster, even before his demonic heritage made an appearance; why would he bother giving them even more ammunition when it comes to reasons to hate him? So no matter when he figured out his attraction to guys, he’s not going to lean into it, because he also likes girls, right? (Ignoring for a moment that bisexuality is a lot more nuanced than that.)

Rin likes girls, Rin is human — that’s what’s going to get people to like him, or at the very least tolerate him. That he likes guys, that he’s half demon, he can shove that shit down and pretend it doesn’t exist. Lock up any stray thoughts and keep the sword sheathed around anyone who doesn’t already know.

(Excuse me for being amused by Rin wielding his humanity and supposed heterosexuality as a sword and shield.)

The problem, of course, is that he can’t keep up the facade forever. The narrative won’t let him. Rin has to embrace his demonic side, because it’s the only way to move forward and to continue to help his loved ones. And once he’s moved past the issue of his friends being upset over the deception, when they understand he’s still Rin despite what he’d hidden from them, Rin is finally allowed to be himself. He uses his flames, he lets his tail move freely in the open around the Cram School kids. Rin still doesn’t like this side of himself — it’s inextricably tied to every moment of pain and isolation he’s dealt with his entire life, including the death of Father Fujimoto (and, y’know, his mom). But he is moving forward, he’s trying to adapt.

And isn’t that some great fucking subtext for his bisexuality, too?

[canichangemyblogname]

Great. The rabid shippers are once again trying to turn this (re-hashed) “fetish discourse” around onto queer men. “The faggots are the REAL fetishizers”— because apparently it’s 1963 again, and a man liking a man is an unhealthy and irrational reverence; an obsession. This originally started out with us pointing out our own invisibility in fan spaces and talking about how many people in fandom who ARE NOT queer men speak over us, write off our lived realities, and rely on harmful real-world rhetoric about us to malign our visibility while building their fan community on our sexualized bodies and their fantasies of our lives. They build their relationship with media exclusively through an obsession with m/m relationships, and—perhaps predictably—then trample over us when we ask for respect.

I suppose part of what’s most frustrating is that when we, rightfully, point out that this—and similar rhetoric— is homophobic, an unfortunate not-infrequent response has been “Pfts— but I’m queer,” as if that excludes someone from being a piece of shit. You all do realize that being part of a protected class does not prevent you from contributing to systems and spreading ideas that harm those in other protected classes or the same protected class, right? “I experience an axis of marginalization, therefore I could not possibly contribute to a system that harms me and others like me,” certainly doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny, not just because it’s untrue, but also because its use here functions as a thought-terminating fallacy, designed to end the debate with a cliché rather than address the point put forth: your homophobia. It is also an Irrelevant Conclusion Fallacy, as the argument that members of a marginalized class are more likely to be sympathetic to members of that same class is certainly valid, and could be argued, but this conclusion does not address the issue in question: your homophobia. It may also be characterized as an Argument from Incredulity, where you cannot imagine that a queer person could be queerphobic, so it must be untrue. Which, of course, I have all seen people point out.

However, now, as if on queue, the next most frequent “come back” is, “So you just want women to shut up and take it? You want to silence queer women?” 1.) The people saying and doing this shit aren’t all women, 2.) The people saying and doing this shit aren’t all queer, 3.) What lead people to call out your post wasn’t anyone’s identity; it was the contents of the post, you are now using identity to shield yourself from accountability, and 4.) This is a strawman fallacy being used to distract from the original critique: your homophobia. It is also an Ad Hominen attack being used to move the focus from your homophobia to the implication that your critic is motivated by misogyny to critique you.

Although, this “come back” is more of a “case in point” at this point when the original argument was about how fans who do not live as queer men (or those adjacent) do their damnedest to speak over and discount the lived realities of queer men (and those adjacent) to instead center our visibility and our representation around the preferences, pleasures, and desires of women. Like— y’all do realize that what started a lot of this “discourse” months ago was a post that quite literally said that mlm visibility/representation has always been about and centered women and their desires in relationships with men, as well as a post where a woman said that if she ever saw a man flirt with another man in public, she’d shoot him, right? You know this, yes?

[glass--beach]

I've been a fan of your music long enough to remember when you used to identify as trans fem. what's it been like circling back around to that and figuring out your identity now that you're doing it sort of in the public eye?

honestly it’s been nicer this time around. i sense a kindred spirit in every trans woman i talk to and it’s really lovely hearing from those who related to my music and figured out their own identity through that. it’s giving me a space where i know i will be accepted. i still boymode pretty often on the road and before tour was nearly always boymoding… there’s almost a safety on stage but despite being literally a performance it feels more real than when i’m not presenting fem. i’ve also now been girlmode out in public a lot after shows and not attracted any negative attention which is nice. even when there was an alt right harassment campaign against the band account they were gendering me correctly.

years ago it was much tougher for me, wearing feminine clothes at random diy shows or whatever. it was often in spaces that were anti transphobia on paper but did nothing to enforce against transmisogyny in practice. even in explicitly queer spaces i felt outcast. online was even harsher - which is really what made me increasingly scared to present fem as there were more and more eyes on me. there were many many trans women i looked up to a lot then but i felt they were so much braver than me. being nonbinary and vaguely “masculine” became a shield at the cost of being called a dude or a guy or just assumed to be male absolutely constantly, and after enough of it i kinda just didn’t want to show my face anywhere… the irony of having made what many considered to be iconic transfem music while feeling so closeted myself was honestly insulting.

with the recent album release and tour it kinda hit a breaking point because i knew a big wave of misgendering was coming if i wasn’t just honest with myself and everyone else. even saying she/they was softening the blow a bit. lots of people just stuck with they. and plenty of writers & critics still seem blissfully unaware that there is anything queer about me or my band or are simply too scared to write about it, idk. but i feel like i’ve come out of my shell a good bit. i’m not just playing shows, i’ve been able to socialize and party on off days and speak my mind more freely and dress in a way that makes me feel pretty. it’s really like flipping a switch - not just for me, but everybody else. EVERYONE treats me differently when i girlmode and i love it so so much, i feel like others are more willing to open up and to treat me with kindness and (respectfully) compliment my appearance and i feel like women (cis and trans) relate to me more, which is a whole lot better than feeling like i relate to nobody most of the time. it’s an entirely different set of social scripts that just feel so much more “right” to me, so much easier for me to embody, than the male social scripts. i know a lot of people feel like gender is bullshit and bad inherently and good for them but for me that mentality was a way to hide it think. i feel absolutely liberated in embracing femininity! :) thank you for the lovely question, i have so much to say on this