#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!)

[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

[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.

[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.

[mintyfoxdev486]

Exclusionists and pick-me type queers miss the point so much it would be funny if they aren’t actually hurting people. I mean it really feels like:

Cisheteronormative society: “these are the boundaries around what is an acceptable way to be a human if you aren’t hurting anyone”

Queer movement: “those barriers are bullshit”

Exlclusionists: “yeah *these* are the barriers Aron d what is an acceptable way to be a human if you aren’t hurting anyone”

Like… the barriers are still bullshit. This is why I think it’s important to not get too lost in trying to give labels clear binary definitions. Big labels are for us to achieve solidarity, micro labels are for conversation, peace of mind, self exploration. Trying to give either a clear cut 100% rigid definition is _going_ to kick someone out because the human experience is a gradient, and in the world we should strive to make, we can still have labels if we want, but we shouldn’t need them, because people don’t need to worry about just showing up with a girlfriend when they had a boyfriend before without coming out as bi first to be safe. I shouldn’t have to give a power point presentation on why me having an adams apple and being a girl makes sense actually. So this post goes out to all my he/him dykes, my aego but actually demi but actually not friends, to all my aces who feel some sexual attraction or a lot, and my bi lesbians and gays, and all the heteroromantic homosexuals and vice versa. Shout out to all the nb people who don’t quite fit into any label or maybe all of them or maybe some but just a little. Shout out to trans people who don’t pass, shout out to trans people who do but don’t want to, shout out to those who can’t pass or just don’t bother. Shout out to everyone who’s just being themselves and doing their best, I know it can suck sometimes, I know there are a lot of loud annoying asshats even in our own community, but y’all are honestly ahead of the curve on this assignment so keep being iconic.

[crimeronan]

This might sound silly but the comments you left on your vibes poll meant a lot to me as a bisexual non-binary person. I identify as queer and that term means so much to me, so I know what it's like to feel a kind of solidarity with others who reclaim terms like those. As a bi/pan person I've always felt like I'm excluded and not allowed to use those two words, even before I realized I was non-binary (which complicated it even more for me). Being intentionally included felt really nice and I just wanted to thank you.

aw, this is very sweet and not silly at all!

to be honest, that's the precise reason i made those comments in the first place. they were prompted specifically by someone lamenting in the tags that there aren't reclaimable slurs for bi people, which Shocked me. i was like ".....but.... there Are. bi people have been getting called dykes and faggots since the words first existed. gay versus bi division is fake news...."

i grew up in a situation that was Very Very Very Unsafe as a queer person, and for a long time my only association with "dyke" and "faggot" was Danger. and Fear. that's no longer my association thanks to years of having a queer community and queer friends who gleefully use those terms to self-identify -- a "dyke faggot kinsey scale" is a joke about how genderweird and sexualityweird a lot of us are. and it's me getting to be playful with words that used to scare/hurt me :)

gatekeeping queerness and queer-related slurs has always been silly to me, because like. it truly Does Not Matter to our oppressors which specific Box we fit. or if we don't fit a specific box. it only matters that we don't fit THEIR box. ace, bi, trans, gay, pan, lesbian, genderqueer.... none of us fit in their box!!

if you want those words for yourself, you can have 'em. and if you don't want them, you do not have to use them. (good god i would never tell someone they have to Like or Embrace being called slurs. peer pressure will not actually make someone comfortable with this.)

anyway. thank you for the ask, i'm glad you felt seen!

[drop-dead-dropout]

NEW USERNAME local-queer-disappointment -> drop-dead-dropout

unpinning my other post because i want to talk a little about me and this space that i've created! hi i'm alex and i dropped out of high school twice lol

i think a dni is stupid because people never listen anyways, which is why i haven't had one, but i still see the value in at least telling people who this little corner is for.

also YELL AT ME ON DISCORD I'M woahits_alex.mp3 IF U ASK ME ABOUT FIC RECS FOR MY FANDOMS I'LL CRY WITH HAPPINESS

anyways opinion stuff under the cut. you don't have to read it, and you don't even have to listen if you do, but i might argue with you (<- serial arguer) so if you want to avoid the Discourse here ya go.

you are welcome here:

- ALL queers. trans men, trans women, nonbinary, intersex, poc queers, xenogender, "contradictory" labels like mspec gays/lesbians lesboys/turigirls/sapphileans (omg it's me!!), slur reclaims, detransitioners (who are not transphobic), mspec lesbians, aro/ace and all variations thereupon, unlabeled, questioning, etc. i love all of you. i love the community that we share. we are family, whether or not some of us want to be, and exclusionism is Not Funky Fresh!!

- pro Palestine!! i don't always rb posts as much as i used to (i am scared of spreading misinformation) but i think i'll start doing that again! (don't forget your daily click guys)

- jewish people. i am specifically adding this one to say that because of the shitty Everything, i've seen a lot of concerning antisemitic stuff recently so i'm just, yk, putting this out there.

- disabilities/cluster b disorders/systems/AAC users. i am not any of these things so if i say/do something out of line please tell me! but i love you guys and you're absolutely welcome here.

- proshippers (if this bothers you block and move on)

- furries. not personally one of y'all but i think you're neat and you make cool art :]

- literally, like, anyone, as long as you're not a dick

you are not welcome here:

- terfs, transphobes, exclusionists, anti-mspec, anti-lesboy, and people who think transandrophobia is "fake" or whatever. go away i don't like you (or at least be prepared to be blocked or yelled at)

- similarly to last, anyone who starts queer infighting or hates on less visible queers/strangers who don't "look" queer, the whole "bi girl's straight bf" nonsense (i don't care if you think someone is cishet. you have no way of knowing that. let's stop hating people for immutable characteristics and start having thoughtful criticisms of people's actions thanks)

- ZIONISTS. BYE BYE

- (but also antisemites because come on now let's notttt. judiasm ≠ zionism)

- ableists, fatphobia, racists/bigots, general dickheads

- antishippers (again, you can either leave now or expect to be argued with)

other general stuff:

- i accept anonymous asks! and also non anonymous ones. ask me shit idk

- i am autistic and VERY gullible. if i reblog a "bait" post, or something that's clearly fake or a joke with a genuine reaction, i'm probably not playing some 5d irony chess i'm probably just stupid. sorry y'all i'm trying :\

- i don't rb nsfw. not as, like, a rule, i just don't see the value in doing so lol. if i ever did i'd tag it and probably update this

UPDATE: thought i should clarify, i don't rb nsfw but i do rb nsfw humor, like dick jokes and stuff. hope there's no confusion

- i argue with people!! i enjoy arguing with people!! usually it's in replies and not reblogs but still. if you are allergic to stuff like that maybe don't follow me? i also rb "discourse" posts, mostly transmasc support stuff and callouts of transandrophobia, general solidarity stuff with the trans community or lgbt community as a whole, proship stuff, politics, current events, that kinda thing.

- this is, shockingly, supposed to be a fandom blog! (i got carried away; i always do.) current fandoms include: ace attorney (the one this blog was supposed to be about), doctor who (childhood hyperfixation come back to bite my ass), and splatoon (no excuse). also mha is basically my abusive boyfriend stockholm syndroming me to stay at this point but i'm trying to get better (not). you can find the records of my failing recovery at @alex-is-losing-sleep-over-krbk /hj (i also sometimes shamelessly rb this blog's posts over there lol)

and i guess since i'm mentioning fandoms, here are my fav ships: wrightworth, klapollo, franmaya, thoschei, pearlina, agent 24, & cuttletavio.

anyways, that's about it. love you all :]