#but i tend to use it as an umbrella term bc most ppl understand what i mean when i say that

[fallen-angel-adam-frankenstein]

I love these classical music "dark academia" type playlists but my god please people more pieces exist than Carnival of the Animals, Swan Lake, Moonlight Sonata, Clair de Lune, and the Chopin nocturnes like show me some random Fanny Mendelssohn composition I've never heard before PLEASE

[transrightsjimin]

big question, is the q word something that most of the community avoids or is it just wrong for cishet people to use? I'm not cis and not het and I've always used the word to identify myself. similarly, i have many many lgbt friends and we all use it about ourselves/each other and also to title the community in general. it proves to be easier to say than a string of letters. i guess i just don't know if we're behind the times or is it just dependent on the person?

i rly can’t speak for what most of the community wants or doesnt bc that’s hard to measure. it’s in general just difficult to speak of one true global LGBT community, considering LGBT was never intended as a solid group with rigid identities, but moreso referring to a coalition of different marginalized groups that sought to fight for equal rights. the labels and discourses surrounding it only make sense in “western“ or colonial cisheteronormative societies in which a gender binary is the norm. i tend to use lgbt for ease, but i wanted to emphasize here that there is not one universal understanding of / equal amount of relevance across cultures to the term LGBT. i understand that ppl prefer a different word for personal use for reasons such as this.

that aside, i’m afraid the trend is heading towards the q slur being used as umbrella term, or on the other hand, to use a long acronym despite not all groups in additions unanimously agreeing with being included, nor being faced with similar degrees of stigma and violence. ive seen both of these trends start to show years ago on tumblr and by now it has reached outside it and it’s rly tiresome bc other perspectives aren’t considered as much, and it allows in people w power over others who reinforce prejudice and make spaces unsafe, e.g. with asexuals joining GSAs in the US and pushing for PDA being banned in the groups bc it makes them uncomfortable.

i’ve been told by some dutch people that the q slur somehow isn’t considered a slur to ppl here bc it got introduced through academia while gay was introduced here as insult. but idk what to think of that, considering i don’t like the loose use of the q slur in academia (to the point where it’s used to refer to inanimate objects and random shit) nd i have not been introduced to it this way but knew it as a slur first and foremost.

and of course the ppl i spoke to who like the term and use it so liberally didn’t consider other views when they only engaged w other ppl who id more as q***r. and i’m just kinda iffy w local groups w the word in the name anyway since my impression thus far has been that these groups pose having less common genders or sexualities (and often include things tht are not oppressed in the same way tht being lgbt is, and invite in cishets) in itself as a very radical thing, even more than different labels, and i just cringe at that bc it says nothing abt politics at this point.

if anything it’s downright insulting to call everyone the slur despite being asked for years and years by others to not to do it. i dont think you followed me for a long time bc otherwise it wouldn’t be so shocking to you to come across the criticism. people keep asking again and again to not call them the q slur, nor refer to a community as a whole this way. i know ppl on tumblr have 0 reading comprehension but i get really tired of people responding in defense, as if personally attacked, time and again, “should i not call myself this then?? are you saying i’m not valid??“ (i cant see the word valid anymore since like 7 years ago, but thats another topic).

and like no, people simply ask to not be called this by strangers or have whole communities be called a slur. you can reclaim words that might’ve been used against you, but that nor the fact that it’s been reclaimed by more people over the past few years doesn’t make it not a slur anymore suddenly.

like just say LGBT for others, if it deems relevant to the context, and stop referring to strangers or a community at large with a slur that’s used against people to this day.

[bi-lesbian]

I kinda vibe w bi lesbians cause I'm agenderflux & omnique (my gender changes depending on who I'm attracted to so that it's always gay), and I am a lesbian sometimes, and really wish I could express thatbut I feel wayy to scared to talk abt that because of how ppl would react to that? but seeing bi lesbians makes me happy! it's a similar boat of "using the term lesbian despite not being what most people consider a lesbian" ya know? anyways have a great day, keep bein urself!

ohhhh thats what omnique means !!! ive seen the word a couple times but never looked into it :Oo i didnt know there was a term (or That was the term) for that sorta thing !! i def vibe with that..

anyways thats super valid !! im sorry u feel scared to be able to express this stuff much, its unfortunate ppl are so judgemental/hateful about things they may not understand or agree with :( but you can defintely be open about things on this blog at least ! i like keeping this a safe space for all identities :33 and im glad to hear seeing bi lesbians makes u happy :D

and yeah, lesbian doesnt really have much of one solid definition to it bc it can be quite different for everyone- a lot tend to say its exclusively wlw, a lot of others say it includes nb ppl too, and historically its been an umbrella term for any wlw (before biphobes forced a change in the general public eye), and its still seen and used as such by many, many ppl. in the end, i think it should become common again for it just to mean they like women, whether exclusively or not. so if someone says theyre a lesbian, assume they only like women unless stated otherwise- much like how gay tends to be used (so theres still no excuse for shitty men to assume they can get with a woman if she tells them shes a lesbian).

anyways, i hope u have a great day too !!! and keep being your super valid self :333

[collectivedreamscapes-moved]

i just had the most random thought. well... two of them.

1) i remembered when Main Renee thought we only had a few boys in the system... and wanted to hysterical laugh. Cuz so very wrong.

2) of all the reasons system mates can form, can 'dealing with the dissonance and dysphoria of being trans' be one of them?

we were kids in the late 70s and early 80s. we didn't even know being transgender was a thing until our 30s.

we remember being inordinately confused by Boy George and Hollywood from the movie Mannequin because in our experience, we were informed multiple times in multiple ways that there was a Right Way and a Wrong Way to express your gender (ie we were always doing it Wrong) and we asked our mother one time why Boy George dressed like that (bc she listened to a lot of Culture Club) and she was all 'it's just part of his act' in this 'don't ask anymore questions' tone of voice. (this is a woman who would lose her shit if my brother didn't clip his nails.)

sexuality has always been easier hands down for us bc we didn't bother thinking about terms we didn't even know existed. we would just be: 'cute. 10 of 10 would bone'. regardless of gender.

gender is a confusing mess of '???' in our heads. along with gender expression. we remember Main Renee feeling ashamed bc she liked quilting and being confused as to why because clearly we were a girl and quilting in our family was an approved girly thing. so why be ashamed?

we laughed when we were scheduled for a hysterectomy and our mother and aunt were all like 'you'll still be a woman without ur uterus' because we were just like 'thank god! just take the thing!' and we were genuinely confused at all the comforting and consoling literature. like... being a breeder doesn't define being a woman? or does it? we didn't know and figured this was just another in the very long list of things that didn't make basic sense to us.

(and we'll tell you a thing. we know it's a fanfic trope and some ppl find it a helluva squick, but we love ABO bc it allows for normalized male pregnancy... even if we don't agree with certain anatomical presentations of it. because we had three kids and the guys in our system are PROUD to consider themselves Moms.)

when we learned about transgender and started actively reading up on it and was like 'oh! oh this is a real thing?!' we were dating a lesbian at the time and she was Not Pleased and told us she would have to break up with us if we pursued it and we were again... confused as hell. like 'what tf does it matter what our body looks like if you love us???' we had the worst disagreements about our chest. we mostly wanted our tits gone and she kept suggesting reduction instead. (she'd had one.) and we realized she didn't get it. so we left it alone.

the body is 45 now and we've been using genderqueer as a term bc it encompasses all of the system's various gender issues. we hesitated to use trans bc we felt like we didn't fit our understanding of the term. (we've since been told that genderqueer falls under the trans umbrella?)

so we've largely avoided specific terms (and lemme tell you, the whole aro umbrella was both eye opening and even more confusing than anything else) because people seem to have ideas and opinions on what they practically mean that just... do not compute to us. our spawn has tried to explain and watched us just... '???' ... as we tried to wrap our brain around it. and finally just said 'mom... you're prolly not gonna get it.'

sexuality is easy for us. once we learned the term pansexual we all went 'oh yeah this fits way better than bi' and haven't looked back. the rest? sometimes it feels like we'll never sort it out. so every year Pride month is... kinda painful. Because the things you see the most are people who are fiercely about 'this is who I am!' which is awesome for them. but us? it just kinda emphasizes everything that confuses the hell out of us.

as a system... we tend to lean towards genderqueer pansexual and quoiromantic bc trying to explain it is hard. we think we're likely more demiromantic to quoiromantic but we're still grappling with the fifty million definitions for love and the difference between 'platonic' and 'romantic' still baffles tf out of us.

individually.... our identities roam the map. some are ace, some are proudly gay, but all of that is still sexual attraction, which is easy.

the rest... not so easy.