#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.

[leotheloaf]

Hi, y’all, in the coming years it is more important than EVER that we have a strong queer community.

What we ARENT gonna be doing, is forming separatist movements, or rekindling old ones, or dogpiling each other over who “gets the right to speak” about their own oppression. We ARENT gonna be throwing the most “unpalatable” queers under the bus to try to appeal to cis/het/allo people. We ARENT gonna be abandoning our trans and nonbinary siblings. We ARENT gonna be abandoning our intersex siblings, and we A R E going to be INCLUDING them in our activism. Respectability politics gets us nowhere. Infighting gets us nowhere. Separatism gets us NOWHERE. Shape tf up y’all

[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!)

[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 :)

[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

[cipherinator]

I’m so sorry..

SORRY FOR BEING FUCKING RIGHT ALL THE TIME LETS GO

[transhuman-priestess]

You can get mad and send me hate mail all you want about me defending trans men and supporting solidarity between trans fems and trans mascs, but in 10 years you're going to be shrugging off the stance you had when it falls out of favor and I'm still going to be right about this. Same as when it was "bi passing privilege", same as when it was about "cishet aces", same as it was when it was transmedicalism, and same as it was the last time we went thru this discourse.

[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.

[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.

--

[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.

[leikeliscomet]

Right I've been putting off making a 'homophobia in the asexual community' post just like the racism one because asexual exclusionists would argue asexuality is inherently homophobic and so, not LGBT. So there's a knee-jerk reaction whenever homophobia is brought up because of the tactic of false homophobia accusations to justify asexual exclusionism and compulsory sexuality. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist *at all* and if we're gonna push for asexuality in solidarity with the LGBTQ and I and genuinely support gay alloaces, there needs to be some type of self-accountability:

Anti-queer puritanism/Slut-shaming allo queer people & culture. Anti homosexuality laws have existed throughout history and banned anything under the umbrella: gay sex, gay marriage, gay relationships and even 'homosexual behaviours'. In response, the non-ace LGBT community pushed against this with unapologetic depictions and celebrations of gay sex, gay romance, kink, sex work and more. You have every right to experience repulsion and it isn't a moral or social flaw. At the same time, it's fully possible to describe repulsion and aversion to sexual spaces without using homophobic dogwhistles. When you say 'gay culture is all about sex' 'gay culture is too sexualised' do you mean how non-ace gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals and non-ace trans people have sexual expectations put on them? Have invasive questions asked about their sex and genitalia? That they're stereotyped as being perverted, predatory and dangerous? That they too also experience compulsory sexuality and are harmed by it? That all of these hurt gay aroallos too? Or do you mean it to mean 'it's bad because it's sexual' because if it's the second that's something to unpack.

"Everyone does x to asexuals, but they'd never do it to gay people!".jpg - ...They do. 'Everyone ships aroace characters but they'd never ship lesbians with men' they do. 'People don't force gay men to be with women' People still do this! Visibility =/= privilege. Just because non-ace gay people make up the most of queer representation doesn't mean homophobia and lesbophobia aren't issues anymore or things of the past. Plus compulsory sexuality and homophobia go hand in hand. The same people that believe asexuality can be fixed with sex are usually the same people that support gay conversion therapy. We can easily call out acephobia without minimising other sexualities' struggles. Puritans hate everyone outside of allocisheterosexuality don't forget.

"You're not gay, you're a homoromantic asexual" So this originally was a good faith attempt to fight ace exclus by asserting that asexuals aren't diet straight people and by definition you can't be a heterosexual asexual if you experience little to no sexual attraction to be heterosexual. But the side effect was the idea that you can't be gay and asexual, bisexual and asexual , pansexual and asexual or lesbian and asexual. It's really not non-gay aces place to tell us how to identify or say we're not "really" gay because we're ace and it's just homophobic and biphobic to say we're just gays and bisexuals with low sex drives, internalised homophobia or repression because puritanism told you being gay, lesbian, bisexual and pansexual can never not be a sexual identity. Non-ace gay people can sex repulsed and averse without being ace. There's gay aces that identify as homoromantic, biromantic or panromantic, some don't like the ___romantic prefixes and use gay asexual, bi asexual and so on and some just go by lesbian, gay, bi or pan and don't ID with their asexuality. There's multiple ways to label ourselves and again, just let gay alloaces decide what gayness means for us.

"Gay asexual is just gay" - Linked to the previous point but in reverse. Makes no sense to say queer non-ace spaces aren't ace friendly then assume every gay ace can go to those same spaces 'because we're all gay'. Compulsory sexuality exists in a lot of queer spaces. TERFS and radfems in lesbian spaces argue asexual lesbians are pretenders, repressed and sanitising lesbianism and the same views are aimed towards gay men. Then there's those shitty memes about 'bisexual men when it's time to suck dick' or 'bisexual women when it's time to eat pussy'. The compulsory sexuality creating the ideas that 'sexual' in homosexual and bisexual is literal, that you "have" to have sex to prove you're gayness, that you're a traitor to gay liberation if you're not having gay sex is why gay alloaces go to asexual spaces and need these spaces. To project the gay sexual predator stereotype is bad enough but to project that onto fellow aces is extremely reactionary.

Anti-Love is Love sloganeering - Love is Love and Love Wins was originally to push for the legalisation of gay marriage, fight the idea gay romantic couples weren't real or legit like straight couples and celebrate legalisations of gay marriage. It was never an anti-asexual or anti-aromantic slogan it was created for the push to protect gay marriage and gay love. It's been criticised as a slogan by non-ace people already and it does have limitations, but the point remains that gay love is oppressed in homophobic society. There's so many better ways to respond to the limitations in non-ace queer activism than to say gay love doesn't matter, use love isn't love or love losing which anti-gay conservatives literally used to argue gay marriage should stay illegal btw or that it's just 'allo shit'. We make our own. We have 'pride is a protest' and 'we're here we're queer' and we have ace specific ones like 'we are not broken' 'put the ace in disgrace'. Plus if we can clock making 'sex is bad' esque slogans as a focus point in ace activism can easily slip into reactionary rhetoric that harms non-ace queer people, sex workers and kinksters we can have the self awareness to see anti-love sloganeering can easily do the same to marginalised types of love. Gay love isn't the enemy, amatonormativity and compulsory sexuality are.

Asexual separatism/"We don't need pride"/"There's no point of the LGBT community" It can feel tempting to want an completely solo asexual space or movement separate from the LGBTQI parts because of ace exclusionism and compulsory sexuality but I'm sorry this isn't the answer. Not every asexual gets to a choose whether or not they're queer. If you're gay, lesbian, bi, pan, trans, non-binary or intersex as well as ace you're tagged as 'other' no matter how you identify. If individual aces don't want to be called queer and rather stay in asexual spaces, or don't see the need to join asexual spaces at all then that's a fine decision to make *individually*. But that doesn't mean the LGBT community, queer spaces, queer representation and pride is 'useless'. That's just spitting the face of decades of activism. Activism that includes asexuals too btw! Yasmin Benoit literally marched with the Gay Liberation Front and they fully accepted her. She spoke up against asexual conversion therapy at the trans rights demo here in the UK and she worked with Stonewall which is why we have the first Ace Report in UK LGBT history. And conservatives have made it pretty clear they don't fuck with asexuals (pun unintentional) and see asexuality as queer reagrdless. Self-proclaimed fascist Matt Walsh has spoken against asexuality. Various major TERFs from Kellie Jay Keen, Julie Bindel and Jo Bartosh have attacked Yasmin Benoit for saying asexual people should have rights. GB News, the UK's far-right 'news' channel had a whole section dedicated to 'debunking' asexuality. Anti-gay conservative parents are pushing to ban books for involving asexuality. You might think 'well what's the point of fighting for gay sexual rights if we're not having any?' But like... that's the point. You don't support people different to you for clout or money or because people should only have rights if you get something in return, you do it because it's literally just being a decent person.

Just very very very very tired. If you're some ace exclusionist giggling 'see they ARE all homophobic!1' fuck off it's not about you but anyway it might be cringe but we're all in this together high school musical style. Learn gay history and activism as an asexual because we do have things in common and there's so much we can learn from each other.

[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.