#and why are you so fucking obsessed with lesbians having sex with men and finding an exception for men in their sexuality because they’d

[melocherie]

im not sure if the whole lavenoor situation is like done and dusted with, but honestly there was always some parts of the story that rubbed me the wrong way. like how elsa's genderbent was weirdly fixated on sex and erotica, since he was a KID. bcus wdym you found an erotic novel laying around? IT MAKES NO SENSE. WHY WOULD AN ISOLATED CHARACTER HAVE ACCESS TO SUCH STUFF?

hmm.  i  actually  don’t  find  it  strange  to  depict  children  as  having  interest  in  nsfw  content  within  reason.  there’s  a  difference  between  sexualizing  a  child  and  a  child  character  exploring  their  sexuality,  and  noor  clearly  modeled  espen’s  discovery  from  her  own  experiences  of  being  exposed  to  adult  content  as  a  young  girl.  not  to  mention  that  some  children,  regardless  of  age,  enjoy  sexual  content.  this  could  be  due  to  any  combination  of  purity  culture  demonizing  sex  and  thus  leading  to  children  obsessing  over  it,  sexual  abuse,  hypersexuality,  or  just  plain  curiosity.  unless  the  author  is  obviously  just  perving  on  their  child  character,  i  don't  see  anything  wrong  with  depicting  real  people.

if  there  is  one  aspect  of  espen’s  character  that  i  dislike,  it’s  noor’s  treatment  of  his  sexuality. 

it’s  important  to  note  that  she  is  asexual  and  i  am  not,  so  please  take  this  with  a  grain  of  salt,  but  i  always  found  it  odd  that  she  picked  a  character  she  knew  many  people  had  headcanoned  to  be  lesbian/asexual  and  then  purposefully  reworked  them  to  be  a  horndog  straight  man.

she  ranted  about  how  you  shouldn't  solely  headcanon  characters  who  are  cold/unemotional  as  ace,  which  i  agree  with,  and  it's  fine  that  her  elsa  isn't  queer,  but  explicitly  making  them  interested  in  sexual  content  because  she  disliked  the  asexual  headcanons is…?  i  understand  she  was  hoping  to  demonstrate  how  stoic  characters  can  still  be  sexual,  but  straight  sexuality  is  the  norm.  purity  culture  is  it’s  own  separate  discussion  but  even  then,  it  has  always  been  acceptable  for  a  man  to  be  horny.  instead,  if  she  yearns  for  good  asexual  headcanons,  shouldn't  she  be  the  first  to  write  the  princes  as  asexual?  only  jasmir  is  on  the  aspec  spectrum,  but  i  don't  think  his  queerness  is  properly  explored  in  canon.  yes,  his  trauma  from  sexualization  is  discussed,  but  i  don't  believe  his  subsequent  disinterest  in  romance  and  sex  receives  the  same  amount  of  attention  (admittedly,  i  may  be  wrong  about  this.)  otherwise,  creel  is  the  only  other  ace  character,  and  i  don't  think  any  of  the  characters  from  mc’s  hometown  are  significant  enough  to  count as  meaningful  representation.

imo,  the  easiest  solution  would  be  to  introduce  anna,  the  character  whose  life  was  saved  by  platonic  love,  as  asexual  instead.  anna,  who  is  fiery,  passionate,  and  a romantic,  is  an  excellent  example  of  how  you  can  be  asexual  while  still  holding  love  in  your  heart.  it  would  also  be  far  less  infuriating  if  anton  already  had  a  complex  relationship  with  love  and  sexuality,  rather  than  having  him  be  lectured  about  how  society  should  allow  men  and  women  to  be  friends.  way  to  go  girl,  you  really  cured  anna’s  crippling   loneliness  from  becoming  an  orphan  and  being  isolated  from  her  remaining  family  (fuck  mc,  all  my  homies  hate  mc.)

[saltydogsmut]

You know, there could be an argument that Ashley a deeply closeted comp-het lesbian. Aro/ace if you prefer.

Because in spite of her obsession with Andrew, we never see her even think about or acknowledge other men. Even though she's upset when they don't find her particularly attractive, she doesn't seem to understand what sex drive is attached to. Only realising that Andrew would be a deterrent to the guards when he mentions it. And not recognising the murders and threats would quash Andrew's when dealing with the lady I the apartment.

Ashley may not understand the feeling of attraction and love, which is why you get to choose how she defines her own feelings. Her jokes about sex and loving Andrew too much are just that, jokes. She doesn't get the intense feelings everyone else does about the topic as she has no stake in either.

Her understanding of sexuality/people is from r-rated films and maybe some of the theoretical porn books Andrew has stashed away somewhere. (So far as I know, you can't find any, but maybe they're the parents' books, who knows.) . When she's trying to appeal to Andrew it's all about her labour and not anything of a sexual nature, it's always Andrew who initiates the more dubious physical side to their relationship, fingers in her belt loops, crawling into her bed at night, etc. This is why she thinks it's Andrew whose actions are more suggestive than her own. She even admits that in the questionable/love ending, she doesn't particularly care to pursue it. It's just a way to keep him around.

And yet, she always has feirce reactions to women. Why does she call all other women vile temptresses‐ aside from indoctrination from movies/her mom? It could be because she herself has a strong attraction to women. She tries to get confirmation from Andrew about her feelings, asking if he thinks nina is pretty, because she thought nina was pretty. Nina stopped being her friend as soon as Ashley found out she had feelings for her brother- not just because of the risk to Andy spending less time with her and the potential of them never being friends to begin with and only a means to an end- but potentially because Ashley had a crush on her and felt rejected.

The same could be said for Julia, who Ashley sends insulting and vulgar phonecalls to, showing her confusion of where the lines should be by saying "you think you're better because you can fuck him and I can't?!" But clearly according to one ending she can. Or at least, partway. We understand something sexual happened, but its possible they didn't have vaginal intercourse. Ashley might not be able to get physically aroused while thinking about men, making her assertions about women even more stark. If women can arouse even her, then surely no man could ever resist their charms. Not even Andrew.

After all, Ashley can place herself in the romance spot between the other girl bunnies, but her budding feelings can never blossom. Only Andrew gets to experience the blooms of romance.

Anyway. This bitch gay. YEET.

[sixlane]

lane u can't just say "pandoralecto" and leave it at that i need to know more please

it seems i’m incapable of talking about pairings without making a moodboard recently… but anyways YES let me tell you about them.

alecto is our resident radfem man-hating lesbian who can’t help but conform to patriarchal ideals in her quest to redeem herself and her family in the eyes of the rich elite. she’s mean and selfish and brutal yet she still cares what others think of her. pandora on the other hand could not give less of a fuck what anyone is saying about her, yet she just happens to be this (on the outside) “perfect woman.” she’s blonde and beautiful with delicate features and she’s rich and she throws elaborate parties that everyone who’s anyone is invited to. and she does it just because she wants to. pandora has never done a single thing she didnt want to do, and she’s praised for it. people don’t seem to care that she’s blunt and apathetic because she’s beautiful and alecto hates her for this. but she also wants to be her. she becomes jealously obsessed with pandora and somewhere along the way that blurs into lust. and it’s so ugly and gross but she wants to literally cut pandora open and wear her skin. she can’t help it.

then we have pandora, who is just living her life carefree exactly the way she wants to and there’s alecto standing in the corner of her party with an untouched martini just glaring at everyone. and pandora is like. what is her problem? alecto is so full of rage and pandora cannot understand how a person can hold so much inside of them and she doesn’t like it. she thinks alecto has the most massive stick up her ass and her failure to understand this woman bleeds into disdain for her. but it also means pandora cannot get alecto out of her head. she’s a natural observer and she finds herself to be so fascinated by other people because she’s so different from them. she’s low empathy like her brother but entranced by the way people interact with each other in a normative context. she cannot for the life of her understand why alecto cares so much about anything but for some reason she can’t get herself to leave alecto alone. their whole relationship is pandora doing things to get reactions out of alecto. good or bad. seeing what will make her tick. constantly antagonizing her. she’s obsessed with alecto just as much as alecto is obsessed with her. she wants to break her so bad.

their fighting turns into violent make outs which lead to creepy power-play sex. who will get the upper hand. it’s a fight to the death. they’re both trying to rip the other open.

also i thought it would be interesting to explore their relationship in the context of both of them being in some type of weird codependent twincest relationship. they don’t hinge on this but like pandoras relationship with evan is about belonging and alecto’s relationship with amycus is about dominating. so i think the pandoralecto sexual dynamic would be flipped. alecto finds their violent sex dynamic surprisingly fulfilling because it’s equal. they’re both women!! she’s not performing. she’s at her most feral and imperfect and pandora still wants her in some weird way. she feels more comfortable taking on a submissive role because she doesn’t have to uphold this power over pandora that she feels she has to uphold when she has sex with men. for pandora sex with her brother is not about sex. it’s very intimate and like. idk something otherworldly. but sex with alecto is about sex. it’s lust and obsession. i think she realizes that alecto has never not been in control and she wants to flip that. she wants to get on top of alecto and see what happens. she takes the reins because alecto has always had an iron grip on them.

tl;dr: they’re feral and they hate each other and they’re obsessed with each other at the same time. they both have an inability to let things go once they’ve zeroed in and that’s what drives this dynamic. they just can’t stop!

[lesbianp1lled]

I really think the bisexual hatred towards lesbians is jealousy. They see those lesbians who are obsessed with straight women and they are upset that they aren’t obsessed with them. “But but you fucked a straight girl, she likes dick, so why not meeeee”

I personally don’t get the straight women thing, I wouldn’t even date a virgin bisexual bc attraction to men, even if they never act in it, is a turn off.

Lesbians. . . fucking a straight girl. . . yeah the maths ain’t mathing, a straight girl wouldn’t have sex with a woman. Agree a lot of bisexuals are jealous of lesbians tho.

The last paragraph, this is what i’ve said to people before. I don’t find bisexuals attractive because being attracted to men is very off-putting to me. I couldn’t be with someone that fangirls over their male blorbo and says how much she wants to fuck him, that would be a massive turn-off.

[raisinchallah]

you know it is really interesting reading discussions on old xena fic and like the culture of xena fandom at the time because like prevailing notions of fandom and fanfic writing probably until the 2010s have very much been focused on like the why do straight women write about men having sex with other men and this like idea of a distancing of identity essentially (whether or not that was ever the predominant makeup of slash communities is i suppose up for debate but tho there were many lgbt people writing slash fic it was i think still part of the larger fan perception and perhaps advantageous to mostly be seen as straight women no matter the actual demographic makeup) and then the angle of i suppose more modern reads on fanfic as this like beautiful place of transformation and queer actualization or whatever that i think both focuses more on youth and on making it into some kind of mystical space it all feels a bit silly to me but with the xena internet fan makeup skewing older due to requiring a lot of unfettered access to said internet and just who had access to the internet at the time so tho more accessible than needing to be on specific mailing lists or convention groups to find hard copies of zines back in the day it was still like not representative of the entire fandom but anyways its a very interesting and lucid look at fanfiction as an area of self expression but also like comparing it in many ways to old lesbian pulp novels and positioning it within like the existing genre experimentation of the show like neither positioning it as some kind of perverse obsession removed from ones own identity in that it is clearly discussing the fact that various lesbian and bisexual women want to explore their interests thru this lens but also are not talking about it as some kind of transcendent act or any strange mythologizing around it that has appeared in the ao3 era and levels of academic interest in the concept that have continued the mythologizing..... perhaps also because the show itself is understood by both critics and fans to be a bit silly and you know lightly trashy campy television i also find it interesting the way that the perceived quality of the source material not being this untouchable thing and that writers themselves call themselves bards and essentially parallel their writing with the writing of gabrielle who is also lightly made fun of for her own writing it all becomes quite tongue in cheek and i guess comfortably equating the quality of fanfiction and the television show as things that can interchange with each other with neither the energy of fanfiction is better fuck canon (tho that was a subset of fan reaction to the rift arc) but also not like idiot fans thinking they have anything on the show quality you know... idk balance a lovely thing

[m--rtyr]

I am so in agreeance of the "That is what you are choosing to be angry about" in regards to writing

One of the things I get judged about when writing to my friends is that I like to write age gap relationships, and that is something I find bizarre. Like... of all the things I write about, that is what they choose. Murder, torture, drugging and even assault but the age gap relationships are the thing that get folks.

Like, I am personally a child of an incredibly toxic age gap relationships and the child right after a teen pregnancy. (20 isn't a teen so I didn't count as a second teen pregnancy, even though my mom got pregnant as a teen. Weird). Like, there is an 10+ year age gap between my mom and bio dude and lets just say my mom follows a trend.

I know what unhealthy age gap relationships look like, I VERY MUCH DO! My birthday cake this year was a "congrats on beating teen pregnancy" cake cause that is how prevalent this shit is in my family. Yet I get "But... they are bad... You know they are bad... why?"....

Maybe I want to live out a fantasy where I am around an age gap relationship that isn't bad or weird, maybe these characters are 20 years apart but one of them is 70 and the other is 50, maybe I want to write about having sugar daddy cause I am poor, maybe I just want to write a girl fucking her best friends mom because I accidentally listened to Stacy's Mom on repeat and got bored.

It seems like in people's efforts to protect children from grooming they just keep circling back to purity culture. "Kids should be exposed to sexual stuff" - "NO SEX FOR ANYONE" . "We should stop grooming " - "ANYONE OLDER THAN THEIR PARTNER IS A PERVERT PEDO" . "We should keep an eye on relationships with unhealthy dynamics" - "THIS PERSON MAKES SLIGHTLY MORE INCOME! THEY ARE CONTROLLING YOU WITH MONEY"

This is totally not brought upon me seeing your lesbian cannibals and me remembering the time I got into a "Really?" Battle with a friend over my two characters, a 40 year old serial killer who is obsessed with a 25 year old EMT who became an EMT for a sense of control. Like... One of them is a serial killer, the other is a person with OCT and a slight god complex.... The 15 years mean nothing when ONE OF THEM KILLS PEOPLE AND THE OTHER HAS TO REFRAIN FROM DOING SO!

Nah literally it’s so insane.

Like a little while ago people were getting weird about LR and I had to take a step back because. The eating people fic? That doesn’t exist yet? And you’re not mad about the eating people thing?

Like sure yes nuance can exist. Especially in regards to depiction vs endorsement.

Example, the point of IASIP is that all the characters suck. Like cautionary tales the characters never learn from. They’ll be racist, homophobic or sexist, look like idiots doing it, suffer, and go right back to it. But in the 2000s they had a trans character and they regret how they wrote her, because the characters never suffered for transphobia like they did other forms of bigotry. Sure they do worse in the show but they regret this because of how they did it.

But if you watch fucking Silence of the Lambs and your take away is ‘this movie is so immoral. Hannibal is so much older than Clarice :(’… Brother he’s also a fucking cannibal. Like. The fact he wants to fuck Jodie foster is the least of his issues. Look at the behaviour of other men that want her. Do it.

The intention is not that the relationship is, in any way, ideal.

I also think people need to learn the difference between romanticisation and endorsement. Immoral age gaps shouldn’t be endorsed but if the media is portraying it as bad but like. It’s also hot. Or whatever. Then I think we can be big boys enough to go ‘they clearly don’t think this should happen, they’re just responding to a fictional fantasy about it’

I understand why they are so conflated, but also. They’re not the same thing. And I think we can watch movies and go ‘mmmyeah this scene feels kinda romantic/erotic but that doesn’t mean it’s right’.

[sippinggossip]

I sometimes wonder what the obsession is with Ethan and why his girlfriends seem obsessed with him and lose their shit when they lose him, and I think I figured it out.

We all know Ethan as a sex fiend, but I also believe he is someone that knows how to connect with someone beyond the physical. Sure, he can dickmatizes them, but I he also knows how to tap their hearts, minds, and souls, as well their asses. Honestly, what more could you ask for? As a hetero woman, I can say it's extremely hard to find a man who not only fucks good, but loves good too. It's either one or the other you have to choose with men.

However, the biggest thing I think is the proximity being with Ethan brings one to a lavish, privileged, celeb lifestyle. Vic's a lesbian, so that's a no go, Damiano is unattainable and less opened, and no one is checking for Thomas* (harsh, but true), so who is the next best option?

Ethan.

*Yes, I know he is in a relationship, but you know what I meant.

.

[jenyifer]

Atom in the Soup.

It’s the night before only friends again and I haven’t properly talked about Atom. Yes I did talk about him in relation to Cheum and Boston’s masking but!! He is important to the BostonNickverse so I can’t ignore him. Hell I even did some soup on Daddy Dan before Atom.

Atom’s name is not a mistake he’s viewed as small and insignificant to the rest of the cast. Boston pays the most attention to him because he cares for Cheum and Atom is an extension of her. So he readily treats him like a little brother too. He must have seen hung out with Atom before. But Atom is important for telling a queer narrative and we can’t over look him because so often Bisexual eraser is a thing in media and our conversations about queer people. I personally have a love hate feeling towards him based on my own experiences.

Let me tell you a story… a lesbian story actually. I was friends with several girls who were dating men (who were terrible by the way) and one of them let’s call her Eve was always talking obsessively to me. She introduced me to my future ex gf let’s call her Lili. We started dating and immediately Eve told me “oh it’s so funny I didn’t know you liked women… I don’t like women but I’ve had a lot of dreams about Lili and you Crazy? Right?” Eve was definitely dating a man but she would tell me about how much she liked Lili all the time. I made the mistake of keeping this info to myself because I didn’t want to ruin their friendship didn’t think it was my place. When Lili and I broke up Eve immediately tried and failed hooking up with Lili. Eve told me she was still straight she just wanted to try. She always dreamed of being with her but in the moment it was too real according to her. Lili’s panicked story to me was that she rejected Eve then the girl got very drunk and she dropped her off and was going to never talk to her again. Eve told me she was 100% str8 and this helped her cement this… supposedly.

So was Atom or Eve at fault for wanting to try? No. Did they obsess for a long time about how things would go? Yes. Reality is you trying something out like that is harmful to yourself and the other person when boundaries aren’t clearly understood ahead of time. Boston made it clear so many times that this was a one and done thing that Atom could leave that Boston didn’t judge him. But reality is Atom fucked about and found out. It’s not easy discovering who you are I don’t blame Eve or Atom for trying to go to someone who they know and admire. Seems like the easy option. But it’s a story people like Lili and Boston see all the time pretty out and proud lesbian gays used for experimentation making them feel less than. It’s not flattering to find out someone you thought was a friend only thinks about your body. So push them away before they can make you feel inferior insignificant. A single Atom.

I sympathize with Atom. He has no one to talk to. He believed Boston would still be there even if things went wrong because sex is no big deal to Boston. But that wasn’t reality. Now Atom is alone and hurt. Questioning who he is and if he has done the right thing. If I have to predict what I think will happen is.

1. Atom tells Cheum after seeing Boston with her maybe trying to reconcile? Then everything blows up.

2. Atom sees Boston happy with Nick and this causes Atom to go Nuclear getting revenge. Maybe he knows Nick and thinks he’s such a loser so why can Boston accept Nick but not Atom

whatever happens I feel like we are going to get a nuclear explosion that effects Nick and Boston going to ep 12. This is likely not to be my last soup pot on this boy.

[squidink-pasketti]

I need to talk about the obsessive use of the word "yaoi" because my god if I see one more person make a yaoi joke today I will lose my goddamn mind

news flash!! yaoi is fetish content. made by non-MLMs and for non-MLMs. it's fucking weird.

if you're a non-MLM who enjoys it, do what you want, I have no power over how you spend your time, but it is often harmful to see gay men as a turn-on

this is a list of what yaoi ISN'T

- any content made by and/or for MLMs

- MLM ship content

- any and all gay sex

and this is a list of what yaoi IS

- fetish content for people who are not gay men but find gay sex attractive

I, as an MLM, think that it's really fucking weird to fetishize relationships (specifically sex in this case) because of the genders of the people involved. and people often talk about how it's harmful to fetishize lesbians, but I've never heard anyone say it's harmful to fetishize MLMs. why is it okay for you to fetishize gay sex while you preach about leaving lesbians alone? if you're going to say it's not okay to fetishize one, then you have to say it's not okay to fetishize the other, either

and the word "yaoi" is thrown around so loosely that people don't even know it's fetish content. I see one piece of ship art or writing, SFW or otherwise, and there's bound to be at least one person in the comments calling it yaoi when it is very much not yaoi. AND the amount of literal children calling themselves fujoshis is so gross. what the fuck are you doing looking at MLM fetish porn. you're twelve.

just. stop calling stuff yaoi when it isn't. and stop pretending like enjoying MLM fetish content isn't weird. thanks

[saltydogsmut]

Some People are going back to the comphet lesbian/Ace post as if Ashley engaging in sexual behaviour bc she thinks its the only keeping andrew from killing/leaving her, explicitly raping andrew and saying she didn't enjoy it anyway, and having the most dysfunctional married life where she always feels pain during sex (except one night when drunk) and Andrew doesn't care enough to do better....

Automatically makes her a heterosexual.

...

Like... how do you miss a point that badly. SHE'S NOT ENJOYING HERSELF?! Not that enjoyment necessarily means much for sexual attraction but oh my god.

Like, I just blocked immediately bc they don't know anything about the topic or just don't think women have internal lives outside of their actions but jesus christ. Neither is something i want to deal with.

Like, she's preforming heterosexuality, what the fuck did you think the Het was in comphet?

I'm willing to have Burial prove me wrong but y'know what? Im not sure it will. That's not what the game is about to begin with, but obviously the siblings are too emeshed in each other for us to ever see Ashley explore her sexuality. Even as a preteen she hated that her peers were boy obsessed but didn't have the vocabulary to express why forcing herself on a date felt wrong, untrue to herself. And sure, "loves andrew", but in the box ending its not like she's fucking him is it.

I didn't automatically take the scratches as something good the first time around in the burial vision scene and what do you know, it looks like it might not be. Wow.

--

Metaphor for those who need it under the cut.

To make things simple for other people: if you see me eating sushi you may think I like sushi. Instead it might be a friend's birthday and even though im not hungry or like it very much I'll tolerate it bc i love my friend and they like it. Or it might just be the closest food joint to my place of work so i just hork some down because im hungry.

Maybe I don't care what type of food im having. and maybe that's because i was never in a position to have food preferences to begin with and I'll develop them later. or maybe its because i always ignore the burning churn of my stomach and drooling as something that happens to everyone when they come across a perfectly seared steak. That everyone thinks seared steak is the most delicious looking food in the world and naturally pulls this result out of everyone. It's just not advertised to me and even if it was It's just so i know what my boyfriend would like.

Like, you have ppl in their 30's, with years of having enjoyable sex with men, finding out they're lesbians. Bc they've treated emotional intensity as a replacement for attraction and had good enough sex to not question the things they were told. Like that it's shallow for a woman to care about appearances, that all women generally find men gross, that women are the "fairer" sex. That women are naturally more reluctant and fridgid when it comes to sex. Etc etc.

But no. You had sex. With a man! You could never be not straight!

(For guys, that every guy doesn't really care what a woman looks like, guys will do anything. That every man desires an intense relationship with his bros that he never will with a woman. A bromance. That you get into a relationship just for sex and its only if she gets pregnant that you have to put a ring on it. No man wants marriage, its a ball and chain. If you don't want sex then its just because she's not hot enough. A woman should be okay with crumbs of intimacy and you shouldn't feel bad bc women don't expect emotions from a man and only want to own you, are only using you, and anyway they have lesser internal worlds and could never match up to a guy. Don't test any of these theories though, while they're super true and uncontestable they are mean to say. *fingers crossed* don't find emotinally resonant gay porn don't find beautiful gay porn...)

Like, i know tumblr is gay, but just bc they're having the wost sex known to all mankind, and not even trying to improve it, doesn't make them straight. Be nice.

[solarianshifter]

leucothoe/arcjec kin vent

im actually so mad at klytie rn. why did she bury me alive! why did she mind control laivan into shooting me! why anything else that she did in any of our other lifetimes! getting over ur weird unrequited crush on a man who fucking despises you is FREE.

i should have ratted on her to our father about the lesbian sex she was definitely having with her fucking attendant. i certainly could have. she had BETTER hope I don't find her again because i will make fucking SURE she can't do shit to me ever again. bitch.

im gonna think of every one of the most repulsive men i know and make them be obsessed with her so they will stalk her and she will never ever know peace again IN HER LIFEEE. and then I'll do it again in the next life! and the next! ad infinitum!

[lesbianp1lled]

I hate that we live in times where a woman can call herself a lesbian and bisexual and I don't immediately trust her. and for a good reason too because in 90% of times she isn't really attracted to women at all. and it's not only the problem in progressive countries where people want to be oppressed for some reason and thats why they claim to be a part of lgbt, but it happens in conservative countries too. like I live in a homophobic country and its already hard to find other same sex attracted women and it gets even harder because straight girls claim to be lesbians or bisexual when it's obvious that they're not. I'm just tired.

and look, I get it that sometimes sexuality can be confusing. but I can get it when you're in your early teens but why the fuck are you still confused in your twenties??? how could you live until your twenties and not realize that you're obsessed with men when you're actually in fact obsessed with them???

The fact it’s still a problem in conservative countries is wild.

I personally don’t think sexuality is confusing at all. For straight people and gay people alike it’s quite obvious to us who we like because it’s one sex. Like for me I didn’t have much confusion, as a young teen I knew first I didn’t like boys but then my attraction to girls came so I knew why I didn’t like boys.For me the lack of attraction to men came first which was strange for me but as a child I brushed it off and thought I was too young to be interested in them however my peers were which raised gay alarm bells for me lol

[genderkoolaid]

“You can set that boundary and say you don't want anyone who identifies as a woman to interact with you. That's your right. But multigender people aren't gonna trust you & are gonna see you as exorsexist or at least have exorsexist ways of thinking that make you unsafe for us to be around” hey man! Maybe not trusting someone who sets boundaries about their relationship is….. bad? Demanding someone have no boundaries about who interacts with their (especially sexual) content and demanding that people allow people who they are uncomfortable with to be alright with interactions! Yikes!

Also can I control who’s attracted to me? No. But I can choose to not act on it, if someone says men dni, men dni, swag. I simply respect relationships. Im not saying boygirls/girl boys/genderfucks are weird, they fuck, some of my best friends are gender fuckers, I’m saying it’s weird to explicitly identify as a woman and then get angry when people who don’t enjoy women interacting with their content…. Get….. angry? At them for setting that boundary.

sigh. okay

Your obsession with our womanhood is misandrogyny. Multigender people aren't infecting any communities, we aren't leeching in womanhood to gay spaces or manhood to lesbian spaces we aren't opening doors to cishet predators, and us interacting with your posts as gay men is not infecting you with our girl cooties. I'm not saying you don't have real trauma but your focus on how some gay men are women is a focus on how our androgyny and how unnerving and dangerous it is to binary identity.

On top of that: the focus on our womanhood when we are discussing our identities gay men means you are assuming that womanhood is a dominant identity, one stronger than our manhood, because its the part of our androgyny which unnerves you the most, which means its our dominant feature. When it comes to being a gay man, everyone sees me as a woman, but when I'm a lesbian suddenly I'm the most man ever, depending on which one offends monogender/binary people the most. If a multigender person is interacting with your post because they relate to it as a gay man, why are you focusing on their womanhood so hard, regardless of if you even know how their womanhood impacts their sexuality and manhood? All you need to know about multigender gay men, in this context, is that they are gay men in gay men's space. Its not weird to explicitly identify as a gay man and then get angry when people invalidate your identity as a gay man because you are also a woman, because they don't want to question why they think those things are incompatible. Why is it so concerning to you that some gay men are women? Why does their gender specifics matter to you at all? Why do you feel like its such an affront in the first place? That's the exorsexism. That's why multigender people wouldn't fucking trust you. Emotions aren't apolitical or except from critical reflection & I'm saying you ought to reflect on why you have this wariness towards multigender people in the first place instead of unquestioningly following it.

Lets pretend to be a transphobic gay man for a minute. "I don't want trans men interacting with my posts. I just don't want to have to see vaginas in gay men's space. Its not transphobic to set boundaries. Why are you getting upset with me? You just want to force me to have sex with vaginas, that's homophobic. I have the right to loudly tell trans men I don't want them to have anything to do with me because I think they all vaginas, all want to fuck me, and I find that disgusting. I respect trans men, I just think that letting them in gay men's spaces is opening the door to trying to force gay men to have sex with women!" Do you seriously not see the similarities?

Look I've had two different anons now talk to me about how much they love & support genderweird people, buuuut they just make life so hard for me because they talk about their identity and want to be respected and partake in their communities :( I promise I support you guys I just would like you to shape your lives around my internalized transphobia. I mean you literally said "I love gender fuckers, my best friends a gender fucker"

I really, truthfully, honestly hope you realize how fucked it is that you've now made me, someone who literally brought up the emotional trauma this kind of exorsexism has had on me and my sexuality, put all of this energy into explaining this and defending us.

[thebroccolination]

I saw you mentioned Queer As Folks recently. OMG how I missed Brian and Justin. When they went angst, they reeeeeaaaally served angst. I seriously don't have access to watch the entire series in my country, I can only watch snippets from youtube. I'm so sad 😭 Can you share with me what you like most about QaF and maybe if you have your favorite Ao3 fics about them. Thank you so much, Key ❤

Aaahhh, Anon!

You've unsurfaced some deep memories.

Okay, I just finished writing the thesis below. I'm back from the future. A lot of what you're about to read is pure emotion, so I apologize that it's not, uh. Well structured or especially rational. Queer as Folk was very formative for me, so my thoughts on it are very formless. \:D/

•

I watched Queer as Folk in high school, and it was a core experience. I vaguely remember writing Brian/Justin fic, but I think I mainly just read, and unfortunately, all of the fic I read was on LiveJournal, so I have no idea how to find it anymore. I'm really, really bad with names and titles, so I'd really only know them if I saw them again. :')

I have hot takes, though!

As far as fandom goes, the US version was phenomenal. So much fic. So much fic, and I loved it so much. The fanvids, the art, the meta, etc. It was such a great fandom.

BUT as a show, I preferred the UK version. I thought it was better crafted, the story and characters felt a lot stronger, and the dialogue was fantastic. It felt more inclusive in every way, and it had this…cozy warmth to it. Even at his worst, Stuart is nowhere near as much of a menace as Brian, and I think that's because he has Vince, and Brian has Michael.

(I didn't like Michael. At all. \:D/ The actor is lovely! I just regularly pined for the character to be pushed through a nineteenth floor window and then get stepped on by an elephant tourist visiting family at the Pittsburgh Zoo.)

The US version also screamed Written by White Cis Gay Men Who Held a Weird Grudge Against Lesbians and Didn't Believe Bisexuality Is Real. I was a "definitely straight except for that one time and that other time and that other other time I had suspiciously queer thoughts and also argued a shade too passionately about queer rights at the dinner table" teenager, and while I loved Brian and Justin as a ship, the UK version made me feel like I could find friends who'd feel like family one day. (And it came true, and they're queer, too.)

I think of the US version of Queer as Folk as fandom fodder. After every episode, I'd dive into LiveJournal, read fics, meta, look up fanvids, etc. I learned so much from Elder Queers who talked about safe sex and the importance of getting tested and all the things either referenced in the show or totally ignored that Elder Queers were like, "This was ignored but if you're ever in Justin's situation, here is what you do, please promise you'll do this."

The UK version is the one I rewatch when I want to revisit that warm, safe feeling.

And it'll always fuck my brain up that the US showrunners of Queer as Folk watched Stuart fuck a fifteen-year-old that was blatantly framed as "this is a bad thing, Stuart is doing a bad thing, everyone is aware that this is a bad thing, this is very bad, Stuart" and thought, "Okay, the bad thing is that he's fifteen, so let's age him up to seventeen and make him the love interest instead of the best friend who's the same age."

MIND. BLOWN.

I mean, it explains why Michael's all [evocative hand gestures]. His English counterpart actually ended up with his hot Irish best friend. And, like, Vince is obsessed with Dr. Who, so they gave Michael comic books? Like? Why not Star Trek? And he's obsessed with Brian and has the same soul-destroying crush that Vince has on Stuart, but there's a point to Vince's crush on Stuart the point is that they end up together and Nathan is a high school boy who is genuinely meant to be a blip on the radar in the background of their story.

It's been long enough that I don't hate Michael anymore, I'm just still fascinated by CowLip's bizarre story decisions.

Here's how I'll summarize my complicated relationship with the US version of Queer as Folk:

Season five was an insult to me personally, and I never watched the last episode. That stupid ending reversed all five seasons of Brian's character arc and landed him exactly where he was in the first episode, only multiple years older. And CowLip talked about it like it was brilliant and not a pathological misunderstanding of how storytelling is meant to operate to connect with audiences.

But.

I remember watching the Babylon bombing episode. Viscerally. I was staying at my sister's house, and I waited until everyone fell asleep. I snuck into their home office to watch the episode on their computer because I kept all queer media I watched secret from everyone in my very conservative family. I turned the volume down to one bar, kept the lights off, and held my shallow breath whenever the house made any kind of noise. Because Brian had never said "I love you" before, and this was it, because he thought Justin would be one of those corpses rolled out on a gurney from the club where they met, where their friends and family all gathered, the only place they felt safe being gay.

And many years later, when something similar happened far, far away at Pulse in Orlando, a memory surfaced of secretly watching an episode about love and desperation and grief. Of feeling caged inside a sexuality prescribed to me. And it was the first time I came out on social media.

Because it was a ridiculous show in some ways, and a terribly written one sometimes, but I think it also cut to the quick for many of us who just…didn't have anything else. We didn't have many options back then, and the fandom was massive, and it nudged me a little closer to understanding who I am and who I love.

[audreydoeskaren]

do you know Chinese symbolism for homosexuality?

tw homophobia, pedophilia

Hi again, for gay men there are a couple really well known ones but I’m not sure if they were real or fabricated, because all the articles describing them always cite the same couple sources from Antiquity... I tried to verify them but the only articles that didn’t copy and paste from the same source came across as extremely homophobic, so I decided to give up. The most common and reliable one is probably 断袖 or “cut sleeve”, which I mentioned in a previous ask. I would like to use this opportunity to talk about some tangential but more important topics regarding homosexuality in China though.

As a followup to my previous ask where I said I'd look through some Ming and Qing novels to see how homosexuality was perceived at the time, the conclusion I (unfortunately) came to was that homophobia was very much alive and well in Chinese literature and society. A lot of people like to argue that gay people fared pretty well in China historically by either pointing to emperors who were or were rumored to be gay or time periods where gay sex was prevalent as a form of consumption. This is extremely shallow and also kind of Orientalist in my opinion, these arguments always go for the emperors and do not take nuance into consideration or dive into wider societal discourses on homosexuality in imperial China. If you research homosexuality in Europe by only looking at royalty, you’ll find plenty of homosexual behavior too, does that mean gay people had it very easy in Europe historically?? Not to mention that they usually don’t differentiate between dynasties, let alone centuries or decades, even though public opinion on homosexuality in China (or anywhere in the world tbh) could change very quickly. This is also sort of Orientalist, assuming “imperial China” to be a never changing entity with a never changing stance on homosexuality. Since I know nothing prior to the Ming Dynasty I’ll share some of my random findings on homosexuality and homophobia in the Ming, Qing and 20th century.

Gayness as disease

Nowadays the symbol of the cut sleeve is just a benign historical allusion but historically it seems that it was used in a negative and condemning sense, implying that people thought of homosexuality as a disease or deviation from the norm. The common phrase used for the cut sleeve is "断袖之癖", usually translated as "the passion of the cut sleeve" nowadays, but the meaning of the word 癖 here leans more toward "fetish", "obsession" or "hobby" with pathological connotations. I thought maybe this word had a different, nuanced meaning historically but it seems that it was used to describe what it means :(( The only silver lining is probably that with the progression of language it isn’t offensive anymore.

In a lot of popular novels from the Ming and Qing, homosexuality was depicted as a "perversion" and a decadent lifestyle that plagues morality, and gay characters were often either killed or straightened out by the end of the story. An example of this is the story 黄九郎 Huang Jiulang from the series 聊斋志异 Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by 蒲松龄 Pu Songling written in the 17th century. In this story, one of the protagonists was gay; he died after confessing his love to the other guy in a very fast paced bury your gays arc which somehow reminded me of the Supernatural finale, and reincarnated as a straight man because of his piety. Thanks I hate it. Pu uses the symbol of the cut sleeve to refer to the protagonist, presumably in a negative manner.

Gayness as power/status symbol

Another thing was that historically in China a lot of people confused homosexuality with pedophilia. This is a global thing, but its presence in China is often overlooked. This could be seen in the popularity of another term for homosexuality, "娈童", meaning something similar to "pederasty". I read somewhere that since the late Ming, pederasty was considered a type of tasteful consumption for high society, along with things like fashion, food, music and art. This was not equivalent to the "cut sleeve" or homosexuality as we know it nowadays, which refers to a personal sexual orientation, pederasty historically often refers to an imbalanced power dynamic where a wealthy, privileged man takes advantage of a young boy as a leisurely activity. It’s more to show off that someone in a position of privilege and wealth has the power to procure sexual objects, gender and age don’t matter much in this regard. I cannot help but cringe violently whenever someone brings up pederasty as proof of China’s historical “openness” toward gay people. Talk to me again when in this time and place you could marry someone of your sex (not a minor) and be considered a respectable couple instead of two jerks with a degenerate fetish (not saying that gay people have to marry, it’s just that the ability to do so is an important indicator of equality imo). Pedophilia and homosexuality are not one and the same good heavens.

I hypothesize that the reason why Chinese society was historically homophobic despite having no religious condemnation of homosexual individuals was the idea that having many concubines and male children was a status symbol for men. Women of marriageable age were seen more or less as commodities and male children could supposedly "continue the bloodline" 传香火 and were vessels for passing down prestige, so having them were of utmost importance to a privileged man. Being just gay or lesbian, however, meant that you didn't perform the "man strong working woman weak making babies" heteronormative family prototype, and was thus prone to criticism. When gay men didn’t have children they “couldn’t continue their bloodline” and were emasculated, when gay women didn’t have children they failed to “fulfill their duties as a woman” and were shamed.

It kind of makes sense considering how being bisexual was never a problem in comparison, especially for men. If you were a rich guy who had both male and female partners, you would still have children and concubines both male and female so nobody gives a shit. Emperor Zhengde of the Ming (reign 1505-21) was presumably bisexual and had both male and female lovers, nobody had a bone to pick with that; he famously liked to fuck around but those who criticized him did so for his debauchery instead of focusing on the gender of his partners.  This is different to homophobia in Europe where same sex attraction was considered evil and immoral in and of itself because of religious reasons, in China it was rather the other practical implications of homosexuality (not having children or a family) that attracted hate.

By the way can we just take a moment to talk about bi erasure in Chinese history. From all accounts of Emperor Zhengde I’ve read he comes across as extremely bisexual, but a lot of people try to make him a gay icon? I mean, he liked women too.

One interesting homophobic angle in ye olde China which I find kind of funny was straight women who wanted to climb the social ladder by marrying rich men talking shit about them after figuring out they were gay lmao. Historically, there were not so many work opportunities for women, so the easiest way to improve social standing was to marry a rich and powerful guy. Not saying that women didn't work, they did but their upward social mobility was restricted because they couldn't enter the imperial examination system which was how men became rich and powerful. This angle is relatively benign and kind of helps illustrate that historical Chinese homophobia was indeed fueled by classism and patriarchy.

Gayness as crime

I used to think that there were no anti-sodomy statutes in China (laws prohibiting sex between gay men), but it turns out that there was one decree in the Jiajing era (1521-67) and one in 1740, and private gay sex was not actually decriminalized until 1957. Same sex marriage is still not legal in China at time of writing. I couldn’t find detailed information on what these laws entailed or how they were enforced, but they’re enough to prove that homosexuality in China was legally punishable from the 16th century onward. On top of that, even when there was no law prohibiting private sex acts between people of the same sex, displays of gay affection such as kissing or holding hands could still be legally punished under “public indecency” or “hooliganism”, which was frequently what happened in the 20th century. 

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

What do you think lesbians are attracted to in women that we can’t be attracted to in men?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives woman-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait women have that men can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

I am a gay man. I neither am a lesbian nor have sex with lesbians. I differ to lesbians on what lesbians are attracted to. Idk why you're in my inbox babe.

But I will say that for me I'm attracted to femininity in men, including trans men but I'm not attracted to women, and I assume it's a similar thing for lesbians but with women instead of men.

Also being attracted to femininity/masculinity isn't sexist, usually that just comes down to preference, which can stem from internalized bias but doesn't always. Like I assume you if you're a lesbian that you have a preference for butches/studs or femmes, or maybe you don't. For example I tend to give all guys a chance regardless of aesthetic, size and gender presentation but my whole life I've only ever been romantically interested in three guys and they were all skinny feminine punk/goth types. I imagine that's a preference that I have.

Anyway logic doesn't have much to do with sexual preference in my experience. Logically I'm a huge bottom so I should be into guys who top but that usually isn't how things work out for me. Logically I prefer the physical act of giving head to people with vaginas and I'd probably have more luck finding someone with that equipment who wants to get eaten out if I was into women but I'm woefully attracted to men and I just have to hope that a trans guy finds me on Grindr, or just eat ass. Logically, I don't want to get pregnant so it would probably be safer for me to be into people who can't do that to me, but again, woefully attracted to men. I look at a woman and I just can't muster any sexual appetite for her. Sorry.

Although to be fair my disinclination toward women does on the rare occasion apply to men. Like for example I might be convinced to KaiKai with a Trixie Mattel type or a Nina Bo'nina Brown type but you could not get me to KaiKai with F1nn5ter. I don't know why he just doesn't register to me the way that most women don't register to me.

So yeah I am giving you a fucking non answer because sexuality isn't about logic or reason. It's words we have to describe sexual attraction, which I hate to tell you this, is a vibe. It's all feelings. Feelings of sexual attraction.

You TERFs are so obsessed with white patriarchal notions of concrete reason that you never realize the very obvious answer that some things just aren't about logic or reason, they're about experiential reality. And then you wanna pretend like you're anti patriarchy.

Feelings don't care about your facts.