#idk it's just interesting how often i get myself into Ambiguous Gender Situations

[butchfriend]

the older lady i’ve been gardening for has only referred to me as he and today finally asked what my pronouns are (despite having known each other for a year now) and i was like “oh anything is fine” and she has continued to only use he for me... i love when my gender around little old ladies is just “nice young gentleman” to the point where they ignore literally everyone else using she for me lmfao

[tyrannuspitch]

ok coffee cup emoji i forgot to copy it but 1) doctor who just in general 2) alternative fashion takes

okay i don't think i have anything very insightful to say abt either of these but. let's see

1. doctor who... hmmm. i have a lot of conflicting feelings from consuming it sporadically over years. i almost subjected you to the full list of level of enjoyment by season, like a malevolent genie catching hold of the phrase "in general", but then i realised i did actually have one solitary point to make so here is that instead:

re: ten's era and class: i can respect much of what each are doing but i wish scifi writers would invoke "genocide" less often, bc it's not actually an edgy moral grey if you the writer have created a situation where an entire people is synonymous with one evil army (a situation which never occurs irl bc real ppl simply do not work like that.) like at that stage we're talking mass-murder-in-self-defence, not genocide, bc genocide by definition includes indiscriminate killing of innocents and you've literally *written out* all the innocents? like the only way you can make it a palatable storyline is by making the species effectively just an extension of one single evil character. which is not how real people work. so why not just ask this question about one character. "is killing in self defence ever okay" is a legitimate question. "is genocide ever okay" is not a legitimate question until you bring in implausible scenarios. i know scifi does thought experiments but.. urgh. this one goes the same way every time and it's never genuinely interesting or satisfying. it's just uncomfortable.

disclaimer having written this: most of the rest of what i had to say was positive, it just wasn't interesting. anyway... twelve my beloved

2. alternative fashion takes: god idk i do not dress well and never have and therefore am not qualified to have Opinions. my personal relationship to alternative fashion specifically is v weird for two reasons:

a) i can appreciate the aesthetic as a whole and even somewhat identify with it but you offer me each thing individually and i'm suddenly like nope. nope. nope. like... idk. i like how lip piercings look but i feel like i wld find them gross to actually have. and i will not do makeup for dysphoria reasons and i-have-a-skin-disease-anxiety reasons. and i am nowhere near confident enough in my own decisions to ever get a tattoo. and i feel kind of just, ambiguous gross and unlike myself wearing most casual clothing during the day. (not cheap clothing. specifically *casual*. wld much rather wear cheap formal stuff than designer casual. and i think the main problem i have w casual stuff is being loose/oversized. i just... want to feel *neat* i guess? and not clumsy? and loose clothing that moves a lot just makes me irrationally feel rlly uncoordinated and graceless and generally messy?) (the more i try to word this the more autistic i sound rip)

b) i naturally lean more towards like, idk. formal/historical stuff rather than modern/grungy/futuristic. but as much as ppl talk abt wanting to look like vampires, the majority of alt men are doing a p straightforward ripped skinny jeans + black t shirt thing and even finding examples of men who are doing Just Straight Up Dress Like You're In Interview With The Phantom Of Crimson Peak Or Other Miscellanous Goth Film is not easy. let alone actually finding the clothes to do it yourself. (like no i don't literally mean historical dress but like. urgh. i feel like goth *women* dress like witches pretty frequently and therefore the clothes themselves are out there.)

all that aside my hot take is. um. i need nicer shoes and maybe some rings and/or nail polish. sidefringes are overdone we need to bring back bobs on men. yes from the middle ages. uhh. gender noncomformity in men includes androgyny and not just straight up wearing dresses and ppl discussing gncity in theory never seem to demonstrate understanding of that so maybe look at an emo man once. uhh. glasses on chains (monocles, even) are good and on theme for an aesthetic which incorporates lots of other metal jewellery. that is all i have to offer

[sivisgirlfriend]

long rambly post about lesbian loneliness under the cut hhhhhh

it’s kind of sad that i just realized that these days at school i consider (most likely) straight men to be the easiest people to sit next to in class in case i need to talk to them. like, obviously i would prefer to sit next to & talk to women but more often than not i feel like i’m creeping them out or they just... don’t know how to talk to me? and i’m not saying this to praise men, like i don’t think they’re actively being nice to me and some/most of them are rude to me as well, but the “safe” state of them is just like... when they realize that i’m not interested in them so they’re not weird about it or try to hit on me but instead just act neutral and civil for like the five minutes we have to discuss a question. but with women i feel like a) they’re creeped out by me if they realize i’m a lesbian b) they’re confused because they don’t realize i’m a lesbian so they don’t know how to talk to me or c) i feel like they’re creeped out so it gets weird. so i’m just in this vicious cycle

and i know it’s pretty petty but i feel kinda jealous whenever i hear ppl talk about making friends or about how they just walk up to someone and start talking. like. i could never do that? and i feel like because of the way i look and how i’m kind of... ambiguous gender presentation-wise so much more is expected of me socially. like i already risk being seen as a weirdo by just existing as who i am so i feel like if i make the smallest mistake or if i’m a little awkward in a social situation people will feel weird and leave the conversation. ppl say that i should just act confident or whatever but that will come across as me “trying to be a man” or something and like... the only option i feel like i have left is to make a fool/joke out of myself and who i am which is something i don’t want to do after this many years of repressing my identity as a butch lesbian. like it’s so frustrating that in a social situation i can tell that i’ve got it and i’m saying a lot of things or even making ppl laugh but i can still tell that they’re uncomfortable and don’t want to be in the situation ://

ofc here i’m talking mostly about straight people but i feel like this sometimes applies to gay ppl and especially other wlw. it’s a little different of course but anyway. like... i’m content just having my own little social circle & family, it’s not like i actively need more people in my life but knowing that i couldn’t have them very easily if i wanted to just bums me out. i pretty desperately want to have other wlw/lesbian friends casually/irl or just to like... talk to other wlw but whenever i try it just doesn’t work out? online it’s fine but irl just like. doesn’t work. i especially want to talk to other butches but that’s a whole other story really because like... i get mistaken for a guy for quite a lot and that’s mostly straight people, like i don’t think other butches mistake me for a cis teenage boy BUT i’m so scared that they don’t pay attention to me or when they see me they think i’m a man anyway like. or that i’m transmasc or something. because people have done that a lot. and whenever i look at myself and the way i feel comfortable presenting it doesn’t scream butch even to me, like it just says genderless blob who someone could easily read as “man” and i’m just ! god ! i know this might be kind of problematic to say and obviously i don’t think clothing/presentation = gender but like.. many people do. idk other butches or anyone really interact lmao.

saljdakljd this got really long, can’t believe this started out as me realizing that my favorite school acquaintance is a straight man 

[idiopathicsmile]

Wait, you're straight?????? I am honestly surprised to learn this! You write so gay!! (That's a compliment, usually when straight people write queer characters, it's very eye-rolly)

haha oh gosh, that is very kind of you to say!

the short answer to “you’re straight?” is “yeah, think so”

the long answer involves a fuckin ouroboros of overthinking and oversharing, which i will put under a cut if anyone’s curious, but man it’s such a mess.

the older i get, the more i realize that my feelings and experiences don’t entirely line up with being a kinsey scale 0, and the way i categorize my reactions to people is kind of clouded by the fact that i don’t really experience body-specific sexual attraction. 

i get crushes on dudes pretty easily but those don’t feel sexual--i find cute guys aesthetically pleasing, and i want a cute guy to think I’m funny and cute; i don’t daydream about things getting steamy. 

in retrospect, i’ve periodically met women who were so cool and funny and cute that i wanted desperately for them to feel the same way about me. i didn’t harbor secret fantasies of smooching them, i just wanted them to laugh at my jokes. which again, is also how my dude-crushes go, and did i only frame this as platonic here because i expected myself to be straight? did i just lack the cultural framework to look at them as romantic prospects? if it’s this ambiguous, can i safely assume i’m just a hetero who is overthinking things?

i’ve been romantically involved with a couple of folks, and cuddling was the fucking best, but if things went beyond kissing, i was instantly consumed by this feeling of “there are things i’m supposed to want to do to this dude’s body and i don’t even know what i’m supposed to want to do.” without detailed instructions, my mind goes blank. (i’m fine with doing things if i have detailed instructions, and sometimes it even feels really good, but sex is like cooking blindfolded and with earplugs in--there's no instinct i can rely on.) i don’t know how much of that is an anxiety thing, and how much of it maybe suggests some shade of gray ace and/or demisexuality.

i have a libido, but the things that turn me on aren’t specific to gender or biological sex. i’ve felt physical attraction to specific people (often but not always dudes) every now and then but it’s always been situational, based on stuff they were saying or doing in that moment, and it still didn’t correlate with a sense of wanting to do any particular thing to them. 

i am terrified--TERRIFIED--of claiming labels that don’t belong to me. i’ve publicly said that i wasn’t demi or gray ace, and i don’t know if i’m confident enough in all of this to take that back. the traditional narrative for how you are expected to experience physical desire has always always been sort of weird and alienating to me, but again, i’ve always written that off as anxiety about sex, or dismissed it as me being in some sort of arrested development caused by shyness or prudery. (and yeah, if somebody said that to somebody else, i’d be like ‘shut your acephobic mouth’, but man idk.)

i’ve also publicly said i was straight. in my college group of friends, i would frequently be the “obligatory straight girl” and we’d all laugh at my confusion about boobs. honestly, i feel the same way about whichever parts of dude-meat are supposed to be analogous here. (...pecs?) 

but again, at least all the crushes i’ve consciously had have been on dudes. and because of this, i have lived a life where i have never felt oppressed by virtue of who i was dating or wanted to date, and so on a political, “check your privilege” kind of level, i feel like it’s dishonest for me to claim any identity but straight. and since i haven’t had those experiences, especially talking to lgbt folks, it feels like a useful shorthand to say “hey, please call me on my bullshit here”

i very much want a long-term romantic partner. i want to meet somebody i’m super into, who’s super into me, and i want to make dinner with them and hang out and support each other and cuddle, and i want to find somebody patient enough to give me a lot of very specific guidance about what they want in bed, who won’t view my vagueness about sex as a weird burden, because i do want to do those things also.

when experimenting with dating apps, i have a hard enough time just finding someone who’s funny and not racist.

(I have tried to verbalize these misgivings to two of my closest friends, and they both responded with essentially, “y’know, you have the option of just not telling a guy that you’re zero percent attracted to his body.” which, like, i guess? but never discussing this doesn’t feel great to me.)

i think if i do end up with someone, it will be a dude. even if i have another crush on a woman i’d be way too consumed by ‘YOU’RE JUST THE WORST KIND OF STRAIGHT GIRL LEADING ON THIS POOR LESBIAN OR BI LADY’ guilt to pursue her, and even if i somehow did, i think that blank-mind-in-bed thing would feed into my worst anxieties about being an awful straight girl, and it would be frustrating and humiliating for all parties.

if another person told all of this to me, my instinct would be to say, “aw hey, it’s okay if you’re a demisexual bi who leans strongly towards dudes and has a lot of socially imposed hangups” but reading over this post, my inner critic is rolling their eyes, like, oh great, another str8 trying to co-opt other people’s struggles to make herself seem more interesting, so i don’t know.

straight, i guess.