#bi ace trans solidarity

[ace-aro-pride-toronto]

Toronto Pride Parade, Trans March & Dyke March 2023 (preliminary info)

Update: *** Final info for all 3 marches here ***

Happy Pride Month for those around these parts! We’re going to have groups in all 3 marches again this year. Please RSVP to  Please RSVP (toronto.ace.aro.pride@gmail.com ) if you’d like to attend *any* of the marches.

Here are the preliminary details and accessibility info below-- More details coming soon:

1) Trans March-- Friday, June 23th, rally at approx 7pm, march at 8pm

Everyone is welcome who *is among* or *supports* trans, non-binary, 2-Spirit folx and gender diversity! 

We're planning to march midway through the group because we expect many though not all participants will be trans/non-binary, and they are asking to prioritise trans and non-binary folks near the front

"While allies are welcome to join, we ask that they respect the importance of this space and leave room for Trans folks to celebrate at the front of the march!" (source)

2) Dyke March-- Saturday, June 24th, rally at approx 1pm, march at 2pm

Everyone is welcome who *is among* or *supports* dykes and lesbians (broadly defined, including dykes and lesbians of various genders, including non-binary and transmasculine dykes etc.), bi+ women and femmes, and/or trans women and trans feminine folks of all sexual orientations. 

The group will determine where in the march to march based on who shows up to participate

"While this event is specifically for Dykes and Lesbian, allies are more welcome to join, however, when marching and rallying we do ask that allies leave space for folks who identify as Dyke or Lesbian to celebrate at the front!" (source)

3) Pride Parade-- Sunday, June 25th, meet at 2:45 pm. [Note: the route / endpoint has changed this year]

Everyone welcome who is among or supports people under the ace and/or aro umbrella(s), trans umbrella and/or everyone affected by homophobia and transphobia! 

Like in past years, we continue to invite people (especially trans/non-binary and/or bi+ folks) to march which us who don't have another group to march with, particularly those with more radical politics opposing structures of oppression. We expect everyone to abide by our Respect Guidelines.

Accessibility --

Please note these are large, crowded, outdoor, rain-or-shine events that involve approximately 2km of slow walking/travelling during the routes (possibly more for the parade) and they are **mask-optional** (i.e., most people attending in the general crowds likely will not be wearing masks)

If you have any accessibility requests, please let me know asap (Pride Toronto has been especially slow to respond to emails this year).

In the past, people who have needed to borrow a wheelchair to participate have been able to do that. While Pride Toronto does not seem to be offering that this year, if you would need to borrow a wheelchair to participate and want to, please let us know ASAP and we'll see if we can arrange it.

Pride Toronto will have ASL interpretation at the rallies. Their info is very vague on whether they have other ASL interpretation support. If you have any ASL-related requests (for example, if you need ASL in order to participate as you would like in a march), please let us know ASAP and we'll see what we can arrange.

[rjalker]

actually if we want to be more specific, the alloaros and alloaces who sided with exclusionists during the aspec harassment campaign didn't call the rest of us "non-Queers", they called us "non-SGAs" and "cishet aces and aros" or just straight up "cishets".

Applied to literally every ace and aro and aroace person who wasn't either homosexual aromantic or homoromantix asexual.

Because at that time the exclusionists were trying to beat the word "Queer" to death because they didn't like how inherently open-ended and accepting it is compared to "LGBT".

And yes. They called all aces and aros and aroace people who weren't allogay in one way or another cishet, including the people who were aroace and ~SGA~ (same gender attracted/attraction), and the ones who were openly trans and nonbinary.

They didn't care that not being attracted to the opposite gender inherently means you cannot be "het", because they were pretending that the only way to really be not straight was to feel attration to the opposite gender. Literally erasing aromanticism and asexuality as orientations and turning them only into modifiers for your ""real"" orientation, which was either straight, or gay, and you didn't get to decide it for yourself, either.

They literally did not care how many people they had to misgender and erase to pretend that any aspec person who wasn't acceptably allogay wasn't Queer and had no right to call themselves such.

And let's not forget they all went around claiming that every single aspec person was white and a white supremacist, erasing and speaking over all of the openly Black and brown aspec people, while there was literally one big exclusionist who got found out for literally racefaking to help spread the racist rhetoric and claim that any criticism of it was "just more racism".

Like. Do we gotta just go over the whole history lesson for people who weren't there? Because I'm getting really tired of people within the aspec community constantly vomiting up the exact same rhetoric as exclusionists but pretending it's okay because they're aspec too. Like same-gender-attracted alloaros and alloaces weren't some of the biggest accomplices and sellouts of the whole thing. Which went on for years.

[algrenion]

i love the term queer in relation to myself because it feels so nebulous and fluid, but also so strong. non-newtonian. like the oobleck of identitifiers. subject to extreme change, but solid in its own unique way, especially when struck. that's just my interpretation of it, but i think it's delightful.

[mushroomyhouse]

Take care of one another this pride 💖

[psychotic-tbh]

Happy pride to all my LGBTQA+ psychotic siblings btw (I’m a day late but pride isn’t over so yeah!)

[acearchivist359]

bi/ace solidarity but they’re in love with each other

ft. a bonus trans flag dean because i saw a bunch of people on twitter arguing about headcanoning dean as trans while i was working on these and the trans dean antis annoyed me so

[therubyjailcell]

me, staring at my fav lil blorbos:

me:

me: they're on the aro and ace spectrum :) they might also be trans, and also be nd :)

[cipherinator]

I’m so sorry..

SORRY FOR BEING FUCKING RIGHT ALL THE TIME LETS GO

[fandomdestoryer]

Mfs will see a heartwarming post about inclusion and how we shouldn't be fighting each other and will be in the comments being the most hateful peices of shit

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[decolonize-the-everything]

I've noticed a rise in radfems/TERFs in feminism tags and more specifically trying to rebrand as The Real Feminism or True Feminism since it's "for the girlies" or whatever.

I am begging you all to help me bury them.

Because as a teen who grew up during the peak of exclusionary "bi/pan/aces aren't vaild" and "kill all men" era where the concept of misandry THRIVED I'm telling you this feels extremely similar.

And radfem/terf ideology got mainstream from those sentiments being so popular and so easy to tap into. It was framed as being righteous since men were oppressors.

"Women are good and men are just mean oppressors! Look at everything they've done!" is such a common sentiment in those circles.

It also completely lacks critical feminist thought.

And we're STILL dealing with the affects of it over a decade later.

.....So let's talk about JKR since she's currently the Figurehead and favorite of the movement that's trying to rewrite feminist history.

It's 2023. It's a year before a US election where Project 2025 and Trump would happily create a road for trans and queer folks to be imprisoned if not worse.

Which is I'm sure why JKR has been photographed and interacting with multiple members from The Heritage Foundation, people whove spoken for them, and people who attended theyre meetings. She even enjoyed watching Magdalen, who who she credits for becoming a TERF.

But do you know who Magdalen is? Or what else she was saying? What about any of the other people in the photo? Do you know the scope of what JKR was internalizing and how bad it was? Do you know she has ties to conservative anti-abortion groups?

Do you know what The Heritage Foundation? Probably not and they're the worst so let me tell you why it's such a huge red flag for her and other so-called TERFs and radfems to be associated with them.

Because I can tell you right now she heard a lot of things from those people and there is no fucking way in hell that it was just about queer people or just some sex-specific concerns. And it wasn't just passive bigotry.

Anyone who doesn't conform to the idea of a white, straight nuclear family (re: single mothers, leftists, immigrants, gay couples, etc) is made out to be an enemy of the state.

Anyone they can justify as a "national threat." Yes, they call us all a national threat on their site, their book, and the pamphlets they pass out to politicians. The details are listed on their website including the Mandate For Leadership which is their instruction guide for the next president.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it calls for genocide, prison camps, and eugenic cleansing.

Several people in that photo don't even support abortion, a basic women's rights that JKR claims to care about deeply.

JKR was consuming white supremacist dogma under the guise of feminism.

And she's not willing to admit or correct it which is where the problem lies. She won't even admit to herself that she was fooled or that it's bad or hypocritical.

My concern is that she is not the only person who's fallen for it and there are more everyday.

So it's very important to me y'all learn how to filter out what Actual Feminism is in this age where literal fascism is attempting to take its place.

Firstly,

Real, actual feminism will be welcoming to EVERYONE

Because the patriarchy doesn't only affect women or cis people or white women and it's an insult to every previous feminist icon to say otherwise.

Feminists have been fighting for decades to unite people under the concept that Patriarchy is a system that will be brought down with allyship and solidarity.

They've been fighting so hard and so long to prove that everyone deserves the same rights as men.

That women are just as capable as men and shouldn't be stopped from entering fields of study and sports dominated by men. They've been fighting to prove that women are just as capable and smart as any man is, that men would benefit from it dismantling patriarchy too.

Women fought side by side with the queer community to get Roe v Wade passed in 1973. You know why? Because despite what radfems and TERFs will tell you trans women benefit from protecting and standing up for bodily autonomy.

Do not let bigots tear drive a wedge between two groups that experience gender based oppression and would benefit from the same exact rights.

We have changed history together and they're terrified we'll do it again.

A screenshot from the largest feminist organization active right now, The National Organization of Women.

Notice how the T is included. They even posted this video two years ago when LGBT and specifically trans rights started really coming under attack in 2022.

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men.

ALL women deserve rights.

Every gender deserves equality and fairness.

And feminism is for all of us or it is for none of us.

Because nobody deserves to be treated the way patriarchy treats us.

[olderthannetfic]

The "straight passing privilege" thing is crappy because it pits us against each eachother within the same identity. It's bad enough when people try to drive a wedge between the LGB and the T, or try to carve out the aces, or get the trans girls and the trans boys fighting over crumbs.

But this one pits bi women against other bi women based on who their current partner is, pits trans people with boring fashion sense against trans people who like to look more punk. It's the ultimate infighting, the most granular and specific way to get us to destroy our own community and solidarity and make sure none of us, no matter how well we pass, have any support.

--

[the-delta-quadrant]

queer unity and solidarity between butches and femmes and those who are neither, between lesbians and veldians, between bis and pans and polys and omnis, between aros and aces, between trans and non-binary people, between, between LGB and TQIA+, between transmascs and transfems and transneutrals and trans-others, between aces who fuck and aces who don't, between aros who date and aros who don't, between the fluids and the statics, between polyamorous and nonamorous people, between intersex and trans and non-binary people, between unlabelled people and labelhoarders, between questioning folk and those who know and those who don't care to find out, between closeted and out people, between stealth trans folk and those who who are openly trans, between periorienteds and variorienteds, between mspecs and aspecs and non-binary and intersex people and everyone else who doesn't fit binaries, between people who use old language and people who use labels that were coined yesterday, between those with easily understood identities and those with complex identities, between fat queers and queers of colour and disabled queers and other queers who are marginalised among queers, between queers of all flavours and shades of grey and stripes of the rainbow.

queer solidarity for all, queer unity in the fight against oppression, because otherwise, they will win.

queer unity and solidarity as we exit queer pride month and enter dissbled pride month.

[stormandsparks]

I’m gonna be honest…

I hate how much the queer community fights itself on this site.

I’ve seen all these things:

Trans people posting about how they’re struggling and other trans people replying that “they’re not really being discriminated against because they’re a trans (woman/man, delete as appropriate)”. Literally both of these. Like what the hell guys? We’re all being discriminated against, each of us in different ways. Thinking that you’re the only group who are being hurt isn’t true, and it’s not very good for solidarity.

Others saying that bi people aren’t being true queers because they can be in het relationships, or that they aren’t really bi because they’re in a het relationship. Again. Not true and super super hurtful people.

Perisex people invalidating the discrimination that intersex people face, and (to a slightly lesser extent) the reverse. I’m sorry, but at this point I don’t understand it. We’re all people! We all deserve to thrive and getting angry at those who don’t share your experiences isn’t gonna help anybody.

Queer people in general saying that straight people don’t belong in the lgbtqia+ community. Forgetting about aces, aros, aroaces, trans people, intersex people and a lot more that my tired brain hasn’t conjured up yet. Again, we are all in this community and deserve to be here.

TLDR; all queer people are valid in their identities, and infighting isn’t helping anybody get the rights they deserve.

[grizzlyofthesea]

Thoughts on this official Helluva Boss Pride artwork?

Here are mine:

I love all the pan representation, but I'm kinda jealous of how many pan characters there are, too. I know I shouldn't be. Emotions are just funny like that sometimes, though.

My ace Octavia headcanon is now canon! ...At the cost of Mammon also being ace. He's fun to watch, don't get me wrong, but I mean... Mammon. -w-"

We've got some nice bi-ace solidarity with Loona and Octavia. That's always great. :)

The spade symbols on Mammon's robe and hat... Is it just for the aesthetic, or is he now our only confirmed aroace character across the Hellaverse? (I still staunchly believe that Alastor is aroace, but for some reason, the people at Spindlehorse refuse to say anything either confirming or denying it...)

Verosika's hairstyle is fun, especially with the heart-shaped curls at the ends.

It's nice that multiple trans characters (not just Sallie May) are included. I wonder if we'll ever get any nonbinary characters, though.

Chaz is definitely Chaz.

I say, I say, Wacky Wally Wackford is just the happiest demon in this picture!

It would be cool if at least one of the succubi/incubi had an orientation other than pansexual, but oh well.

More lesbians would be nice, too.

Pride Month may be coming to a close, but remember, July is Wrath Month. :p

[sunfl0wersandillusions]

a misconception of ace/aro experience that i see so often in allo ppl that i’m surprised i don’t see talked about as much is that like. individual experience/relationship to attraction has absolutely no bearing on an individual’s passionate support of the political stance that is sex positivity.

indeed among ace ppl some are more favorable or more repulsed or neutral to sexual/romantic relationships than others, but all that is completely separate from the support of the value of sex beyond social/societal/political stigma or barrier. i’d argue there’s plenty of people who are sex favorable personally and sex negative politically; just look at any straight dude who wants a woman who will please him just how he wants yadda yadda while simultaneously looking down morally on women with a lot of experience, or bi women who have been with girls, etc.

an ace/aro person’s lack of active interest in sex/romance (which of course does not inherently negate their capacity to have and enjoy such) is not this prudish puritanical belief in the superiority of their own modes of attraction/relationship over allo ppl; in fact, many ace/aro people are constantly reckoning with the notion of their feelings and relationships and love as inferior to the allo “norm”. where the sociopolitical expectation is hetero, allosexual monogamous attraction and the conceptions of “valuable” individual/interpersonal/communal/broad institutional society and economy and politic associated with such, ace/aro-ness is just as relevant a radical approach to interpersonal relationships and by extension HUMANITY as those of our gay and trans siblings. sex positivity is so much more than “i love sex”, and ace/aro people, if not among you already, are boldly and proudly in solidarity with you.