#i let go of a lot of mental toxicity when i accepted my queer self

[curlyhairedintrovertsworld]

i swear, realizing i was ace made me a better person. i will stand by this forever. happy asexual awareness week 💖

[trans-harrington]

an intro post!!

what's up! i'm zee, i'm 23, and i largely use they/them pronouns, though she/her is occasionally acceptable. i've been roleplaying for about 6 years, and i'm unfortunately obsessed with stranger things, hence the blog! i'm always on the lookout for new partners, so don't hesitate to send a message if you're interested in plotting!

i'm a pretty chill person when it comes to writing, but i do have a few rules and guidelines. please read everything before messaging me!

general.

first and foremost, i only write with people 20 or older. please do not contact me if you're under the age of 20, or i will block you.

secondly, i am a black, queer person, and i write a lot of queer characters. if you don't like that, don't interact.

i want to reiterate that i write on discord only. my tumblr blog is just to find people and talk a little before moving over there. i'm a multi-para writer, and i average about 6-8 paragraphs, but i can write less if you're more comfortable with that. that being said, i cannot do one-liners. i like to keep a plot moving and i feel like with one-liners, it just drags out. i will lose interest and the plot will be dropped.

i write in mini servers on discord, and i usually make a couple of channels for us to chat and share things ooc, and different channels for each roleplay. i write in third person, past or present tense, and i have tried in the past but i cannot get into first or second person, so please don't ask me to write in either.

lastly, while i use some bots, i prefer not using tupperbox. it confuses me and more often than not i forget to actually use it when replying.

activity.

i work a full-time job, i'm preparing for a year-long certification course, and i'm mentally ill, so my activity can be spotty. there may be times that i just want to chat without writing, and there may be periods where you get tons and tons of replies from me. please be patient with me either way. you can always poke me gently if it's been a few days and you haven't heard from me, but daily messages, or multiple messages a day make me extremely anxious. i'm less likely to answer you, and it will probably end in a ghosting situation, which is the last thing i want. if you're the kind of person who needs rapid responses every day, we aren't going to vibe.

plotting.

first and foremost, be aware that i require doubling. i have a lot of ideas and ships, and i know plenty of other people do as well. i want us both to be able to get what we want out of writing together. i will always put as much enthusiasm into your plot as i do mine, and i ask that you do the same. if i feel like you're neglecting one plot in favor of the other, i will probably end both.

nsfw and other themes.

i am an adult, and i enjoy writing smut and heavy topics. sometimes, my plots can be very smutty, and other times smut might not appear at all. please let me know what you are and aren't comfortable with upfront so that we can avoid any tricky situations!

i enjoy writing angst, fluff, aus (especially historical aus), omegaverse, pregnancy and family-building, and canon-compliant plots. i love brainstorming and worldbuilding, filling in the many gaps that the duffer brothers have left us with.

i have very few triggers, but i will not write out the following: self-harm, toxic or abusive relationships, homophobia or queerphobia of any kind, racism, heavy descriptions of gore, eye trauma, or animal abuse.

for smut purposes, i absolutely cannot write anal penetrative sex. i had a nightmarish experience both online and in person that i won't go into details about, but anal smut is highly triggering for me. if you bring it into a plot, i will block you immediately. that being said, other limits include: pedophilia, raceplay, feeding/food, feet, detransitioning, and noncon.

characters/ships.

i will delete this part later, but for right now i am not looking for any steddie content. i enjoy the ship, but i have been overwhelmed with it lately and would just like to take a break from it altogether for the time being.

my main muse is steve harrington, who i write as a trans man. he's my favorite character to write as, and is the one i have the most headcanons and backstory for. but i am duplicate-friendly, and welcome other steves to interact!

additionally, i do write as a few members of the party, but i write them all aged up. the only time i will write them as kids are if they're appearing in other plots as background characters.

and lastly, i am open to all kinds of ships, but there are a few things to keep in mind. firstly, i am open to canon/oc ships but only if you have a detailed character sheet for them, so that i can actually get a feel for them. secondly, i do not enjoy ronance or stonathan as romantic ships, but i am always happy to write them platonically (in fact i have a platonic stonathan plot that i am DESPERATE to write so hmu).

characters i write:

- steve harrington (ftm)

- robin buckley (nonbinary)

- max mayfield (ftm)

- nancy wheeler (cis or mtf)

- joyce byers

- jim hopper (cis or ftm)

- dustin henderson

- eleven hopper

- vickie (begging for a last name reveal)

- chrissy cunningham

- carol perkins

as far characters i want to write against - bring me anyone! i love exploring different dynamics between characters, especially ones that don't get to interact much (if at all) in the show. i'm always looking for romantic, platonic, or familial ships, and i'm always looking to plot, so don't hesitate to reach out and send a message!

[nacrelyses]

normal album analysis as a musical: the child

first a disclaimer: i know this interpretation was not will wood’s intention in making the album, this is just how the music resonates with me and i hope it helps other people as well.

now following up on my last post about the normal album potentially being interpreted as the life of a queer child in a conservative family (tw internalized and external queerphobia, gaslighting, mental illness). 

let’s call this ..hmm.

a normal musical: the child.

suburbia overture: the aforementioned overture, the establishment of the musical setting as your typical white picket fence upper middle class suburb nuclear family. traditional values, traditional lifestyle, traditional children, with the vampire culture segment foreshadowing the way that imposing conservative values and self-loathing on a closeted queer child “sucks” the life out of them.

2econd-2ight-2eer: when the child starts questioning, the very act of questioning defies the moral compass their family has set out for them. possibly reflecting the way that questioning and exploring one’s identity, in addition to being rife with internalized queerphobia, is also fraught with the self-gaslighting that comes as a result of the internalized queerphobia, which might make the child believe they’re simply “losing it” or that whatever they’re experiencing is a mental illness. also the first stanza: “my grip on my secrets slipping while i’m speaking in tongues, screaming at the top of my lungs in the confession booth” religious trauma much?

laplace’s angel: the child has begun to come to terms with the fact that they are most likely queer, and the complete deterioration of their family’s imposed conservative values. this is the phase where the internalized queerphobia still makes them feel as though they’ve become a bad or evil person, thus laplace’s angel being them internally pleading for the world and for society to see them as they really are rather than a villain deviating from the norm. that if others were in their shoes, they’d walk the “same damn miles”, the same damn crises, the same damn emotional turmoil, that the child is currently going through .

i/me/myself: gender cannonball...need i say more? maybe the child believes, as a product of internalized transphobia, that it would be easier if they were their assigned gender - or perhaps, depending on the individual, maybe the child is wishing to be able to exist as their true gender. in either scenario, this song encapsulates the desperation that comes with exploring identity. the freedom that arrives with a revelation and the immediate restriction that comes with realizing that that revelation can never be truly realized in a queerphobic family. or even the bitterness at knowing their family makes such a huge deal about queerness, that queerness is somehow a gigantic roadblock their family will never be able to cross. both realizing your identity and still grappling with the idea that if you were born into the “norm”, you wouldn’t need to go through all this pain to try and figure out who you really are. it’s the turmoil of being genuine in a society that would actively oppress you for doing so and putting up a facade that somewhat lessens the aforementioned pain, but at the cost of further internal suffering. 

also, to my fellow genderqueer and gender nonconforming will wood fans (and let’s face it, which one of us isn’t?): i see you. i see your spotify listening activity. i see the loop button. i would ask if you’re okay but i know we’re not

...well, better than the alternative: parenting angst here, maybe alluding to the parents themselves perpetuating toxic cycles that they never had the opportunities to realize or heal from. the child is born amid these toxic cycles, and although this toxicity (the queerphobia, for example) is the norm in this suburban family, deep down the parents don’t want their child to turn out the way they do. meanwhile, on the other end, the child is feeling as though “everybody’s up in my goddamn business” - maybe the parents are starting to suspect that their child is less than cishet (or maybe the child has come out to them), and within their denial of their child not turning out the way they want them to, maybe they unconsciously realize that it’s their own toxic parenting styles that have made their child so afraid and secretive about who they really are. if this is the scenario that the child has come out to their parents, they have decided that even if they are existing in a conservative family, they will be existing as themselves. or if it is a closet scenario, the child has decided that they will continue to hide themselves from their family for their own safety. in either situation, the child believes that the decision they made is “better than the alternative” 

(this song also makes me remember hospitals a lot so there’s that)

outliars and hyppocrates: we start off with some more religious (trauma) imagery. maybe the metaphor of the apple is trying to indicate to the parents, through the conservative lens of seeing queerness as something bad, that the child was not “brainwashed” or “taught” to be this way. that they simply are. the rest of the song grapples with that internalized queerphobia, maybe the child feeling that they are less than human because of their queerness but who’d want to be human, be the norm, anyway? if the child is made to feel Other, then they ought to embrace and wear and own that Otherness - out of defiance, out of desperation, but ultimately out of a need for survival. 

blackboxwarrior: i want to focus on the chorus here. the child’s mental struggles are exacerbated by the lack of acceptance they receive from their immediate environment, but the chorus acts as sort of a defiance against their internalized queerphobia. so what if their parents’ values portray queerness as an illness, something that will kill you? if it was going to kill the child, it would have by now; and it hasn’t, so surely the child is heading in a right direction to be exploring and reclaiming their identity. and then the bridge - “growing up, how was your relationship with the fundamentals of conscious existence?” ties back to i/me/myself’s grappling with the idea of self and existence in one’s body. growing up, how was the child’s relationship with the environment that dictated how they ought to exist and be perceived? and “what, you think ideas spread because they're good? / no, they spread because people like them” can be pointing to the conservative ideas that are perpetuated by the child’s family. these ideas do not spread because they’re good. they spread because the family wants an excuse from some higher power to discriminate against those they feel are outliers from the norm. “so here we are once again, holding, as it were, a mirror up to your mirror / i guess it's just something people do” can be pointing to how the way the child is trying to come to terms with their identity is by overcoming the toxic ways of thought that their parents taught them, and which their parents are still bound by. if the parents are to find out that their child is queer, their reaction will be to ask, “why? we don’t understand you?” but they are really only talking to the mirror, to the reflection they have constructed that they believe their child to be. their child is not that reflection, and they are going in circles, but that’s just what people do, i guess.

finally, the bridge being formatted sort of like one’s first session with a therapist or psychiatrist leads into marsha, thankk you for the dialectics.

marsha, thankk you for the dialectics: a heavily psychiatry-based song. marsha thankk is about the intertwining of the self with the illness and i value that meaning a lot. i can’t think of another way, nor do i particularly want to think of another way, to embed this song’s meaning into the child. it has grown obvious by this point that the child has their own mental illnesses to grapple with - whether they arose as a need to cope within their toxic home environment, or out of other factors, is not particularly important to be clarified. i would say that the meaning of this song in this musical is just what it was originally intended to be - the child, on their path to recovery, slowly separating those toxic coping mechanisms from themselves in order to really realize their identity. 

love, me normally: i wrote a long ass post about this at 12am this morning. 

memento mori: the musical’s closure. this song embodies a lot of nihilism about one’s existence and one’s meaning in existence, and i would like to think that this song being the musical’s closure is not closure in the sense that it gives you a “where are they now” glimpse, or that it gives you the final direction that the child has decided to head in. rather, memento mori exists in this musical as the child’s innermost thoughts about their own existence as somebody who seemingly defies the (supposed cishet) order of the universe. it is the child’s darkest, most shadowed and hidden ruminations about their life and what their death may bring, if anything at all. throughout the child’s life, throughout the musical, these thoughts have only been hidden, obscured and glimpsed in passing when the lyrical puzzles of the normal album’s previous songs unfurl (think, “if it was gonna kill you boy, it would have by now” and “am i pretty enough to fucking die” and “good news for the purists, they’ve discovered a cure for the symptoms of being alive / it’s a painless procedure with a low rate of failure, but very few patients survive”, etc). but as the musical’s finale, memento mori brings these thoughts into their very antithesis - into the light. it illuminates the rawness of the child’s pain in learning to accept and love themselves. it brings these thoughts into tangible and articulated reality for two reasons: 

for the audience, as both a warning of the results of such a toxic and intolerant family/environment and an articulation of the thoughts perhaps many of us, ourselves, have to contend with at some point in our lives.

and for the child themselves, so that they can fully realize these thoughts. so that they can parse them, articulate them, unlearn them, and begin to heal.

memento mori in this musical is, paradoxically, a song about death that encourages life to heal.

anyways that’s what i’ve got so far now i have homework i should...do....oh god-

[camrensrealbish]

Blame it on the fandom

I’ve been thinking about the podcast appearance a lot in the last few days.  I have questions for you, Lauren.

Promotion and Camren headlines

It’s interesting when you look at the ways they used Camren for promotion. In the early Fifth Harmony days, to bring LGBT teenagers to the fandom. Then quietened it with Brad and Austin PRs. Then “I found the girl” was released. And then finally Lauren’s coming out followed by the “never real... ever” tweet. Tweet that btw made headlines and brought Lauren’s name into mainstream, ensuring that the first bit of information general public learns about her is that she was not in a relationship with Camila Cabello. 

And now apparently they’re doing it again, use Camila to promote Lauren, while simoultanously slamming Camila’s gay rumors. Very clever if you ask me.

Toxicity

Are you seriously trying to tell me that there is more blame in teenagers who wrote fanfics, that in people who used two girls’ relationship in whatever way they wanted to sell a product?  

The fandom shouldn’t be to blame, but you know who? The management and the label. People in control of her career and image. People who didn’t give a f*ck about her mental health and didn’t offer any help or support when she was starting her career in LA and everything was happening at once and closeted Lauren started to panic. The people who were “making decisions on regular basis to fuck them over, to make them literal slaves”. Most importantly, people, who’ve worked in the industry for years and knew where all of this would lead to and how to manipulate the story. 

And ok. Maybe Lauren didn’t know better in 2013/14 and the fandom, who was pointing out all the moments her feelings were showing seemed like an obvious target, because she didn’t know how to deal with her feelings for Camila and her internalized homophobia. But am I really supposed to believe, that nothing has changed since then and she’s learnt nothing?

That Lauren, who’s outspoken about the contracts and the bullshit of music industry, even when she’s not supposed to, that this Lauren would blame the fandom and not the people in charge? 

Fake it till you make it

That was some great acting on Lauren’s part (a little bit worse on Becky’s). Girl, maybe you should be the next one with acting career?

I wonder how many times she rehearsed her speech. Because without a doubt, it was prepared with her team and thought through thoroughly. What was our biggest argument against them saying Camila and Lauren were not dating? The way they look at each other and some of Camila’s slips (”Mine’s Lauren”,”Who are you kissing under the mistletoe?”, “Why do you assume it’s a boy”). So they made sure to take all our arguments away.

I also did not have that connection with her. Camila and i were just very good friends at that time, you know what i'm saying, and we respected each other. When each other would talk we would look at each other, we had love for each other, like genuine friendship, you know what i'm saying, and in the latinx culture i don't know about you, but growing up I was very affectionate with all of my friends i was very, like, we would tell each other shit that yeah, maybe you would think we were gay if you were listening over, but we weren't, you know what i'm saying.

It made me really angry, because seriously? You’re gonna use heteronormativity to shove Camila deeper into the closet?

Why now?

That was the first question that popped in my mind right after I recovered from the shock of hearing Camila’s name. Why now after 3 years of ignoring Camila’s existence?

LJ1 is coming. Album with a lot of songs about Camren in it, that you can easily connect with Camila’s side of the story. Why am I so certain about it? Because she made sure to incorporate Camren timeline into the relationship with Lucy. 

I was like, I need to own this, you know? Like, of course she can’t be with someone who doesn’t want to be with her really, you know? That’s traumatizing. As someone who was really queer and accepted that about herself, and I loved that about her. She was so self-assured and who she really was and I really wanted to be like that but I couldn’t give that at the time, so I had to deal with the pain of losing her because of that. Then she came back into my life and we had a very toxic relationship, because neither one of us was healed enough to be together, but we loved each other so much… that happened when I was 18. I wanted to be with her so badly that I didn’t even give her time or me time to even know if this was what I wanted or what she wanted. I was like “no, now we’re gonna be together” so I went all in and was like we’re going to be in this relationship. And I remember my mom being like… She knew, but she also – again, there was a lot of toxicity between this girl and I, this was not a healthy relationship, this was not anything to romanticize what I went through, but also, it was my story.“

Started as friends with benefits, Camila wanted more, but Lauren wasn’t confident in her sexuality, so they broke up and got back together as a couple in 2014. That’s exactly what we were speculating was going on with Camren then, what Camila confirmed in her songs (Feel it twice, Should’ve said it) and even mentioned in Zach Sang interview. 

They really decided to sink the ship this time. They’re not playing anymore, so I’d get prepared for a big shitshow in Shawmila circus, let’s pray it’s not marriage.

[tobeornottotc]

The Problems with HIStory4; Close To You Ep 1-4 (Observation and Comments)

The verdict is out!  I actually enjoy History4, as much as there's problematic elements to it, and it does feel a bit like a regression; the acting is great, the chemistry is perfect, and it's not as bad as the trailer made it seem. Like yes, we have a very invasive annoying fujoshi trope, but the characters are written in a way that it makes sense that they fall into this.

The Fujoshi Harassing Invasive Fake Dating Trope:

Cheng is so childish and so up in the clouds, and from a typical sexist, ignorant flawed man perspective, it's like he's always never taken anything seriously because he doesn't see any need to. Also, because he doesn't take anything seriously, he's ignorant and very self-focused and takes things too far; it's his character flaw. The only person who keeps in line is Moren. Who is someone who takes a lot of things seriously but also kind of ignores or avoids feelings and what that entails.

Moren is very gentle and sweet with his friends whilst on the surface, he seems cold and distant, but he tends to be very comfortable and have fun, like the childish part of him is brought out by Cheng. They compliment each other so well. There's something about the way they like each other so unconditionally despite being so opposite to each other, they do care a lot, and they have a very ignorant homophobic mindset because of how they've been raised in society, so they don't know a lot about queerness and what it means, so that's interesting to see them learn their feelings and grow from that.

I like their domestic vibes and how they are when they're just together alone; it's not entirely romantic or in your face that there are feelings; it's very soft, and very based and focused on the depth of friendship that they've developed, and I think that's so cute and adorable to see. The only thing I don't like about their storyline is the fujoshi trope; she's not always there; she's hidden but her presence always reminds me of why this trope is so problematic because she should be called out for her invasiveness. She should be taught about why what she's doing is not okay; maybe she does, later on, do so but I can't tell how serious this writer wants to be with this show. She may have genuinely just wanted a typical old BL style novel like show in the past that we used to read that doesn't address problematic stuff.

The show is very light and funny with these twos story so she may not want it to be so serious, which is why I'm trying to be careful when analysing the show. My thing is the fujoshi thing needs to be addressed because her actions aren't okay more than Cheng and Moren. The trailer for the show is wildly exaggerated and made me dread watching the show. Still, although Cheng is sometimes quite touchy and can fall into that line of harassment, it's been called out by Moren in episode 1, and everything in the trailer that seemed problematic with harassment for them isn't like it is.  It's just them joking around and being Moren and Cheng. Moren may feel weirded out by some situations, but it's not against his consent, is what I'm trying to say. Cheng is not meant to be a perfect character; his flaw is his childishness, and how he doesn't take things seriously, so he comes across as rude, invasive, loud etc. But for them, there's nothing so far that is as bad as what the trailer suggested it would be. Maybe, later on, I'd change my mind.

The Stalker Obsessesive Step Brother Trope:

For Jie and Xingsi. It's different. It's the same issues with stories about obsession, possession and trauma tropes. People will not like Jie because the reason why he does what he does, is because his character outline is based on a mental disorder (that isn't even diagnosed, but it's clear he's on a  sociopathic spectrum), he's emotionally shut off, so he doesn't have any feelings, doesn't know when he's gone too far or when he is doing something to others that are seen as problematic. All he focuses on is his feelings for XingSi because he's the only person who makes him care.

Not goanna lie, their storyline has toxic elements, and it is weird that the show wants to humanise his actions and make him seem pitiful. For me, he is pitiful, and I do understand why he acts the way he does, but I think others would have an issue with him. I think it's hard to accept the storyline because it is romanticising toxicity and dependency, but I kinda after being freaked out by him; I've come to kind of understand why they write his character the way they did for him and Xingsi. The theme of these two's story is conforming to societal pressures vs being free and accepting your self. So they kind of help each other with the other's problem/issue.

You can decide if you want to see that as romantic or if you are so turned off by Jie's insensitive actions. For me, this is a typical toxic storyline that makes sense to me why they'll be together. For example, when looking at Jie; Obviously, he's been nurtured into developing parts of being sociopathic to deal with the pain of his childhood. It's not an excuse to let him get away with his actions; I'm just saying I understand his character outline. He doesn't trust people; he doesn't let anyone in. So he's automatically someone with sociopathic tendencies, very possessive, can be aggressive if he isn't sure he trusts what's happening, alienates himself and doesn't care for how others view him. But he's someone who kind of helps Xingsi deal with his own secrets; Xingsi is someone determined to be responsible/right in society; hence he hides himself and his actual wants and needs to please people.

So Jie, with his own twisted ways, is always a catalyst to helping Xingsi find out what he wants and for Xingsi to come to terms with being brave and showing who he really is to people. In a way, Jie, because he's so emotionally uncaring about what others think of him, is the antithesis to Xingsi; he is freer because he's not hiding who he is or conforming to what others think is right/wrong he only cares about his own freedom/happiness. So he provides that way and escape for Xingsi to be himself and stop pretending or acting to please people and society. That's what the writers are trying to achieve with them. Jie is then also taught about feelings and emotions because of having Si as someone he does care for automatically and does want to change for and be gentle to whilst Si learns to accept himself /stop conforming to societal pressures.

They follow typical old BL novels in the past; they have problematic issues and toxic stuff around them to discuss, and they're very flawed; they are written to help each other deal with their flaws/issue by falling for each other. Is it right to romanticize that storyline? Maybe or maybe not, we need to do better stories for BL; that's something we know, it's not okay to always have toxic or problematic storylines, but if you know me, I also enjoy the past BL tropes as well. I like toxic storylines because they have so much interesting character dynamics that are wild to explore and analyse. They usually are very angsty and dramatic, and they have a good plot. That's something I never try to hide away from, I don't agree with when people say you shouldn't write toxic storylines or add problematic characters, but that's an argument for another day etc., I just want it to be called out when its a toxic thing/problematic trope like give consequences and show them learning why its wrong, or have them go through a character development.  

It's not going to make me judge the show so badly or stop watching it when I actually enjoy the friendship, characters and lighthearted, funny vibes the show brings every Sunday. Like it makes me smile and laugh when I'm watching Cheng and Moren, and it makes me think when I watch Xingsi and Jie. So yeh I enjoy the show and I'm not ashamed to say it.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Article by Amelia A. J. Foy

Happy Bisexual Visibility Day! On this day, we celebrate ourselves as bisexual people in a world that often overlooks our community in both a heteronormative sense and as a part queer culture. Despite the B in LGBTQ+ standing for bisexual and our long history in the fight for queer liberation, we are often left out of narratives surrounding LGBTQ+ issues and experiences. For example, you’ve probably never seen a coming-of-age story where the character is discovering their bisexual identity in the same way you have movies like Love, Simon or the plethora of other straight films about young romance. This is because bisexuality is often framed as being both gay and straight; however, the issues our community faces are unique to bisexual+ people (those who are multi-gender attracted) and, whilst I definitely saw myself in Love, Simon and cried my eyes out, it did not wholly encapsulate my experience.

Seeing actual bisexual representation in the media now warms my heart, but it is few and far between: actually getting it right is even rarer. Sure, Glee had a bisexual character when I grew up watching it, but her ex-girlfriend then gets with a lesbian and says, “now I don’t have to worry about my girlfriend straying for penis”, so it didn’t really do much for me. Especially as a young, confused teenager.

This is why we need visibility. Now, visibility is not the be-all-end-all of our liberation or acceptance into culture. Visibility can often come at the price of facing more danger and being hypervigilant, and places the onus of acceptance on marginalised people not “putting themselves out there” more. Many bisexual people also aren’t visible for many reasons, one of which being for their own safety, and another being that we are often read as either gay or straight based on our partnering at the time. It erases a massive part of our experience.

However, this is why visibility is particularly important to the bisexual community. Bi-erasure and invisibility is linked to the rates of poor mental health within our community specifically, because it is a unique challenge we face. Then, if we come out, we face exclusion from queer and heterosexual spaces alike, and social exclusion is also correlated with worse mental health. In fact, bisexual people face higher levels of anxiety, depression and suicidality than not just heterosexual people, but lesbian and gay people, too. We also encounter higher rates of sexual assault/harassment, which is particularly problematic considering many of our stereotypes centre on our “greediness” and “promiscuity”. Yet, despite a plethora of research showing us to be the most vulnerable sexual minority community, our issues are neglected, belittled and written off. Most people don’t even know how much we are suffering.

Growing up bisexual was a big confusing mess as a result. I came out seven years ago, aged 14, to the immediate reaction of “it’s a phase” from my family, meaning that I had to navigate this self-discovery on my own, quietly. Throughout the next few years, I encountered a slew of biphobic remarks and experiences:

“I turned you bisexual.” Ah, yes, I couldn’t have liked girls for ages and repressed it due to compulsory heterosexuality. That would be ridiculous. It must be your godlike attraction.

“I wouldn’t marry a bisexual because what if they wake up and want a man?” I was definitely about to propose to you in the middle of history class, so thanks for letting me down gently.

“But you’ve never dated girls before.” My nerdy ass hadn’t dated anyone before. Thinking back on this one, how weird is it to demand a 14- or 15-year-old to have a dating history to idenitify as bisexual?

“You’re too young to know.” Cool, but all the straight kids know they’re heterosexual from the jump, right?

Being in a queer toxic relationship and having no idea where to go because there were no resources for LGBTQ+ students and I had no adult support network because I was bisexual in a queer relationship… Can I get a yikes?

“Is the correct term bisexual or desperate?” Men get so mad when you’re bisexual and not into them, don’t they?

“Bisexuals are just confused.” Yes! We are! Coming out as a sexuality that is severely underrepresented and misrepresented, even in LGBTQ+ spaces, and being told by these same spaces all the ways in which you don’t belong, really sucks! It makes you doubt yourself! I was confused, and I couldn’t express it out of fear of validating this stereotype!

“I don’t think you’re really bisexual.” Well, we’ve been lipsing for months so that sounds more like a you problem to me.

“Want a threesome?” If I wanted disappointing sex I’m sure I could find it somewhere else, thanks.

Right at the start, these kind of things sent me way down into existential crisis and had me questioning my identity. I was alone, scared and confused. I felt an overwhelming pressure to just know my identity and an overwhelming pressure to fit in, and I had no resources to help me.

Bisexual teens are less likely to have access to safe spaces and supportive adults than lesbian or gay people, and that was definitely my experience. If I had just one adult to talk to at school - a counsellor or someone who ran an LGBTQ+ club, anyone - I could have avoided a lot of toxic situations and had more confidence in who I was.

Now that I have a social support network and I’m an out and proud adult, it doesn’t bother me too much. But I know how badly these kind of things can impact you, especially as a young person, and so does the research. If you are a young bisexual person, please know that you are not wrong, not indecisive, not greedy and you do not deserve any level of abuse or belittlement. I support you and there are places and spaces that will support you, too. Here’s a few online places (sorry for the UK focus!):

Bi.org

biresource.org

londonbipandas

Bicommunitynews.co.uk - particularly this page to find local bi+ meet-ups and events in the UK & Ireland

[dailydnp]

Daniel Howell on queer self-care in a straight world

Daniel Howell came out on YouTube a year ago and now has a bestselling book about how straight and queer men can best look after their mental health. In a weird year for Pride, and for mental health, we asked Howell how the LGBTQ+ community should look after themselves

Being a man is not easy, nor is navigating your mental health as one. But for queer men the problems are both very similar and entirely their own. Finding space in this world to process the hard parts of being queer and making sure we don't bring the worst parts of masculinity into queer spaces isn't easy either. Coming out might seem like the seminal moment in a gay life but, actually, much of what follows is no easier.

Daniel Howell – “a professional internet clown” – has documented his own experiences with coming out, being gay and the struggles with his own mental health on his YouTube channel. Now he's released a book, You Will Get Through This Night, which is currently at number one on the Sunday Times chart. The decision to do a book around mental health was partially inspired by a resistance to doing a memoir – “My entire life story is on the internet, go watch it if you want” – and also by the fact that, “For 28 years, I never even took a slight interest in my own mental health, asking how I was feeling, because if you've had a busy work day the last thing you want to do in your spare time is homework about mental health.”

So the 30-year-old set out to condense all the knowledge he'd found tough to swallow into a more palatable format. “It's a lean, mean mental health machine. I'm not going to go off too deep on one topic and we're not going to waste any time. We're going to give you the information that you need right now.” For Howell, this is a book you can reread over and over again to find the advice you need for the problems you're currently facing. “I'm in this position where I'm opening every wound in my entire life, inviting everybody to stick their finger into it and hoping that I can make it seem more relatable and accessible,” he explained.

As we enter a very odd Pride Month and Pride season, indeed, we asked Howell how LGBTQ+ readers might be able to use this time to find solace and mental tranquility, particularly after the year-and-a-bit the world has had and we start to return to some semblance of normality.

GQ: We are here, as part of this discussion about mental health and your book, to talk about how queer mental health is impacted by heteronormativity, the patriarchy, by straight society, all of our favourite things. You documented your coming out and, since then, your journey with queerness. So I was wondering how your mental health was beforehand and how it changed afterwards?

Dan Howell: I could not have estimated how intrinsically linked my sexuality was to most of the suffering in my life. It really boils down to a single point about authenticity: if you are living a lie, if you are pushing against something fundamentally true and inevitable about yourself, you're just going to burn out and reach a point where you can't do it anymore. That's what happened to me. I had such a traumatising relationship with my sexuality throughout my life. I was one of those people – and many will relate, whether they're queer or not – who said, “I'm just gonna focus on my career. I'm not gonna deal with this skeleton in my closet right now, because I've got to focus on other things.”

What happened with me was I reached that wall, I hit that point where I just couldn't keep going anymore in my day-to-day life. As someone who creates, and is supposed to be an entertainer and to talk about myself for a living, I literally couldn't work anymore until I tackled this topic. It had everything to do with my self-esteem, my world view and my own relationship with my own emotions. Every time I dived down that rabbit hole of anxiety, or I slipped into a depressive mood and felt like I deserved it, it was because there was something that I couldn't escape from yet.

For me, the moment – well, I say “the moment” I came out, it was a year-long process – it was literally a weight that lifted, in a way I can't describe to anyone that hasn't been there. It felt like my entire life I'd been wearing a suit of chainmail that I just instantly dropped on the floor and I felt like a completely different person. And that kind of acceptance of yourself allowed me to re-evaluate every aspect of myself in relation to my mental health. I've just done a complete 180.

We love that for you. But like any of us who come out, you are then faced with a world that is in many ways wildly uncaring once we have done it. What have been some of the struggles you have faced as someone being gay in a fundamentally straight society?

There are a lot of, let's say, “sensitive straight people” that feel like gay people having a moment for themselves takes something away from them. This is true of queerness of any shade, but it also applies to anything else in life: if someone is going through something bad and needs a moment or if they just want any kind of equality, that's not taking anything away from you. To all the racists on Facebook, Black Lives Matter isn't making your life worse, it's just that they want equality. It's the same thing for people coming out: they're not coming out to have an attention parade, that's just them becoming a normal member of society, like you.

I wish I didn't have to come out because I hated all the speculation and attention I had to deal with for the ten years prior to it. Until anyone having to come out, in any way, with their gender or sexual identity, is normal, it's going to be a surprise to you. So I don't know what you're complaining for.

We are all, technically, at one point, part of the straight world and then slowly but surely our relationship with it changes – or at least that's my experience. What has been your relationship with engaging with a world that is, in some ways, in stasis while you have gone on a journey of change?

I had to accept that a lot of the audience that have been with me over the past ten years were, unfortunately, not gay. And that's really sad, but I still want to say that they're welcome and bring them along with me on the journey slightly. Even though I've come out as this alien, it doesn't mean I'm flying away to another planet and you'll never be able to relate to me again.

This is why mental health is a great example for my audience of how my being gay is so linked to my experience of my health, but you can relate to it too, because you're also a human with a brain and you have emotions. We're not so different. So, for me, it's about saying, “Hey, there are certain things that I am going to talk about now and there are parts of my life that I'm going to share.” And you might be like, “Oh, well, I haven't had a leather orgy in the basement, I can't relate to that.” And to that I say, “Well, that's my culture, you just have to accept it.”

But it's important to find the common ground in everything that I do. But I'm aware that, whether I asked for it or not, I am in this position where I'm representing queer people, especially on the internet. So even though my coming out moment has happened, I will never stop having to talk back to people and explaining things for the rest of my life. You don't just come out once. I'm going to have to do it every ten minutes, every tweet, everything I'll ever do for the rest of my life, if ever someone's surprised and goes, “What's that about?”

Have you been intrigued as to the ceiling for some people of what they're willing to engage with as a queer creator, telling stories of your own life, sharing in your own life? Have you been surprised by how far some people are willing to go with you or surprised by where someone's boundaries are?

It was definitely a surprise how positive humanity can be sometimes. That's just my perspective, because I am very much a product of my childhood, which was very upsetting and, as a result, as an adult I am incredibly cynical. My default position is to expect the worst from everyone.

Because I was brought up in a very toxic masculine environment, I have the same mental health struggles that anyone male – regardless of whether they're gay or not – can relate to, which is that pressure to have the stiff upper lip and not show any vulnerability and not ask for help in case you're perceived to be weak. There's still this notion that young people on the internet, people like me, are always complaining about things and asking for attention and talking about their feelings. Can't they just deal with it? There's this idea that they're weak or not being manly, but in my experience it's the opposite of that.

If you are willing to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, honestly, “What am I not dealing with? What am I too stressed about? What are the issues with my life?” If you can open up about that and ask for help, that's bravery. It's not a weakness to be honest with yourself and look at the shit that's hiding underneath something. That's what's gonna make you stronger; you have to go there and confront it.

When I come out, I expected that everyone's going to hate me, it's going to be a disaster, my career is going to be over. But the younger generation on the internet today is, by default, much more accepting. Because I just told the truth of my story, it wasn't even about whether I was gay or straight, people just empathised with what I've been through. People who watched my coming out journey might not have been gay, but they had a connection with me. You definitely do get the odd lost Trump Twitter bot that somehow stumbled into the weird gay Zoomer space, but, for me, I have actually been surprised by the people of the internet.

Let's not aim all toxic masculinity in the patriarchy at straight people either: the bad parts of it percolate into our own communities as well. Have you found restrictive parts of masculinity still crop up in your life or in queer spaces?

I am not instantly free of my psychological upbringing and culture and I'm aware of that every single day. I am a miserable bastard. I think men across the world have a certain mindset of being cynical and competitive, but, specifically for British people, it manifests in tearing each other down. We're all comparing ourselves to each other.

You think the moment you come out it's a big gay rainbow parade – everyone's a hippie, all hugging each other – but gay people can be so vicious within their own communities. Hurt people can still hurt people, so you still have all these horrible people in the gay community who are willing to be toxic and horrible. Being gay doesn't mean you're not racist. It doesn't mean you're not an asshole. And everyone has to have a moment where they think about themselves and how they act.

How have you found being queer with accessing mental health provisions in this country?

The current support for mental health in this country is just abysmal. Mental health support shouldn't just be there if you've snapped. Our entire society and healthcare should be trying to prevent it in the first place by educating people about how to look after their own mental health so that we're all fine.

When I first started going to a therapist I assumed I could talk to anyone, but they just don't understand my perspective all the time. For me, this has shown the importance of having a community. One of the good things that the internet has done, especially for queer people, is to allow the only gay in the village – wherever the hell you are in the world – to go onto the internet and to find a community of people like you that are supporting each other.

I look at young people today and they're like: here's a list of resources, services and things that you can read to understand your own body and your sexuality, how to think and feel and mental health. I just think, “Oh, my God, if I had Twitter when I was 13, I might have had a drastically different life.” Because it wasn't until I was 23 or 24 and social media started taking off that I even saw that these spaces existed. So at least people today are using technology to create the resources that aren't already being made for them out there in the world.

Feminism benefits men as well as women and many forms of intersectional equality benefit the oppressor as well in the long run. What parts of thinking about a queer, inclusive mental health system and a queer inclusive society benefit straight people as well?

The most straight, white patriarchal man feels like they're being oppressed by this cage that they built themselves. You want to talk about why the male suicide rate is so high? It's because society expects guys to not share how they feel and to fit a certain role in society that's complete bullshit.

To any man who feels like life isn't fair, because they wish they could have a bit more help, they wish they could open up a bit more, they wish they could be more honest, if we move closer to acceptance we can just be on some even ground here that's much healthier for all of us.

It's exactly the same thing as gays becoming bullies because they're just regurgitating something that happened to them before. It's all a cycle of this toxic relationship with ourselves and our self-esteem and our mental health and how we take out our emotions on others. And people need to be allies in order to have a better relationship with how they see themselves. It's just a fact.

You were talking about how, often, when we tell anecdotes about our pain it can seem like we're dealing with it, but actually it's just another way of being palatable for others. How do you balance making sure that you're being vulnerable and engaging with yourself honestly, while also presenting something that is fundamentally well-crafted for an audience?

There's a difference between me five years ago being like, “I'm depressed, ba-dum-tsch” and how I talk about my mental health now. What was behind that way I used to talk? I think for so many people – and this can apply to any issue that you can be stressed or upset about in your life – humour is this coping mechanism, it builds up a wall but allows you to get something out on the table without really dealing with it.

There's this whole discussion about what are you allowed to joke about and the line before you say, “Hey, you should stop talking about that and take it seriously.” For me, I still think you should be able to joke about your sexuality. I will tell stories about it, you can laugh at me being depressed, it's just that the person doing that has to acknowledge the pros and cons of approaching it that way.

It can also make you feel like you can see other people that are talking about it. Is 10,000 people joking about how depressed they are slightly weird and maybe there's an issue there? Yes, but at least that one depressed person goes, “It's not just me.” So there's a good side to it.

What every single person then has to do is not just let that procrastinate the issue. It can't be a band aid and then we all say, “Oh, there we go, we've done all the work that you have to,” because you can only joke about it for so long until you hit the wall.

For queer people who are confused, who are exhausted from various facets of existing in a heteronormative patriarchal, straight society, what are some good things to be able to do to be able to tuck themselves away to look after themselves?

The biggest thing is realising that it's not a big mysterious force that you can't control. You are actually not built and wired a certain way and there's nothing you can do about it. I used to tell myself this lie when I was feeling really depressed sometimes that I was just having a bad day and therefore on those days I guess I just have to spend the whole day crying into a pillow or something. That's not true. Unfortunately, you don't have that excuse. Because what I've learned from writing the book is there are so many things you can do to change how you think and feel, just in the moment.

For me, I'm that guy that bolts awake at 4am in the middle of the night in cold sweats, thinking about some traumatising gay thing that happened to me when I was 15. Now I'm obsessed with being mindful, trying to do something to indulge your senses to be present in the moment instead. When it comes to lifestyle, I hated this realisation myself, but it's not all therapy. There are lots of little everyday choices that every single one of us can make that have profound impact on how we think and feel. As much as I like to be an insomniac nerd that doesn't go outside and mostly eats takeaways, it's things like your support network, what's your social life like, are you getting a good night's sleep, how much do you move during the day, what's your environment like… Little decisions we make day to day, all of that adds up to create the foundation that your health and happiness is based on.

That's why I think the book is so important. It may make you feel personally attacked, but it's in a good way. If that's what I've had to go through publicly for the past ten years, I think it's only fair that everybody does that for themselves.

You Will Get Through This Night by Dan Howell is out now.

[phynali]

Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture

I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words). 

I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.

Under the cut.

Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.

First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.

So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.

Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?

(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)

Why does this matter?

the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars

it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces

Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.

Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.

Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.

It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.

(The irony of this is completely lost on them).

This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).

As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking. 

“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).

(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).

What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic. 

For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.

(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).

On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.

As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.

How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?

For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.

(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).

These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.

But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.

These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”

These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.

Why them?

In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation. 

There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.

Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.

How does this happen?

Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.

As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.

What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.

Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.

Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.

(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)

In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).

Some final notes:

This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.

[basil223]

Queer Girl Rambles pt.1

(If you don’t like long stories that could be said in only a few sentences, skip this. It’s a winding road, so either get in the car and drive with me, or skip the party)

I’m a recently self accepted Queer person. I realized I was a homosexual a little over a year ago and it took a bit for me to be comfy with that. And then I decided I’d download the Her app. It was beginning of lockdown (although if you had asked me then I would have said it was mid lockdown, so I guess this qualifier doesn’t really matter), and I, as a socially out, but familial closeted person decided that talking to women on a dating app might give me a chance to spread my little gay wings.

It took about 20 minutes but a girl, let’s call her Hannah, messaged me. She was funny and actually held a conversation, and Hannah made it very very clear that she thought I was beautiful and that had COVID not been a thing, she would have asked me on a date.

I was shocked, delighted, and baffled. A woman? Liked me? I had never felt desirable before then. No one had ever actively pursued my attention before ~at least, in a respectful way~I was excited.

But here’s some things you’ve got to know. I am a college student. I am a college student who struggles with school. I am a college student who struggles with anxiety. I am a college student who’s main goal is to graduate with possible grades and this is her one try main focus. And most importantly I am a college student who is trying their best.

Sounds normal right?

I get busy, everyone does. Over the next week, Hannah and I seemed to be playing phone tag. One of us would respond, and then along while later the other would. Eventually we exchanged Snapchat’s.

Ok. More backstory...at the time I was taking summer classes, which is essentially a 3 month course jammed into a 4-6 week period. I was taking not only Physicsand Physics lab, but I was also taking Calculas. A class I had failed, in a normal term, twice already. My strengths are not in math or science but I had to take these to keep my graduation date from pushing back. For MANY reasons, it was one of the most anxiety ridden summers I’d ever had. But I handled myself. I’d gone to therapy a few years before, and I had some therapist sanctioned coping mechanisms, and some self taught ones. For example. Spoons. You have 20 spoons a day and you can spend them on whatever you like. Some tasks take more spoons than others, but you only get 20. So use them well. At the time, school was about 15 spoons. Staying closeted during a pandemic and social movements in a southern conservative home took up 4. Which left me about one spoon to spend. Most days this was spent laying on the floor with my puppies or attempting to keep in contact with my ride or die friends. Because that’s one of my self taught coping mechanisms, which may not be healthy or not. But when I reach my capacity, I shut out the world. I cannot respond to texts or calls or, anything. And at this point in my life, my friends understand that. If they don’t hear back from me, I don’t HAVE to worry about upsetting them( I mean I still worry but as I said. Anxiety). At the very least I can just text them spoons and they get it. I try to respond as fast as possible but sometimes things get pushed back a few days.

Anyway, back to the story. We had been snap chatting a bit, at least everyday, but it wasn’t the same. I began to notice that Hannah never seemed to talk about herself. I’d ask her questions about herself but I’d get very little information. And she’d quickly turn the convo back to me. And let me tell you. There is only so much of talking about my own life that I can do. I tried using convorsation starters or asking her opinions on things I had never experience but she had, and...still she gave little information and turned it back to me. It was frustrating, but I accepted it. Maybe she wasn’t as good a conversationalist as I first thought. And another thing I noticed was that she never seemed to be able to chat with me first. I was the one who had to initiate it first. One day I decided that I wasn’t going to message first. A few hours go by and I see on her story that she posted a meme about people not texting people. It seemed weird but I thought, no can’t be about me. The next week I tried it again. The meme was way more pointed and most could argue passive aggressive. I called her out on it, and told her if she wanted to talk to me, she didn’t have to wait for me to do it. She agreed said she’d do that. ~stage whispers~ she didn’t.

These passive aggressive story posts would continue for,gosh a half a year now. If I didn’t text her for a stretch there would be a post on her story about it. It got to a point where I wouldn’t open her stories or even Snapchat at all.

In December I got an internship, which is essentially a full time job and it’s expected I take night classes to accommodate this (it’s part of my major so it sounds crazy but I swear it’s normal). I was anxious and it’s been a huge learning curve. Throughout this time, I would off and on respond to her texts, I’d tell her how the internship was going all that jaz. But there would be days where my spoons we spent and most defiantly not on her. Her call out posts increased. My anxiety got real bad and her posts only made things worse. So eventually her messages sat in my inbox, unread, for 3 weeks. I contemplated never opening them. But I felt bad. I opened them and reexplained why I couldn’t answer in a timely mannor, apologized for the unintentional ghosting, and made it very clear that if she wished to continue texting me, that I couldn’t promis a prompt response. She said “don’t worry about it. I get it. Just remember to text me when you’ve got time!”

Last week J hit, and while Im still not comfy with what was going on in my job and life, I was mentally able to make a rare Snapchat story about getting to pick music at work.

I still didn’t have a lot of spoons to answer her, so her comment on my story sat untouched in my inbox till tonight.

Tonight I found the courage to leave a groupme of people I am no longer friends with. And I opened Snapchat to leave our Snapchat groupchat, when I began to think about Hannah. Because there on her story was another call out post. I had just left groupchat a of toxic people and yet here I was clinging to a girl who made me feel so bad about spending my spoons. Who could not, for whatever reason, have an adult behavior about her feelings and what she wanted and needed out of our “friendship”. I decided I’d remove and block her. I don’t need this in my life.

But her unopened messages were still there. I opened them. There on my screen was Hannah’s response to my week old Snapchat about picking music. The gist of the message? “Looks like your not to busy to post on Snapchat”

All my guilt and remorse flew out the window, and Hannah was immediately blocked from my life.

Why did I wait this long to boot her out? I think it’s because she was the first, and so far the only woman to show interest in me. And I was scared that by blocking her, I was giving up my proof of gayness. Her interest made me feel more valid in my identity.

But that’s the thing. My identity is MINE. And it took my first year of Gay to understand what that meant. I am queer. And that is not dependent on if someone of my sex finding me attractive. That is not dependent of somone giving me attention. I will not be giving others the power to hold my identity hostage anymore

[nona-gay-simus-main]

Top 10 Worst Tropes in Romance - Part 2

Disclaimer: This is MY opinion, you do you.

Part 1: Here

1. The Child Partner

I’m not talking about literal children, because duh. What I mean is the a person who needs their partner to emotionally parent them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the whole point of a romantic relationship is to be with an equal. You’re supposed to be teammates, best friends, and lovers.

Of course, I'm not including cases where one partner is disabled or chronically/mentally ill and needs the other to take care of them - that’s an entirely separate thing. 

I'm referring to people (usually cishet men), who constantly need their partner to manage their moods and emotions. They always have some ~trauma~ to manipulate the partner into staying in the relationship in order to keep reassuring them, confirming their self-esteem, and even doing their cooking and cleaning, as if they aren't abled adults with two functioning hands.

That shit sucks!

Imagine doing that for someone all the time and then also trying to have a kid (or multiple kids) with that person. Not only will you be taking care of your actual child; but also - your partner-child. Stop normalizing lazy, emotionally stunted men. That shit ain't cut no matter how hard his abs are or how big his dick is.

2. “I’ve been in love with you since the first moment we met.”

I don’t know what it is about this trope, but it shows up in many romances and it always makes me uncomfortable. How the hell are you supposed to react to that? 

Oh, you’ve been in love with me since the first time we met? Yikes, my dude.

You can’t even fall in love with someone that fast anyway. You're not in love with the person, you’re in love with your idea of them!

The only acceptable version of this is the one where it’s more along the lines “I thought I might fall in love with you if I spent any more time with you.” But other than that, I really don't understand why this is a thing?

3. Lust = Love

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude. I’m perfectly fine with couples who have loads and loads of sex. I’m also perfectly fine with casual sex and friends-with-benefits and any other consensual arrangement between adults.

I just get tripped up when pretty much all a couple does is have sex. They have little in common outside of sex, spend little time together when not having sex, and don’t share any hobbies, interests or even conversation topics. Or worse, when they aren’t having sex, they’re fighting. 

If you want your characters to get laid, that’s cool. But if you want me to believe they are also falling in love - you’re gonna have to try a little harder.

4. BDSM = Abuse

Yes, abuse happens under the pretense of BDSM, but BDSM is NOT inherently abusive. It only happens within pre-established boundaries and safe words and with explicit consent. The only people who claim it's abuse, are people who have a vested interest in controlling what women and queer people do with our bodies.

So I really, really hate it when people use “It’s just BDSM, don’t be so uptight” to justify their rapey, abusive love interest’s actions. If the submissive has not already consented, or their consent was obtained through manipulation or intoxication - it’s not meaningful consent.

BDSM is a lot more complex than some of the simplistic catchphrases we use to explain it to the vanillas, and we can discuss those complexities for hours, but at the one thing is definitely true - the Dominant only has as much power as the submissive is willing to give. If they (knowingly) cross a boundary or take power without the consent of the submissive, it’s not power exchange, it’s abuse, pure and simple.

5. "All women want him. All men want to be him"

Really? ALL women? Are you sure?

I hate to tell you this, but some women are exclusively attracted to other women. And some women aren’t attracted to anyone. Some women have low libidos, and some women just don’t prioritize sex and relationships for whatever reason. And some women are in happy, fulfilling monogamous relationships already.

And all men want to BE him? Did you know that some men are attracted to other men? They might want a piece of that too. Or perhaps, they just don’t value being some alpha douchebag and are happy to be their much better-adjusted self. That's a thing.

Can we let this cliché die already? Please?

6. Giving up your dreams for ~love~.

Oh man, this is the worst! And why is it nearly always the woman, who has to make a choice between her career and ~~~LoVe~~?

So many books/movies etc. start with this powerful career woman and then by the end reduce her to nothing but a trophy to her man. That’s not feminist, it just keeps perpetuating the same tired gender roles.

And I can’t help but think about the future of this relationship. What if it doesn’t work out? Then the partner who the dreams were given up for looks like a jerk, even if they never asked for this.

And even if it works out, the partner who gave up their dream job, or opportunity, or whatever, will always have this “what if” at the back of their mind. Over time, they may even end up resenting their SO, especially if things don’t work out for them career-wise.

Just such a bad trope all around. It’s not romantic, it’s toxic, and co-dependant and I want it to stop.

7. He treats everyone like crap ***but you***.

You know the limitus test to see if someone’s a good person? Look at how they treat people who are “beneath” them. Their servers, the cleaning lady, etc.

If this guy treats servers like crap, treats his friends and family like crap, treats everyone like crap, except for the person whose pants he wants to get in (or wants to keep getting in for the foreseeable future), why are we romanticizing him? He’s a selfish jackass.

You can have a grumpy (but ultimately caring and good-natured) character, that's fine. But if he only treats people like humans when it benefits him - that's not sexy, that's sociopathic.

8. Love Cures All

Ahhh, the worst of them all. Truly, having a character who suffers from mental illness or has a major trauma, but oh look, they got some cuddles from the love interest and now they are all good!

Just stop, please. It’s so damaging to the people who are going through this, to tell them that all they need to feel better is ~~~LoVe~~~. And if they aren’t getting better? Well, they just haven’t gotten enough ~~~LoVe~~~!

It’s also damaging to the partner - no one should have this much responsibility on their shoulders.

Obviously, the love of a partner, friends, and family can HELP with the healing process, but it’s not enough by itself. Get them some goddamn therapy, please.

9. Accidental Pregnancy

I don’t know about you, but for most people I know, myself included, accidental pregnancy would be an absolute nightmare, not something romantic.

Do you know how bad my entire generation is doing financially? And people use this as a plot device to strengthen the relationship?

Also, relationships get weaker after having a child, not stronger. Babies are cute when they are sleeping, the rest of the time they are crying, screaming messes. Yeah, why wouldn’t sleep deprivation and constantly hurting everywhere strengthen your relationship? 🙄🙄🙄

10. Violent Men

IRL, violent men are scary, not sexy. Even if the violence is never directed at the love interest, chances are that over time it will be. But even if it’s not, why would you ever want to date someone who has the emotional maturity of a pre-schooler?

Because after pre-school, kids tend to learn to solve their problems with their words. But I guess your love interest hasn’t matured past the age of 6, which coincidentally also leads back to the first trope on this list. Charming.

[just-bpd-thoughts]

I have a lot of followers on this account and I need to vent my emotions somewhere so like hey y'all

I haven't been super active in a long time bc of life, which is how it goes sometimes yk. But for the past several years, life for me has been dealing with abusers and facing trauma on top of trauma. My biggest abuser has been my mother, and mother's day was yesterday, which is why I'm thinking and feeling so much about this.

She victimized me for years. My entire high school career was ruined because I was too busy being her emotional dumping ground and protector, as well as her punching bag. There were days when I had to miss school to make sure she didn't hurt herself or to make sure my brother didn't kill her. And she often tossed my needs to the side, as I would ask for things I needed and wouldn't receive them for months on end, if at all. She put off making important appointments and phone calls for me. And then she vilified me for not being able to take care of myself properly due to my mental illnesses.

She was constantly belittling me for the negative effects my mental illnesses had on my life, even though she had a lot of the same illnesses and saw a therapist. We did therapy together and she never wanted to work through anything. She only admitted to having done something wrong when we were in therapy. She didn't talk about her emotions or about boundaries, she just did the bare minimum to get us through the appointment.

I didn't even know how bad it really was until I reconnected with a childhood friend and got to know their best friend (who would become my now girlfriend of almost 8 months) after all of my other friends had virtually disappeared from my life because I was so draining to be around anymore because I was a wreck at all times. Until then I didn't know how wrong my mom was and how unnatural and toxic our relationship had become. What my friend and girlfriend got me to see was that my mom and I were entirely codependent, and I was trapped in a cycle of abuse, and I needed to get out. Especially because mere weeks after my girlfriend and I got together, my parents started planning to move six hours away from home. I didn't finally realize that I didn't have to go with them until a week before the move, and up to that point, every day I woke up thinking that soon i was going to be torn from everything and everyone in my life that mattered, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And I knew that if I had to go through with that, I wasn't going to survive. Either I was going to wind up dying or completely self destructing.

Leaving my mom's home was a fucking FEAT. But my loved ones gave me the means and the courage to do it. She made me help her move, and then brought me back to where I'd be living. I stayed at her new house for a little over two weeks, and she let me bring one of my close friends (in fact, OFFERED to let me bring said friend, it was her idea, and then she treated me like a nuisance later bc my friend came along w us). She treated me like garbage every day. She was always putting me down and being passive aggressive and getting an attitude with me, for no reason. She started pointless and petty arguments in front of my friend and verbally abused me the whole way through with zero fucking remorse. The day before she took me back, she got into two fights with me, the first one in a goddamn IHOP bc she said I "might as well be an atheist" simply because I'm not a Christian and I told her that it hurt my feelings to hear her say that because she knew I had a religion, and she lost her MIND, because how DARE I tell her she did something wrong? And the second was me crying to her and begging her to stop bullying me all the time and to just be my mom, which she didn't listen to at all and instead screamed at me for an hour or so about how rotten I was for wanting to leave

This was at the end of November and the beginning of December. She left me in the town I live on December 4th. Since then, she has started COUNTLESS disputes with me over social media for no reason. She has threatened me and blackmailed me, saying she'd come get me, which she can do because she convinced me to let her get legal guardianship over my person when I turned 18, telling me it was "in my best interest" and "for my health and well being". She has stolen money from me and conned me out of money when she has more than she needs and I'm living off of social security. She has publicly abused me on my Facebook page for my friends and other loved ones to see, talking to those who came to my defense like they were less than human to her, throwing slurs at my queer friends. Talking to me like I was garbage while people watched and then praising herself for being so good to me. This has further hindered my quality of life as well as my education.

She bounces between that sort of behavior and telling me about her art projects and how much she misses me. The past few days she's been nice, when last weekend, she was a terror. This past Friday my therapist told me I don't have to make any decisions yet about whether I should - or even want to - have my mom in my life. But today she finally sent me a friend request on Facebook again, after not having me on social media for awhile because of the aforementioned arguing. So before I accepted it I told her that my boundary is that she can't start fights with me over the shit I post because I will post what I want on my Facebook and none of it is ever meant to have a go at her. She simply said "understood love you" and that was that.

Then I was scrolling through her Facebook a little bit ago, and she had shared something. It was a shoddy list of the defining characteristics of a narcissist. And she captioned it with something that alluded to me being a narcissist and not even realizing it, without using my name (but of course she misgendered me on purpose). And that just fucking BITES. More than I can even say.

She's mean to me so often. She's so abysmally nasty to me. She treats me like dirt and I'm still so nice to her all the time and she still acts like I'm the bad guy. Like I'm not her fucking KID. Like she didn't and doesn't hold a position of power over me. Like it's even possible for her to be victimized by me. And then she tells me that I play the victim so much that I can't see the error of my ways ?!?!!?!??

When she was still arguing with my Facebook friends some months ago, she posted something in a comment thread while responding to my girlfriend's dad (who was standing up for me). She told him that I was going to tell him to lay off of her because, ever since my dad passed, I would "do anything" to keep her in my life. So she admitted that she knows she holds power over me emotionally and that she can and will use that to her advantage any and every time she feels she needs to. Publicly.

And now she's still acting like I'm a narcissist and a manipulator ???

Tl;dr moms ain't shit

[glolovescats]

A story of me and my history. My experiences.

CW - trauma, sexual assault, mental health struggles (ADHD, BPD, OCPD, Depression, PTSD, Autism??), self harm, addiction, psychological abuse

.

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I’m 27 years old, non binary, AFAB. I am the older middle child of 4, all of my siblings are brothers.

I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder) and most recently PTSD.

My first psych evaluation was when I was 5 years old, and I have recently found the notes from that evaluation and they point to early onset BPD traits as well as ADHD.  Though it is stated repeatedly throughout the notes that they could not complete a full assessment because I refused to participate in any activity or or engage with anything that I deemed “too difficult” instead spending more time on the things that I was comfortable with such as painting.

My favourite lines from the assessment are as follows:

“If she is not motivated by an activity, she trends to wander off physically and mentally.  However if interested, she can concentrate for long periods of time.”

 “*Deadname* was a great talker and loved to tell stories on and off topic. She had a keen sense of her own capabilities and was often self-critical of her work stating ‘it does not look good.’ It was very difficult to change her mind and she appeared to want to be in control of the situation.”

I remember after this assessment being medicated for ADHD for a few months. My parents called them my “hyper pills” because if I was hyper it meant I probably hadn’t taken them..... yikes.

After those few months, for whatever reasons my parents took me off the medication.

I have had a very intense oral fixation since a very young age, biting my nails for as long as I remember and being a thumb-sucker, not just during sleep but during awake hours as well, until I was 9 years old.

When I was 11 I began self harming, as a way to release my emotional energy and tensions and soothe myself.

When I was 13 I told my mom about my self harming, at which point she sent me to a psychiatrist again. I was again diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication, which I remained on until my second year of college when I decided I didn’t want to be medicated anymore.  As a teen, I continued to self harm but hid it from my mom as she was very critical and cruel in her reactions to it.  Anytime I had emotional outbursts (which was, fairly often) I would be asked “have you taken your meds today!!?” as if that would solve everything going on.  I spent many hours curled up in a ball in my closet crying, sobbing, feeling like I was going to explode, then hurting myself to calm down.

When I left home for college, I developed anorexia. I stopped cutting myself, but began hitting myself repeatedly until bruises formed, then maintaining those bruises over long periods of time as a new form of self harm.  It was also in this time that my love of cannabis started to really form (I had enjoyed it as well as a teen, but in limited capacities as I lived with parents who I had to hide it from, and they were quite controlling over my social life and free time)

After 2 years of college, my first queer partner, whom I still feel very fondly for and maintain a very strong friendship with, noticed not only my eating disorder but also my self harm habit, and convinced me to seek help.  A few months later I went to my doctor and was diagnosed with Depression and Anxiety, and put back on medications.  I was 19 then, I am 27 now and still on that same medication, though the dose has varied throughout the years depending on my emotional state.

I went through some other relationships, some healthy, some less so.

I became more and more in love with cannabis. SPending what little money I had on it. “Borrowing” some from friends and lovers. Smoking when I woke up, in the afternoon, and before bed, sometimes throughout all hours of the day.

When I was 23 I fell in love with a man named Derek. It was the first cis man I had ever truly fallen in love with, and that love became... toxic. Obsessive. At the time I would have called it passionate but I know now that it was very unhealthy.  I put everything in my life aside for him. I risked pregnancy not because I wanted a child (I never have) but because I wanted to make sure he would never leave me.  This is also when my love of cannabis solidified into an addiction.  I was using it to cope with the pain of being so desperately in love with someone who, wasn’t very good at catering to my needs, to put it lightly. He was a dealer at the time, this was before it became legalized in Canada so dealers were still very much needed.  So I always had access to it, and for free or cheap.  We would wake up in the middle of the night and go smoke a couple bowls before heading back into bed. We smoked all day every day, it was what our relationship revolved around.  We would also take large amounts of MDMA on the weekends and go out dancing from midnight to 8 or 9am at the after hours clubs, then go home and smoke to ease the come down. This gave me a love for MDMA which is a terrible thing for someone with low serotonin to begin with.

Nearly two years into our relationship, my friends started to notice that I wasn’t being treated well, that I was always hurting, always longing for more from him, and always pushing aside my needs to accommodate him.  They begged me to leave him.  I was having breakdowns, even with my antidepressants. I was self harming again. I was having rage blackouts. I was hurting.  A few months later, he broke up with me.  I begged him not to. I promised I could be right for him. We just had to try. He didn’t want to try.

Now, 4 years later, I’m so glad he didn’t. Yes, my heart was shattered in that moment, yes it sent me on a spiral, but I see now how toxic the relationship was and he is not anything like the person I would want to be with for life.

At that time I was living in towns on the outskirts of Toronto, but his dumping me gave me the push I needed to move to into the city, which I did, y months later. March 15th 2017.  Moving to Toronto meant more freedom, more access to all the things that made me happy - a queer community, a polyam community *I discovered Polyamoury about 2 months after our breakup and realized how much I needed it*, more job opportunities, more diversity and acceptance.  It also meant higher rent, higher weed prices as I was now buying from dispensaries, higher transit costs and generally higher cost of living.  Some of my new friends were sex workers and it... appeared enticing for me.  however I didn’t feel close enough with these friends yet to ask details about safety, vetting, standards, etc.

Well, I decided to get into sex work for myself, without really knowing what i was getting into.  I’m not going to get into much detail here because my PTSD stems directly from these experiences and I don’t want to trigger myself right now.  But I spent 2 years working as a Sugar Baby and Full Service Sex Worker.  I did not have standards. I was driven by my need to maintain my weed habit - which was at least 2 grams/day - so on average about $600/month or more.  I didn’t take safety into mind more than letting my roommate know the given name and phone number of the person I was meeting up with.  This led to... a lot of fucked up situations. A lot of pain and trauma. I was constantly high, which allowed my to dissociate while these things were happening to me and suppress the memories quite quickly. By this time in my addiction, I was never NOT stoned.  On top of that I would occasionally take MDMA before or during a date to maintain a peppy mood and appearance.  On March 1st 2019, after realising that I wasn’t even making money off of all of it, I was driven far into debt by trying to maintain appearances and a lifestyle that i just couldn’t afford, and a realization that I was dissociating whenever I was being intimate with a client OR a friend or loved one... I decided to leave the industry. It’s been over a year now.

In the first year of my living in Toronto I saw a psychiatrist about my mental instability, my rage blackouts, my obsessiveness. I was diagnosed with BPD and put on a mood stabilizer, which I admit has helped a lot in terms of my heightened emotions and rage problems.

During those first 2 years in Toronto, I was also in a queer, polyam relationship with a person named Laurel.  At first i was drawn to their softness, their creativity, their ability to be vulnerable with me and others.  Eventually, that vulnerability became co dependance. They used me as a crutch, they took all of my emotional energy for themselves and never gave any in return.  While I was being traumatized, I was also supporting them through their mental health struggles and ignoring my own. They had a bad habit of disregarding and stomping all over my boundaries. even after we would discuss them and i would make compromises. I was being abused by this inherently toxic person (I say that, having many friends who have witnessed and felt the toxicity from this person as well). By April 2019 I was drained, I was traumatized, I was falling into a pit and being pushed down even further by the person who claimed to love me.  When I tried to set boundaries I was met with threats of suicide, manipulating me into staying with them longer.  But eventually I started to see through it and I just couldn’t anymore. I ended it. Which was met with a lot of cruelty and more manipulation to the point where eventually I had to just block them from every form of contact and move on.

Throughout the year after that, my weed habit maintained, and got even more intense, going up to closer to 3 grams/day and including concentrates and edibles as well.  I was always high. Always numb. I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t focus during conversations even if I was really interested in what we were talking about. I couldn’t stay awake, I would pass out while hanging out with friends, while on public transit, in movie theatres.. anywhere. I could hardly get out of bed in the mornings and when I did I would go straight for the bong.

I was constantly fatigued and I felt numb. I didn’t want to believe my precious cannabis could be doing this to me though, so I begged my doctor to refer me to a psych to discuss changing medications, assuming it was my meds giving me these side effects.  That psychiatrist diagnosed me with OCPD, saying that he believes this is what has always caused the depression and anxiety, and he also diagnosed me with CUD - Cannabis Use Disorder - essentially a fancy way of saying I’m an addict and my drug of choice is cannabis.  He told me that he would not touch my meds until I either drastically cut back my usage or stopped altogether.

I was devastated, I hated the idea of having to not smoke weed anymore. And I knew I would HAVE to stop altogether because my many many many attempts in the past to cut back were never successful. I knew then that I was an addict, just like my alcoholic father, my alcoholic and cocaine addict younger brother. I knew I had the gene too.

I discovered MA - Marijuana Anonymous, which is like AA  or NA but for stoners.  My dad had been sober for 11 years with the help of rehab and AA so I figured I would give it a shot.  I smoked my last bowl on February 29th, I went to my first meeting on March 1st.  I haven’t smoked or consumed any cannabis products since. It’s over 4 months now. I also made the conscious decision to be sober from alcohol as in the past my attempts at smoking less weed led to drinking more alcohol.  I know I need to fight my addiction as an entire entity, not just as one substance.

In the past 4 months I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs.  Not only with sobriety, but with the pandemic hitting Canada mid march, forcing me out of work and stuck at home, it’s had both positive and negative effects.  My first month of sobriety I was fairly manic, I wasn’t as hazy and groggy and fatigued, I had also just started taking Vyvanse - a stimulant - for my ADHD. So I was very motivated and I was cleaning and creating and doing all these things I could with my free time.  Then about a month and a half into it I started to get physically depressed - I say it that way because my mind felt ok. IO wasn’t having catastrophic thinking or suicidal ideation or desires to self harm - but I was feeling very avoidant and sleeping and napping so much more. Two months in, my memories that I had been suppressing with the constant high started to come through to my conscious. Sometimes they were childhood or teen memories, which I could mostly cope with.  But then came the memories from the sex work. The traumatic experiences. The shame that surrounds them.  I was having invasive thoughts. I would lay my head down to sleep and suddenly be in flashbacks.  I had known for a long time (about a year, since leaving the industry) that I was triggered into panic attacks by intimacy and touch, but I didn’t know exactly what was causing those panic attacks. I just knew that touch made me feel so unsafe.  Well, now I knew why. One night I called my sponsor, crying, stuck in a loop of flashbacks and memories and feeling like I couldn’t breathe.  And then the words just flowed out of me, I said “I think maybe I have PTSD”.  Luckily for me, I already had a follow up appointment with my psychiatrist scheduled for the next week. I told him everything that was happening, that I was remembering things but then getting stuck in flashbacks and shame and cycling thoughts. He then diagnosed me with PTSD. He suggested we go back up to a slightly higher dose of my antidepressant while maintaining my other medications (I’m still on the mood stabilizer and the stimulant) and urged me to find ongoing therapy. My sponsor had sent me a link to a group of psychotherapists who work on a low budget sliding scale, so I referred myself to them and within 48 hours had a free 50 minute consultation scheduled.

Where am I now?

Struggling with the invasive thoughts which make me feel depressed, but knowing where they stem from is helpful.  Awaiting my therapy consultation which is in a couple of days, hoping it’s a good match and that we can start speaking weekly or every other week depending on cost.

For a while now I’ve been trying to decipher whether I really do have ADHD< BPD and OCPD all blended together, or if I’m really autistic, because so many of my traits and symptoms overlap with autism.  I’m doing my research now on traits of autism and seeing where I identify.  I doubt I would ever get a diagnosis, as doctors would rather believe we have all these other disorders rather than autism (stigma), but to know where I feel I fit would be helpful.  I have some friends on the spectrum and I’ve reached out to them to discuss as well.  My youngest bother is autistic but he really fits the “autistic teen boy” stereotypes which I do not.  And I understand that autism can present very differently in different genders and different people.  Personally, I believe I may be Autistic and have PTSD. But I will continue to pursue ongoing therapy, as well as DBT therapy, to address my behaviours and see where I can learn to cope better.

I am probably the most single polyam person you could meet. I have no intention of dating, though I do have a couple crushes I intend to grow strong friendships with, until I have learned to cope with the PTSD and intimacy triggers. In a way it’s as if I am currently feeling asexual, because even the thought of kissing someone I like triggers me into a panic.  But I don’t believe that I will feel this way forever so I don’t use asexual as an identifier or label for myself.  I am not working, though still technically employed, my job is in the travel industry and we don’t expect to have enough meaningful work to return to until at least the fall.  When i do return to work I’ll be doing so remotely, as will most of the employees of our company. So I have less transit expenses, less time constraints, and more freedom to focus on myself and my personal development.  I’ve made this tumblr to explore and learn more about autism in adults. As well as to have something to do and distract myself with when i start to enter a depressive cycle.  SO this blog will be a mix of mental health and neuro-divergent info posts, along with cute animals, selfies, travel photos, and maybe a little shit posting - as a treat.

Welcome, and thank you for reading my story.  If you have any questions or relate to any of it and want to chat, my inbox is open.

[elipersonalstory]

A (distort) self-portrait

Trigger warning: Mention of death and brainwashed, discussion about pain, suicide and intrusive thoughts, mental illness and general sickness. Nothing is graphic but be aware of the topics.

My name is Eli, I’m 29 years old, and I’m scared of being alive.

Honestly, that could be it. The look that I always find on the mirror has only one question all the time: “Why?” Why am I alive? Why I survived? Why I never let go? What’s the point of all this? Being alive, keep fighting the pain, keep waking up… Now it feels selfish to think like that, which opens the door to have this thoughts and the guilt, a toxic guilt that goes with them hand on hand. Because… do you deserve happiness and a better live when you think like that? After fighting so hard for this happiness, at last, most days you’re still thinking that it’s just not worth it.

 Meds help. Therapy helps. But specially medication because I’m not still able to open enough to a professional. I thought at first that meds may change me, that my overwhelming feelings made me who I was. I really didn’t know a different version of myself that the one drowning in anxiety 24/7. But of course that wasn’t what happened.

 Medication just numbs the pain a little bit, just enough to find moments when your own laugh sounds genuine even to yourself. Moments when you don’t stop and think “wait, why am I happy after all?” Medication opens a door to find your true self between all that pain, anxiety and all the sickness that chase me.

 But I am in pain, everyday, all the time. It was kind off ironic understanding that the physical pain was real, that my pain wasn’t only on the inside as many people on my life thought. Even tho the pain on the inside can be way more damaging, if people tells you that everything is in your head, then… it’s not real, so you must get over it. Realizing that my nerve system was so broken that the pain was starting to show up on my body, to the point that the touch of the blood pressure cuff can be unbearable, made everything real and gave me some strange relief. Something that I think only mentally ill people can really understand.

 I don’t wanna die. I don’t even want to forget or let go all the pain. I don’t want to change who I am, my life experiences, my thoughts (even the very bad ones). I like who I am, sometimes, and I don’t want to lose that and have to learn to like someone else who will be always with me.

 I’m scared of being alive. I’m not good at being a person. I’ve failed so much, in so many ways, that I don’t know if I can succeed in life. And, what I mean with succeed? Having lots of money, being famous, making history? Well, maybe, but no. I’m talking about just… being an adult, having a purpose, an identity, looking after some project. Being a good friend, partner, daughter, sister, I don’t know.

 And I’m not objective, I know that. Bad people have convinced me of my failures are what define me. I feel like I sound as someone who has been brainwashed, but on my personal case, to hate myself over and over and over. To the point that sometimes I don’t know who I am, what I want, what I expect from my life. I’m so scared of myself, my life, of having choices and decisions and humanity that I lose myself all the time on that painful fear.

 So, it is hard to do a self-portrait on this situation, not gonna lie. Who am I?

 I can say some things: I want to be a programmer and a writer, even tho I’m not doing anything to progress on any of those dreams this days. I love listening to soundtracks, it calms my mind and help me to think and dream. My favorite films are Interstellar and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I’m quite good at lying to people who doesn’t know me very well, which is mostly everyone. I am neurodiverse, queer, disabled, mentally ill, Ace and many more labels. I love reading, but is hard to focus enough, especially since my young adulthood. I don’t know a “healthy” version of myself, I’ve always been mentally and physically sick.

 I guess this would be enough information about someone. But, is that me? It feels like a pile of words that says very little. I’ve always been good at that, defining myself with very generic words, making harder to really know me. The most open and genuine phrases are also the most self-loathing too: “I lie, I can’t read well enough and I don’t know who I am without being sick”. It’s not a good picture.

 Labels say a lot if you know the nuances behind them, but I don’t usually get deep on that. So, they say things, but not much either. Am I asexual? Not really, but I’m not allosexual either. That’s a perfect example.

 What I like, what I dream of becoming is absolutely important. But somedays I don’t believe I dream with that and I hate everything I like, or I just… I just don’t know. So, is it really informative? Yeah, a little, I guess.

 So, who am I?

 I guess, someone quite sleep deprived, with depression-ish symptoms (again, godsake). A person who needs to learn to accept that failure is part of being alive. Someone that needs to really learn that, yeah, everyone can be wrong. That most of my so-called fails, are just a projection from other people evilness or just… their insecurities and fears. They don’t define my humanity and definitely don’t decide how my future is going to be.

 That’s me on 2020.

 Hi.

[chimcharstar]

1 THROUGH 55 AND 1 THROUGH 30 GO GO GO

LETS FUCKIN GO

tumblr please actually make this a keep reading

55 interesting questions you should drop in someone’s inbox

1. If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

I ALREADY WATCH NETFLIX AND AGONIZE OVER MY STORY

2. What’s your favorite piece of clothing you’ve own/owned?

MY JACKETS. ANY CHEST OBSCURING, BROAD SHOULDERED, COZY JACKET

3. What hobbies would you get into if time and money wasn’t an issue?

DANCING, ID NEED TO GO TO CLASSES OR SOMETHING

4. What would your perfect room look like?

IM ACTUALLY PRETTY HAPPY WITH MY ROOM BUT IVE ALWAYS WANTED A LAVA LAMP, AND 1800 MORE PLANTS COULDNT HURT

5. Do you play sports?

NO

6. What fiction place would you love to go to?

SINNOH REGION

7. What Job would you be terrible at?

DEBT COLLECTION. I WOULD BE GIVING SHIT TO PEOPLE FOR FREE. I COULDNT BEAR BEING ENCOURAGED TO FORCE PEOPLE WHO CANT PAY FOR SOMETHING TO PAY MORE

8. If you could turn any activity into an Olympic sport, what would it be?

SERVING. HOW MANY PLATES CAN YOU CARRY AT ONCE

9. What’s the most annoy habit other people have?

WALKING IN MY SPACE BUBBLE WHEN MY SENSES ARE OVERLOADED

10. What skill would you like to master?

A SECOND LANGUAGE

11. What would be the most amazing adventure to go on?

THE ONE FROM MY DREAM WHERE I KISSED A GIRL DYED MY HAIR BLUE AND WE ELOPED TO BRAZIL TO RAISE SHEEP

12. What’s your favorite drink ?

THAT CHRISTMAS SHIT. PEPPERMINT MOCHA AT STARBUCKS. A FRIEND GOT IT FOR ME ONCE. NOW I ORDER IT A BILLION TIMES.

13. What state or country would you never like to go back to?

I HAVE NOT TRAVELLED MUCH EVER

14. What songs do you have completely memorized?

I DONT REMEMBER LYRICS SO MUCH, BUT I COULD PROBABLY REMEMBER HOW MANY SONGS GO COMPLETELY

15. Are you usually early or late?

LATE. IM GETTING BETTER THOUGH

16. What takes up too much of your time?

GETTING OUT OF BED

17. What do you wish you knew more about?

SWORDS

18. What are some small things that make your day better?

COFFEE. SOMEONE SAYING SOMETHING NICE TO ME.

19. What TV channel doesn’t exist but really should?

QUEER EYE BUT BY TRANS PEOPLE FOR TRANS PEOPLE

20. Who has impressed you the most with what they’ve accomplished?

YOU. AND ME. ITS GROWTH

21. What age do you wish you can permanently be?

21, SO I HAVE TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE FUCKS GOING ON

22. What TV show or movie do you refuse to watch?

13 REASONS, THE BOOK WAS TRIGGERING SO I WONT RISK IT

23. What would be your ideal way to spend you weekend?

TAKING A WALK, HAVING COFFEE, WATERING PLANTS… IM HAPPY

24. What’s something in your life that’s considered a luxury?

I HAVE PERFUME...

25. Is there anything you’re too young/old for?

TO YOUNG TO NEVER DRINK. TOO OLD FOR POKEMON

26. What’s your favorite genre book or movie?

I DONT HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN FOR EITHER BUT I SEEM TO LIKE URBAN FANTASY A LOT

27. How often do you people watch?

I THINK IM SO POLITE BUT HONESTLY, I QUIETLY SCRUTINIZE SO MANY PEOPLE ON THE TRAIN EVERY DAY AND GUESS AT THEIR PERSONAL HABITS AND SELF IMAGE.

28. What’s the best single day on the calendar?

MY BIRTHDAY, SAGITTARIUS SEASON RULES BABY

29. What are you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?

I DONT KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING PPL HAVENT HEARD OF BUT IM INTERESTED IN BLACK HOLES

30. Do you relax after a hard day?

FOOD. NETFLIX. DECOMPOSING ON TUMBLR

31. What’s the best book or series you’ve ever read?

I HAVENT READ A BOOK I REALLY LOVE IN AGES. HARRY POTTER AND ARTEMIS FOWL WERE MY FAVOURITES GROWING UP, BUT CORNELIA FUNKES BOOKS SLAPPED AND HIS DARK MATERIALS WAS GORGEOUS

32. Where’s the farthest you’ve ever been from home?

IDAHO?

33. What’s the most heart warming thing you’ve ever seen?

LUCIFER WAS LIKE YOU DESERVE SOMEONE WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR BORING MIDDLE NAME JANE AND KNOWS THAT EVERY MURDER BREAKS YOUR HEART AND YOU SIMPLY DESERVE BETTER SO NO MORE MOMENTS WHILE THEYRE HAVING A MOMENT AND CHLOE IS WATCHING THIS FUCKING IDIOT AND IVE WATCHED THIS BEFORE SO I KNOW SHES GONNA KISS HIM AND THEN THEY KISS

34. What’s the most annoying question that people ask you?

ANY SMALL TALK QUESTIONS

35. Would you give a 40 minute presentation with no preparation?

YES. ID MAKE THAT SHIT RIGHT UP. SKILLS

36. What’s something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?

GIVE ME A HUG AND SOME CHOCOLATE

37. Would you rather go Hand Gliding or Whitewater rafting?

HANG GLIDING

38. Dream car?

SOMETHING I DONT HAVE TO WORRY WILL FALL INTO PIECES AT ANY MOMENT

39. What’s something so many people are obsessed with and you just don’t understand why?

STRAIGHT LOVE SONGS

40. What are you most looking forward to in 10 years from now?

HAVING A CAT

41. What’s something you’ve been meaning to try but haven’t gotten to it?

DECORATING THE DOLLHOUSE I RESCUED FROM THE BATHROOM

42. What’s the best thing that’s happened to you all week?

IM NOT VERY FAR THROUGH THE WEEK AND I HAVENT ENJOYED MOST OF IT BUT PEOPLE SAYING ADORABLE THINGS

43. How different was your life one year ago?

NOT A LOT DIFFERENT, IM JUST LONELY IN THE CITY NOW, MINUS A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP, ONE YEAR ON T

44. What/who would you rate 10/10?

MY CACTUS JAKEN. I DROPPED HIM SO MANY TIMES AN ENTIRE HALF OF HIS SPIKES ARE FLAT SCARS. AND LOOK AT HIM. THRIVING

45. What kind of art do you enjoy the most?

GENUINELY MADE ART

46. What do you hope never changes?

MY T PRESCRIPTION

47. What movie title best describes your life?

I LOOKED THROUGH NETFLIX AND I PICK TWILIGHT

48. What website do you visit most often?

TUMBLR

49. What’s something you’re looking forward to this year?

MY BIRTHDAY

50. What’s something you’d like to unlearn?

FINDING A REASON TO CANCEL EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING

51. Where would you spend all your time if you could?

WALKING BY SOME RUNNING WATER

52. What age would you like to live to?

80. THATS MY MENTAL HEALTH ANSWER

53. What’s something you’re most likely to become famous for?

SOMETHING CREATIVE WOULD BE AWESOME

54. What’s something you’re most likely to be arrested for?

CRIMES

55. What’s something you really want but can’t afford?

A CAT

Lgbt+ ask game

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns?

I’m even a little shaken by a questioning state right now but for a while I’ve felt the best fit is the androgynous label -- I read a description of it being the purple on a pink to blue scale, both at once but not specifically either one, and something else by itself. I’m also happy with a cryptic masculine grey area. My pronouns are he/him.

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

During the Puberty 1.0 nightmare, I was basically living someone else’s life, and any attraction I felt wasn’t in relation to myself. I felt disconnected from my body and gender and everything too, and I felt a lot of social pressure to experience a certain type of attraction, fit into a certain role, et cetera, and none of these feelings existed in me at all, so I used to identify as ace. When I realized I was trans, I was too caught up in the, transition safely, my life is a lie, stopping dysphoria drama to focus on this, but I had an idea I might be a gay guy judging from my gay creative writing until I caught feelings for a girl and realized this wasn’t the first time that had happened. Some bi positivity and nonbinary rage later, I am reminded that gender is a joke.

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?

Yes of course A LOT. Starting with my parents, who do it aggressively and maliciously. And plenty from strangers and customers, mostly after hearing my voice pre-transition. It used to hurt terribly because I was dealing with so much other stuff at the time, and one little thing could be the last straw, so I used to react strongly and harshly, to people you express yourself to anyway. On T, I’ve been so much more chill and confident, and it’s less painful to accept that some people just don’t know any better, although that doesn’t change its effect.

Who was the first person you told, how did they react?

I don’t remember, I think it was a high school friend. I vaguely remember texting someone in a bathroom during a crying session at work. My high school friends were all warm and supportive.

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?

It was scary as hell. I’m sure coming out (with your gender specifically) is scary by nature because it’s a huge truth to be telling that can really change how the people you love perceive you, for better or for worse, but for me, I’m also thinking with the dread and certainty that my family would be too conservative and potentially dangerous. Coming out to my family was one of the worst, most painful things I’ve ever been through -- being kicked out and laughed at, a lot of drama, confrontations, Bible readings and being ganged up on at odd hours, trying to comfort my mom who took it as her personal failure -- I was shaking with adrenaline 24/7. I think of the “I’ll suffer through anything as long as it has meaning” comment that was about angsty fanfics, but knowing the truth about myself was a source of unshakable strength and it felt refreshing and even triumphant to say, like I was giving myself permission to exist for the first time. I came out a bunch of times, though...

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?

My family reacted mostly badly, my sister is a little confused but has the spirit, and my friends have been wonderful.

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?

It’s more of a gender thing, but I hate it when people imply that I shouldn’t be on T or are subtly trying to talk me out of it with their questions. After all the disrespectful as fuck bullshit I heard from my parents, I’m tired of this.

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

Zombie apocalypse denim? Gay Layers

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

I’m not really emotionally invested in these “ships” you cool kids are talking about. I like canon, age-appropriate ones.

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

I’ve never really worn makeup. I brazenly never bothered to growing up, and if it had an effect on me socially, I was too tuned out to care. My sister always wanted to do my hair and makeup, but I wasn’t interested and wouldn’t let her, much to her frustration. I wore some for a musical once though, and I had no idea what I was doing and it was extremely uncomfortable. I felt what I know now is dysphoria and ended up using the lipstick to draw. Another aspect to this is my family forbade it (or my dad made the decision for everyone), not that it made my sister feel less pressured to wear it, so maybe it was some female presentation I could easily get out of. For that reason, I don’t have super strong feelings about it. Not understanding it probably resulted in me feeling left out a lot among my peers.

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?

Yes. Before my realization, it was a numb horror I wasn’t consciously aware of, ruining nice things growing up to the point where I feel like I missed out on being a teenager. I remember it as feeling nauseous while sitting in a corner, feeling like none of my clothes ever fit for some mysterious reason. Living with my family in the closet, it defined my life, and I was obsessed with my presentation. These days, it does not bother me on that level at all, except a minor freakout now and then if I get really wild and wear feminine clothes. Or I still feel it in more subtle ways, when I default to customer service voice, or when guys my age are twice my height and I look aaaall the way up at them and wonder what gender they see me as.

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?

Trust me, I have heard truck loads of dumb shit and the winner is the Gay Agenda is R****a’s propaganda to weaken the integrity of North America. Considering what is happening over there, it was enragingly stupid.

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

I feel like I can be myself around lgbt+ people. I don’t feel like I have to hide stuff or put on a show, and I’m not afraid because it’s familiar territory.

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

Aside from obvious problems like TERFs, ace discourse. Ace people are part of the community if they want to be and that’s enough on that, my skin is already breaking out.

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?

I finally went to a Pride event this year! I was surprised it was the first one I’d been to, then remembered my parents discouraged me from going anywhere, never mind to a gay where.

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?

I can’t think of many people right now, but Leslie Feinberg seems awesome, and some quotes from Stone Butch Blues are very validating.

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

No. Technically I have been in one, but it was shitty and ridiculous, and basically platonic, and I don’t want it to count.

What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

I barely read… I read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe in high school and it was honestly so precious.

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

Yes. I got kicked out (but then kicked back in again), had my stuff stolen and damaged, was verbally harassed… and I was indirectly fired by an employer, but We Will Never Know Why...

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

Queer Eye! I don’t know of many though, and some important ones, I just haven’t watched.

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

My mutuals :D

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

I’m okay calling myself queer.

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?

No, but I did see some drag performances at the one (1) Pride event I went to, and they were jaw-dropping.

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?

I’m not sure what this question means, but I decide what fits right by what makes me feel the most alive and emotionally real and in the moment. What makes me feel the most attractive to be honest. There’s a post about dysphoria I saw going around, the things on it are basically what I use to figure things out.

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?

I am actually! Not anytime soon, but I’m the responsible type for sure, and judging by the way I love growing plants and being around animals, I’m probably a nurturing person. I actually like kids too, lol, they’re just so high-energy.

What identity advice would you give your younger self?

You’re a boy. Go!

What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

I think people are going to have different ways of expressing themselves that make them happy, but… I don’t think they should infringe on basic human decency. When I hear “role” I think of acting a certain way because someone told you to, something I want to disagree with on the spot.

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

People move out of my way on the sidewalk and take me seriously now. Privilege or self-confidence… I never want to forget what it used to be like, or get too entitled.

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?

That it’s simply living one’s reality. I think that trips up a lot of straight people -- that some people just come like this, and they don’t have to make it fit into their personal identity.

Why are proud to be lgbt+?

Because I worked hard to be alive and happy right now. I’m proud of choosing to get through those rough patches, take care of myself, heal, take walks, cook breakfast, learn healthy coping mechanisms, that was out of love for myself and a defiant conviction that I have a place in this world.

[queenofthecommunistcannibals]

@yikes-trademarked

i mean yeah, the post has nothing to do with it just comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to people who are genuinely oppressed in a modern day society. how are asexuals ‘neglected’ and ‘isolated’? so most people experience sexual attraction and you don’t, whoop de doo. nobody actually cares if you do or don’t experience sexual attraction. if you could please give me an actual, real life, not someone-calling-you-a-plant-online example of asexual discrimination then i’ll take back my words

___

@yikes-trademarked I super love how instead of apologizing you are doubling down. Okay. I'll give you examples. Here are some general prejudices that affect aro and ace people. They aren't in any real order.

•Until the DSM V asexuality was considered a mental illness. Despite the fact that now we are "allowed" to "identify" as asexual HSDD (Hypoactive sexual desire disorder) is STILL considered a disorder. So instead of trying to help a person accept themselves as asexual allosexual (nonace) doctors will try to "fix" someone if they want to. Asexuality is still seen as something to be cured. It is still a dysfunction in their eyes, they just hide their prejudice a little better.

•Asexuals have been harrassed and raped in an attempt to fix them. Asexuals and aromantics are often seen as a "challenge" to be harassed into affection.

•Mainstream Christianity discriminates against asexuals as they do other queer identities. Here is one quote from a document called "Asexuality and Christianity" produced for Asexual Awareness Week (the fact that we get "awareness" rather than "pride" ain't great either)

"While celibacy is officially considered a good stance in religion, declaring oneself disinterested in sex is often met with disapproval. Asexuals have been told that they are rejecting God's gift of sexuality, that they are just as bad as homosexuals because they are not 'normal'...or people decide to pray to God for them to be fixed or for the Almighty to send the right person for them to fall in love with."

Or from the horse's mouth "Question: What do you call a person who is asexual? Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist. Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well." This was written by two Jesuit priests David Nantais and Scott Opperman. In other religions this is also often true. I know more about Christianity personally but I know similar doctrines exist in Islam and Orthodox Judaism. Not to mention the notion that marriage is the only acceptable option in these religions (unless you are Catholic clergy) and children are a necessity. Hell, according to the conservative traditional gender roles of these religions even an otherwise gender conforming aro/ace doesn't fit (not marrying, no kids, no family, all that).

•Dehumanization from all sides. We are told to be human is to love and that love is nearly always put in romantic or sexual context. Indeed NOT being capable of or experiencing romantic or sexual love is often used as shorthand for someone being a bad person (As Dexter [from Dexter], for example, becomes more sympathetic he develops the ability to feel sexual/romantic love. Robots in fiction can be asexual and aromantic but only if you want to show them as apart from humanity. Once you want to make it clear they have a soul they have to experience some kind of romantic urge or longing. Like Data from Star Trek) An article in Psychology Today by Dr. Gordon Hodson Ph.D. (who specializes in studying dehumanization) postulates (with a study to back it up) that asexuals are the most dehumanized sexual minority.

•On the specifically romantic asexual front in many places do not consider a marriage valid until it has been consumated.

•In media in which asexuality and aromanticism are not proof of evil they are judged to be not real. Here is one of if not our first actual representation in media. In the film Nymphomaniac the SELF-PROCLAIMED asexual character turns out to be a rapist who the protagonist murders in what is supposed to be a "woo! You go girl!" moment. AT BEST this says asexuals aren't real. We're just sexually repressed misanthropes. It might also imply that asexuals are base animals who are waiting to strike. THAT IS ONE OF THE FEW TIMES THE WORD ASEXUAL IS EVEN USED IN MAINSTREAM FILM! I cannot think of a single other.

•We are erased constantly in real life and in media. Here are two examples of active erasure, Jughead Jones (canonly aro/ace in the comics and coded as such since day one) was straight-washed for Riverdale. You may say "oh maybe they didn't know" (which is bullshit) then consider example two: Sherlock Holmes. Holmes (who I adore) has long been one of the few characters that has been "allowed" to aro/aces, but when the creators of BBC's Sherlock were explicitly asked if he was aro/ace they said he absolutely wasn't.

This is part of what I am talking about. We are not allowed to exist. We are invisible.

•Asexuals and aromantics are somehow toxic in our mere existence. We make kids think it is okay to be like us and are poisoning their young minds. We hate sex and thus are against the sex positivity movement.

•"Virgin" is an insult and we are treated as constant children. Somehow we have failed to grow up and cannot be treated as adults.

•And here is what I was really talking about SOCIETY IS NOT MADE FOR US! CULTURE IS NOT CONDUSIVE TO OUR EXISTENCES! I didn't know asexuality was an option until I was about 24. And before that I, like many aro/ace people, put myself in a lot of situations and relationships to "fix" myself. To make myself normal. My first and only sexual encounter was one of the things that sent me spiralling into a serious depression. I didn't know that it was okay to not be interested and to say "no.". So I said "okay" because I thought it was what I had to do to be a normal teenager. I don't know if I ever shared that online before so congrats you got me so mad I revisited my personal trauma. From childhood we are told falling in love is the ultimate reward. As teens we are told we gotta get laaaaaid. As adults not being involved in a sexual/romantic (often indistinguishable) relationship is WEIRD and TROUBLING. I have been told by people who don't know I am asexual that asexual people are "too weird" or even "creepy." The idea that someone might not be capable of romantic love sets off people's red flags that said aromantic might be crazy.

•We are surrounded by sex and romance constantly. Constantly. It is inescapable. In your real life I want you to pay attention to romantic or sexual imagry and storylines around you. There is no break. No alternative. This is what I mean by "invisible at best."

•Also, we are denied a history. It is very hard to prove absence but often sexless figures are immediately dubbed to be gay/lesbian because of their lack of interest in "appropriate" gender. Forgetting entirely that asexuality and aromanticism are options. Then when the question is raised they maybe a figure WAS aro and/or ace we are told that we are """"stealing"""" history. There is like one person in history we are allowed: Nikola Tesla. I love him very much, but he also fits the bill as a weirdo asexual. Because anyone who was the least bit acceptable to society must be allosexual. An example in reverse, Queen Elizabeth I, Britain's most beloved monarch, who never married, never was romantically or sexually involved with anyone (aside from being assaulted as a teenager), and was in her era very famously THE VIRGIN QUEEN who used her virginity as part of her persona to great affect. She is not considered asexual or aromantic and never has been. I have seen a biographer bend over backwards to get away from that accusation including using an incident where an elderly Elizabeth flashed a dignitary to make him uncomfortable as proof that she was allo. We can't have this awesome historical figure be one of those creeps right?!

•i am not even going into the history of how "sexlessness" was historically treated, especially in women. Let me just say that "spinsterism" was considered a danger to children and young women.

•NOTICE I WENT THIS WHOLE POST WITHOUT MENTIONING ASSHOLES WHO USE THE DISK HORSE AND BAR US FROM QUEER CIRCLES EVEN THOUGH SOME STUDIES FIND ASEXUALS HAVE LOWER SELF ESTEEM THAN ANY OTHER QUEER GROUP AND WOULD REALLY BENEFIT FROM A COMMUNITY!! THIS POST IS ENTIRELY EXAMPLES OF NON ONLINE PEOPLE BECAUSE SOMEHOW YOUR CONSTANT ABUSE OR REFUSAL TO RECOGNIZE ABUSE IS A-OKAY BECAUSE IT IS PART OF "THE DEBATE" BECAUSE SOMEHOW OUR EXISTENCE IS ACCEPTABLE DEBATE!

These are just some examples. People are free to add more but I am tired. If you want links I will dig them up.

Sincerely,

Fuck you.

I apologize for the "fuck you" but the exclusionist attitude is so disheartening. It is bad for not only aros and aces but also the queer community in general. We should be in this together! Fighting for one another side by side! We should be there for each other for hardships and for celebrations. I think it is vital that exclusionists really examine what and who they are actually fighting against.

[polyadvice]

What are some of Zinnia's opinions?

Hello! I see tons of asks about advise and now I'm actually wondering what are some of your opinions about the whole community? I'd like to know more about the lovely creator of this amazing blog❤️ :)

This reads to me like “please, sir, could I have some discourse?” but I, like most humans, adore being asked for my opinion, especially if it comes with some flattery, so here ya go, some Zinnia Opinions, RIP my inbox:

I think more, if not all, of us should be in therapy! I think working on our own issues and patterns is critical for healthy relationships, whether you’re polyamorous or monogamous. I think we as a culture should be fighting for more accessible mental healthcare, and one of the best things we can do for our people is help them find therapy that is helpful and affordable for them.

I miss the word '‘poly.” I fully understand why we are making a shift to polyam, and I would never put my linguistic comfort over someone else’s very real cultural hurts and needs, but I find “polyam” clunky and it makes me sad that we are facing this namespace collision right now.

I think “ground rules” and “boundaries” are incredibly misunderstood and mis-used in polyamory. I’ve almost never seen “ground rules” work out well - they’re often arbitrary, lead to unnecessary ‘betrayals,’ and let people hide behind them to avoid actually interrogating their true feelings and needs. And people need to realize that “setting a boundary” does not obligate everyone to do what you say or else they’re toxic abusers.

I think we need to do a better job with our language. I’ve written about this before, and I stand by it. I especially think we need to be very careful about words like “abuse” and “trauma,” because they really do mean things beyond ‘made me feel bad.’ I strongly recommend Sarah Schulman’s book Conflict is not Abuse as an in-depth discussion of this and think it belongs on any standard polyam reading list.

I don’t think polyamory is a better, more enlightened or truer way to be in relationship. I disagree with Dan Savage and the Sex At Dawn crowd that all humans are ‘naturally’ non-monogamous and therefore polyamory or monogamy are just personal choices anyone can make freely. Some people are better served by monogamous relationships, and polyam people need to stop evangelizing polyamory as a one-size-fits-all solution to existing problems.

That said, I think monogamy culture is pretty destructive. When practiced with intentionality and as meets the needs of the individuals in the relationship, monogamy can be plenty healthy! But I have seen so much abuse in the name of monogamy, of possessiveness, of jealousy; damage done out of fear of cheating; repression and rejection and violence - we need to better understand and interrogate the social, political, economic, religious, and sexual power structures that drive our assumptions around monogamy.

I wish we had better pride colors and/or full ownership of the infinity heart. I love symbols! I would love to be able to wear my polyam pride on my sleeve, but tons of mono people use the infinity heart to just mean “endless love,” which makes it a pretty diluted symbol, and the pride colors are not great.

I think more polyam families should become foster parents. I think more people should, honestly; but being polyam gives you an advantage in that you have more adults to help out, and most of us have already done a lot of self-work around healthy emotional management and communication styles, which is critical for foster parents. It’s not always easy to get certified as an “unconventional” family, but it is doable, and we should be doing it!

My polyamory is queer. Not all polyamory is queer, but I truly believe that polyamory can be queer, when it is a ‘queering’ of the dominant monogamous culture, a re-understanding of relationships, an individual reclamation and rejection of culturally imposed assumptions, and love as “praxis” that challenges economic, political, and sexual systems of dominance.

Polyam people need to make a lot more space for relationship anarchy in the conversation. Related to my opinion that not all polyamory is queer, but polyamory can be a queering of relationships. It’s sad to me that so many people think polyamory is only about sexual-romantic relationships, and often looks in practice a lot like monogamy culture just with more people, where the sexual-romantic relationships are prioritized in terms of values, commitment, finances, etc. Polyamory can be an invitation to re-understand relationships in a whole new way. Who say that the people we have great sex with have to be the people we live with have to be the people we co-parent with? Let’s make our own way, friends.

I think “best case scenario” daydreaming is an under-utilized tool in polyamorous relationships. Thinking through what you really want, having words for the feelings you want to have, understanding what you want your day to day life to look like - this is so helpful! We should all have a clear picture of where we’re headed, what our goals are, and what our deal-makers and deal-breakers are. I don’t know why so few people are able to really articulate what they want out of their relationships - grab a journal, or a questionnaire, or a boring work meeting, and dig in!

I think people should make my life easier when writing in to this blog. People should check my FAQ, not send me thousand-word letters that don’t include a clear question, and not do these other things. I also think it would be super swell if people contributed to my Patreon!

There we go; some of my most strongly held opinions about polyamory. I have many other opinions, like:

People should stop assigning moral value to food and eating habits and drop the food-negative fear-of-calories nonsense; diet culture is absolute bullshit, and the concern-trolling about fat bodies is cruel, disingenuous, and needs to die.

Caffeine is an addictive drug and we are way too relaxed about young children becoming dependent on it to the detriment of their sleep health.

Being critical or ironic about something does not make you smarter, more mature, or better than someone who earnestly enjoys it.

Genetic connections do not a ‘family’ make, and no one is obligated to stay connected to someone who isn’t healthy for them just because they are ‘related.' And if you are deeply connected to someone whose connection to you isn’t recognized by monogamy-culture - like a kid who isn’t genetically related, or a life partner you aren’t romantic-sexual with, that’s great! Ignore the haters.

Movie theatre popcorn is always better than anything you can make at home, and is always worth the $7 it costs at the theatre. Drinks and candy, you should smuggle in.

If someone isn’t drinking, people should leave that alone and not harass, pester, or tease them about it.

Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” music video is not cultural appropriation, because she brings in people who are skilled in those dances to perform them well, and the point of the video is that she can’t do what they do and is just being herself alongside performers she is sharing her stage with. Cultural appropriate is a real issue in pop music (and everywhere else) but I think that video is absolutely not an example of it and don’t understand why it’s constantly used as one.

Alcohol is a lot more dangerous and addictive than marijuana and the reasons it’s legal and socially acceptable are racist and classist and are not based in reality.

Tumblr and Instagram should do more (that is, literally anything) to fight pro-eating-disorder content on their platforms.

No one should feed me food with tomatoes in it, ever, ever, ever! (And I don’t want to hear about how I haven’t had a “real, good” tomato - those ones taste worse because they taste more like tomatoes!)