#assuming everyone is cishet by default is the problem

[universe-of-peoples]

It’s pride month! You know what that means! It means it’s time for people to see me in Pride merch and compliment me for being an ally 🙄🤦‍♀️

[mabaris]

that stupid comicbook.com article and also fan response in general to the companion romance situation annoys me so bad for the sole reason that everyone acts like the only people in the game are the pc and playable companions

[old-long-john]

.

Trying to work up the courage to tell my dad I'm trans is actually eating me inside out. I need to do it, because I need to get to the next part where I can actually live my life as myself, but it feels like there's a cork in my throat whenever I even think about getting the words out. My mental health is taking a nosedive. I've chipped a fucking tooth from grinding them in my sleep, which has never been a problem until now. I just feel so fucking overwhelmed and angry that I keep having to come out, over and over again, as bi, as trans, because everyone else will always assume I'm the cishet default unless I tell them otherwise. The only way I get to be myself is by ripping my chest open and sharing deeply personal shit that I don't want anyone to know because it's none of their fucking business. But there's no other way to move forward with this. I fucking hate it and I'm so tired.

[fozmeadows]

on the outing of kit connor

can I just - 

the reason coming out is a thing - the whole reason we have a CONCEPT of coming out - are heteronormative social defaults. we live in a culture that assumes everyone is straight: that teaches us to assume, not only that everyone else is straight, but that we are straight, and which overwhelmingly, depending on context and location, either treats queerness as something external to the norm, something invisible and shameful, or something downright evil. and so we have a situation where, when you are queer in whatever way, coming out is never a one-and-done situation, because even if you’ve come out a hundred times in your life, strangers will continue to assume you’re cis and straight unless you tell them otherwise - which it may not always be safe to do, because of homophobia and transphobia. so out people, despite being out in whatever way, can still exist in this constant state of semi-closetedness, not because they want to, but because of the refusal of others to entertain the reality of their existence as a human default, rather than as a specialised exception to the norm. straightness and cisness can always be Assumed, says this logic, but queerness must be Proven: otherwise it cannot possibly exist.  

all this being so, when you demand that a real, human person discloses their sexuality to you before they’re ready? when you forcibly out someone? you’re contributing to the same heteronormative social defaults whose dominance you’re ostensibly using to justify Why Visible Queerness Matters, because what you’re really demanding is certainty, and the emphasis on certainty IS THE WHOLE GODDAMN PROBLEM. what you’re saying is, “I assume that everyone is straight until or unless they expressly confirm otherwise, because that’s the Correct Assumption. assuming that someone is queer, therefore, would be Incorrect, even if they’re signaling solidarity with and support for the queer community - even if they’re signaling queerness in other ways - because queerness isn’t allowed any ambiguity. I must be Certain of who is queer and who is Not, because it’s Wrong to assume a person isn’t straight” and I just.

[stares directly into the camera] really. really! who is it, I wonder, who taught you that it’s wrong to assume people aren’t straight? who told you that it’s potentially insulting to be thought of as queer, but NEVER insulting to be assumed straight? what social norms, I ask, imparted the idea that thinking of someone as queer is “imposing sexuality” on them (negative), whereas thinking of them as straight is Perfectly Normal? do you think, perhaps, that continually assuming everyone is straight to the point where you demand a public, notarised Admission Of Queerness to be exempted from that assumption maybe serves to further entrench the idea of Straight As Default, thereby creating a more hostile and less accepting environment for queer people? has it occurred to you that, if you respond with derision and hostility to anyone who (for instance) plays with gender presentation through fashion, evokes a queer aesthetic or otherwise says Fuck You to presenting as cishet without expressly confirming their queerness, you are making it HARDER for queer people to exist safely in public, to say nothing of shoring up toxic, shitty gender binaries for cishet people?

does the entertainment industry have a historical problem re: casting straight people in queer roles and praising their performances while simultaneously refusing to cast queer people in those roles because “it wouldn’t be acting”? YES. is this some homophobic bullshit? YES. does hollywood, despite its supposed status as a liberal bastion, still have a huge fucking problem with homophobia and treating out actors and other out creatives like shit? YES. 

is any of this improved by forcing queer actors to out themselves, the better to feel comforted that a FICTIONAL queer person isn’t being “disrespected” by a real human actor, or whatever the fuck other justification you’d care to run with? NO. NO IT FUCKING ISN’T. 

does forcing people to out themselves increase the lack of safety queer people feel and experience within an already homophobic industry? IT SURE FUCKING DOES. 

all of you go to your godamned rooms and think about what you’ve done

[kingofthewilderwest]

What's amatonormativity??

I’d encourage you to go to Google or check out tumblr tags and posts on amatonormativity to learn more!

Amatonormativity is the internalized cultural mindset that romance is default and central. It especially conceives of romance as the single most important relationship in someone’s life, to the point it should be focused upon and sought out above any other bond. It treats romance like the universal ultimate solution to any of our emotional bond problems (loneliness, intimacy, trust, support, longevity of relationships, etc.). Amatonormativity is heavily ingrained in many societies, like the mindset I find in people in the United States.

Of course romance isn’t a bad life experience! For many people, it can bring great joy. When people criticize amatonormativity, people aren’t criticizing that romance can be a great thing in someone’s life. The problem with amatonormativity is that it treats romance as the ULTIMATE thing, the ONE solution to our need for emotional fulfillment.

It’s important to understand that amatonormativity has profound negative side effects, whether you’re allo or aro, whether you’re queer or straight, and whatever gender you are. Society takes a lot of things for granted regarding romance and this can stunt our happiness. It stunts our ability to bond with other people around us or find satisfaction within our lives.

Amatonormativity underlies emotionally stunting assumptions like..... (disclaimer... I will often use language defaulting to the Western cishet perspective, because that’s the mindset of my broader society... I myself am an aroace enby and have more nuanced understandings of gender, gender expression, gender roles, sexual attraction and identity, romantic attraction and identity, etc.)

Automatically assuming that just because a man talks to a woman, the interaction MUST be romantic in nature (this of course intertwines with heteronormativity -- many of my points will intertwine with heteronormativity). It assumes there’s no such thing as “just friends” between people of “opposite” genders. This in turn can result in us losing opportunities to bond to, understand, or properly respect... literally half the human population.  

Treating friendships as secondary. Treating friendships as temporary. Treating friendships as more replaceable than romance. Treating friendships as less “deep” and important to our time than romance, even a romance you started two days ago with someone you met last week. By doing this, we lose the chance to grow deeper with someone near us. It limits the potential by which we can bond with another human soul and find happiness.  

The belief we are unlovable and not worth anything because we can’t find a romantic partner. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people disregard their own worth because of this, and it makes me deeply sad. The truth is that our worth is not at all tied to whether we have a romantic partner. We can be so deeply loved and cherished in all sorts of relationships. Of course it’s still valid if you feel single blues because you want a romantic partner, but tying the concept into “I am worthless OR I’m dating” clearly is an emotionally harmful concept. It can result in everything down to hooking up in a relationship that you aren’t ready for or don’t like as much as you pretend you do.  

The belief that we are utterly alone without a romantic partner. I notice this often ties into the amatonormative belief that we can only get good physical touch, trust, emotional and physical intimacy, etc. through a romantic partner. I feel this mindset is especially pronounced in cishet men, since USA culture treats masculinity as lacking outwardly expressed vulnerability, and ergo you might not be getting your emotional needs met through your platonic and familial relations. The one “accepted” way of getting your emotional needs met comes through The Girlfriend / Wife. This belief prevents us from reaching out and finding support through other people in our lives. We can find love and comfort in friends. We can confide about our emotional struggles and find relational intimacy (great trust!) through familial and platonic bonds. Hugs, snuggling, other acts of physical affection are what humans need, and don’t need to be relegated to One Person Only. Plus... if we assume that our emotional struggles should be fulfilled by One Person Only... that puts enormous pressure on that partner to provide for everything. No one’s that strong. We need support networks, not one designated “save me” individual. It’s pure unhealthiness to mount burdens only on one person, and bottle yourself up otherwise. I often see this fallacy pop up when people start a new romantic relationship. You might barely know the person, and yet you’re trying to rely on them for everything, and you’re trying to be the person they’ll rely on for everything. You dive deep into the expectations before you really know how to handle it, and in the process become psychologically overwhelmed because of the Huge Responsibilities this role seems to entail. Being in a romance doesn’t automatically mean you’ve reached peak intimacy! Note: it’s not to say that romance can’t be a major avenue of security. Of course it’s a great way to fulfill intimacy, trust, physical needs, etc. Of course it can become a bond full of loyalty. But romance is actually like any other relationship... a familial relation can be weak or it can be strong, a platonic relation can be weak or it can be strong, and a romantic bond can be weak or it can be strong. The fallacy is that we are treating romance as *THE* way to fulfill all these diverse emotional problems, socking it onto one individual when it might be beyond their single load to bear, and then not seeking out help from the other sources that are around us.  

The belief that the only person you can live with is a romantic partner. Living with non-romantic roommates (aka living with friends) is seen as an undesirable inconvenience and something you only do temporarily because you financially have to. It’s seen as an immature youthful thing rather than something an established adult might do. Living with friends long-term out of chosen happiness is not something that crosses the mind of many people... it’s assumed you’ll either move out to live on your own, or marry and go and live with your partner.  

The belief that adulthood progresses through a very specific sequence of events. You go to school. You leave on your own. You marry. You get a house. You have kids. There’s a reason it’s common for family to nag you  “When are you going to get married? When are you going to get married?” Because clearly you haven’t made an important step of adulthood, an important step in life, unless you get married. I’ve noticed that for many of my friends, even those who are comfortable with the life choice to not get married... they express they don’t feel “as adult” as their married peers. And many people in society won’t treat them “as adult.”  

Harmful beliefs downplaying spousal abuse, like those people who try to argue “you can’t rape your wife / husband / spouse / girlfriend / boyfriend / significant enby / significant dumbass. That’s not what rape means.” Because a sexual-romance is the GOOD thing, right?  

AND MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MORE!!!

Some people of course have a better handle on their relationships than others. Some people are better at ignoring what society considers most important or most default. Some of what I’ve said above is when these beliefs are treated to their utmost, rather than what some people will do (lots of people have close “besties”, for instance). But amatonormativity+heteronormativity creeps in everywhere in society.

It’s the reason why, in most Hollywood movies, the protagonist is a man and the main actress is his romantic partner. It’s the reason why these two characters might start a steamy romance even before they know each other well; who needs to write ACTUAL understanding between the two characters when they obviously are going to fall in love and fuck?

It’s the reason why advertisements are so sex-oriented (reminder note: society usually doesn’t distinguish sexual and romantic bonds). Advertisements try to make their product appealing by associating it to romance, the Ultimate Desirable. Here’s how to make you look hot so you can attract someone in a romantic-sexual relationship, because THAT’S the ultimate goal of life, right?

It’s embedded in linguistic expressions. If someone asks if you’re dating, you respond, “No, she’s only a friend.” Or. “No. We’re just friends.” Friendship is being treated as lesser. Breakups are treated as inevitably bad even if you choose to be friends afterwards -- because clearly being friends is “taking a step back”, right? Even the word “break up” -- oooo that’s bad sounding! (There have been multiple times I’ve ended romantic relationships where I’ve turned the phraseology on the head and told them it’s a step forward to better, happier, healthier, stronger bonds... and they had to think it through, because amatonormative society forgets this can be the case.) “Friendzoning” is seen as a crime in part because you’re not going to be as intimate with someone as you want to be... despite the fact that having a non-romantic and/or non-sexual relationship with someone could be JUST as meaningful and deep!

I’ve FREQUENTLY seen church study groups that offer only these options: young adult small groups, women’s small groups, men’s small groups, and married couple’s small groups. Because clearly the only “mixed” gender situations out there are when you’re too young to be married, or you’re married.

And frankly, I think it’s one of the reasons why fandom likes to play hook-up with all the characters. Shipping is SO much fun! I love shipping! This is not a comment against the act of shipping! But if everyone needs a romantic partner to be happy...... mmmmm.... yeah let’s rethink what the underlying assumption is here. It’s that default assumption that “romance=happiness, romance=ultimate goal, romance=happily ever after, friendship=lesser.” If two characters in a show don’t canonically hook up, fans can get angry... even if the relationship showed on screen is one with a lot of trust, loyalty, happiness, and intimacy.

I am aroace. I don’t know how many other friends in the aro and/or ace community have talked about how lonely and unhappy they feel, because all their friends around them are looking for sex and romance and ergo don’t treat their friendship deep enough for my friends to get their emotional needs met. It’s easy to feel left out in a world where everyone is looking for romance, and ergo you are never the bond they want to pursue.

There are many ways in which we can achieve close bonds with people. This is why I think it’s important to talk about amatonormativity. Again, I’m SO happy when my friends are happy in a good romance. That’s a good thing!!! But it’s so psychologically destructive, whether you’re aro or allo, to live in a world where romance is considered The One And Only Key to relational happiness.  

Talking about amatonormativity has the goal of helping us be aware about how society idolizes romance and/or sex. The goal is to help everyone know we have many options by which to pursue good, deep bonds in a variety of ways. The goal is to make sure we don’t treat romance as the only acceptable way to live. The goal is finding ways for humans to get our needs fulfilled healthily and widespreadly. The goal is to be more comfortable with and more accepting of people who don’t follow The One Righteous Path Of Required Romance, so that we can all be more comfortable with ourselves and the relations around us -- including being comfortable with our romances!

[emptymasks]

Yep. Like. I totally feel it when shows and movies pull the “bury your gays” trope. They wait right until the end to reveal one of the characters is gay and in love with another character or something and then kill them off straight away. It just hurts my heart. I hate it. I physically can’t watch scenes of hate attacks on gay people. Like in IT Chapter 2 when the couple are attacked at the beginning. It makes me feel sick. These things do effect us and can make us feel awful.

Like the fact Loki can say he’s pan/bi or whatever but we are never gonna see him with a guy, it makes me feel like gay people should always be behind closed doors. Like we should hide. Whereas straight people can show their intimacy. And they say he’s gender fluid on a piece of paper but never delve deeper into it imo. And so many people in the fandom are now making out he’s like, not gender fluid? Or pansexual? That he’s a straight man or something and when he changes shape he’s a straight women. Gosh it’s so weird.

Well they didn't even say "genderfluid" on a piece of paper though. That's the big problem. They said "sexfluid" which isn't a real gender identity and now a whole load of the audience thinks Loki is not genderfluid and is instead "sexfluid" and that he's 'sexfluid' because he's a shapeshifter and genderfluid isn't a real thing. Or it is a real thing, but Loki isn't genderfluid he's 'sexfluid' didn't you read the thing in the show? Ugh.

Like of course it's biphobic to say a bi man can't date a bi woman, no one's saying that isn't still bi representation. But it's weird that they boast about them being queer but then don't want to show any same-sex relationship. Not that Loki is a man or him being with a man would be a same-sex relationship as he's genderfluid, but the show is acting as though Loki isn't genderfluid: using he pronouns for Loki variants like Sylvie they don't know the gender of yet (I know it was probably to trick the audience, but we still would have been tricked if they had used they/them because we all know everyone would have assumed the other variant is male by default), Mobius calling Sylvie Loki's "female self" which is straight up just fluidphobic. Showing Loki and Sylvie together while the director confirmed it won't be brought up that he's bi again, the writer said Loki is falling romantically in love with Sylvie, while refusing to ever use they/them or she/her pronouns of have Loki say or show in any way that he is genderfluid lets cishet fans and homophobic fans watch the show without "LGBTness shoved down their throats". It allows people who don't like LGBT+ representation to still believe the characters are cisgender and straight.

[twopoppies]

since this subject has been floating around for quite sometime i would love to hear your thoughts on it.

do you think cishet women should write lgbtq based fics?

at the end of the day we don't know what the person might identify as, if they're publically not announcing it (they shouldn't if they don't want to.) but just like the debate that harry is queer and we know that but the community doesn't accept it because he's not "out and proud" (this was the comment on an article about MP) but just assuming everyone is cishet until they say otherwise gives more traction to the belief that cishet is default.

I don’t think there’s an inherent problem with it, as long as the author is doing some deep research and possibly having a sensitivity reader for whatever they’re writing.

I’m not really comfortable saying X group shouldn’t write about Y group because they’re not a member of it—there are too many variables involved. Reading/writing fic and being involved in a fandom like this one has allowed thousands of supposedly cishet people to discover their identities. As long as a person is being respectful and doing their best to write something accurate, I don’t see a problem.

Additionally, saying you can’t do X unless you tell us that you’re LGBTQ+ feels like some serious gatekeeping. People who want to be involved, but aren’t ready to share their labels (or don’t know yet what they are) still may have important stories to tell.

[robuttsinyourthighs]

Transphobia is just discourse and not a real world problem. Nice

I think it's cute how everyone is assuming shit about me because of how I look and what I comment on.

The fact that I identify as they/she means nothing.

No one knows how I've fucking struggled with not being able to even ATTEMPT to transition because of my body's default that "clearly this is just a cis woman-must not know anything about trans rights haha we've got *her* now! Let's assume they're a terf because they won't take our word about something with no supporting evidence!"

And I know for a fact that no one will believe that I wish I were male because I don't show it. Y'all are going to sit there and assume shit about me when you don't even know me.

That's disgusting and you're no one's ally.

The only reason I put "they/SHE" is to make people comfortable. No one would accept me as NB or male because of how I look and being in no position to try and change myself so I have to roll with what I have so I don't get scrutinized by cishet people in job interviews and make new people I meet unconformable.

[catboyfeli]

the past few days i’ve been experiencing so much confusion and dysphoria towards the concept of nonbinary itself, and i think that’s part of why i used to oppose it??

it’s just?? i’m autistic so i take everything literally, so if someone identifies as their agab, but not the gender roles assigned to it, would they be nonbinary? what even is gender to most people?

i’m so loving towards queer cishets because, although i’m not cishet, queer attraction to men as a woman is a big part of my identity, and everyone has different interpretations of what gender is, so if someone experiences their gender as queer, but still identifies as it, wouldn’t they be lgbtq?

like, if a cishet man identifies as male, but does not conform to the male gender role, expresses himself femininely, experiences a disconnect from the male social role, and experiences attraction exclusively to women (or those who present as women), but in a way that isn’t the same as typical cishet men, would he be considered nonbinary or genderqueer?

people go on and on about self identity always being valid, but the second someone identifies as cishet and queer, they act like it’s contradictory. but heterosexual attraction and straight attraction aren’t the same thing?

people say lgbtq means anyone who isn’t cishet, but also talks about how cis individuals may identify as genderqueer, or something similar, to describe their connection to gender roles and social roles. so by that logic, someone can identify as cis + het and queer without it being contradictory.

it’s been on my mind a lot lately and makes me feel like bursting into tears because it’s so overwhelming and confusing and i hate how exclusionary and hateful the community as a whole is.

i just? i have one character i’m kin with, that goes beyond just having them as a character i relate to or find comfort in. he’s a cis man, but very feminine, doesn’t conform to the male social role in the slightest, attracted almost exclusively to women with a rare exception here and there for other feminine men, identifies as male but not with the male social or gender roles

i know it probably sounds silly to most people but for me, this kin majorly affects my identity and so often i just wonder? is he cis? is he nonbinary? i don’t fucking know??? sometimes people say nonbinary and genderqueer can also refer to one’s gender expression, and yeah, this character’s gender expression is 100% nonbinary. he doesn’t “act” like a man whatsoever and identifies more with women than with men, but still identifies as a man.

anyway the big problem is that i roleplay this character, and whenever i think about the fact that people would assume a straight man or lesbian wouldn’t be attracted to him, it makes me feel incredibly dysphoric, because like?? ok he’s male but he doesn’t behave or present male whatsoever, so yeah, some straight men and lesbians COULD be attracted to him because attraction goes far beyond gender identity and is affected more by gender expression than anything else

so this whole thing just makes me feel confused and dysphoric and i’m about to start my period so i’ve been real emotional and disassociative lately which makes me hyperfixate on this and it’s so UGHGHHGGHh.

it’s just so difficult to explain my feelings, beliefs, and experiences to others and it makes me so frustrated and upset.

i just wish? the community would come up with something to refer to actual non lgbtq people? instead of using cishet as a catch-all because it’s really not? someone who’s cis and het can still be queer in their experience with gender and sexuality, and although i’m neither, i’m still supportive due to my past confusion with all of this and knowing what i experienced was queer, but at that time, feeling as if cis and heterosexual best described me.

and plus now even if i was cis and het, my attraction to men and experience with gender would still be queer, regardless of my personal identity or attraction (or lack of) to women.

most of society sees gender as either male or female, depending on your sex or which one you want to transition to, and how you behave and present yourself is independent of your gender. which makes sense, but now i don’t know what i believe and it’s all so fucking confusing and some aspects of nonbinary enforce gender norms and others demolish it and it confuses and distresses the hell out of me

i just wish i had one person who understood my way of thinking, then i’d feel less alone and crazy, because like? a woman who presents as male can still conform to the female social role? gender expression refers to more than just presentation, and a woman who presents as female can not conform to the female social role. is that considered nonbinary or genderqueer? is that why people think i’m crazy for being supportive of queer cishets? is a person who identifies as their agab but has queer gender expression considered nonbinary or genderqueer? have i just been taking this “identity” thing too literally?

are gender and gender roles considered the same thing? because yeah, they are just about the same thing, but is that how other people view it?

typing this whole thing has helped a little with my thoughts but i still feel distressed and dysphoric as hell. i’m nonbinary, but still have a strong attachment to being female due to, you know, growing up as female and mostly conforming to the female social role, so seeing all this hate towards cishets makes me, by association, feel like shit, and seeing people constantly assume heterosexual attraction conforms to binary gender roles, makes me feel invalidated, invisible, and dysphoric. me being kin with a very gnc male character, who also experiences queer heterosexual attraction, makes it hurt even more and increases my distress and dysphoria.

like on tiktok? i saw some jerk say how “straight people shouldn’t use top/bottom” like??? first of all trans people?? second of all PEGGING?? like i said, i still feel strongly attached to being female, so this made me feel like garbage.

does the community consider those who do not conform to gender expectations as nonbinary or genderqueer? is cis used to refer to those who identify as their agab AND the gender and social roles that go along with it? am i the one who’s out of the loop?

feminine gay men (more specifically, mlm) are normalized in lgbtq spaces, but feminine straight and bi men when it comes to m/f attraction, aren’t, and are inherently assumed to conform to the male social norms. same with women, obviously, but i feel like it’s slightly more accepted with women.

even in bisexual spaces, m/m and f/f relationships are considered ‘superior,’ and m/f relationships are always assumed to conform to gender roles. by the lgbtq community, as well. people think m/f and het mean heteronormative, gender binary conforming. but it doesn’t. is there any sort of term or community for those who don’t conform to this? i’ve been meaning to make my own but i’d really rather not because i just don’t have the energy.

this is what i’m always talking about. this is why i thought so strongly i was just a cis girl that didn’t conform to the female social role. is my understanding of things just off? is being gnc considered genderqueer by default? and when i say gnc, i don’t mean a man who wears dresses or something, i mean men and women who don’t conform to the gender roles assigned to them because it’s who they are inside, not to make a political statement or whatever. i’m not gnc or nonbinary to make a political statement, i am because that’s just who i am.

anyway if i could just be a normal cis girl who isn’t exclusively attracted to femme men that’d be fucking amazing. sometimes i wish i was just a trans guy but even then i feel like i wouldn’t be completely happy since i’m just Not attracted to gender conforming men in the slightest. and yes, i’m bisexual, but lately it’s so rare that i’m attracted to women and when it comes to men, i’m exclusively attracted to femme men, not exclusively attracted to men as a whole.

so often i get jealous of trans men, gay men, and lesbians, and then i feel like an asshole because i shouldn’t be jealous but i am and i just wish i was one of them and not a fucking freak that doesn’t seem to fit any label or community properly. like my gay trans friend? i’m so jealous of him and i feel like an asshole. he has so much community and i have? nobody. i wish i was like him. i don’t know anyone who understands my attraction to exclusively femme men, and especially not girls who understand it. for a long time, you know, despite me feeling drawn towards the nonbinary label, i thought my lack of community of other women who understood how i felt and lack of representation, was why I felt that way, and I thus brushed it off as me being cis and confused.

knowing tumblr, someone’s going to see this and make fun of me or invalidate my feelings, as fucking always, so i don’t even know why i’m posting this. i just have nowhere else i can put it.

[realisationanddoubt]

The binary: realisations and rants

Can we talk about the gender binary a bit? Of course we can. It’s my blog, we can talk about Naruto or the impossibility of clown cars if I wish. So I’ve been thinking a lot about me after my break up as, I suppose, is normal. Thanks to this I’ve stumbled across an identity crisis I’ve been putting off for years. I’m non-binary and that’s a weird thing to just non-chalantly write down for me. See, I’ve spent years talking about how I don’t really care about gender. As a bisexual, I’ve had the conversation numerous times. As a stereotypically effiminate person I’ve spoken many times about how I’m comfortable in myself acting however I want because the gender stereotypes hold no interest to me. But I’ve never really bothered to delve into why.

It’s taken awhile to come to terms with being non-binary. It’s like coming to terms with my sexuality all over again. As usual, I’ve been presented a choice. The sexuality and identity fairy came to me twice now and happily asked “men or women” and I, in classic me style, didn’t really pay attention to the fact that there was a clear binary choice and only half listening just replied “Oh, no thank you!”

It’s difficult to live in a world defined by binaries and then realise you’re not really interested in participating. When I very first realised I might be non-binary a couple of months back, I got lost in a strange narrative. Do I need to start wearing make up? Should I make myself more androgynous, shave my beard? How do I present as non-binary? Of course the answer (For me) is you don’t. I should have really known that from the start because I had to do the same thing with my bisexuality. It took many years to get from “How do I let everyone know I’m bisexual?” to “I don’t really care who knows what my sexuality is and I have no desire to share that information.” I’ve approached being non-binary much the same. I get that people are proud of their sexuality and identity and seriously, good for them. That must be a nice thing to have. Thing is I’m not particularly proud. Let me see if I can put this into words.

So for me, sexuality and identity are both very matter of fact. I’m not proud of either of those aspects of me but don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed. The idea of being proud of either of those things is, for me at least, the same as being proud of having curly hair or brown eyes. Sure, there was some emotional turmoil coming to terms with my sexuality and identity but it’s not like these are things I had to strive and work for. They’re just facts. I don’t really care if people call me he or they. They feels a bit more natural I guess but it doesn’t particulalry bother me being called he. And note, I get called he because I have a beard and a masculine build. When I was a teenager with heavy eyeliner and long flowing hair I got called miss and she a lot and that never particularly bothered me either. I’ve never particualraly felt some kind of rage at being misgendered. I don’t really care that people assume I’m straight (I kind of care in that way of, Jesus dude open your mind and stop making assumptions but not enough that I’ve felt the need to correct anyone.)

Though I wonder how much this is a story I tell myself. Just like it’s difficult telling yourself actually, you’re not any of the traditional genders, telling yourself you don’t really care about presenting and pronouns in a community that’s so fired up about them feels weird. 

“Welcome to the queer community! Would you like to be angry about misrepresntation of your sexuality or your identity?” The queer fairy politely but firmly asks.

“Ah, no thank you, I’ve already eaten.” Josh replies, not really paying attention to the climate or the question.

I even considered whether I’m supposed to change my name. Am I supposed to change my name to something a bit more androgynous? Maybe start calling myself Alex or Frankie or any other name that could be either gender? But I don’t want to. I’m just Josh. I’m a bisexual, non binary mess and Josh is my descriptor. 

Should I care more? Should I be fighting some war against ignorance? Am I somehow doing a disservice by not participating?

Not participating is basically my default. “Here lies Josh, they didn’t participate.”

I kind of make life more difficult for myself by not divulging these things. People have asked me before “Are you gay?” and I just reply “nope!”. Then I get annoyed that people just assume I’m straight despite literally never giving any evidence to the contrary. I guess it’s just a problem with the system. My sexuality and identity are improtant to me but they’re personal. I’m not going to talk about them to work colleagues or friends anymore than I’m going to talk about my kinks. 

“Hey Josh are you gay?” My well meaning but misguided colleague asks.

“Oh no, I’m bisexual, non-binary and I like scratching and biting during sex.”

You really going to just out your kinks like that online huh my dude? It should say enough about me that I feel a swell of anxiety to putting a fairly vanilla kink on a personal blog no one I know will ever read. Do I really want Tumblruser420 to know I like biting in bed? Feels like an overshare. 

This really became a bit of a deep dive into gender identity huh? I guess I’m just going through some stuff. 

Quick tangent, whenever I hear a noise in my house, despite having two cats that are always the cause, I need to check every room just in case. I even check the bathroom which only has one very small window next to the door. Just in case some sneak thief broke in through the plughole I guess. Some S’wit. Some N’wah.

God I’m just going through some Stuff y’know? I worry how much of my outlook might be down to internalised shame and not just non-chalant IDGAF attitude. I haven’t put Non-Binary on my tinder profile. I mean I have but I’ve set it not to show. I don’t know if that’s out of fear of being judged for it or simply because I haven’t come to terms with it myself. To be clear, I definitely haven’t come to terms with it myself yet. I have bisexual on my profile but I guess I’m still kind of ashamed of that.

Is it shame? I guess it’s more fear. Not like a fear for myself or my safety or anything. More a fear of people’s perceptions. It’s not even that I’m scared people will be shitty to me because of it. If that’s the kind of person they are, fuck them. I just don’t want to be “That queer one”. Does that make sense? I kind of hate to term cishet because it only seems to be used as derogatory but I need to use it a sec. I think the main reason I’m happy to just pass as cishet is because then I’m allowed to be a person. The second you’re something different that’s it. That defines you. I get it needs to be a conversation so people stop being ignorant and hateful but at the same time even just the discussion about it feels like it’s pushing me into this definition. Like being bi or being non-binary means I’m a certain kind of person. 

I guess it’s the classic tale of any ism. Racism, sexism, homophobia...ism. I am bisexual. I am non-binary. But I don’t want to be the bisexual. Being defined by something like that, something so out of your control... It feels so... dismissive? I’m not a person anymore. I’m not Josh. I’m a bisexual. I’m non binary. I’m white. I present as a man. All that shit. This is starting to become a rant on the construction of society as a whole and the role of privelege and what that means huh?

I’m creative, emotional, witty. That’s what I’m defined by. That’s who I am. I’m not just some pigeon hole word. Define me by my facets, not my facts.

Realisations are a funny thing. I have a lot of realisations in my life and mostly I like them but this one leaves a sour taste in my mouth. It’s not that I don’t care, that much is apparent after this rant. I’m just so tired of it. I avoid all the discourse and conversations about any kind of identity issues because I’m tired of defending myself. It doesn’t matter where you fall on the spectrum. These kind of labels aren’t useful. They’re just a method of pinning something to someone that says “Can I just hate this person out of hand.” and it’s rife. It’s everywhere and it’s all the same. I don’t care if you’re having a rant about black people or a rant about cishets. It’s all just vicious hate. We live in a world where people are so desperate to have someone to hate because they’re different. Whether that difference is in the majority or the minority it doesn’t matter. Hating all men or all straights or all whites is no different from hating all trans people or all queer people or all black people. Hating all millenials because they’re special snowflakes is no different from hating all boomers because they’re not progressive. It’s just pure hatred because they’re different. Just blanket statements attached to something someone can’t control to give you a reason to say “Oh don’t worry, I’m allowed to hate them”.

Maybe keeping my identity or my sexuality to myself makes me a coward. Fine. I refuse to participate in these wars of hatred. I just want to spend time with my cats, fall in love, help people and laugh. 

As always, as will be written on my gravestone one day, I refuse to participate. To all those people who fight for my ideal world on my behalf, thank you. To all those people on either side, progressive or traditional, just to hate one subset of people, go fuck yourselves. I’ll just be over here, trying to make the dying smile and trying to give people a little longer in this world to spend with the people they love.

That’s it. Rant over. I’m going to try and get another hour or two of sleep before work. I know it’s customary to drop the mic after a big speech but know if it felt like I did, I just fumbled putting it back into the mic stand and I’m trying to own it. If you look closely you’ll see that the blood has drained from my face and perspiration is clear on my forehead.

[gayagendaofficial]

Wait, what’s gay lingo? Like, what does twink, bear, etc. mean?

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

Before I get into actually defining these terms, I’d like to write about a few things:

So this is probably in reference to this post I made. Not to explain the joke to death, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do. I wanted to make fun of how people who aren’t mlm think they know what mlm terms like “twink” and “bear” mean and how they blatantly use them incorrectly everywhere, because they think they’re funny (bc gay men are a joke, right? //sarcasm), or because it makes them look “woke”. It’s an idea I had for the longest time when I saw something a str8 woman wrote about Zac Efron being a twink, in the present. Like yes, Zac Efron was a twink, past tense, but he is absolutely not a twink anymore (if you can even call a str8 man a twink). And she also implied that being a twink is something you can’t outgrow, which is laughable, because it’s kind of a meme among gay men that being a twink is something you grow out of whether you like it or not.

This mostly seems to be a problem among cishet women, since cishet men tend to be too concerned with their “masculinity” to touch gay culture. But since this is tumblr and virtually none of you are cishet, a lot of the times I’ve seen people misuse these terms on this site were LGBT+ people who weren’t themselves mlm. In those cases, the reasons seem more that these people are just misinformed, and they use these terms because mlm use these terms, and we share a community. Part of it comes from the fact that wlw might see the terms “twink” and “bear” as analogous to “femme” and “butch” respectively, which is not true in the slightest (Butch and femme are their own complex thing. What they actually have in common with twink and bear is that few outside their communities actually know what they mean lol).  Another reason might be that other LGBT people see mlm using these terms sarcastically and think they’re being used in earnest; if an actual gay man calls a bodybuilder a twink, he’s probably being sarcastic, and also probably trying to insult him (which is a whole can of worms I’ll open up in a bit).

I’m gonna try to define what “twink”, “bear”, and a couple of other terms actually mean, as well as give a little bit of context to how they’re used and controversy surrounding these identities within gay spaces, partially based on my experience as a gay man and partially based on casual research. I’m just one gay man, and I’m not an expert in queer studies or anything, so take from that what you will. I hope this will be useful to mlm who are just discovering their identities and exploring their sexuality/gender, who are new to the community, and I also hope to inform our siblings elsewhere in the LGBT community. This info could also be useful to cishet allies, although please be mindful of your intentions in using these terms.

Anywho, lets get to the definitions:

A twink is a young, smooth, slim mlm. The definition here is generally seen as being pretty strict on those 3 criteria, although “twink” is sometimes used for older mlm who are skinny and don’t have much body hair. Those last two criteria are the most important, because there are other categories for mlm that fit one of the criteria; an otter is essentially twink + bodyhair, and there’s a whole host of other words for other body types.

The definition of “bear” is a little more flexible than “twink”, although it generally comes down to the inverses of those same 3 criteria. The most important of these is the bodyhair requirement; any definition you find of bear includes something about being hairy. Almost as important as bodyhair is body type, although “bear” covers a slightly larger range than twink in that regard. Usually, “bear” indicates that someone is large or plus-sized, although it can also sometimes be used to describe someone who is muscular in the sense that they are beefy (if you can see a 6 pack, he’s probably not a bear). It’s also sometimes associated with being slightly older, but that’s not nearly as important, and “bear” can refer to any age. The term “cub” refers to mlm with the same body type as a bear, but who are smooth and young.

Now, let’s get into some misconceptions/controversies surrounding these terms. The first of these is that twink and bear are the only two options, and that all mlm fall into one of these two categories, or that other terms are simply variations on those two main terms. This misconception is really only one held by people who aren’t mlm themselves (or are, but are only just learning the terminology). These terms are extremely specific, and the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of mlm don’t fit into either of these categories. And that’s ok! There are a ton of other words mlm use to describe themselves. I’ve already mentioned “otter” and “cub”; there’s also “jock”, which refers to muscular mlm; “wolf”, which also refers to muscular mlm, but specifically hairy ones (with a bit of overlap with the “beefier bears” I mentioned earlier); the relatively new term “twunk” which you may know from this video as “a combination twink and hunk”; and many many more. In addition, all of these categories are really just physical descriptions of your body, and don’t have any bearing on anything else. You don’t need to fit into any of them.

That being said, there are a number of stereotypes associated with these terms, and it is important to address them.

Our next misconception is one that’s as common among mlm as as it is among everyone else: that twinks are by definition fem, and bears are by definition masc. “Masc” and “fem”, short for masculine and feminine respectively, come with their own host of problems, and that is a can of worms that I am not going to open up right now. This post is long enough as it is. If you want the sparknotes version of the controversy surrounding the masc-fem dichotomy, it basically boils down to misogyny, transphobia, and internalized homophobia. But back to twinks and bears: I would like to assume that it’s obvious that your body type or bodyhair has absolutely no impact  on your personal presentation of gender. There are plenty of fem bears and masc twinks. But unfortunately, most people don’t seem to get this. And this super important, because the gendered way we think of these terms affects everything else I’ll be talking about in the remainder of this post.

My next point, which is really and observation based on my experience in the gay community, is that bear as a term seems to be much less… loaded. However, being a twink myself, there might be a gap in my personal experience, so any bears feel free to correct me. However, from what I’ve seen, “bear” isn’t really used as an insult in the way “twink” is. Which is a bit of a miracle, considering how prevalent fat-shaming is in the gay community. From what I’ve seen, bear isn’t a term that’s forced on you, it’s a term that bears choose for themselves, almost always in a positive way. It’s a term associated with body positivity, and bear communities seem to be much less toxic than the gay community as a whole. Even when it’s used to describe someone else, it’s always a neutral statement of fact. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used as an insult, or even sarcastically. The worst I’ve seen of it is that it’s used as a porn category, which contributes to the fetishization of fat people; but then again, twink and jock are also porn categories, so it would be weird for bear not to be. This isn’t to suggest that bears are treated better than anyone else in the gay community, if anything they’re treated worse; just that the word “bear” itself has neutral to positive connotations. (Again, any bears correct me on this if you’ve seen it used negatively!)

Twink, on the other hand, is absolutely used as an insult, and frequently. And while this may sometimes be harmless, more often than not it’s really problematic. If you’re plus-sized and you use twink as an insult in the same vein that Nicki Minaj said “fuck the skinny bitches”, that’s completely fine. Twinks are seen as being desirable (if they behave a certain way; more on that later), so effectively it’s punching up instead of punching down. However, a good 95% of the time that “twink” is used as an insult, it really comes from one of the many stereotypes that all essentially boil down to the idea that twinks are fem. And the idea that being fem is inherently bad and insult worthy is, once again, rooted in misogyny, transphobia, and internalized homophobia. 

This association between twinks and femininity also has a lot of scary implications on the beauty standards twinks are held to. I’ve noticed that twinks fill a niche in the gay community that is similar to the role cis women are supposed to fill in western culture as large, and that we’re only seen as sexually valuable if we perform the same behaviors and meet the same beauty standards that are typically reserved for women. We’re bottoms by default, submissive both in and out of the bedroom (yes I actually am a sub bottom, but that’s beside the point). We’re supposed to maintain a completely smooth, hairless appearance; a shaved ass is the bare minimum of hygiene. I once met a guy on grindr who demanded that I be completely hairless everywhere beneath my eyelashes, and while that’s a bit extreme, he was by no means an outlier. Just today I talked to a guy who wanted me hairless between my neck and knees. We’re often seen as vapid and stupid, and infantilization of twinks is rampant (some guys put way too much emphasis on the young part of the definition). And, to cap it all off, there’s the racism! Who’d’a thunk that all forms of oppression are connected? (sarcasm). Twinks can of course be any race, but the ones you’ll see men on grindr going after the most are white or light-skinned Asian twinks. Combine that with stereotypes of Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern men as dominant and aggressive, and you have a whole slew of white supremacist ideas painted over with a thin coat of gay porn.  (mlm of color who’d like to add or correct me on anything, please do so!)

I’ll end this already long post with a comparatively brief discussion on who these terms apply to. Basically, if you’re an mlm and you fit the definition of “twink” or “bear”, congratulations! You’re a twink/bear! “Can bi men use these terms?” Of course! “What about trans men?” Are you attracted to men and male-aligned people? Then of course! That last one might be controversial to some cis gays, and to that I say fuck right off. However, it does get a bit muddier with trans women and transfem nonbinary people and the word twink. Trans women are absolutely not mlm, but many of them have been a part of mlm communities for a long time, often before they even realized they were trans, and some may be reluctant to give up the word twink (I haven’t seen this for bear, although again, lmk if you’ve seen evidence to the contrary). And on top of that, a lot of cis men looking to have sex with trans women conflate trans women and cis twinks. Because remember what I said about twinks filling the niche of women? It’s often a niche they share with trans women, except trans women have it even worse, because they are actually women. My two cents is, if a trans woman wants to refer to herself as a twink, she’s more than welcome to. Just don’t go around calling trans women “twinks” unless they specifically say you can; it’s a gendered term, you are misgendering them, and, once again, you can fuck right off. (trans women also please comment if you want!)

Well, anon, I bet you weren’t expecting a post this long. At least I hope y’all learned something! Be gay do crimes!

[philosophiums]

i don’t fully agree with the way the op talked about this but a) there is lgbtq as identity and then there’s lgbtq as a political coalition. neither you nor op made any distinction between them and of course there’s overlap but that’s part of the issue with this whole argument. second not all ace people are straight obviously but a cisgender heterosexual person is what people are referring to when they talk about straight people. i don’t think that’s about exclusion it’s about being honest >>

about privilege imo plus the split attraction model is deeply problematic for a lot of reasons, namely that it assumes that “””allosexual””” lgbtq people somehow don’t experience atypical attraction or have complicated relationships with sex. that may not be the intention but it’s a problematic way to frame the conversation. like mogai culture has a lot of problems and if this is about community those concerns should be taken seriously. idk op was not wording things well but i think > >your response didn’t necessarily address some of the actual issues with mogai and/or the aro/ace discourse. like i think this has devolved into a “who can be in the club” argument and that’s not the point either “side” is trying to make. idk i just think this is an issue almost exclusively on the internet and it would be more productive for us all to discuss solutions bearing in mind historical and social context. i am really sorry some fuck sent you death threats over this though wtf

oh hey look an actual reasonable discussion. i’m going to break this down into a numbered list to stay a bit organized and try to address things as you brought them up so please don’t think the list is my way of being like... snappy or something

100% agree. lgbt as an identity vs lgbt as a political coalition are different but not mutually exclusive. lgbt+ is a looooong acronym and includes a broad range of alignments and identities, and it’s great that so many people can find comfort and community in that identity, and i think that anyone who feels like they’re not solidly cishet is welcome to try on some identities or keep themselves as “questioning” and educate themselves further about different identities and the community history, and no one should be held back from exploring because - shocker - identities and our understanding of them change frequently, especially in relation to ourselves

genuinely i think the split attraction model is the biggest problem here. and place the blame for this wherever you like (media, society, the church™, whatever). like i hate that our options are I Have/Want Sex All The Time vs Maybe I’m Acespec. that’s not.... how attraction works. that’s not how people work. the ace spectrum is.... so strange to me because “ace” as in “actually asexual” can not, by default (in my opinion) be cishet, because the “ace” replaces the “het.” they would be cis ace. unfortunately, i think a lot of the ace spectrum is full of sexuality modifiers (demi is probably the most popular one). demi isn’t actually.... a sexuality. i think it’s a valid identity and i think it should be allowed in the community, but we circle back to, then, the difference between lgbt as an identity and lgbt as a political coalition

i am 100% with everyone on the whole “some acespec people are cishet” thing. a cis girl who IDs as demi (i’ve already used it once i’ll keep going with it) but who is pretty sure she’ll only ever be attracted to cis guys is welcome to use lgbt as an identity, but shouldn’t have a say in lgbt as a coalition. she’s still cishet, because even though demi is “ace” in the absolute loosest of terms (because it’s on the spectrum), it’s a modifier. the reason i get so worked up about ace discourse posts is that no one who makes them bothers to differentiate between asexual and the rest of the spectrum - they just say “ace” and refuse to acknowledge it as its own sexuality. asexuality is, by default, not cishet. and like... i’m saying this as someone who ID-ed as demi for a long time because i was still convinced due to social expectations that “surely i have to want to have sex i just need to find the right person” 

however, of course, you then get into the complications of “some people who were cishet but who were abused are now ID-ing as asexual and should they be allowed to ID as lgbt as a coalition.” well... no. they have always been cishet. if they want to actually ID as asexual then i think they can use lgbt as an identity, but the other side of it isn’t open to them

also please don’t get me started on romantic attraction i’m not even sure it’s a super real thing i honestly think it’s something (western) society more or less made up by uplifting the ideals of marriage and more or less banning close physical contact between friends because honestly how do you even define romance as an attraction it’s bonkers 

i didn’t touch on this stuff in my initial reply to the post because every time there’s ace discourse it always seems to boil down to “we can’t be adults and understand that there’s nuance and complications to all of this so we’re just going to hate all acespec people and try to ban them from ID-ing as lgbt and they’re only valid if they also hastily say that they’re trans or wlw/mlm but they’re on thin ice.” and that pisses me off because if you think you’re in a sound enough place to start dictating who is and isn’t allowed to say “i fit into the lgbt political coalition” then you need to be less line-in-the-sand about it and more understanding to the fact that some people who identify as ace actually aren’t cishet Even If They’re Still Cis And Not Bi/Gay/Pan/Etc. because asexual is. literally. a sexuality and you can’t be het if you’re not. attracted to people?

but yeah like......... no one can really be the Identity Police and say that someone who thinks themselves to be something other than the social standard of cishet isn’t allowed to identify as lgbt (allies can fuck off they don’t get to be in the acronym but like.... it’s open ended with a + for a reason). and i think that anyone who wants to identify as lgbt needs to start doing some research on different identities and on the history of lgbt as a political coalition and it’s evolution as an identity as well. and you’re right - none of this actually exists in the real world, because it typically happens that getting into discussions in the real world results in learning instead of tightening your grip on your beliefs (which is how tumblr discussions always go; everyone gets defensive and no one actually learns anything)

and i’m not saying that even i’m 100% right. everything is so dependent on minute details and individual identities. we get so used to binaries that i think it’s difficult, sometimes, to remember that no two people are in the same exact place on the spectrum. no one experiences their sexuality the way another person does. sometimes even the definitions of terms and identities are different for different people, and they change so damn frequently

thank you for being a reasonable human being and please feel free to keep up the discussion if you want to ♡♡♡

[aridara]

I’ve seen that this list of bad-stuff-that-feminists-SUPPOSEDLY-did-to-harm-men is going around again recently.

So, I’ve decided to simply copy-and-paste my rebuttal here, with slight modifications. Now with added quotes!

Okay, I’m going to number each single link Takashi0 provides. If it’s something that I’ve already talked about, I’ll be very brief about them, because there are 138 (if I didn’t miscount) links, and I can’t repeat myself every fucking time.

Feminists threaten to kill woman for saying men need abuse shelters.

1 No proof that it was feminists who threatened, in any way, Pizzey.

Feminists prevent a meeting about male suicide.

2 The meeting did happen. It wasn’t prevented from happening, nor did the protesters tried to via violent means.

Feminists stage mock murders to scare men.

3 No mainstream feminists defended them.

Feminist attacks male cartoonist and is hailed a hero of feminism.

4 Solanas wasn’t “hailed a hero of feminism”, neither back then, nor now.

Feminists shut down forum for battered husbands.

5 No proof that it was feminists; the forum continued.

Propaganda campaign against male fathers wanting custody.

6 Unsourced claim.

Feminists wish to slander accused names before convicted.

7 Feminists pointed out that protecting the names of those accused of rape while denying the same to those accused of crimes like murder or terrorism is patently unjust. This from Takashi0’s own source.

Try to shut down female prisons.

8 Becuse they don’t work - reconvictions and suicides were unusually high. Moreover, the release only involved convicts with light sentences that weren’t threats to society.

Create rape laws that exclude female rapists.

9 Suspicious source (see here); also, no word about whether those laws passed or not. Not to mention that, given the massive epidemic of rape on women in India, they really neded to sort out their priorities. (See also this thread.)

Make it impossible to charge women with rape.

10 Due to how Israel’s trials go, a man’s testimony trumps over a woman; if that law was in place and a woman can’t prove she has been raped (which is hard to prove), then the rapist could use this “non-conviction” as “proof” that she raped him and score a conviction. Also, the law only applies to a woman forcing the victim to penetrate her; if a woman penetrates a victim with a body part or object, even without this particular law she’d still be charged with rape.

Feminists against equal custody.

11 They’re against using 50/50 custody as the default; this is because it has repeatedly demonstrated that the most beneficial thing for the kid is to be able to stay with the parent that took care of them the most.

Female felons should serve home sentences.

12 Should read “Female felons should serve home sentences if they aren’t violent, but have parental duties, since we can’t just throw children in foster care”.

Told judges to be lenient on women.

13 Because they’re more likely to have parental duties or mental illnesses. It’s still a case-by-case procedure.

Feminists cover up female domestic violence.

14 Murray-Straus cites only ONE case where a publication was blocked, and offers no proof that it was feminists, nor the details of the case. The rest of his argument is basically “Feminists don’t talk about male victims of DV, this means that they are preventing everyone from helping them”. Sure. So is the World Wildlife Found. </sarcasm>

Feminists don’t want the gov to help unemployed men.

15 Feminists pointed out that there were various female-dominated jobfields in difficulty, too. And they didn’t ask for men to not be helped - they asked for women to be helped too.

Feminists launch campaigns to help girls only while boys are doing worse in every facet of education.

16 There still is a wage gap, a pay gap, a hiring gap, and a promoting gap. That’s the reason for those pro-girls campaigns.

Males who were raped as a child still have to pay child support.

17 The most recent case is from 1996, all of those cases haven’t been picked by any newsource whatsoever, and male rapists can get child custody for the children born from those rapes in these days.

Women should have the right to put a child up for adoption before the father gets custody.

18 The father in question didn’t have custody in the first place.

Feminists against beyond reasonable doubt when it’s male rapists.

19 Penal cases are based on “innocent unless proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt”. Civil cases - what the article was about - are based around “preponderance of evidence” which, as the article’s author puts it, means “the relevant body looks at all the evidence and rules for the party it thinks has the stronger case”. So, basically, slagartehfox wants civil cases of rape - and only rape - to have the same restrictions to evidence as penal cases.

5 rights feminism ignores for men.

20 This is actually a 5-in-1 bullshit list. (Also: JudgyBitch? Really?)

Men already have the right to decide whether to keep or terminate their own pregnancies. Oh, wait, JB wants men to be able to decide for others’ pregnancies. What next, does she wants to stay at home on sick leave when a colleague has a broken leg but she’s perfectly fine?

Feminists ARE the ones taking male rape seriously. MRAs… not so much. (See point 4 of this post of mine.)

Feminists aren’t the ones shaming men for talking about their feelings or admitting that they have mental problems - misoginysts are the ones shaming other men for being “weak”, or rather, “feminine”. (See here and here.)

Again: feminists aren’t against 50/50 shared custody being the default because they assume that women are “naturally” better caregivers - they’re against it because favoring the kids’ “primary caregiver” is more beneficial for those kids.

Feminists HAVE spoken against forced circumcision, and they aren’t preventing anyone from trying and solve this issue. MRAs? Only speak about it in discussions about FGM, in order to paint feminists as penis-cutting monsters. THAT’S IT.

Feminists blame males for their abuse.

21 Tries to demonstrate that women commit the majority of DV act by referencing the study that uses the Conflict Tactics Scale, which, among other things, doesn’t differentiate single incidents from repeated behaviours, doesn’t differentiate acts in self-defense from acts of abuse, and doesn’t consider at all sexual assaults and rapes.

The primary aggressor clause where only men get charged with abuse.

22 Unsourced claim. Also: no proof to disprove that the vast majority of DV offenders are men.

Shame men into going to war.

23 The White Feather Movement was created in the first place by far-right nationalists.

Feminists dismiss female child rapists.

24 The Honey Badge Brigade did, in fact, lie. The HBB stated “95% of abused boys in juvenile facilities reported being attacked/coerced by female staff“. This “statistic” doesn’t appear anywhere in the cited source; what is written is “Among the estimated 1,390 adjudicated youth who reported victimization, 89.1% were males reporting sexual activity with female staff only, and 3.0% were males reporting sexual activity with both female and male staff” (p.23). How is “sexual victimization” defined in the survey? “Sexual victimization—any forced sexual activity with another youth (nonconsensual sexual acts and other sexual contacts) and all sexual activity with facility staff“ (p.7). “All sexual activity with facility staff”, even if consensual and legal.

Feminists say men can’t talk about domestic abuse.

25 Question: where did Costello said “Men can’t talk about domestic abuse”? Answer: Nowhere - Takashi0 made that up!

Feminists mock a man who has his dick cut off.

26 Pretty much no feminist has defended that one. And before you say “No Ture Scotsman!”: we’re at 26 links so far - 30, if you consider the JudgyBitch one as 5 different points. Up until now, Takashi0 managed to drag up only 3 istances of feminists doing something awful - and ZERO istances of those people being defended by the vast majority of feminists.

Strawmanning MRA members.

27 That’s because MRAs are misogynists. Hell, have you forgot the existance of Pick-Up Artists (”I hate women but I want to have sex, here’s some ways to coerce them into sex”) or Men Going Their Own Way (”I hate women, so I don’t want to think about them, let me talk over and over on the Net about how women are awful”)? People can’t discern sides of the manosphere because they’re pretty much all characterized by misogyny.

feminists attack church.

28 The video depicts a (probably feminist) protest in front of a church. Not an “attack”. [EDIT 19/01/2016: Apparently it was a protest against Argentina’s massively fucked-up laws on abortion, which severely limit them. They’re the reason why 80.000 women per year end up in the hospital due to complications caused by illegal, non-sanitary abortions… and are arrested for having an abortion if they survive afterwards. And only 1 in 8 abortions (out of 450-600.000 per year) in Argentina are performed legally.]

Feminists transphobia

29 Congratulations: you finally found a sizable group of feminists that are legitimately awful (Trans-Exclusionari Radical Feminists, or TERFs). Too bad you’re way too late for the “Feminists should care about trans* people too, not being transphobic!“ by about a quarter of century.

Feminists slander the MRM

30 Repeated link - see 27.

Again,

31 Nope, the article is accurate. There is no systemic oppression of white cishet men (Systemic oppression isn’t just “I am discriminated against”, you also need a social system that upholds said discrimination to a systemic level - and there is no vast majority of women/POCs/lgbt+ people oppressing white cishet men); MRAs really did try to slander the Don’t Be That Guy campaign with their “False rape accusations are an epidemic, stop encouraging them!” bullshit (which has been repeatedly proven to be false); pretty much none of the issues MRAs worry about are caused by - or prevented from being solved by - feminists; and, in fact, the MRM has done nothing at all to solve those issues, preferring instead to attack feminists.

And again,

32 Elliott Rodger was literally dripping with his own misogyny. He regularly frequented first PUA sites, and then the PUAHate subreddit. His violent misogyny was pretty much the final consequence of the general manosphere’s misogynistic rethoric. Also, feminists didn’t claim that Rodger was a MRA, the Daily Kos did. And no, despite what the Honey Badgers can say, Futrelle wasn’t involved.

Call them terrorists.

33 While peole do think that calling the MRM “terrorist” is quite excessive, there’s no denial of the massive amount of hate present in it. Here and here manospherians justify Lepine; here’s proof that the Tom Ball manifesto stayed on AVfM’s front page for way too much time; and here, here and here are the manospherians’ opinions on Rodger. They aren’t terrorists - they’re cheerleaders for terrorists.

Feminists say Men can’t be raped.

34 Broken and probably repeated link - see 9.

Feminists defend female raping minor.

35 ………Barbara Ellen is a prominent feminist? Oh, right, I forgot - she’s a woman, and she’s saying something you don’t like, therefore of course she’s a feminist. (Meanwhile: MRAs believe that a minor boy “having sex with” an adult woman is something enviable: 1, 2, 3.)

Feminist defends why fucking an 8 year old boy isn’t rape.

36 Zero proof that kermitismywaifu is a feminist. In fact, it seems he’s NOT.

Feminists primary aggressor clause discriminates against males.

37 WAVA is already gender-neutral. Plus: if the MRM wants male shelters, then why didn’t they do like feminists did and fund them?! Hell, with WAVA you’d easily get financial aid from the government!

Feminists cover up female domestic abuse stats.

38 Broken link, but probably a repeat of 14.

Woman smashing bottle in mans face in public. Nobody gives a fuck.

39 Oh, right, I remember when they’ve tried this before. How many times have they done the play? And how many times they’ve shown the one istance where nobody helped?

Jezebel mocks men who are abused.

40 Jezebel critiqued the faulty CTS study. Bad taste? Sure. Plenty of feminists admit that. We’re still waiting for MRAs to stop bringing up that massively flawed study.

Feminists make sure the gov doesn’t spend money on male shelters or male research.

41 Same argument as 37. Why don’t MRAs fund male shelters? Oh, right, because they don’t give a shit about male victims.

Female on male abuse in public is at best ignored, and at worst celebrated.

42 Where’s the unedited footage? Where are the bystanders’ reactions? (See point 39)

Public stops a man from abusing a woman in public, same crowd laughs when the roles are reversed.

43 Oh hey, it’s the #ViolenceIsViolence fraudolent video! See here for details!

No funding for male shelter.

44 Again: WAVA IS GENDER-NEUTRAL. There’s this guy who’s asking for help to build this shelter, but have any of you ever heard MRAs raising their asses and doing something to help building those shelters? Nooooooo! (Also: good job spreading that “there are no resources for men” narrative. Apparently MRA’s prefer to tell male victims that they cannot receive any help, than to direct them towards actually existing resources like this or this or this…)

Founder of Canadas only male shelter for abuse forced to close due to lack of funding before committing suicide.

45 Did feminists cut off his fundings? No. Did they prevent anyone from supporting him? No. Did MRAs raised money to help this guy? No.

Feminists threaten to kill woman for saying men need abuse shelters.

Feminists prevent a meeting about male suicide.

Feminists stage mock murders to scare men.

Feminist attacks male cartoonist and is hailed a hero of feminism.

Feminists skewed the Definition of Domestic Abuse, resulting in only male abusers being arrested and female abusers not.

46-50 Repeated points - see 1, 2, 3, 4 and 22.

Feminists’s DV training hurts Police training

51 Misleading title. What happend was: a husband attacks a man. He claims that it was self-defense because, he says, said man attempted to attack and rape his wife. The wife had previously given a taped statement to the police, stating that the man wasn’t armed. She then refused to testify in person by invoking marital privilege. Not “feminists’s DV training”.

Feminist Mary Koss denies malerape victims.

52 Koss doesn’t “deny male rape victims”. She simply states that for the purpose of researching the subject “forced to penetrate” should be a separate category.

53 Broken link to a page named “Sommers”. Possibly, it portrayed these debunked statements of her.

54 Link that shows that Koss, in her survey, attained herself to the local (Ohio) legal definition of rape because otherwise her critics would’ve dismissed her survey “because she broadened the definition of rape beyond the reasonable”. They still tried to discredit her that way, though.

Feminists violently protesting against Warren Farrell at U of Toronto

55 Repeated point - see 2. Also: no acts of violence were made.

A mob of feminists at a recent protest attacking and sexually molesting a group of Rosary-praying Catholic men who were peacefully protecting the cathedral in the city of San Juan from threats of vandalism.

56 Repeated point - see 28. And there was no “attack” or “sexual molesties”.

Feminists disrupt a forum for battered men

57 Repeated point - see 5.

Feminists fought a law for equal custody to be the default if both parents want custody and neither parent is unfit.

58 Broken link to Glenn Sacks. Also: probably repeated point (11).

Multiple times.

Feminists started a campaign against Father’s rights groups

Feminists fought against laws granting men anonymity until charged with the crime of rape—not convicted, just charged.

Feminists fought against a law to end to the justice system favoring women simply because they are women, and giving men harsher sentences simply because they are men.

Feminist fought against men want equal treatment when victims of domestic violence, and to not be arrested for the crime of “being male” under primary aggressor policies.

Feminists in India and Israel fought against femalerapists being arrested, charged and convicted of rape.

Feminists fought against a economic stimulus for male-dominated job such as construction, etc.

59-66 All repeated points - see 11, 6, 7, 8, 21, 9, 10 and 15.

Feminist fought a law against Paternity Fraud.

67 The link only states what the “Revocation of Paternity Act” is. Not that feminists fought it. In fact, a search for “feminism revocation of paternity act” pretty much only brings up anti-feminists sites linking to the same webpage.

Feminist Harriet Harman has publicly requested employers to hire women in preference to White men if both job candidates are equally

68 It was basically affirmative action, it was for women and ethnic minorities (and yes, there IS discrimination against them), and most importantly it was NOT a law proposal and thus there was no obligation for those firms to follow.

Equality Minister,feminist Patricia Hewitt, was found guilty of breaching the Sex Discrimination Act by “overlooking a strong male candidate for a job in favour of a weaker female applicant”.

69 Congratulations: you found a woman doing a Bad Thing. And? Are you claiming that feminism as a whole is bad because of one woman, but that one of the biggest MRM websites putting up a libelous “criminal registry” is the action of an extremist fringe? Or that widespread hiring biases against women don’t exist because of this one woman being biased?

Elected in 2009, the lesbian feminist prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir has vowed to “end of the Age of Testosterone

70 Do you know what the “Age of Testosterone” refers to? The 2008-11 Iceland financial crisis, caused by aggressive economic policies opposed by, among other groups, feminist groups.

Feminists want to peeing while standing illegal

71 False description - that left party is pushing to exchange stand-only toilets in male restrooms with sitting ones. Newsflash: you can pee on a sitting toilet while standing up.

Erin Pizzey had to flee the UK because she and her family received death threats and her dog murdered all because feminists didn’t like that she discovered women were equally as violent as men.

72 Repeated point - see 1.

Also Suzanne Steinmetz and her children received death threats and bomb threats she discovered that the rate at which men were victimized by domestic violence was similar to the rate for women.

73 No proof that it was feminists.

Richard Gelles and Murray Straus have all received death threats from feminists, simply for publishing their findings (that female-to-male family violence was equal to the rate of male-to-female violence).

74 No proof that it was feminists.

75 Yep, it’s the CTS study. Debunked.

Feminists say Men can’t be raped.

Feminists defend female raping minor.

Feminist defends why fucking an 8 year old boy isn’t rape.

76-78 Repeated points - see 9, 35 and 36.

Most feminists backed studies are bullshit.

79 This doesn’t prove that “most feminist backed studies are bulshit”. All this proves is that people have forgot to actually check the BOJ statistics.

Beyond reasonable doubt doesn’t apply to rape.For men only

80 A college hearing is considered akin to a civil lawsuit, and thus it isn’t bound by the same restrictions as a penal trial. Plus, even in the rare cases where the school does take disciplinary action against a student accused of sexual assault, 75-90% of the time it’s a token punishment - if the school decides to give any punishment in the first place.

Feminist changes mind on rape culture when her son is falsely accused.

81 False rape accusations are awful. The fact that they exist doesn’t change the fact that rape culture exists, or that way more often is the accuser that gets disbelieved (including by the police), or that false rape accusations are no more common than false anything accusations.

Feminists primary aggressor clause discriminates against males.

Feminists cover up female domestic abuse stats.

Jezebel mocks men who are abused.

Feminists make sure the gov doesn’t spend money on male shelters or male research.

82-85 Repeated points - see 37, 38, 40 and 37 (again).

Feminists prevent a meeting about male suicide.

Feminists stage mock murders to scare men.

Feminist attacks male cartoonist and is hailed a hero of feminism.

Feminists shut down forum for battered husbands.

Propaganda campaign against male fathers wanting custody.

Feminists wish to slander accused names before convicted.

Try to shut down female prisons.

Create rape laws that exclude female rapists.

Make it impossible to charge women with rape.

Feminists against equal custody.

Female felons should serve home sentences.

Told judges to be lenient on women.

Feminists cover up female domestic violence.

Feminists don’t want the gov to help unemployed men.

Feminists launch campaigns to help girls only while boys are doing worse in every facet of education.

Males who were raped as a child still have to pay child support.

Women should have the right to put a child up for adoption before the father gets custody. Feminists against beyond reasonable doubt when it’s male rapists.

5 rights feminism ignores for men.

Feminists blame males for their abuse.

The primary aggressor clause where only men get charged with abuse.

Shame men into going to war.

Feminists dismiss female child rapists.

Feminists say men can’t talk about domestic abuse.

Feminists mock a man who has his dick cut off.

86-110 All these points are a repeat of links 2 through 26.

feminists attack church.

111 Repeated point - see 28.

Feminists shut down a festival about gender equality for including men.

112 That’s not what happened. What happened was that the sponsors realized that CAFE had nothing to do with equality and everything to do with MRAs and misogyny, and ran away from them.

Feminists hope MRA’s die.

113 Correction: ONE person who defines themselves as “feminist” and who doesn’t have any relevant spot in feminism whatsoever hopes that MRAs die.

Feminists against fathers day.

114 #EndFathersDay is a troll tag created by 4channers.

Feminist makes up fake assault stories.

115 Again: only 2% at best of rape accusations are false. There is no epidemic of “false rape accusations” or “made-up stories of assault”.

Female reporter bullied by feminists at the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference

116 Yes, because telling someone “Your conservative magazine isn’t welcome here” is totally bullying on par with what feminists face. </sarcasm>

The Wage Gap is a myth.

117-121 Besides the fact that the wage gap has been always correctly labeled by feminists as “How much female workers collectively make/how much male workers collectively make“, there’s some small factoids such as: women are penalized if they get pregnant more than if they take a pause from their jobs from any other reason; women are penalized if they try to negotiate their salary; there’s hiring and promoting biases; and even if we consider a man and a woman doing the exact same job/efficiency/hours worked, there’s still a 7% difference.

Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces

Labor force participation rate for men has never been lower.

122-124 How is this a problem? Feminists aren’t “stealing jobs” or “preventing men from taking jobs”.

Women in some cases make more than men.

And their husbands dont have a problem with it either.

125-134 Still doesn’t negate the existance of the gender wage gap.

Women CHOOSE to stay away from STEM field

135-138 Still doesn’t negate the existance of biases against women in STEM. (Here’s two examples.)

Did I mention that at least 50 of these links are repeats? Good fucking job, Takashi. Good fucking job.

[feeling-things-sucks]

I think I really want to come out to my family. I know I want to come out to my friends too, but both present so many stupid issues

I know I wanna tell my friends first, since I’m closest to and more comfortable with them so it would probably be easier to come out to my friends plus very few of them are cishet, so I know that logically the only thing they’re gonna do is accept me with open arms, but I was the last one within my friend group to really find that I’m pan, and anxiety keeps telling me that since I was “cishet” for the longest time out of all of us then that means they’ll think I’m just lying to fit in, which is actually Bullshit but I’ve just internalized so much of that “special snowflake” crap that people say without even realizing it. And on top of all that I wouldn’t even know how to bring it up even though it’s literally as simple as sending a quick “hey I’d rather go by he/him pronouns now” but noooo nothing can ever be simple, dammit.

And for my family, I’ve only ever insisted that I’m straight and cis.

Part of the reason I haven’t come out to them yet is because I’m too fucking stubborn, there have been multiple occasions where my mom has straight up asked me “do you ever feel like you might be part of the lgbt community” AND I’ve overheard her talking with my dad about how they thought (maybe still think?) I’m a lesbian, so it’s like telling a kid “if you keep asking for the candy then you’re not gonna get it”. If you keep asking me if I’m gay then I’m not gonna fucking tell you.

Also partially because it’s bullshit that lgbt people have to “come out” in the first place. Why can’t I just fucking exist without people assuming I’m cishet by default? So I just liked to pretend that they were never under the impression that I was cishet but like... that’s just unrealistic. I’ve thought about dropping hints, like wearing pride flag bracelets and hoping they might come across the same color scheme online and maybe connect the dots, or recommend more and more movies/shows with lgbt rep, but I’d still actively be Coming Out, just in a more subtle way. And at the end of the day, I’d probably be a lot happier if I would just fucking tell them that I would prefer to have male clothing and use he/him pronouns and keep my hair short and maybe get a binder, so therefore I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to just swallow my pride (ha) and say something because if it’s gonna help me lead a happier life then why shouldn’t I?

Fuck, I’m lucky that I have parents who have vocally supported the lgbt community, even if they say some dumb shit sometimes.

So I want to come out but like, what do I say? I want to tell them I’m pan but that would probably require a really dumb conversation about how gender isn’t as binary as they think and I just don’t have the fucking spoons to do that. So do I just tell them I’m bi to save the hassle? But the fact I’m pan will probably come up Eventually and I’ll have to have that conversation Anyways so it’s better to just get it over with already instead of putting it off.

And there’s the same problem with telling them I’m agender and want to start a transition. I feel like there’s a difference between telling them “I’m into people who identify outside the gender binary” and “I personally identify outside the gender binary” are different things, so should I just say “I’m a trans guy” to make it simpler? But again, the fact I’m agender will probably come up eventually. And they’ll question me like “how did you come to this conclusion?” “WHY did you come to this conclusion?” “If you’re agender then why wouldn’t you want to go by they/them and dress more neutrally?” And it’s like. Just let me live pls lmao.

And if I ever manage to pass and people perceive me as a Dude then I’ll probably feel more comfortable wearing traditionally feminine things and then they’ll be thrown for another loop because why would you wear jewelry and makeup if your a trans guy!?!?! Like idk how to explain to you that I can be a guy and still enjoy pretty things, those things are not mutually exclusive.

And I don’t want to lie just to make things easier because though it might make it easier on me a little, it would also make it a LOT easier on them because now they don’t have to Struggle to understand that not everyone is ready to jump at inane gender roles, and like that’s fucking stupid because we are Not just an inconvenience in your life.

I also don’t want to lie because though it’s close to the truth it’s still not Actually Me.

And then After Everything is said and done, my brother is a stupid piece of shit and if he Can make a bigoted comment then he Will make a bigoted comment because he just doesn’t fucking think before he opens his mouth, and then when I call him out on his shit he pouts and acts like the victim so I’ll have to deal with that.

The same goes for my parents, they’ll probably want to Talk About It and end up saying more stupid shit and then I’ll have to be the Nice Gay who educates The Cishets and I’m fucking tired of doing that even though I know I inevitably will because I’m a fucking doormat.

There’s just so much Shit and I know that in the End it’ll probably be worth it but I don’t even know how or where to start

[theharellan]

rules & stuff

General

Thank you for coming to my rules page! I'd appreciate it if you could read over these to prevent future misunderstandings.

This is a Solas roleplay blog. Solas is a character from the latest Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Inquisition. He plays a large role in the story, and thus this blog will be spoiler heavy. If you have not finished DA:I (and all its DLC) then please take caution when you follow this blog. I don't tag spoilers for any DA:I content and I would hate to spoil anyone.

Here are some basics!

mostly canon, semi-canon divergent

independent, elective

will roleplay with mutuals only

21+, not open to smut

single ship

tags triggers

Rules last updated April 2021.

Interaction

i am semi-selective & (mostly) not exclusive

I will only be roleplaying with mutuals for the foreseeable future. Starter ask memes may be turned into threads, but please make a separate post!

I will roleplay with multiples and do not practise exclusivity for either Player Characters or Canons. I have mains whose interpretations/universes I default to so that I can write in a semi-consistent universe. All duplicates I roleplay with exist in different universes.

i am singleship

This is the "(mostly)" part of the "not exclusive thing." On this blog I only ship with Iander Lavellan and am closed off for romantic ships. I am, however, incredibly interested in developing non-romantic ships- both positive and negative. As Ian is a companion OC and not Inquisitor, he exists in my Solas's universe regardless.

i reserve the right to follow & unfollow as i choose

This blog is not follow-for-follow. I like to keep my dash relatively slow moving. As mentioned, I do try to keep the opportunity for non-mutuals to roleplay with me or chat.

As for unfollowing (or soft blocking) I won't usually explain why, usually it's one of these couple reasons:

Inactivity (the main one tbh - if I see you're back I'll refollow!)

Offensive material (homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, etc)

Untagged Negativity / Vagueblogging (it makes me anxious)

Untagged character hate (especially Solas or Merrill hate)

As one final note on following: I don't send in passwords. I promise I read your rules before initiating interaction.

sending & receiving memes

Don't use me as a meme resource. Not all IC memes will work for two characters, so if it doesn't fit feel free to reblog. But OOC memes, symbols or asks you can send out of character, which require no interaction to send. I don't care if we're not mutuals, and I promise if you send me something I'll check to see if you reblogged it and send you something in return. I'm not a big fan of the "reblog from source" solution for non-mutuals, I just... pls. Send me something.

on messaging

I will not roleplay using Tumblr's IM system and prefer not to roleplay on IM platforms (Discord, etc) period. Feel free to message me OOC, it's open regardless of whether or not I follow you.

My Discord is also available for mutuals. Just shoot me a Tumblr IM or ask and I'd be happy to provide it!

Threads

please be patient

I am currently attending grad school and am a graduate assistant on top of that. Roleplying is a hobby, please respect that.

Before you message me asking about replies please check here for a list of my Solas threads or here for a list of Solas replies I currently owe. If you are on this page, I know I owe you. If you're not, please mesage me and let me know! I'd appreciate it, I like to keep it updated.

i'm open to any format

Banter, para, multi-para, novella are all possible. I prefer to reserve longer threads for plotted or intense interactions, and shorter threads for more casual roleplays b/c otherwise there's way too much navel gazing. Shorter threads are also much more likely to get timely replies.

I don't format beyond small text, and will roleplay with you regardless of whether you do or don't format yourself. I do use 100x100 icons (except in specific AUs where I have no icons to speak of), but am open to iconless roleplay if you don't use them.

Tagging

common triggers on this blog

This blog regularly features themes of slavery, fantasy racism, and mental illness (specifically: depression, depersonalisation/derealisation, ptsd). All themes present in the Dragon Age series will also likely appear here at some point, even if it's OOC discussion. These will be tagged when referenced.

my tagging policies

I track the tag #theharellan

I tag general triggers and will tag others upon request. My format is: #(trigger)+tw. For example a blood trigger warning would be: #blood tw.

I will also tag content warnings for things that include, for example, character death (like so: #character death cw).

NSFW is a rarity on this blog. When I do write or reblog something even vaguely NSFW it will be tagged #( nsfw )

For a full list of the tags I use often on this blog, please refer to this page here.

my tagging requests

For my comfort, please tag...

#Animal Death TW (especially pet death)

#NSFW

#Gore Images

#Negativity

#Solas Hate

My Solas Interpretation

I've been roleplaying Solas 3+ years at the time of writing, and I've expanded upon his interpretation over this time. Here are probably some of the most important things to know about my interpretation.

some notes for elvhenan-era characters

Please at least skim this post especially if you roleplay a character with knowledge of Fen'Harel.

If you roleplay an evanuris, please do not assume Solas is your friend! This has become less of a problem since Trespasser, but I'm keeping this just in case. He has no love for the evanuris (save Mythal) and will just want to fight you.

I am open to discussion so our interpretations of Elvhenan better match, but there are some things I'm not interested in changing. If you diverge from canon in a way that rewrites the evanuris as wholly benign and erase slavery from the narrative entirely, then we're not compatible.

some notes for everyone else

Do not suspect Solas of being Fen'Harel without my permission! He is canonically very careful with his identity. The exception to this will be Elvhenan-era characters, but even in those cases don't just sweep in and out him.

My Solas was not Solas first. What I mean by this is, he had several names before choosing the name Solas. I headcanon that Elvhenan elves had a pretty fluid view of names, similar to how Abelas likely was not the name that character was born with. That being said Solas is his real name.

My Solas is queer. He is panromantic, asexual, and agender. My reasoning for roleplaying him as such can be read here, but tl;dr there is no such thing as a cishet in Elvhenan.

As stated previously, he is in a canon relationship with the companion OC Iander Lavellan. I don't expect you to know the ins and outs of their relationship by any means, but it is common knowledge within the Inquisiton. You can read a summary of their relationship story here.

I write the events of Inquisition as having played out over the course of about three years rather than the canon one. My default Inquisitor does both Jaws of Hakkon and The Descent prior to the end of the game.

I've tweaked Solas's behaviour during What Pride Had Wrought to flow better. You can find a more detailed description here.

In canon Solas says some very bigoted stuff about dwarves and qunari. This holds true for my Solas, but I tend to write him as developing/learning better throughout the course of DA:I (which is supported in part by canon, but due to banter it comes across inconsistently). This isn't to say he's cured of his racism b/c it is always an ongoing process, but that he's aware enough to try to check himself.

His ultimate goal is to tear down the Veil and use his powers as a Dreamer to reshape the world to create a future for the elves/spirits- and, more specifically, the rebels he fought with before the creation of the Veil.

As one final note please refrain from making egg jokes at him or me. I'm so tired.

OOC Stuff

about me

You can call me Tas! I use she/her pronouns. I’ve been in the Dragon Age fandom for like 8 years now and I’ve been rping for like 18 years total. Probably more. I made this Solas November 22nd, 2014.

I have a personal blog (queenaeducan) and my discord is available to mutuals, just shoot me an ask!

Name: Tas Age: 26 Pronouns: She/Her Interests: Elves & cats

For Non-RP Blogs

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Coming out at work

Our stories of what makes a great workplace for LGBTQIA+ people

With thanks to: 

Chloe | Social Media Manager | She/her

Stuart | Senior Clinical Support Worker | He/him

Eliza | Freelance Content Creator | They/them

Linnea | Art Director and Visual Designer | She/her

At SH:24, we are all about sexual health. Sexual health isn’t just about getting tested for STIs or using contraception, it’s also about feeling happy and comfortable with your sexuality so that sex is always a healthy, safe and joyful experience. We have lots of fantastic LGBTQIA+ colleagues, and we want to make sure that they are supported at work. 

To celebrate Pride 2021 (and to get some useful tips on how to improve), we asked some of our LGBTQIA+ colleagues about their experiences in the workplace.

How can workplaces better support and attract LGBTQIA+ employees?

“Be open and actively work to help the community and make it very clear that you support them.” Eliza, Freelance Content Creator

“Don’t just support your staff during Pride month! Support them 365 days a year,” said Stuart, our Senior Clinical Support worker. This was echoed by Eliza, a freelance Content Creator, who added, “Just changing a logo to rainbow during June isn’t enough. Companies should be actively looking to hire us.”

Stuart felt that workplaces have come a long way, with some larger companies having LGBTQ+  networks to offer support, raise awareness and communicate that intolerant behaviour is not acceptable. “But we still have a long way to go, for example, in supporting staff who are Trans and encouraging the use of pronouns.” He felt that training and better awareness of LGBTQ+ issues can help to make better working environments.

Linnea, our Art Director and Visual Designer, made the point that understanding LGBTQ+ issues and needs should be the responsibility of the employer, not the employees. “As a queer person it’s easy to become the only one repeatedly pointing out the presence of cis- and heteronormativity. It becomes a heavy burden to always be the one challenging things. It can make you feel invisible. What sets a workplace apart is if they can listen and take on suggestions about how to make it more inclusive, then build on that themselves, rather than relying on queer employees to point it out every time.”

Chloe, our Social Media manager, agreed. “It’s great when companies actively acknowledge LGBTQIA+ issues and are openly putting actions in place to check complicity or unconscious bias.”

At SH:24, we’ve started to encourage colleagues to add their pronouns to their comms profiles. “Joining teams who automatically put pronouns in their bio is a great way for me to feel seen,” said Eliza. “It’s not common practice yet but I think we’re getting there.”

Can you tell us about coming out at work?

“I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“I very quietly put my pronouns in my social media bio and email sign off,” said Eliza. “People slowly started to notice that I’m using they/them. Once I felt more comfortable I came out ‘officially’ online and in the workplace. I was met with great support. A few people didn’t understand it but they were open to learning.” 

As a Freelancer, Eliza moves between workplaces, which presents its own challenges. “I don’t always feel comfortable coming out with new clients,” they said, “but overall I feel very supported.”

Stuart said he’d never had a big coming out at any workplace. “It’s partly because I’ve worked in places where I felt safe or was aware of other LGBTQ+ employees and could see how they interacted with other staff.” He usually just drops it into a conversation: “I talk about my husband and what we did over the weekend.”

Chloe shared a different perspective. Before joining SH:24, she’d worked as an artist in the music industry. “I was very young when I started. I hadn’t had the experience or time to understand my own sexuality, but people were making assumptions and constantly questioning who I was attracted to and making jokes about it and my appearance.” 

Her management didn’t give her much protection, and Chloe felt they actually played on her sexuality to add some ‘mystique’ to her image. “I didn’t realise at the time, but this robbed me of the opportunity to really understand who I was. I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!”

How important is it for you to be able to be open about your sexuality in the workplace?

“Feeling like the exception to the rule can be uncomfortable, especially if you are recently coming to terms with your identity.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Sexuality is often presented as something secondary, that’s part of your ‘personal life’ but not part of the workplace. But our business is sexual health, so we’re well aware of the importance of sexuality in all aspects of a person’s life.The workplace is where a lot of people spend most of their time. So we want to know, how important is it for our colleagues to be able to be open about their sexuality at work? 

Stuart hit the nail on the head. “It’s part of who I am and not something I should have to hide. Being happy in the workplace allows me to be more productive.” 

Eliza agreed. “It’s important for me to be myself in the workplace. You spend a lot of time with your colleagues and it’s important to feel safe and to feel and be yourself.”

Chloe talked about active inclusivity. “It’s important to not have your sexuality/gender ‘othered’ in the workplace. Workplaces shouldn’t assume ‘cishet’ identities as the default. You shouldn’t feel like you’re deviating from the status quo.”

“Working for companies where other queer people are visible is really imporant,” she went on. “It’s not always possible, but being in a team with other LGBTQIA+ people makes it a lot easier to feel comfortable about being open about your sexuality. It can make it a more joyful, celebratory experience!”

What do you wish you had known before coming out?

“Coming out is an ongoing process. Each time you start a new job, meet new people.” Stuart, Senior Clinical Support Worker

Eliza was surprised at the ‘outpouring of love’ they received after coming out. “I wish I’d known how scary it can be to come out. I also wish I’d know that more people would support me than I thought.”

Coming out isn’t usually a one-off event. You might come out in different ways to different people all the time, especially in the workplace. “It gets easier over time, as you become more comfortable in yourself,” said Stuart. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Eliza often has to ‘come out’ to voice their pronouns. “As a non-binary person who presents very femme,” said Eliza, “I still struggle to correct people when they accidentally use the wrong pronoun.”

“It’s ok for your understanding of your sexuality to change all the time!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Chloe reminds us that coming out should be totally up to you. “What do I wish I’d known before coming out?” she said. “That you don’t have to. For me, ‘coming out’ felt quite intimidating, like I had to know absolutely everything about my sexuality before I did it. I realise now that’s not true! In the end, I just started exploring my bisexuality, being more open about my experiences, and let others catch up!” 

What advice would you give someone wanting to be out (in the workplace)?

“If your identity makes someone uncomfortable, you are not the problem.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“It’s your decision to come out at work if you choose,” said Stuart. “Some people come out with a bang, others don’t. Only you know what is the best way to be you. Each place I’ve worked, I usually come out to the people I’ll be working closely with to start with, then let it happen naturally from there.”

Eliza had similar advice. “Take your time, only come out when you feel ready and safe to do so,” they said. “Most people will love and support you. If they don’t, it’s their loss.”

Linnea said she’d had positive experiences coming out in the workplace. “Most people have been really friendly and open about me having a girlfriend. My negative experiences have been structural (like lesbian erasure) and unconscious biases, where some people have made assumptions about me or my relationship purely because it’s same sex.”

Her advice is to go for it. “Try not to take ignorance personally. People might not know anything about it. I like to assume that people mean well (unless they prove otherwise) and I remind myself that we live in a homophobic society, where everyone learns those narratives and internalises them to some degree. Some people will have had the opportunity to have those views challenged, and some not. Sometimes ignorance is just that: learned behaviour that hasn’t been questioned. There will always be some people who don’t want to or think they don’t need to challenge those internalised narratives, but I like to think they’re in the minority.” 

Can you share an experience when you felt your sexuality was recognised in a positive way?

“When I moved to Margate!” said Chloe, enthusiastically. “It was the first time in my LIFE that people didn’t assume my sexuality, despite me moving with a male partner.” Chloe felt able to be herself right from the start. “I feel part of the queer community there, regardless of my heterosexual-presenting relationship. It’s helped me to work through internalised biophobia - it’s tough to feel like you’re not making the whole thing up when people don’t see you. I feel much MUCH more confident coming out to new people with pride, rather than anxiety that I’ll have to defend myself.”

Linnea had a recent experience with some kids on the street. “These cool kids asked me to take their photo. They chatted to me about queer stuff and I was like, ‘Wow! Maybe they saw me and realised I was gay too!’ That’s never really happened to me before! I was happy to be read that way which I’m always nervous about not being.”

Thanks to Linnea, Chloe, Stuart and Eliza for sharing their experiences. We hope this will be an ongoing conversation. If you’d like to tell us about your experience of coming out at work, find us on Instagram @sh24_nhs. We’d love to hear from you.

published first on https://spanishflyhealth.blogspot.com/