#it even hurts people like my sister who is literally just a straight cis woman who likes to power lift as a hobby and wears baggy clothes

[gideonisms]

It's crazy how much people still don't understand that you can be a woman and wear masculine clothing or have a short and practical hairstyle. I really feel like even though most people even here in texas understand that a person can be gay or a lesbian, we haven't at all made progress in accepting that people can dress how they want regardless of their gender

[cuntess-carmilla]

The level of performance you demand from bi people as a whole, but especially of bi women, is motherfucking insane. I really don't get why you all demand bi women virtue signal their sexuality by "rejecting" men in order to not deem them gross lesbophobes by virtue of existing. "Even" if they prefer men that's not necessarily out of some internalized homo/biphobia. They just like men. That’s kind of part of (most bi people’s) bisexuality. Shocker, I know.

A lot of the behaviors you all accuse bi women of (not taking other women seriously as partners, for example) are behaviors a lot of lesbians in denial exhibit too but in us you see victims of our own pain and misogyny who need help and understanding, while in bi women you see vile irredeemable perpetrators who must be ostracized and punished.

You blame them of their own abuse at the hands of cis straight men in ways that if you remove the "bi" from "bi women" you would recognize as disgusting victim-blaming, WHILE rejecting them & pushing them out of LGBT spaces, which, guess what you fucking geniuses; leaves them to have cis straight men as their only viable option. Funny how that works. You're all "women should stay away from dating bi women" or "bi women fetishize lesbianism by wanting to be with women" but shame bi women for being with men IN THE SAME BREATH. What the fuck do you want them to do? Be celibate for your own biphobic comfort?

I legit saw idiots on Twitter say "normalize lesbians only dating other lesbians" as if that's not what's normalized already. Bi women are already seen as gross sluts that kiss women at parties to turn men on and only seriously date men. What the fuck isn’t normalized about lesbians dating lesbians only?

You think that I, a literal fucking dyke, didn't see women at some point as hot for sex and men as the only viable partners for serious relationships? Would you see me as a disgusting dangerous misogynist for having been there, or as struggling with internalized homophobia? If it’s the later, why don't you extend that same compassion to bi women? Only difference there is that I'm a lesbian and they're bisexual.

Sure, they like men so being with men isn't INHERENTLY torture for them like it is for me, but you don't think that thinking/behaving that way is traumatizing for them too? They love women and are depriving themselves of that experience out of internalized biphobia, misogyny and homophobia. You think that doesn’t fuck them up too? They're hurting too, but you think that, unlike a lesbian who does the same, THEY deserve that suffering.

And no one is telling you to date them or to suffer for them through it just because they're suffering too. What you're being told is to see them as the non-straight women they are who're suffering too and understand the complexity of their situation the same way you would someone like me.

You think too that the “solution” to the horrendous rates of IPV they face with cis straight men is swearing off men. Would you tell straight women to do the same if they don’t want to be abused by male partners? You wouldn't. Because you see straight women as not having "an option" but think bi women do and thus they MUST be asking to be abused. Literal “asking for it” shit. It's all victim blaming + Boys Will Be Boys, but add a "bi" to it and it's progressive somehow.

This points to you seeing women's attraction to men as only ok when it's not "chosen", just a passive reception of misogynistic violence (which, way to take away the agency of women’s sexualities, you dumb bitches), but when they IN THEORY have a "choice" because they also like women, their attraction to men is active instead of passive, and thus they're cock-sucking sluts who’re choosing to endanger themselves. You see women whose desire for men is active, as deserving of whatever results from their involvement with men. You can't be a biphobe without being a misogynist.

You see bisexuality as a fractured amalgam of homosexuality + heterosexuality instead of its own standalone identity, and thus they can and MUST choose one or the other, because their “heterosexual” attraction and their gay attraction are in active competition within them like the fucking two wolves shit. You can’t be a biphobe without being a homophobe.

Bi women's attraction to men is NOT normalized and biphobes are living proof of it. It's not normalized; they're bisexual, not straight. Their attraction to men coexists with, interlinks with and isn't independent of their attraction to women. Bi women ARE shamed and punished for liking men because they don't like men alone, they simultaneously like women and those are inseparable for them.

If it was normalized, it wouldn't be widespread to blame them for the abuse they receive when involved with men, like they should pick a side for their abuse to count or matter. They wouldn't be pushed out of LGBT spaces for being with men, it wouldn't be seen by other LGBT people (even many bi women themselves) as a flaw in their sexuality that makes them a gay-straight chimera. They wouldn't feel ashamed of their attraction to men. They wouldn't be seen with suspicion for liking men if it was normalized.

Them simultaneously liking men is seen as not loving men "correctly" AND as not loving women “correctly”. No LGBT women (including cis bi women and straight trans women) are seen as doing love and sex "correctly".

You can only claim bi women's attraction to men is normalized if you see bisexuality as a Lego combo of straight + gay and thus their attraction to men is separable from their attraction to women. It's not. They're not cherry-picked bits and pieces of heterosexuality and homosexuality. They're 100% bisexual, always, no matter in what way their bisexuality expresses itself. Be it bisexual with no preference, bisexual with a preference for women, or bisexual with a preference for men.

It's not 50-50% straight-gay, 25-75% straight-gay, or 80-20% straight-gay respectively. ALL are 100% bisexual-bisexual. If you can't respect that, you're a homophobe and a misogynist.

And yes, it is HOMOphobic to see bi women with suspicion for liking men. You see "homosexual" attraction as inherently in jeopardy if there's a coexisting "heterosexual" attraction because the gay one will be lesser and you see the "straight" one as a threat that'll take precedent. That’s your gay insecurity from internalized homophobia speaking.

Then too, there's a reason biphobes think bi men are secretly gay, and bi women are secretly straight. You see men as the superior and inevitable choice for both. That's misogyny. If you're a biphobe, you ARE undoubtedly a misogynist and a homophobe, even if you're gay and/or a woman yourself.

Every time people make armchair judgements of bisexual women as man-worshipers all I can think of is my sister who cried rivers of tears to me about how painful and stressing it is to over-perform her attraction to men who're not even her type (she likes gnc men!) just to stay closeted, and when I think of that, I wish so badly I could slap each and every person doing that.

And yeah! You read right, GNC MEN. Bisexuality is "gay enough", "even" in their different-gender attraction, that plenty of bi women prefer gnc men, and plenty of bi men prefer gnc women. In fact, plenty of bi people, including the cis ones, are gnc themselves (with a specific tendency towards androgyny but there's many who're distinctly masculine/feminine at it) and thus much more visible as gay than someone like me; a fucking lesbian, but I'm fem-presenting.

"Bi people can stay closeted while in relationships." So can gay men and lesbians who have beards, who hide our partners, whose partners are trans and closeted, if we're trans and closeted ourselves, or if we’re single and not visibly gnc.

My relationship would be seen as straight by outsiders because my fiancé is a closeted trans lesbian. Unless you’re a transphobe you would NOT call that a fucking privilege. It’s not a fucking privilege that she’s forced to hide herself and hide that the nature of her exclusive love for women is gay. That shit fucking kills her inside. It’s not a privilege that to keep the love of my life safe and myself too I have to pretend that our love is straight when it was so fucking hard for me to just detect, let alone ACCEPT and take pride in that I don’t like men.

All of that keeps us safe, but at great emotional cost. Being closeted is safety for all LGBT people, but it’s not a privilege, it’s PAINFUL. You understand this when it comes to gay men and lesbians, and can feel compassion for us. Why not for bi people? Why are you so angry at bi people? Why do you hold so much contempt for bi people?

I'll tell you why: BECAUSE YOU'RE BIGOTS.

[doberbutts]

Where was my father’s male privilege when he was beaten by his father so savagely that he went deaf, while his father’s girlfriend watched and did nothing?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he was abandoned and locked inside an empty apartment until the 1950s equivalent of CPS was tipped off he was there and took him to save him from starvation, because dear old grandpa and his girlfriend at the time didn’t want a defective child once they figured out they’d permanently fucked him up?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he bounced from foster home to foster home until he was held down and raped by one of his foster brothers, tried to tell his foster mother, and she just called him a faggot and left it at that?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he was finally reunited with his mother and had to scrape together a living by eating stale bread and running errands for what turned out to be local gangs, because she was too poor to feed another mouth?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he watched a black man shot by police bleed out in the street?

Where was my father’s male privilege when teachers who should have caught his deafness instead made him believe he was failing his classes because he was stupid because that’s just how black people are?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he got the tar kicked out of him by his white classmates who felt emboldened by their female teacher’s anti-black racism?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he brought the subject of racism up with the school board after a cross was lit on fire on his desk, and he was dismissed by both male and female staff?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he struggled to find a job after completing college, completing a master’s degree, which he paid for exclusively with scholarships earned from his competitive essay writing, because no one wanted to hire a disabled black man?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he was accused of assault by a white female student who could not keep her story straight and eventually admitted she had made it up because she wanted to put her black principal back in his place?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he was violently cuffed and illegally searched while I sat in the carseat and he was forced to comfort me through the window?

Where was my father’s male privilege when his wife, my mother, was immediately disowned by her entire family for associating herself with him? When she was forced to make a choice between a future with him, or her family? When he sees this echo with his children, and my sister’s children have still never met my brother-in-law’s family despite more than 10 years of marriage?

Where was my father’s male privilege when he came to pick us up from school and my school refused to let him in until the cops verified he was exactly who he said he was? Despite his name matching his ID, the lanyard he wore stating he was a principal at a nearby school, and the name on the school registry as being one of my parents? Despite me being called into the office to peek through the blinds at him and verifying that yes, this was my father?

Where was my father’s male privilege as neighbors who protested living near a black man repeatedly called the police on him as he pulled into the driveway of the house he’s lived in since I was born, let himself in with his own key, with ID to match the address and having known these neighbors by first name? To the point my white-passing mother had to diffuse the situation?

My father is straight and cis. My father is black and disabled. My father is a survivor. My father is a lot of things, and I have a lot of complicated feelings about him, but he is not trash. He has not skated through life as though it’s easy. His life was significantly harder than my mother’s, and her life wasn’t easy either. He has been hurt by men. He has been hurt by women. Some of the instances he has been hurt, my mother was directly sheltered from because she is a woman.

Her father was also an angry drunk, but deliberately did not take his anger out on his daughters, preferring to beat his son bloody instead. Mom has the trauma of watching her father beat the piss out of her brother and having to patch him back up after, but never of having been beaten herself.

Mom found herself in compromising and dangerous positions at times, but was protected from physical harm by her brother and the other men around her who saw it as their duty to protect the girls from that sort of thing. Literally the only good thing about rural purity culture.

Mom has a history of speaking out against racism and discrimination when she sees it, but has never needed to throw a punch in her life, because there was always a man around to protect her from the resulting fight. The men might not have agreed with her views on race but they were connected to her and thus duty/honor bound to protect her if someone tried to jump her because she wouldn’t let them beat up the black kid or told them to stop bothering the asian kid.

Mom never once had to stop and consider that it would be kinder to her partner to break things off.

Mom has never been falsely accused of assault because it’s just assumed that women don’t do that.

Mom has never been accused of trying to kidnap us because it’s believable that a white woman has mixed race kids that are darker than her but inconceivable that a black man has mixed race kids that are lighter than him.

Mom has never had the police called on her for entering her own house in their very white neighborhood.

Mom has only been pulled over once in her life, and the cop was far more interested in what my sisters and I were doing in her car than anything she might have potentially done.

My mother is straight and cis. She is also a white-passing POC and disabled. My mother is a survivor. My mother is a lot of things, and I have a lot of complicated feelings about her, but even she admits that her life was easier than my dad’s.

Cis, straight men suffer. White men suffer. My uncle is also a white-passing POC and a survivor. Do you know how much pent up anger he has? Still has, even though my grandfather changed and got better and apologized and owned up to his wrongs? Even though my grandfather’s been dead for years now? My uncle is sullen and prefers a bottle to take away his pain, pain he’s not been able to process, not been allowed to process, and he’s been that way since he was a child, which is not surprising considering what I’ve been directly told the beatings entailed... and things are always worse than what you’re told when it comes to that.

And all of that anger and resentment and rage and pain builds and builds until one of his sisters pokes him a little too hard about it and then he roars at them and storms off and he knows it’s wrong to take it out on them and he knows it’s not fair and that they only mean well but it hurts and he knows no other outlet besides lashing out because that was the only thing he was ever taught. Men get drunk and then get angry and then get violent. So he stops himself at yelling because he knows he can’t hit in anger, and he leaves and bangs doors behind him and stomps off until he calms down.

And you can say “dude needs therapy” and you know... you’re not wrong. But why would he ever seek it? When he sought help as a child he was told to be a man and suck it up and harden and grow some balls. His mother didn’t intervene to help him. You know, I know, he knows it’s because she was afraid her husband would turn on her. But it still hurts to know your own mother let your own father do that to you. Repeatedly. Over and over and over again. The most help he ever got was some first aid from his sisters when my grandfather decided he was done being angry. His teachers just knew him as an angry, sullen boy who frequently got into fistfights with other angry, sullen boys and chalked new bruises up to that. 

If you grow up like this, betrayed by everyone who is supposed to help you, then why would you ever consider seeking outside help as an adult?

And if your reaction is- see? He is a violent man! He is part of the problem! He could seek help and won’t because he is a stubborn man that wants to make his problems into women’s problems by relying on his sisters!

Then you fail to understand that my uncle is the way he is because of unprocessed, repeated trauma and betrayal that he was actively discouraged from seeking help to free himself of the cycle and start to heal. And his sisters were the only people in his life that did not harm him in that way, so at this point his sisters and his wife are the only people he trusts when triggers get poked and the pot boils over.

He does need therapy. He’s not likely to ever seek it out. And it’s because he was born a boy that this happened to him, and it’s because he was born a boy that no one was willing to help when he needed it most.

These men are not part of the queer community. They still were made vulnerable, and needed help, and did not get any, because of that same logic that drives these feelings about men not needing to be helped or included or assisted today. It’s not progressive just because the logic is coming from the queer community this time instead of conservative christians.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

As I spoke with other self-idenitified bisexuals throughout my college career, I realized that many, including myself, felt a dose of imposter syndrome in both gay and straight spaces. Whether it be comments from fellow queer folk invalidating our sexuality or the general queerphobia prevalent in the larger society, many bisexuals resent the heteronormative stereotypes imposed on them from both the gay and straight communities. Further research into the erasure of the bisexual community indicated that its impact on the mental and physical health of bisexual individuals is tangible.

The term “bisexuality” encompasses many sexual identities including queer and pansexual. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), “Studies suggest that bisexuals comprise nearly half of all people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, making the bisexual population the single largest group within the LGBT community.” As the largest subset of the gay community, it is interesting to note that bisexuals are routinely discriminated against in the LGBT community as well as in the straight community. Despite being the largest population behind heterosexuals, studies suggest biphobia in all facets of society has facilitated the erasure of the bisexual community to the extent that bisexuals can expect to be systematically disadvantaged regarding their physical and mental health,

The prevalent stereotypes about bisexuality that keep bisexuals from coming out are noted in the essay “Bisexuality and Mental Health: Future Research Directions,” published in The Journal of Bisexuality in 2015: “It has been argued that bisexuality has been delegitimized by negative stereotypes, such as ‘bisexuality doesn’t exist as a sexual orientation,’ ‘bisexuals are sexually promiscuous,’ and ‘bisexuals are confused.’ Several studies have found that heterosexual, gay and lesbian individuals may all have negative attitudes toward bisexuality, indicating that bisexual individuals face double discrimination.” The authors, Persson & Pfaus, assert that bisexuals are hesitant to identify themselves for fear of backlash from all facets of society, a statement I can firmly attest to having been personally asked “Can’t you just pick one or the other?” by both gay and straight people. In a press release regarding a study focused on HIV/AIDS in the bisexual community, published in the American Journal for Preventative Medicine by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, researcher William Jeffries⁠ stated, “Societal biphobia is more prevalent than antigay sentiment.”

Biphobia is prevalent enough to keep bisexuals from coming out to their homosexual counterparts. Historically, homosexuality has been considered taboo and punished with imprisonment and even death; pro-gay movements all over the world trumpet the importance of acceptance and inclusivity, yet gay communities globally refuse to acknowledge bisexuality as a legitimate orientation and discriminate against bisexuals based on this belief. In her article “Inside, Outside, Nowhere: Bisexual Men and Women in the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Kirsten Mclean examined the impact of bisexual attitudes on a group of 60 Australian bisexual men and women, “in terms of their perceptions of, and participation in, the gay and lesbian community.” Analyzing the range of biphobic attitudes within that homosexual community, Mclean’s study attempted to expose how these attitudes effect bisexual participation in said community. She found that, “though some participants were active within the Australian gay and lesbian community, many were not, due to the belief that they would be rejected or discriminated against as bisexual. Furthermore, those who did participate in the gay and lesbian community tended to keep their bisexuality hidden, for fear of being made unwelcome.” I related so much to that sentiment, having been called a “tourist” at a local gay bar when I mustered up the nerve to go with my fiance, a cis bisexual man. We left shortly after, feeling exiled to a life of languishing among the straights at tacky sports bars.

Ostracization from the gay community encourages bisexuals to pursue opposite-sex partners and fade into heteronormative society. A Pew Research Survey conducted in 2013 revealed that 84% of bisexuals end up in hetero relationships. Award-winning bisexual writer Kristina Marusic discussed this statistic, asserting that hetero relationships among bisexuals does not delegitimize their preferences and that the odds of a bisexual having an opposite-sex partner “fall enormously in their favor… the [percentage of the population that is LGBTQ] is actually closer to a scant 3.8 percent. So not only is it statistically more likely that a bisexual person will wind up with a partner of the opposite sex; it’s equally likely that they’ll wind up with someone from the over 96 percent of the population who identifies as straight.” In an interview with the HRC, an anonymous bisexual said “I wish that more people inside the gay community itself would support my decision to call myself bisexual. I am not being selfish. I am not a liar. I am not gay. I am not straight. I am bisexual.” Additionally, according to Mclean, “a large number of gay men and lesbians still flat-out refuse to date bisexuals.” Thus, many bisexuals couple with opposite-sex partners and identify as straight despite their true orientation, as is reflected by Marusic’s statistics.

The idea that there are two exclusive sexualities, gay and straight, has effectively gagged bisexuals, preventing their self-identification in the heterosexual and homosexual communities and ensuring their assimilation into heteronormative society. In her study “Living Life in the Double Closet: Bisexual Youth Speak Out,” Mclean states, “Dominant public discourses endorse heterosexuality and homosexuality as legitimate sexual identities, but do not recognize that some people are neither exclusively heterosexual nor exclusively homosexual.” Mclean interviewed 22 young bisexual people living in Melbourne, Florida. A bisexual woman herself, Mclean employed an interpersonal, interview approach to this research because she was “examining a group that had thus far been both silenced in traditional research on sexuality, but had also, for the most part, silenced themselves.”

There is nothing quite like silencing oneself, no greater discomfort than suppressing an inherent part of who you are. When I was twelve, I was at a large sleepover at a close friend’s house. Her older sister was “watching” our group of a dozen or so girls. At some point, a large bag of assorted liquors was procured. I have always been impulsive: always picking “Dare,” never scared to sneak out and certain in every situation that I was indestructible. As a seventh grader intent on proving my invincibility, I drank eagerly and abundantly. After taking several shots that blazed through my undeveloped chest and sent unfamiliar chills up my spine, I opened my eyes to the stars spinning above me where I lay in the lawn, both exhilarated and terrified at the realization that I was “completely smashed.” My next decipherable memory depicts me sitting semi-upright in the RV parked near the side of the house, the drunken faces of a few of the other girls swimming in front of me as I swayed.

Truth or Dare. I remember thinking, “This should be good.”

I was dared to kiss the girl next to me, a close friend who was as wasted as I was. I recall the nervous flip of my stomach as my lips neared hers. The Dare and I smushed our faces together clumsily. I could taste the vodka and orange juice on her mouth. I found myself falling into the kiss and she seemed receptive. We made out passionately as the other girls leered at us in an inebriated stupor. Eventually, they left us alone in the RV. I woke up the next morning in a crumpled heap on the floor of the RV; my eyelids crunched as I opened them and my lips were so dry they cracked when I sat up and coughed. The Dare was still asleep on the RV couch; last night’s events played through my head as I gazed at her sleeping face. I felt lighter than I ever had, despite having the worst hangover of my existence. I stumbled out of the camper and entered the house; girls were draped all over the furniture, looking at pictures from the previous night and nursing headaches. The room quieted when I entered; they stared at me, their faces inscrutable. I scrubbed my face with my hands to dislodge the various body fluids dried there. Under heavy surveillance, I procured some water and sprawled on the living room floor, head pounding and hands clammy.

“Z, do you remember anything about last night?” Someone asked. I sat up and put a palm to my throbbing temple. “Not really, did anyone get hurt?” I asked, doing a headcount of the girls in the room to see who was missing. Only The Dare was absent. “No..” Another girl piped up, “But you and The Dare like, hooked up.” She giggled anxiously. I flinched at the thinly veiled disgust in her voice, shrinking further and further into myself as I saw it reflected in the eyes of many of the other girls. Instantly, I realized my mistake.

It was a harmless thing to kiss a girl as a dare. It was another, far more heinous thing to enjoy it.

Panic engulfed me as my pubescent brain scrambled to find a way to maintain my position in the social hierarchy of my seventh grade class. Stalling, I sipped my water. I imagined being one of the “dykes” at school, of losing every inch of social capital I’d managed to attain. Frigid tendrils wrapped around my heart and, for the first time in my life, I consciously gave in to cowardice.

I feigned surprise as best I could: “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said, doing a small spit take to really sell it. A titter travelled through the room and girls started talking at once. “During truth or dare!” “You got dared to kiss her and you did!��� “You were literally all over each other!” “She touched your boobs!” Their exclamations overlapped, the cacophony splitting my skull open. I silenced them with a shout of my own⁠— “Oh em GEEEE!” I yelled, burying my face in my hands so they couldn’t see the humiliation there. “I was completely wasted, I don’t remember anything. Did she have as much to drink as me?” I said. I knew that she’d been as drunk as I was⁠ but⁠— as I’d known (and maybe even hoped) it could⁠— the question changed the tide of the conversation. “You’re right,” a girl said from the couch, “she like.. Took advantage of you.”

That was not what I’d said but I let her comment fester as the other girls eyed me sympathetically. They no longer saw a lesbian; they saw the victim of one. My insides clenched uncomfortably and I ran to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach into the toilet bowl.

I felt close to death as I leaned against the bathroom sink, staring at myself in the mirror. I remember my face so vividly: the self-loathing, the repulsion, the guilt and loneliness so clear on my young features as I silently tried to justify what I’d just done. My cheeks were sallow and slick with shameful tears and perspiration as I sweated liquor from my pores.

Not invincible, after all.

The Dare and I’s friendship was never the same. When our classmates made cruel remarks about what happened, I didn’t defend her. I apologized profusely to her after I came out in high school, but I know that wasn’t enough for the trouble I caused her. Though we were just kids experimenting, the reactions of the other girls solidified my denial of my bisexual identity for years to come. I tentatively called myself Bi-curious to a few close friends, but I’d temper it with comments like, “I think girls are pretty but I would never date one.” and “I don’t know how lesbians do it, vaginas are so weird!” My internalized homophobia manifested as a total denial of my bisexual identity when that identity threatened to make me even more of an outsider at my predominately white, conservative middle school. I had boyfriends and a social circle, but suicidal thoughts became a daily occurrence as the hatred I felt for myself deepened.

My experience is more common than I could’ve ever imagined then. After polling and interviewing hundreds of adolescents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) concluded that “bisexual youth were much less likely to be out to their families, friends, peers, and communities” than exclusively gay youth. Only 33 percent of UK bisexuals surveyed by the Scotland-based Equality Network felt comfortable telling their general practitioner about their sexual orientation, and nearly half had experienced biphobia when accessing health services. Though there are many variables that contribute to a person’s ability to come out⁠— including but not limited to social and political climate, familial relations, and personal values⁠— the UK’s statistics raise alarms about global attitudes regarding bisexuality and health concerns for bisexuals.

In the United States, lack of preventative care for queer folk begins in grade school, as proper sex education for students attracted to the same sex is sorely lacking. According to a 2017 report by Guttmacher Institute, of the 22 states that mandate sex-ed, only 12 are required to acknowledge sexual orientations. Of those 12 states, 9 mandate inclusive discussion of the different sexual orientations, and 3 “require only negative information on sexual orientation.” Poorly educated bisexuals are less likely to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases into adulthood. When The Dare and I were exploring each other, I had absolutely no frame of reference for what we were doing and how to do it safely aside from mainstream pornography tailored for hetero, cis male consumption. No lessons on safe queer sex were taught at my middle or high school; it angers me to know that is the norm.

Erasure impacts mental health as well as physical health for bisexual folk: according to the HRC, “Bisexual adults were also more likely to engage in self-harming behaviors, attempt suicide or think about suicide than heterosexuals, lesbians or gay men.” Bisexuals, especially adolescents, were also more likely to engage in risk taking behavior like alcohol and drug abuse, which negatively impacts both mental and physical health. HRC’s 2012 survey of LGTBQ youth found “only 5 percent of bisexual youth reported being very happy, compared to 8 percent of lesbian and gay youth and 21 percent of non-LGBT youth.” The HRC asserted that poor emotional well-being during adolescence translates into bisexual youth being “twice as likely” to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Furthermore, during research regarding the disparity between bisexual health and that of individuals in the exclusively gay and straight communities, the HRC found that “more than 40 percent of LGBT people of color identify as bisexual, and about half of transgender people describe their sexual orientation as bisexual or queer – making these groups vulnerable to further disparities that occur at the intersections of biphobia, racism and transphobia.”

The well-known yet oft-forgotten “Mother of Pride,” Brenda Howard, spent her life advocating against bi-erasure. She said, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’” Until general attitudes in both the gay and straight communities change, bisexuals will continue to repress themselves and feel excluded from both groups. Bisexuals: never let the ignorance of others repress you. You aren’t confused, you aren’t inherently hypersexual and your queer identity is valid. Don’t let anyone, gay or straight, take away your seat at the Pride table.

[fake-wizard]

How did you become a trans terf? This is really interesting!

Thank you for this question because I can now delay watching my lectures for like 30 min. 

I got tumblr my freshman year, started my deep dive into the realm of tumblr’s lgbtqianpd+++ stuff. I did a bunch of ace discourse as an “inclusionist” then as an “exclusionist”, started iding as nonbinary demiboy, ace/aro, he/they, got a binder i think during the winter of my sophomore year and came out to a couple friends as nb. Went more towards ftm. Started dating my current boyfriend winter of my junior year, told him I was id’ing as ftm (he’s bisexual, didn’t matter) and the rest of my friends, changed my name and pronouns socially. Start of my senior year I told my family and had them change pronouns and name as well. My bday is in October, so turned 18 and was going to start testosterone. 

By the winter of that year however, I had been hate-reading a lot of “terf” blogs. And what I found was that I could not argue against what they were saying. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance about it all, repeating the same mantras but knowing they didn’t quite add up. 

Specifically about: If sexuality is based on an internal sense of gender, how can you be attracted to anyone until they tell you what gender they are? If a lesbian sees a woman and she says “i’m ftm” does that mean the lesbian is now a bisexual because they were “attracted to a man” or is a switch supposed to flip and they stop being attracted? If sexism is based on “being perceived as a woman/passing as a woman” then why do butches who pass as men still experience sexism? If being gay is about “being perceived as gay in society” then wouldn’t that make all the homosexual couples historically who passed as hetero for safety suddenly become actual literal heteros? If transmen have male privilege, why are they not represented in politics, are targetted for sexual abuse by straight men, and need access to abortion just like women do? If transwomen don’t have male privilege, why are they the main voices of the movement? They can reap all the benefits of a male life for 50 years, and then suddenly none of that mattered? If me and my boyfriend’s relationship is “gay” now that i id’d as ftm, how come we could legally get married and adopt in any country in the world? I was raised being told I Should like and date men, I never once believed my attraction to men was a sin, and gay men experience the Exact Opposite, so how could we both possibly be gay men? Why do transwomen have male patterns of violence? Why have I only ever heard of stories of transwomen abusing transmen, and not the other way around? Is it possible to only be attracted to the same sex? To say no is to say that it’s possible for all women to like dick, which is obviously fucked up. What is so different about a man and a transwoman that means a lesbian is supposed ot like the latter? Why can’t anybody define women? first woman, then female, then afab, the goalpost kept moving. What is there to being a woman besides being female, isn’t all that extra stuff just stereotypes? When my sister is distressed with her body and denied herself food, or I cut myself, that’s a bad thing because it hurts your body, but hrt and a mastectomy hurt your body, they even risk killing you, but that’s okay? I took a sociology class and it’s clear socialization effects behavior - but somehow magically trans people grow up uneffected by it? If socialization can influence women to wear makeup, dress, and act in specific ways that arent’ innate, and cause higher rates of eating disorders, couldn’t it effect dysphoria as well?

And so much more!!!

And that’s only on the trans side - I also had my eyes opened to the horrors of pornography and prostitution, the rates of domestic violence, and all the other terrible sex-based oppression that women are subjected to globally. There is so much more to being a radfem than the trans issues too. 

So for two years (winter of my senior year to winter of my college’s high school year) I decided not to transition. I engaged with radfem tumblr and talked about all these things with my female friends in person as well, it was like getting a huge weight off my shoulders too. And it really did help lessen my dysphoria to an extent. I came up with a long list of coping mechanisms to employ for dysphoria as well. 

But by this february, I was just so tired of that. I still supported everything I say about radical feminism, about sex based oppression, protecting homosexuals, and the dangers of medical transition. But dysphoria is just this constant painful presence day in and day out, and I pursued medical transition in february. I applaud every woman who chooses not to transition, and ultimately view transitioning as giving in, because I can no longer be a role model to young dysphoric women, who shows them that you don’t need to transition. 

At this point, I love my body more than ever and I can’t imagine regretting these changes really. I will miss connecting with women the way I used to, especially as a woman in science, but the women in my life from before transition will always see me as one of them still, and I appreciate that. 

The way I see it, words don’t hurt me at all, they are immaterial, and as a scientist I value coherent definitions, and I understand the realities of sex. So my goal with transition is to pass as male in society and to alter the parts of my body that bring me distress - I know i’m not literally male. And I think all trans people need to get to the point where they understand that, it really helps mentally. 

And I’ll always think, maybe if i had different friends (half of my friends understand, half think i am or would think i am an evil terf) or was dating a woman instead of a man (i’m bisexual, thought i was hetero in highschool (but called myself a gay man lmao), and dating someone with the same body seems like a big deal in handling dysphoria), if i tried harder with my coping mechanisms, if I saw a therapist who understood all this and didn’t just encourage me to do whatever I wanted, maybe i wouldn’t be transitioning. But I’m happy now, so that’s what I focus on as mattering to me, and that’s what I want to pursue. 

I do caution others from doing the same though. 

Also tangent at the end here, I call myself “trans” because I’m medically transitioned. To me, “cis v trans” makes no sense and is sexist. But “dysphoric vs not dysphoric” or “medically transitioned vs not medically transitioned” make more sense to me. 

[saybees]

Okay, so I’ve struggled with my gender identity literally since I was a kid. I always used to wear boy’s clothes and I would play with the boys and I had only boys as friends and I was A Boy, okay. But I wasn’t.

Once I hit teenage-hood and my best friend came out as a lesbian I started to learn more about sexuality and gender and it was not too long after that that I realized I was not straight and I eventually came out as pan.

Then when I was in uni I was taking a course called Religion and Sexuality. My prof was a Jewish rabbi (he was one of my fave profs and I adore the man and the class was bomb). One day we were talking about gender stuff and the prof had pulled up that comic that went around here for a while about gender. I can’t remember exactly what it was right now, but it was a popular post here and when he put it on the big screen I recall that I had seen it before on tumblr, but I hadn’t really connected with it like I did that day. I shed tears in class that day, quietly, by myself. I realized, at that moment, that I’m not cis.

I had mostly ignored a lot of those feelings, or I tried. One day I decided I was going to go to the mall and I was going to dress like a boy. My at-the-time boyfriend was all for this. He had come out as bisexual in highschool (after we broke up a year later he came out as gay). He took me clothes shopping and I bought two pairs of men’s jeans that I still have to this day, but am too self-conscious to wear. I had bought a cheap binder off the internet and I wore that to the mall. My boyfriend was extra clingy to me that day (because I looked like a boy and he was gay, in case you hadn’t put those things together, but I digress).

Since then I have not played much with my gender identity. I pushed those feelings down because I didn’t think it mattered. I dated another boy for 3 years who treated me like garbage and I never talked to him about gender stuff. He would never understand and he would be nasty to me about it. So I continued to pretend that Yes I Am A Woman.

I have told my current partner that I do not identify as a woman. He is not concerned with it. We don’t talk about it much, but I think about it a lot. I think about what it might be like if I transitioned to male. I think about what my face might look like if I was on T and what my voice might sound like. I think about the body hair I might gain. I think about being free from the constraints of being a woman in society.

My whole life I have pushed these feelings aside as best I can because it would do me no good to come out as trans and transition. My family would disown me and my parents would tell me all kinds of horrible things. They are so painfully Christian and old fashioned and closed-minded. My sister would support me and perhaps some of my cousins might, but overall I would lose a lot more than I would gain. I would never be able to afford a transition anyway. It would be more time and money and energy than I can afford to spend.

Sometimes I hear about how much happier a person becomes after they transition and that losing their family was a price they were willing to pay. Those people are more brave than I will ever be.

It does break my heart that I will forever be stuck in this female form and never get to know what life might be like if I could be the man that I want to be. When I was a child I often wished I could shapeshift into a boy. I had dreams about being a boy. I still have dreams about being a boy.

I don’t know if I will ever be willing to pay the price that transitioning will cost. I don’t know if I could risk losing almost everyone in my life. I don’t know if my partner would stay with me, and I know that if he wouldn’t then I’m better off without him, but still, the thought of possibly losing the man I love is more than I can bear. I don’t particularly like my parents and I know they are not really very good people because of the many biases they hold, but I do still love them and they are my parents and to lose them would hurt more than I care to admit.

I don’t think about all that I might gain from transitioning, but instead think about all that I might lose. Not that I have much to begin with, but that’s exactly it. I already don’t have much. If I lose even more than I already have then I’m even more alone.

I don’t know. I just feel very alone and lost and frustrated. I don’t know what to do or who to talk to. I’m afraid to reach out to anyone about this because I fear judgement. I fear what they might say to me. I don’t know who is a safe person to talk to. I have talked to my bestie Ryan about it a little and he’s an angel and is incredibly supportive of me. I adore him to the moon and back. I just don’t feel super great about the future. Or the present. I hope I can learn to accept myself and accept the gender I was born with, but right now, and for years, it has felt like such a burden.

[spookymultimedia]

ITS MY BLOG AND I GET TO INFODUMP ABOUT MY CHARACTERS >:D

Disability and gender experience

CW for ptsd, panic attacks, su*c*de [I will talk about at the end if you still want to read this and will add another warning] , gender dysphoria, mild transpobia and abelism both internal and external

Disability

Lyla has osteoarthritis that is due to Burns' pretty fucky genes. She found this out when one evening they literally couldn't get out of bed for anything due to intense pain in the knees. Waylon had to come and get them and when he got there Lyla was pretty much on the brink of tears. Lyla then got a diagnosis. At first she was frustrated because it changed everything about his daily life. He was prescribed pain medication that dulls the pain to a manageable degree and was recommended to use a cane to get around during mild flare ups. It initially upset her. He thought she was too young to be going through something like that and hated having to limit how much they work. They later realized that stigma was ableist and bullshit and eventually sucked it up and decided to just embrace his new way of life and let her Grandfather help him learn how to cope due to experience with chronic pain [which means its lifelong] . On some days they get around just fine with pain meds but on bad flare up days they have to use a cane or chair to get around. She eventually mastered working with the aids and can even pop a sick wheelie on his chair. The pain still gets to them and it really sucks but he does swallow his pride and allow themselves to rest and be supported by others.

Sometimes with her partner Ashley he'll get snuggled and taken care of by her. Lyla is pretty dang light like his grandfather and Ashley has no problem carrying him around. Lyla secretly loves being carried. He's pretty fucking privileged to have Mr.Burns allow her disability support. Lyla is very privileged. Sometimes they like to make his cane/chair look cool with spray paint and whatnot. Very cripplepunk. Lyla probably found a disabled community of people his age to help her feel less alone.

Abbey has undiagnosed innatentive type adhd and ptsd that she gets full on panic attacks from. Neurodiversity was something taboo and not talked about in her childhood and didn't even realize she was struggling more than she should be. As a child she struggled paying attention to long boring sermons/lectures and was shamed alot for it. She didn't understand how she occasionally made people uncomfortable with very weird and unconventional topics she talks about. Loud sudden stimuli and intense buzzing overwhelms her and can make her cry. She didn't do very well in school and barely graduated high school. She prefered watching her favorite movies and playing dolls with her sister over studying. She's extremely sensitive to fabric and only has certain types of blankets and clothes that she can stand. She absolutely hates the feeling of fabric draping against her legs too much so sometimes she either wears tight-ish pants and avoids skirts/dresses. She hates sitting and walking in dresses. She never wanted to wear them lol they feel bad to her. She refuses to sit up straight and will cross her legs. Abbey hyperfixates on animation, cinema, and dollhouses. She likes binging movies and making doll projects. She tends to bond with people through movies and model making. She struggled to make friends outside of her circle and just stayed friends with people she grew up with at her church. They all escaped that mormon hell. Abbey struggles with her emotions and usually gets overwhelmed too much which can often leave her drained and tired. She has an intense oral fixation and uses stim necklaces to chew on, before she would chew on her sleeves, pen caps, pens, her hair, her shirt, her sleeves, bottle caps, ect. She was a very curious kid and tried to eat playdough, dirt and grass lol. None of them where good. She is decent at working at the video store and feels happy with her job being related to her interests. Because hrt therapy is so expensive she doesn't feel she can afford any kind of therapy or medication and it's very overwhelming for her to have to prioritize one aspect of her health over another. But with financial support from close friends and her boyfriend Tim she gets by ok.

Gender

Lyla assumed that it was completely normal to have a fuzzy fluid gender due to believing gender is a lose concept for most people. He didn't realize most people have static genders that don't change at all. It wasn't something they never questioned. Later in Lyla's 20s they started to learn more on gender and realized she wasn't as cis as he thought they where. The term genderfluid fit his experiences perfectly. They never felt still in their gender. Even if they felt more towards one gender over another it wasn't a firm feeling. It felt fluid and lose. As a teen they dressed in goth fashion and was a self proclaimed tomboy. But they realized tomboys or most gnc women didn't dress up very feminine on somedays or even wear dresses. She loves wearing dresses and she loves wearing lose jeans and a lose men's tee.

Lyla's gender tends to shift weekly but it may present or change depending on who they're with or what media/environment they're exposed too. For example he might feel more feminine with certain friends and more masculine with strangers. Sometimes they feel more comfortable being agender or a nonbinary genders with certain people such as their partner. Sometimes they only use certain pronouns with certain people. He/she/they at work, she/he with parents, she/he/they/it with siblings, she/he with some friends, and she/he/moths/rots, rats, its with their partner. Lyla will either tell people upfront on pronouns for the week or use a pin.

Most of the time clothes don't dictate their gender that week but there are some key differences. Lyla will not wear dresses on more masculine days and may draw on facial hair with a mascara brush. On more feminine days they dress more like a nature witch and loves floral stuff. They are more likely to have fun with makeup on those days.

Lyla doesn't want to undergo any kind of surgery or hormone therapy. Lyla may bind a bit with a sports bra but doesn't really feel uncomfortable with his chest and mostly doesn't mind having visibile tits on masc days.

Abbey always felt different from her birth sex and felt very frustrated learning she wouldn't just naturally grow into the chest and genitals she wants growing up. It was an extremely taboo and forbidden subject but despite that something inside her soul knew she was a girl. Her parents pushed very strict gender roles on her growing up and causes her to struggle with her femininity as an infertile woman who could not stand dresses. It made her feel a bit lost but she later felt better knowing other women cis and trans who don't conform to gender roles.

Abbey gets intense physical dysphoria from her crotch and for a long time she had to just deal with it until surgery was an option. Some days she could tolerate it but some days [especially when she got on estrogen and felt very hormonal] it was unbearable and a wet dream or boner would trigger a depressive episode that consists of cacooning a cover, watching her favorite movies and long naps. It was a toll on her mental health that was already pretty bad. But emotional support, understanding and patience from her friends and boyfriend helped her carry on though it. She eventually does get bottom surgery and it's a HUGE weight off her chest.

Abbey usually dresses in sweatshirts, graphic tees and cute jeans. Whatever's comfortable on the skin. She wore tank tops more when her tits grew in. And they grew in pretty dang fast and big and ah it hurt. She's a c cup which she loves but God they where tender for awhile. Double puberty isn't fun. Her transition was a bit rough and long being low middle class but she pulled through.

TW for su*cide. Leave the post now if this triggers you.

Abbey is a suicide attempt survivor. She suffers ptsd from her own husband taking his life leaving her a widow. She felt trapped and tired in her unbalanced emotions and uncertainty of ever feeling okay or getting the medical attention she needed and attempted to OD. Fortunately she was with Timothy who immediately called an ambulance. She was very tired and at first a bit disappointed she was still alive but also a bit relieved. She then had to cope with feeling suicidal.

[aidenhollow]

( KAT MCNAMARA, CIS-FEMALE) - Have you seen AIDEN EVELYN HOLLOWAY? EVIE is in her SENIOR year. The Journalism Major is 24 years old & is a SCORPIO. People say SHE is CARING, COMPASSIONATE, JEALOUS and SARCASTIC. Rumors say they’re a member of WINTHROP SOCIETY. I heard from the gossip blog that EVIE has a two-year old daughter that is back home with her parents and she hasn’t told the dad about the child. She makes money by being a burlesque dancer .  (KT. 21+. PST. She/her.)

Hello! My name is KT, Im 28 and currently awaiting a transplant! Im pretty chill, whenever Im at appointments or anything, Im always lurking on mobile and I also have discord! Which will be a better way of getting a hold of me, because I don’t ever log off out of that thing. Uhmmm, Im getting ready to get a bone marrow transplant but I have my computer with me and will bring it to the hospital once I go in. Also, feel free to message me and hit me up for plots! Here a few things on Aiden <3

Bio:

Aiden Evelyn Holloway was born to Jackie and Hank Holloway, making her the youngest child and made her younger than her twin brother, Adam by five minutes. Their older three brothers Jack, Kinsley and Felix were excited to have a pair of twins in the family.  You can say that the Holloway house was filled with laughter, crying, screaming, cursing and they got hurt a lot. Aiden and Felix were known to be double trouble when they were younger, since Felix was the youngest boy and Aiden was the youngest, the two of them bonded rather quickly. They would chase each other in the yard, while Jack and Adam worked on their cars in the garage while Kinsley worked on his motorcycle and the two youngest sometimes would climb their parent’s apple tree. In which, resulted Aiden getting her hand split opened and the four boys rushed their sister to the hospital, where their mom found out that they were climbing the tree after her and her husband told them not to. All of them ended up grounded, the three oldest brothers had to take the youngest ones to school and picked them up from their after-school activities and had to come straight home.

DEATH TW

You can say that the Holloway family had the perfect life, until one rainy night where their father was coming home from his office when a truck rear-ended his car. Jackie was working twelve nights straight that night and had to see her husband on a stretcher. Throughout the night, they didn’t know if he was going to be able to make it.  That December, they had to bury their father, and nothing was the same again. Aiden noticed that her mom worked overtime a lot more, her older brothers picked up other jobs and her double trouble buddy ended up distant and cold. She knew that Adam was struggling, she was struggling herself. As she grew up, Aiden often turned towards superheroes, skateboarding and anything that would catch her attention more than five seconds.

DRUGS, DEATH TW

About three years after Hank’s death, Aiden started to notice that her mother would wear makeup and bring a duffel bag to work. She started to follow her with her bike, until she saw that her mother was going on secret dates and seeing someone new. She sped home and told her twin brother about what she had seen, and j was asleep in front of the tv. She would go onto the roof to look at the stars, hoping that they would some kind of answers and then she would go on a search for a party, knowing that she can get score some drugs and alcohol. Nothing would help her cope with the loss of her dad, but that didn’t mean she gave up trying. She met a guy named Roman, who you can say is the “bad boy” of the school and had been living with his grandmother. She wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, it was more of a toxic relationship and she was addicted to it. They would often fight for two days and make up like they never said hateful words to each other. However, that all stopped when Aiden spotted Roman with another woman and turned out that he was also dating the girl. So, that kind of made her straighten up a bit, along with her brothers holding an intervention for her to get help to cope with their father’s death.

PREGNANCY TW

Two years later, Aiden graduated from high school with a GPA of 4.0 and full ride (Thanks to George for helping her out a bit) to Yates. Aiden didn’t want to leave without her twin, so she asked Adam to tag along and he got accepted into University of Vermont-Johnson, that way she wouldn’t get home sick. Aiden also got accepted into the Winthrop Society, where she felt that she belonged and called home for the next four or five years. However, one thing that Aiden didn’t plan for, was having a daughter at twenty-one. One night, during a heavy make out session in the parking lot of the Sugar Shack, a burlesque club where she was working, she snuck away with some guy after her shift and ended up having a one night stand. She quickly slipped out of his car when she noticed that he was on the phone and headed straight to her car, with her clothes in her hands. Fast forward nine months later, she welcomed a beautiful baby girl named Odette Evelyn Holloway and promised that she was going to give her a great childhood like she had when she was younger. She never contacted the father, since she doesn’t remember the name and figured that it would be a waste anyway, she accepted that she would be a single mother and knew that she could do it. Especially with the help of her brothers and friends. However, she knows that Yates has a reputation to uphold, she made a deal with her brothers that they act like Odette is their baby sister in public but behind closed doors and to close family & friends, she’s Aiden’s daughter.  Recently, Aiden’s been sending money to her brothers and Odette, to make sure that they’ll keep a roof over their heads while she’s studying Creative Writing. She also thought of a book idea, which can be considered as a Young Adult novel.

 WANTED CONNECTIONS:

sex money feelings dies - a one-night stand but on top of that a frequent hook up. every time they say that they won’t hook up with each other again. it’s not healthy, you both want past the relationship and let it go, but the moment y’all see each other from across the bar or at a party you just know you’ll end up in each other’s bed again. -OPEN

 i saw you in a dream - they were close. so close. thought there would never be a time they wouldn’t talk, but one thing lead to another and Aiden’s left thinking about them when it’s just her and her thoughts. without them in her life really hasn’t been the same, but is it worth getting past what happened to pick up the phone and call them?- OPEN

painkiller  - best friends forever. literally. this person knows Aiden inside out and she can’t see a day without them. they’re essentially her painkiller. She tells them everything and them back to her. they can tell if she’s feeling down just by the way she send her snapchat streaks that morning. She can’t see a day without them.- OPEN

 call your girlfriend - this one is pretty messy. one of them is in a relationship, but there’s a huge flirtationship between the muses. the flirtationship essentially becomes to both of these people attached to each other and maybe... even in love. but there’s still that relationship that’s in the way... YIKES- OPEN?

Looks a lot like a tragedy now- details will come soon <3- Miles

perfect places- party buddies but make it you guys just getting lost in the vibes because you don’t want to deal with life. it’s a good friendship. you guys get the thoughts in your head to go numb, but at a point it’s like what’s the point ?- OPEN

will add more if needed <3

Interesting Facts on Aiden:

Wears a leather jacket, along with sometimes combat boots but she’ll wear tennis shoes.

Has been working as a Burlesque dancer for three and a half years, goes by the name Cherry Bomb. Her parents doesn’t know that she’s been getting her money from there.

Has a two-year old daughter named Odette Evelyn Holloway, born on the 9th of December. She makes sure to Facetime her every night and ends up reading her favorite book to her, which she has a lot of favorite books.

Has a rough time trusting people right away because of past trauma, but has a few people who she trusts with her secret and her life.

Sometimes skateboards to classes or to her brothers’ house, learned how to skateboard back in her middle school days.

Won’t pass up the chance to put someone into their place, though she comes off timid when you first meet her. 

Has a rose tattoo on her right hip, wanting to get a sleeve on her left arm, but isn’t for sure.

Wears wigs when she’s working and covers up her tattoo with makeup. 

[rylredrants]

Pandemic, Politics & Personal Life

I just broke up with my best friend of 5 years. 

She supported me through three major breakups in less than a year, showed up for moves, meltdowns, and meals. We treated each other as sisters, and to me it meant “I love you even when I don’t like you.” There are things about her life and beliefs that I just flat out don’t like, but I compromised and allowed room in my life for those differences.

She is a devout Christian. I’m a card-carrying member of The Satanic Temple. She is married to a border patrol agent, and has repeatedly said that having children separated from their parents at the border is a consequence of their actions. I’m horrified that there are children in literal chain link cages being neglected, assaulted, and traumatized in a way that is simply unthinkable. She reminds me that Obama built the cages.

When her step-child came out as non-binary, she had a meltdown over the fact that she had always wanted a daughter and now the kid is asking to be called by a masculine name. I’ve worked with PFLAG (Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays, the local LGBTQ+ support network) and done education about gender, sexual orientation, and alternative relationship structures where I emphasize the privilege I have as a cis, straight woman (who personally embraces traditional gender roles).

I compromised and allowed room in my life for some pretty big ideological differences. But this year has changed everything.

When the pandemic began, I was living alone for the first time ever. Her home was my home. I cooked in her kitchen, co-hosted her gatherings, brought my laundry to her house rather than use the machines in my apartment complex. I fed her cat when she was on vacation. I had the code for her front door, and at times “shopped” from her stockpile in between shopping trips. We went grocery shopping together the last 2 times I was in a grocery store.

Her husband crossed a line with me after I allowed a loosened boundary in our relationship, and I did my best to not take it out on her. But when we planned ‘girl’s night’ and he decided to call out of work and be at home I hated being there. It became a problem but being me, I felt it better to sidestep things than be direct because I knew that the damage would be irreparable and I didn’t want to end our relationship. I was compromising my own comfort in an attempt to keep the peace.

When she got a head cold and cancelled a laundry and Masked Singer night, I felt abandoned. But I knew it wasn’t personal and I just let it go. When I came over and found one of her husband’s other partner at their house, I felt like my quarantine bubble had been invaded and there were suddenly more risks than I was okay with. 

She replied by trying to rationalize things like who that outside partner was in contact with, but I stopped feeling safe there. I felt like I’d lost my second home. But I didn’t speak up.

She had to go back to work (in retail) but she insisted that she always wore her mask everywhere because she knew how I felt about it. Then she told me that she had plans to go to a local Republican meeting of some kind. She’s always known my view on the politics thing, and this year the Republican Party has proven to be the bigger of two evils by miles. 

She said, “Please don’t disown me” knowing that the political thing may be big enough to possibly disown her.  

I relayed the story to my ex-husband. They used to hang out and go to movies together, but he always knew about the differences in our home and hers. He felt the same as I did about things. A little while later, he shared a picture from the Republican event and there she was naked faced in a small room full of senior citizens. He was horrified. 

I was that much more certain I’d made the right choice in not socializing with her in person.

One day, after a couple months without hanging out she messaged me saying that local COVID numbers were down so “Can we be friends again?” 

But that’s not how this works. Local numbers go down, people stop being diligent and then numbers go up again. It’s exactly what’s happened all over the country this fall. I was not going to be one of those people, but I agreed to do the video chat thing.

Her birthday rolled around and she messaged me upset because her husband had gotten the wrong kind of cake. My immediate reaction was to check my pantry for cake supplies and make plans to bake her a better cake and drop it on her porch the next day. 

We set up a time to have a video chat the next morning… much earlier than I’m typically up and coherent but she’s an early bird in general and I was making brunch for my boyfriend and his son later that morning. I got up and sat at my desk for over an hour with my messages unread. She finally messaged me about how sideways her morning had gone and I did my best to not take it personally. I didn’t bake that cake.

I went to Mexico for my birthday in October. It was the first time I’d been anywhere since the pandemic began. The first time I’d been to Mexico, first time I met my boyfriend’s mom, and the first time I ate in a restaurant in months.

In Mexico, people were wearing masks everywhere. They had footbaths in every doorway where someone took your temperature and squirted sanitizer into your hand before you crossed the threshold. I felt safer in Mexico, terms of COVID exposure, than I felt anywhere at home.

The day after I got back, she video called me in hysterics. She sobbed that I’d gone to “dirty, nasty Mexico” but wouldn’t have coffee with her after she’d “begged” me for months. She went on about how low the local COVID numbers were as a way of saying that I was being overly cautious by staying home like I’ve been. 

She was in a hotel room at the time. 

She and her husband were on an anniversary trip to Las Vegas, having flown threw Phoenix. They were about to head out to a cigar bar. But the local numbers! Seriously.

Today I got the message asking if we were still best friends. I softballed a lot of it, but it ended with her saying “whatever” and that she wouldn’t take responsibility for my choice to abandon her without telling her how I’d felt. And she unfriended me on Facebook.

Part of me feels really shitty. I’ve been processing this feeling of grief and loss of that relationship for months. It’s been exhausting. But if I’m being honest, it’s a bit of relief that it’s over.

I’ve been questioning if I was justified in my stance. 

Were these differences so big that they couldn’t be ignored anymore? Am I over-reacting and cutting one of the last people in my life out that I called my family? Or have I just gotten to the point of exhaustion where I simply don’t have the emotional bandwidth to keep overlooking and compromising my own beliefs?

It feels like the latter and as much as it hurts, I know that’s been one of the tales of 2020 that’s being repeated over and over again. The stakes have gotten too high to compromise or minimize some things. 

It’s all too serious to just live life like there’s not a deadly pandemic. Like there hasn’t been a total upheaval of our political system. Like those of us who stay home and mask up when we don’t have a choice, forgoing all the things that were “normal life” like anniversary trips, restaurants, community theater… all things she’s been doing, unmasked and unaffected all year.. we are the ones that are over-reacting. Nope. I’m not going to be gaslit like that. 

Wear a damn mask, people!

Stop putting your need for a haircut or brunch ahead of the reality that people are dying en masse and suffering long-lasting damage because people can’t be bothered to put a piece of cloth on their face when they go grocery shopping.

There is no reason for people to be making the pandemic political, but those who do only add to the personal impact it has on all of us.

I’m exhausted.

[ariadenassau]

AMERICANA TASK 001

LAYER ONE : THE OUTSIDE (OOC)

name: Ariadne Marie de Nassau 

meaning of name: Ariadne is a Greek name, meaning “chaste” or “most holy”. Marie is a French version of Mary, and the meaning is debated, but can mean “sea of sorrow” or “rebellion”. Her last name, de Nassau, is literally “of Nassau” — she is a part of the House of Nassau. 

aliases: Aria is her nickname from childhood and her preferred name. 

place of birth: Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. 

race: Caucasian 

nationality: Dual citizenship with France and the United States. 

gender: Cis-female

sexuality: Mostly heterosexual

profession: A freelance journalist

eye color: Dark brown

hair style/color: Straight, chestnut brown hair to her shoulders, usually partly braided or in a plait.

height: 5’4” (164 cm)

clothing style: Simple, tailored, and clean-cut, Aria dresses in neutrals and soft materials. She's partial to creamy ivories and tans as opposed to bright colors, with the occasional baby pinks. The only jewelry she wears is a simple gold pendant and a sapphire ring, her birthstone.

best physical feature: Her eyes — both soft and piercing at the same time, the eyes are truly the window to Aria’s soul. 

appearance: Very soft and muted, yet luxurious. Aria is from wealth, which shows, but she never flaunts it. She doesn’t wear much makeup and avoids showing too much skin. She looks professional and pretty, but not someone you’d turn around and look at twice in New York. 

weight: 110 lbs (50 kg) 

complexion: Fair during the winter, slightly tanner during the summer, as Aria darkens easily under the sun. 

build: Slight and petite, she is quite skinny and small, without very many curves. 

voice: Gentle, she rarely speaks over a shout. She doesn’t like to yell and upturns the ends of her sentences, as if she’s always a bit unsure of herself. She has a slight British/European accent from her upbringing abroad. 

LAYER TWO: THE INSIDE (OOC)

fears: Spiders, roller-coasters, and disappointing her parents — although she is working on that last one, 

guilty pleasure: The Bachelor. Aria will never admit to watching them, as she finds the entire idea trashy and degrading, but somehow, she turns it on every week when its airing with popcorn and a glass of wine. 

biggest pet peeve: People who chew on their food loudly (bad table manners in general, really.) 

ambition for the future: To find out who was behind Abby’s killing and write an entire expose on it. 

one bad habit: Popping her pimples and skin blemishes.

one good habit: Washing the dishes immediately after she uses them.

one habit they can’t break: Her daily iced coffee (or two) from Starbucks.

one they’ve broken: Chewing on her nails. 

LAYER THREE: THOUGHTS (OOC)

first thoughts waking up: “I need coffee.” 

what they think about the most: Deep-set anxieties about her future and identity as an individual person. 

what they think about before bed: All the errands and things she needs to accomplish tomorrow. 

what they think their best quality is: Intelligence and writing ability. 

what they think would completely break them: Finding love, and then losing it. 

what they think was the best thing in their life: Discovering that she had a long-lost sister, and getting to reconnect with her. 

what they think was the worst thing in their life: Losing that long-lost sister. 

what seemingly insignificant memories stuck with them: Her childhood piano teacher smacking her fingers when she’d play the wrong notes. 

LAYER FOUR: WHAT’S BETTER? (OOC)

single or group dates: Neither — Aria hates dates. 

to be loved or respected: Respected.

beauty or brains: Brains. 

dogs or cats: Dogs. 

coffee or tea: Coffee. 

showering in the day or night: Showering at night. 

taking baths or taking showers: Taking showers. 

tv or movies: Movies. 

writing or reading: Writing. 

platonic or romantic love: Platonic.

iced tea or lemonade: Iced tea. 

ice cream or smoothies: Smoothies. 

cupcakes or cake: Cupcakes. 

beach or mountains: Mountains. 

LAYER FIVE: DO YOU? (IC) 

lie: “Yes — it’s a way to get information that I want out of people. But I never lie to hurt anyone.” 

believe in yourself: “I hope that I do. I think that I do. Maybe not.” 

believe in love: “I think love is out there, but I don’t know how to find it or if it even exists for me.” 

want someone: “Maybe.”  

work so that you can support your hobbies or use your hobbies as a way of filling up the time you aren’t working: “Well — neither. Writing is both my work and my hobby. So I guess I lucked out.” 

have something you’re reluctant to tell people: “My ‘royal’ status. It doesn’t mean anything.”  

have an opinion about sex: “It’s something lovely that can make two people’s bonds stronger, but...  I don’t know. I don’t think I have a strong opinion either way.” 

have many friends: “I have many acquaintances from work and school, but close friends? Probably not.” 

have as many friends as you want: “Yes. I’m a bit of a loner, you see.” 

have something to make a scene in public about: “God, I hope not.” 

have something to give your life for: “A hundred percent — my career, my writing, and figuring out what the hell happened to Abby.” 

have major flaws: “I… get too attached to people. It goes along with having such little close friends. The friends I do have, I keep very close to my heart, which means when I lose them… well, my world falls apart.” 

have something you pretend or try to care about: “Um — politics?” 

have an image you project: “I think I try to come off as more self-confident than I am. I’m also very polite to most people, even if I don’t particularly think the person is deserving of it.” 

have something you’re afraid of: “Isn’t everyone afraid of something?” 

think you’re polite or rude: “Definitely polite.” 

LAYER SIX: FAVORITES (IC) 

favorite color: “Hm. I love baby pink, but I also love cream and ivory as well.” 

favorite animal: “Polar bears. They’re so majestic!” 

favorite movie: “Lost in Translation. It was such a beautifully shot movie!” 

favorite game: “I don’t play very many games.” 

sound: “Oh! — the sound of sunny winter mornings back when I was in school in Gstaad. You can hear it when you open a window; the chilly breeze, the sound of snow underneath people’s feet… I miss it.” 

song: “It changes, really, but I can always listen to anything by Frank Sinatra.” 

band: “Is it cliche if I say The Beatles?” 

outfit: “Well, it certainly depends on the season, but for the fall and winter, I love my tan crepe pants, an ivory cashmere turtleneck, and my Acne leather boots.” 

place: “Switzerland. I spent most of my years there, and the landscapes are so beautiful.” 

memory: “I think the first time I met Abby — I was so nervous, and I just saw her, and we talked for hours in her room afterwards. Her parents made hot cocoa, and we just sat there, laughing, crying… it was so wonderful, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” 

person: “Abby. Or my mentor back at Harvard. She was the one who helped me curate my writing to what it is now.” 

show: “I don’t watch much television.” 

LAYER SEVEN: AGE (OOC/IC) 

age: 29

date of birth: September 2nd, 1990

day your next birthday will be: Thursday.

zodiac sign: Virgo.

age you lost your virginity: 18.

does age matter: “Age certainly matters if you’re younger, but once you pass twenty-five or so… who am I to judge?” 

LAYER EIGHT: PERSONALITY (OOC) 

moral alignment: Neutral Good. 

enneagram: 4 - The Individualist

four temperaments: Melancholic

tropes: the soiled dove, the lost soul, the contrite, the taciturn

archetypes: The Sage/Innocent 

tarot cards: Temperance

compassion: yes. 

empathy: yes.

creativity: yes.

mental flexibility: at times, no.

passion: yes, for the right things. 

stamina: yes. 

physical strength: not much. 

battle skill: not at all. 

agility: a bit. 

strategy: she’s always planning for her next move, so yes. 

teamwork: yes, but she needs to be the leader. 

strength: so much emotional strength. 

intelligence: yes. 

wisdom: partly, but still trying to find it. 

dexterity: none; Aria has a rare muscular dystrophy that degraded the muscles in her hands and fingers. 

constitution: a hundred percent. 

charisma: only on certain occasions; otherwise, Aria is quite aloof. 

LAYER NINE: FINISH THE SENTENCE (IC) 

i love: “... good food. Can you blame me?” 

i feel: “... lost.” 

i hide: “... my feelings, my emotions, my thoughts.” 

i miss: “... Abby.” 

i wish: “... that I could know where life is taking me.” 

i hate: “... people who think they can take advantage of my kindness.” 

LAYER TEN: FAMILY (IC) 

relationships: “I had a boyfriend. It’s awkward to talk about really, but he dumped me. Quite an awkward situation.” 

parents: “My father is Prince Jean Louis, sixteenth in line for the throne in Luxembourg. My mother is Princess Charlotte Julie, formerly Charlotte Julie Vanderbilt.” 

siblings: “Just Abby, who was fathered by my father and another woman. She was given up for adoption when she was a baby, which is why I never met her until I grew up.” 

children: “No — although, maybe in the future.” 

favorite childhood memory: “Oh — my childhood wasn’t that fun. But I guess, early on, my parents did take me out on trips on the boat in lakes in the South of France. Those were always nice.” 

favorite childhood toy: “My stuffed bunny Juliette. I still have her.” 

embarrassing story: “I fell asleep once in a bowl of yogurt in class. I was so tired staying up studying for an exam, that during it, I was eating my breakfast, and just… fell asleep.” 

favorite family member: “Abby. I’m not very close to my parents, or anyone from my family, really.” 

[dcphnx]

➰ ( CHLOE BENNET, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER ) *✧.:°░｡ —- is that DAPHNE ?! you know them, right? they are the 1214 year old GHOST ( former seelie ) !! they’re known for being LOVING & PROTECTIVE - but i’d be careful if i were you because they’re also UNPREDICTABLE & VOLATILE.

someday i’ll stop....someday....unfortunately today is not that day. so anyways here’s my newest kid, daphne!!

trigger warnings: kidnapping, experimentation, torture death, murder, long af?

she was born sometime in the winter of 804bc, though she doesn’t know the exact date. her mother was a seelie noble, no one knew who her father was and her mother was perfectly content to keep it that way - she “didn’t need some fool coming in and “helping” her raise her daughter”.

she spent quite a bit of time practicing seelie magic - from helping plants grow to different glamours to various charms and even bard magic - not because she wanted to be good ( she honestly couldn’t care less about being “talented” ) but because she honestly enjoyed it.

she perfected a sort of spell that would keep a flower blooming and healthy forever - so long as it remained in the possession of the person she grew it for. she only gave them out to people she cared very deeply for, and it generally took her about a year to get one ready.

she enjoyed spending time in the mundane world but also absolutely loved being at home in the faerie lands and would often venture back and forth. 

she took many lovers over the years.

she had a thing for trying to brighten the lives of anyone she met - she hated seeing people sad or hurting or upset in any way.

her good nature and soft heart ended up landing her in a very, very bad situation, which i’m not going to go too in depth on right now but! 

she was kidnapped, kept as a sort of slave/experiment by a mundane man that had the sight.

she was tortured by said man, experimented on, along with several other downworlds that he’d collected & kept in some remote cabin in the woods

this man ended up buying hestia in an auction to replace one of his dead experiments

he died not terribly long after that, and since no one else knew they were there they were just sort of stuck?

daphne ended up reopening a wound and picking off a piece of bone that she used to unlock her cage, hestia’s cage, and the cage of a werewolf

unfortunately she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it so she just told them to run and leave her.

that’s when amaryllis found her. she’d moved out to lean against a tree and stare up at the sky bc it seemed like a better place to die, but the seelie queen swooped in and rescued her, taking her home and nursing her back to health.

daphne was incredibly grateful and came to adore the queen even more after having met her in person? like “wow she’s such an amazing woman i can’t believe i know her”

after taking several years to fully recover she ventured back out into the mundane world sometime in the early 80s, where she met adrian at a club and the two began a relationship of sorts. they lasted until adrian started to spiral again, bc “i love you, but i’m not fool enough to think i can stop you and i don’t have the stomach for all this bloodshed. i’m sorry.”

after that she spent most of the 90s and the early 2000s in faerie, until she happened by a half-fae child while out in the mundane world one day in 2005.

that child was everett collinsworth. she started visiting him regularly, becoming a big sister of sorts - teaching him to tie his shoes, playing tag and hopscotch, teaching him how to make tiny daisies bloom.

that all stopped abruptly several months later when ev’s father caught them and made daphne disappear. at first he tried bribing her which she quickly turned down, then blackmail which failed bc he couldn’t find any sort of dirt on her ( other than the literal like from playing in the mud ojsdfjoa ), and when it was clear she wasn’t just going to leave - he had her killed.

her dead was not quick or painless - it would’ve been, had she not jumped straight into fight mode when she was attacked. instead she fought back, desperate to survive by whatever means necessary - she hadn’t avoided death once just to be cut down thirty years later, right?

wrong. after a long and bloody fight daphne finally went down when an iron dagger made its way between her ribs to pierce her heart.

for a moment the world went dark, and then she was awake again, standing over her own battered body. she wasn’t confused - she knew with perfect clarity that she was dead, and she. was. pissed.

her death has changed her drastically - she’s loud and full of rage and honestly kind of a poltergeist like she’s not very soft at all unless you happen to be one of the people she remembers and cares about from before her death?

for the last 12 years she’s been trying to find her killer, as well as looking for someone that can bring her back. 

[ithisatanytime]

I ramble on about effeminate youtubers and how the man is keeping me down, no formatting just raw fucking truth bombs and red pills

   There is a youtuber i watch, i like him as a person, i think hes funny, and i swear its like we grew up in the same neighborhood, his references even the really inside ones, i get. we grew up in the same region sort of. but hes your typical bugman, obviously im watching someone play video games on youtube, so its not like im a fucking lumberjack or anything. but i cant stand his political takes, literally have to shut the video off sometimes im so annoyed. hes always talking about getting the vaccine like hes stoked about it, and how well he followed lock down rules and so on. literally never met a dude in real life like that, not once in the entire year, except maybe in march of last year when this all first started happening. but i had a realization about him today, i am always obessed with obscure differences between men and womans behavior, i find it fascinating, the more slight the difference the better. i remember a few years back saying spotify was for girls, and getting in a bit of an argument with my sister about it, we looked it up and at the time (i believe this is no longer the case) ten percent more women than men used spotify, so not a big difference, but its the smaller ones that interest me, because its crazy to me that i can perceive the difference when its so slight like that. but anyway he used spotify, took the covid thing seriously, still watches television, and ninety day fiance specifically. basically if i saw this guy on paper i might presume he was a girl. i always considered city men a little more effeminate, the bugman stereotype is essentially just a feminine man, and this kind of reinforces that in my mind. also these kinds of men, were the only men allowed to get popular on youtube, youtube has been caught numerous times manipulating their search algorythm for politics. long story short, if i decided i wanted to be a lets player, and i put all my effort into that, and i was good at it too, you would never find me via the youtube search function and i would never get suggested to you. society as a whole promotes these kinds of men by filtering them out of colleges for instance by making liberal brainwashing classes a requirement for basically any degree now. a man who is actually intelligent literally cant sit through those classes without losing their fucking mind. this last part of this post, i doubt anyone will actually believe, but its actually what im most certain of. filtering smart men especially smart white men, out of respectable society is an absolute requirement to maintain a system based on lies like we have now. its not easy to see through the racial propaganda regiment we are all subjected to, and to see past the black vs white, left vs white, gay vs straight, man vs woman, cis vs trans, atheist vs christian, matrix of dichotomies our jewish establishment fostered in order to keep us divided, basically any man over 120 IQ would see through it eventually so long as they were interested in biology or history. as a result, i hate to say it, but they push women through the system, and now they are the majority of all degrees obtained even though less than half use their degrees towards a career. this is so much worse than people realize, its an absolute fucking disaster. it hurts men by flooding the job market with college degrees, and it hurts women by fooling them into spending their prim reproductive years being propagandized to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for a degree  most of them will never use. but it filters out gifted whtie men, along with affirmative action, which is literally just preferential treatment for anyone who isnt white, the literal only example of institutionalized racism that actually exists.

[femvulvaphile]

let’s break that weird shit down, then

“We’ve been here since the beginning. I know your hate group, your little Nazi sub-sect, has this lie you like to spread that we suddenly spring into being from whole cloth in the 1970s, but that fighting all through history? WE’VE. BEEN THERE. FOR ALL OF IT.” cool but that’s literally not what I said. transwomen’s and women’s fights are inherently different. Sex-based oppression doesn’t DIRECTLY affect transwomen: you will never be shunned for menstruating, you will never be afraid of having your prepubescent vulva mutilated for the sick pleasure of a men five times your age, you will never be afraid of being impregnated against your will, or of miscarriage of a wanted child, or of all the pregnancy and birth complications who are still killing women all over the world. you will never know what it’s like to have men catcall and grope you when you’re nine years old just because your boobs already began to grow.   

"The demonization of trans women is a relatively recent invention in the grand scheme of human history and it is one that you have helped re-surge into the modern world.” that’s bullshit. the “demonization” you’re talking about can refer to one of two things: either the conservative view that transwomen are “deviant men” (which I definitely agree is shitty), or the radical feminist view that transwomen retain their male socialization and so, as a group, can represent danger to women (which is backed up by research, btw, and the amount of “receipts” in the form of news reports of transwomen hurting and murdering cis women AND in the unending threats and harassment that radfems receive online and irl).

"The idea of ASAB and tying it to gender in some inviolate and unchangeable way is something colonizing white people brought to this country, and others they invaded.” cool but that’s bullshit? pretty much every culture on earth has a history of identifying biological sex and applying sociological roles to them. that’s not a white invention, that’s not the fruit of colonialism. the concept of “gender” as behaviors and roles based on reproductive function has existed for as long as people have existed. some cultures have stricter rules about them, others are more loose. some cultures refuse to acknowledge non-conforming people as their “original gender”, and then you have things like two-spirit or hijras.

"Whether you realize it or not, and…let’s be honest, you probably do, your actions, your hate group, is just a laser-guided subsection of what fascism and white supremacy stands for.” wtf tho. fascists and white supremacists and nazi want a “pure” world without “lesser” groups, like black people, jewish people, homosexuals, gnc people. how is female-only radical feminism the same? are you aware that plenty of radical feminists are woc themselves, and even jewish? are you aware that the vast majority of people you’d call “terfs” aren’t even american, or english speakers? we literally just want men to stop fucking murdering us.

“Without colonization, without white supremacy, your argument, your constant, hammering on “male” as if to conjure some demon from the word, would mean nothing.” male violence has been a reality in human history. it’s not a theory, it’s not up to debate. it’s a fact. you know it is, according to your original post talking about men posing the most danger to transwomen. women all over the world are victims of men. it doesn’t change whether we talk about it, or use the words male, men, amab.

"I don’t mean that in the rhetorical sense, I mean literally, your words would not have a cogent basis without that.” again, bullshit. male violence is everywhere, in every culture, in every part of the world, regardless of how much contact with europen colonization the culture has had. japanese men are violent, russian men are violent, french men are violent, english men are violent, american men are violent, cuban men are violent, argentinian men are violent, brazilian men are violent. nazis didn’t invent misogyny.

“How fucking dare you invoke my dead sisters, how fucking dare you bring up that most of us getting murdered are PoC, while peddling Nazi approved propaganda.” uh. it’s “nazi approved propaganda” to say that women face violence from men and therefore need safe spaces from them? and I brought up the groups that murdered transwomen belong to because YOUR GROUP likes using them, using your so-called dead sisters, as argument points, as proof that a white middle class educated men with a dress and lipstick is somehow more oppressed than any woman on earth.

“Meanwhile, asshole,” oh cool name calling when I wrote a relatively calm and non-offensive post. “I was talking about SHARED SPACES. LGBT focused communities, the ones you are perpetually try to focus trans lesbians out of because you view us as the worst of what you already consider the worst.” yeah, maybe we wouldn’t need to do that if “lesbian” transwomen could stop demanding so much from women, or if they’d stop claiming protagonism when they don’t even experience SAME-SEX ATTRACTION, which historically has been, you know, the entire defining poing for “lgbt” people.

“You didn’t even notice it, did you? You were just launching into Pre-Written Terf Rhetoric #5 without so much as reading what I actually. Fucking. Said.” dude, you’re calling me a nazi literally just because I said women deserve female-only spaces and transwomen should create their own safe spaces away from men instead of demanding entry and protection from women.

"Your insistence that we’re “straight men” only serves to try and push us out of those communities as well." you have more in common with straight men than with lesbians, tho. you don’t experience same-sex attraction, you’re not female, you can impregnate a female lesbian (depending on transition specifics, but let’s be honest: the big problem is the transwomen who claim “there’s no need to need to transition bc my dick is a woman’s dick”), if you’re not “passing” you don’t need to fear homophobic violence from strangers.

“Jesus fuck, like did you even notice that was the fucking point? Like your shoving us aside as non-women is already fucked up but that wasn’t even the point of this particular post.” the point of your post was vilifying women who question the notion that “transwomen are exactly the same as women”. the point of your post was putting the blame on women, “terfs”, for what men do.

"The idea that men view us as also men is so beyond laughable I can’t even properly convey it.” they view you as “DEFECTIVE” men. they definitely don’t view you as women. men are violent towards you as a result of toxic masculinity - a non-conforming male is a threat to their notion of rigid male-female roles. the violence towards you is closer in motivation to the violence towards gay men, rather than the one towards women.

"But I’m just going to say: You don’t live our lives. You don’t live our experiences.” yes. just like you don’t live the lives of women. which is exactly why I said transwomen do deserve safe spaces, but not by invading female-only safe spaces.

"If you don’t know how wrong you are it’s because you’re incapable of treating our words as anything but the words of the target of your hate and thus discarded.” you’re lumping me in with nazis (I’m a latina gender-non-conforming lesbian, I’d be raped and killed by actual nazis faster than you could type “op is a terf”), refusing to actually ACKNOWLEDGE the things I said, bringing up way more arguments than the ones on your original post, and then blaming me for not being able to read your mind.

“The power you hold is that you have been aligning yourself with right-wing christian groups,” bullshit. again: women can’t even get men to stop raping us. how exactly do you think we have any power, any voice, over THE most misogynistic men on the planet?

"the power you hold is that your ilk has been speaking to audiences wherever they can find them in academia for decades,” again, bullshit. women have been in academia for, like, two years, in comparison to how long men have been dominating every public and private space.

"the power you hold is that you went into the communities that might have helped us stay alive and sowed false accusations to turn others against us,” b u l l s h i t. YOU came into OUT communities demanding we treat you as equals, when we are observably NOT equals. sex-based oppression doesn’t affect transwomen the same way it does women. men’s violence is distinctly different based on your sex.

"the power you hold is in helping, insidiously, to uphold the institutional biases that keep us marginalized, alone, and dying.” the same can be said of modern trans rights activists, tho. you’re all contributing to the strengthening of gender as a hierarchy - and not because you need to conform to survive. no, your original message (the one we can still hear from drag queens and transvestites from stonewall, for instance, that your kind likes to claim as “transwomen”) has been corrupted to the point where people look at a feminine gay boy and tell him he must be trans, he must transition, he must be a woman because he likes makeup and is attracted to men. your kind tells parents of vulnerable children that their little boys and girls will KILL THEMSELVES if they don’t take hormones as soon as possible. your group tells lesbians they need to suck dick to be proper lesbians. your group supports (and breeds) more murderers, rapists, and pedophiles than radical feminism could. your group tells women of color, lesbians, survivors of all sorts of male violence, that they’re the problem. you tell us we’re even worse than men. you tell us to die, you threaten us with rape, with baseball bats. you punch sixty year old women who dare take a picture of people trying to silence women. you rape and murder a twelve year old girl. you rape and forcibly impregnate a female trans person, and then brag about it. you support rapists and pedophiles being housed in women’s prison because of their “gender feels”. 

you tell women to shut up about their own experiences. you tell women they’re not the “right kind” of women. you tell women they’re not woman “enough”. you tell them to sacirfice themselves for yet another male.

“And yes, before you even start, I’m blocking you. I don’t debate Nazis or Nazi bootlicks.” still nowhere near being a nazi, but alright.

bonus:

“also do they just have a terf blog name generator somewhere, i swear all terf blogs read like a bunch of synonyms for vagina and spellings of rad and possibly a wolf reference or phile or fetishist, all put in a random name generator” that’s hilarious to men because I literally saved this url after I seeing an asshole claim that lesbians aren’t allowed to call themselves lesbians if they don’t suck dick, and that they’re actually vagina fetishists. the person used -phile on something, I can’t recall what, and I immediately thought “hmm, yes. I love vulvas. I’m a vulvaphile. A female vulvaphile.” 

[laundryandtaxes]

hey, i hope this isnt too invasive but im struggling w my identity and id like ur persepctive. how did you know u were a butch lesbian and not a transman? im attached to my lesbian identity and my relationship to womanhood but i also often feel dysphoric and want top surgery. how do i reconcile these things that i feel are diametrically opposed? how do i know i am a butch lesbian vs a transmasc nb lesbian person?

Thank you for sending this message and reaching out- I know it can be hard to talk about, I’ve been there myself as someone who disidentified for several years, and I’m glad you reached out to talk about it rather than hold it in. Just to get this out of the way, I don’t think these things are diametrically opposed at all.

The first thing I think you should consider is whether you really consider womanhood an option. I know that sounds a bit silly but so many of us absolutely did not realize it was actually, really, physically possible to grow old as women, to have sex as women, to have friends as women, because so many of us either had no friends like us or, in many cases, had friends like us only to see absolutely all of them stop identifying as women. I think there are a number of forces pushing in the direction of disidentification- it is hard to be a gnc girl and this leads to many of us not having solid senses of self as adults, it is hard to not see anyone who looks like you want to claim community with you specifically as women and this can make you feel like you literally are not real, it is just materially more appealing to be perceived as a non gnc man than a gnc woman and if you can pass 100% of the time it’s an appealing option because it means a better paycheck and safety when you walk down the street and so on, it hurts when your friends literally don’t treat you like they treat other women, and in many queer circles right now it is popular for people to straight up either ask when you’re transitioning or tell you that being a boring cis woman is regressive and not even possible if you see yourself as masculine, and the proper thing to do is to at least change your pronouns and pick up a gender identity that’s not regressive. This is a really confusing mixture of social impulses and material impulses, but I don’t think that we should always see the drive to disidentify as an individual decision with no social input having happened- there are lots of forces that make a lot of us, butch women especially, give up on a womanhood which people keep telling us we are doing wrong. So I would ask yourself what you think there is about women that means you can’t be one- there’s nothing wrong with being a woman who isn’t feminine, or even a woman like myself who primarily sees herself as a masculine person, and I think perhaps more now than ever we all need to at least be told that this in an option.

The second thing I think you should consider is what those terms mean to you and I think you should understand that none of them have one agreed upon definition. The way that I see myself is absolutely the same as how some people who identify as transmasc see themselves, down to my experiences with dysphoria, and honestly I have had conversations with more than one trans man who’ve told me our experiences and senses of self are more similar than different . I think the idea that you’re obligated to pick a term and then, if you should happen to pick the wrong one, you’re suddenly cut off from any community with women and lesbians is stupid and cruel. I think it is cruel to call straight trans men lesbians en masse but it is undeniable that there have always been and will always be trans men who still see themselves as very connected to women, who see themselves as living a certain kind of lesbian experience, etc- and the drive among those people to retain communities that have brought them up is not nasty male predatory behavior, it’s a desire to keep community with people they see as similar and important to them, and that’s fine. So this whole issue of picking the wrong term and then being shunned by lesbian communities of course has some basis- if you plan to date other lesbians then transition will shorten your options because there will likely be physical changes and social changes that most lesbians are just not going to be comfortable with, whether that is calling you her boyfriend or you growing facial hair, whether you see yourself as living a kind of lesbian experience or not- but when it comes to just retaining friendships and friend circles and not pretending you don’t relate to butch writing anymore, I don’t think that is a predicament you should be facing at all. Culturally, you probably will right now and that’s sad and unfortunate and I think encourages people to draw lines along identity politics rather than who you feel to be your people. But as far as I’m concerned, if lesbians are your people then we’re just you’re people and that’s that, and that space is generally there in some capacity if you want to claim it. But really the primary differences between myself and a “transmasc nb lesbian person” are literally just the terms we pick to describe ourselves (which is minimally important to me personally) and, in some cases, transition itself. To be perfectly clear though, I don’t believe there are hard lines between terms that refer to gender identity anyway- they’re terms that make us comfortable or uncomfortable, but one experience can go by a million names and you never know except by talking to individual people. If you want to call yourself an nb lesbian that’s totally fine, just know that your experiences are shared by lots of women who just call themseves butches and that you can have community there if you want it.

And then, lastly, I don’t think transition (social or physical) is a worst case scenario at all, or something you should see as a last ditch effort. It will come with its own set of challenges but honestly you’ve already faced many of those challenges as a gnc woman, and the others you should hopefully find communities of other people to help you out. In some communities, you will certainly be pushed away if you start seeing yourself as trans in some way due to concerns about you suddenly becoming a totally different person who wants to infiltrate women’s spaces. I think that’s stupid and, ironically, transphobic in its implication than transition will somehow make you a worse person than before. But in many communities, you will absolutely not be pushed away and I don’t think you should be. This is a matter of your comfort and your health, and I hope the women around you respect that.

This got long, sorry, but I wanted to give you a full answer because I’ve been there myself and didn’t call myself a woman for several years (I know almost no butches who didn’t disidentify at some point, including some who either transitioned and then stopped or are just living stealth as men still while reidentifying because that’s the cleanest option for them) and I think this sentiment is really common among us for right now, but really all I needed to read and respond to is “im attached to my lesbian identity and my relationship to womanhood” because that’s it, then! No matter what you call yourself I’ll consider you a sister or sibling of mine in some capacity, but I want to stress that there is nothing about you that is not true or cannot be true of at least some women, and if you want space here, which you just told me, it is here for you whether you’re dysphoric or end up choosing top surgery or whatever. If you know that your people are here then I’m quite happy to have you as one of us, whatever that means to you and whatever makes that easier for you. I honestly get the feeling that, like many of us, you are asking for permission to hold space with other women and other lesbians, and you absolutely have it. Much love your way, and keep in touch somehow!

[kingdomofimaginedhearts]

(1/4) Hi! Could I request a match up? I'm a cis straight woman w/ blonde hair (short bob) blue eyes, 5'3. INFP. quiet around people but more animated with friends. Try to be polite. Kind. Will go along with that others think most of the time. Will always help my friends and family. Loyalty is incredibly important to me,I consider myself a loyal person. Willing to give several chances. Stubborn and persistent at times but a bit sensitive. Lacks confidence sometimes with a tendency to doubt

Hello! Sorry it took so long! Though I feel like I have been saying that with every post I nmake even if there is only a few at the moment. ^.^’ Anyway here is your match-up, hope you like it and tell me what you think of it. You sent so much information that helped a lot thank you and I appreciate it as I know hopefully given you a detailed match-up that you would like. I don’t know if I just repeated myself then, but anywho let's get on with you match-up!

Friendship match (Woohoo!)

Okay so to start will be who I see could be you friend in the kh universe and I think that you may get along with all of the girls, some more then others, excluding Larxene who is a character who I think you should stay away from as I don’t think she would be very nice of caring to you, probably bully you in a sense of who easy you are to have emotions and things affect you, and I think she could also use the fact that you are easily forgiving to continue, but anyway this match is about friendship! And let’s get on to that!

Kairi:

Okay so as I said I think you would get along with the girls, and Kairi is one of them. I can easily see her being on of you closes friends out of them all, and she probably would most likely introduce herself to you first, due to how quiet you will be in the beginning. I could see this happening when you guys would be younger and I picture you guys imagining different stories and adventure to play around with you high imagination, and having many laughs doing so. I can see Kairi liking how nice you are and how loyal and helpful you our the your friends and family. I can see her liking some of your stubbornness as it will so that you won’t get pushed around as easily then other who would most likely have their heart on their self, but does appreciate how you are willing to forgive and give chances. She will understand at times that you will need time alone, and would always try and bring you up when you are feeling down. She wouldn’t care one bit about you swearing sometime finding it funny at times, and I can see her also prone to swear at time especially playing fighting games, which she may get a bit competitive over, but she will most likely join you in playing games.

Namine:

Namine is the next one on the list, and I consider her to be like your drawing buddy, as you both draw and I think it would be a quite a calming time with her as you may just around a draw in a quiet space, just enjoying the presence of each other. I can see her liking how kind and polite you are, as well as you loyalty which I consider an admirable thing to have. She may be surprised at you swearing and may not really like it, but that's only a small nitpick in the sense. I somewhat also she how similar you are in the way as I can see Namine also having a bleeding heart (as you put it) at times and also wearing her heart on the sleeve and I can see you bonding over it as it nice to have someone like that, that understands because they have it as well. I can see her try and cheer you up when you put yourself down as she would know that you would do the same for her. I also see her watching you play rpgs and her edging you one in trying you to get all the things to fully complete the game and her just watching you.

Aqua:

With Aqua I can see her being one of the friends that seem more like an elder sister. She like the other would admirable how nice and loyal you are and how you always willing to help your friends and family, and she would happily do the same for you. She will always be there for you, yet she will still give you your space because she understands how important that can be. I can see her protecting you from anyone who may think of taking advantage of you bleeding heart or how you wear you heart on your sleeve and if anything happens to upset you she would be the first one to comfort you, though like Namine she may not like your swearing that much and would be a surprise as well at first. She would be the one to try and help you make your dream come true and may enjoy baking with you. Aqua will also be the one to deny the negative feeling you feel towards yourself and always tell you what the best things about you are.

Xion:

Xion is of course the last of the the girl, and I see her being you ice cream buddy, if it wasn’t clear. She like the other will like your kindness and loyalty, yet like Kairi won’t care about you swearing. I can see her understanding the feeling of putting yourself down, but she will always tries to change that in talking about you positively. Though I can see Aqua casually baking with you, I can see Xion, wanting to learn how to bake from you and have you teach her your ways, while also enjoying play video games with you as well. She will understand when you need space as well, and will be interested in knowing how far you in reaching your goal of getting your dream job.

Sora and Ventus:

SURPRISE! There is more friendships! Yes I can see you being friends in particular to two more, and they are quite similar so I place them together hope you don’t mind. Okay! So let’s get on with these two. Like everyone in this friendship list they both like how kind and how loyal you are, and honestly they won’t mind you swearing as long it’s not at someone, though it’s always surprising to here someone swear first at times. They both would like how you willing to give chances to people and admires how you want to help your friends and family. They both would be up for testing out or trying you baked goods and agree to get ice cream with you. Both would indeed play video games with you as well and try and laugh and make sure it’s all a good time. I can see Ventus getting sad when he see how you look down on yourself and would try cheering you up, like Sora would do also. I can see Sora being interested with you drawings, and even more intrigued if you don’t like showing them to him. Sora would mostly likely be the who wouldn’t understand that you would need some time alone and instead think that you might just be upset and would want to know what’s wrong, so he could cheer you off, while I think Ventus would understand. I also believe that both of them would try to help and push you into getting your dream job.

Relationship Match

Axel:

Okay so I will be honest it took a while to find who I would think would be your match, and at the beginning I was tempted to maybe even slip Ventus or Sora in, but then I saw them much more in friends, and as I was going through the information you gave me, in the way I do things, I started to think of Axel at lot and then thought he would be a good match for you because he will see how kind you are as a person and how loyal and trusting you can be. I can see him being surprised at how many changes you would give someone and how you can forgive them. He would like how you where you heart on your sleeve being true to yourself, even if at times you go with what others think. He would like how stubborn you are because it shows that you are passionate for the thing you are stubborn for. I believe he would actually enjoy you swearing because you not listening to the people who say stop swearing it’s not ladylike, and I can see him admiring that about you. I can see him also admiring how you care about your friends and you family and want to help them out. Which I see Axel to also care for his friends, though to me, his ways may not be the best way to go about it and it could cause problems in a relationship as well, because his way of caring is protecting and he might keep important information a secret from you because it might affect you in a negative way, like hurt you, but I believe he is learning that makes it worse in a sense and may need help with that, which I think is why you being able to give him chance so he can would be good for him cause he does it out of the goodness of his heart, like he would also do things that may not be good for him to do and is wrong for his friends as well, because I see him as insecure and sad person at heart though he hides it with his exterior, and I think knowing someone who is kind, loyal, caring and helpful will be good with him. That being said it’s also why I would see him getting quite sad when you talk down upon yourself because I see him looking down on his self as well and can relate and will always try to make you feel better, even offering to get you your favourite ice cream, which I can see ice cream being a pastime of yours if it wasn’t already obvious. I can see him always being by your side, in the non-literal sense, and will understand when you need time for yourself. I can see him having similar love language to your through physical touch would be the top one, just so he can physically that you are there, but then I believe words of affirmation would be the next. (I am somewhat tempted to try and roleplay the characters taking the actual quiz to find out, but I dunno.) When it comes to you hobbies I can see him being interested in them, maybe trying to peak at what you are drawing, and maybe even trying out helping to bake something with you one time. (I have not yet decided if being surprisingly good in the kitchen or him being terrible in the kitchen is my headcanon yet, slightly drawing more to surprising good and I don’t know why) Also He would most likely enjoy playing video games with you, or you playing them and he is just casually falling asleep on you bed as music plays on the background, with ice cream wrappers all on the floor.

And with that I am done! I really hope you enjoyed it and like #I said in my last match-up, didn’t expect to write as much. Anyway! Please tell me if you liked or hated it, if it made sense, or if there is a spelling mistake, but hopefully you enjoyed.

Literally 3 pages in google docs, wow, I am sorry people just scrolling past this.

~Mod Lea~

[youcanrantifyouwantto]

To those who get it and those who don’t:

To those who don’t get it:

We are obviously all entitled to think what we want to. It’s truly the beauty of America. You may not have thought this women’s march was important, and that’s okay for your life. It wasn’t okay for mine. I needed this march. I needed it to show so many women that they are not alone. i needed it to show them that they have fighters and protectors right alongside them. I needed it, and it worked for me.

Please don’t tell me it wasn’t important, because trust me, it was. You probably weren’t there, so you don’t know how great the experience was. You had your experience, and I had mine. Mine was good for me, and yours was what you wanted. I got to see my wonderful, beautiful friends and family feel like they weren’t lost anymore. I got to see women of color, women with disabilities, trans women, women from other countries, and even men of the same get together because we all wanted to support each other. So don’t say this wasn’t important. The love is real.

I keep seeing you bring up women’s rights in other countries, like we don’t understand our privileges in America. We do understand them, but we’re also being threatened by our government. We’re being shown that being gay, being a woman, being non-white, or being transgender could all become more difficult, when it’s not exactly easy to begin with. We’re being shown that sexual assault doesn’t matter if you’re powerful. We’re being shown that being Muslim or black is going to label you a threat. We’re being shown that women are going to lose the ability to choose what we can and cannot do with our bodies. We’re being shown that healthcare is only for the wealthy and healthy. We’re being shown that the LGBTQ community won’t get the same respect as the cis-gendered or straight people. We’re being shown that even if you’re working hard and been here your whole life, if you aren’t born here, you’ll be sent away. For some people this could cost their lives. A bully is in power, and it is only going to inspire more bullies, some who will use violence. So maybe you’re safe, and these other countries have it worse, but for some people in America, it’s going to be worse.

You also say Trump hasn’t taken away anyone’s rights yet, so protesting is stupid. The march was of a preventative nature. Everyone has heard what the new administration would like to do with healthcare, and how they have addressed women and minorities. We protested on his first day in office to show him that there will be a huge resistance to the laws and policies we feel are wrong for this country. We don’t want what he wants, and we intend to show him and his cabinet and his congress that we won’t take it lightly. We will be here. We are here. We were here.

To the anti-abortion group, you can be anti-abortion and also pro-choice. Maybe you can really say there is no circumstance that you’d ever get an abortion, and for you, that’s fine. However, a woman should have the right to choose what goes on in her own body. Be anti-abortion by fighting for better healthcare. Be anti-abortion by fighting for better ACCESS to healthcare for poor women. Be anti-abortion by fighting for better sex education so everyone understands how to properly prevent unwanted pregnancies. Be anti-abortion by supporting better birth control access and research. Be anti-abortion by preventing rape by advocating for true consequences no matter the status and teaching your sons (and daughters) not to rape. All of these things will make unwanted pregnancies and abortions decrease. Most of all, don’t tell a woman who is not yourself that her choice for her life is wrong. She is not you. Maybe her health or body can’t carry a baby. Maybe she was raped and cannot mentally or physically have the child. Maybe having a child results in her death. But most of all, maybe it’s none of your business because what goes on in her body is hers.

You also like to say you’re not a victim so you didn’t need a march. We had to march to show the people who want to hold us down and make us victims that, in fact, this is not the case. We are strong. We rise. They are trying to portray us as whiny and helpless, but we just empowered ourselves by coming together. We are not victims. Nothing about what we did, said, or showed was out of weakness or fear. We created our own strength when we were made to feel like we mattered less. We don’t matter less, and we just wanted to show them that. So we marched. 

For you, maybe there was no reason to march. Maybe you’ve never needed healthcare to an extreme extent. Maybe you haven’t watched your own people unjustifiably die at the hands of people you’re taught to trust. Maybe your parents were able to teach you that anything in possible. Be glad they taught you that. For some people, life isn’t always about being anything they want because they just need to make it to tomorrow. Sometimes people aren’t told they can be anything. Sometimes people are portrayed as the bad guys in life when really they’re just scapegoats for an underlying problem in a country who forgets the working class. Sometimes people are brought up in environments that aren’t supportive. Sometimes people have to start working when they’re 14 (or even younger) because food isn’t available regularly, and then their education suffers because they’re just trying to survive. Sometimes people don’t have access to hospitals or healthcare or mental institutions that actually diagnose what others are just calling crazy. Sometimes people come to another country because they need new opportunities to live a better life, but the true process of being accepted and becoming a citizen is expensive and difficult. Sometimes people grow up being told it is unacceptable to be who they are. Be very grateful and very happy that you lived a life where education and care were provided. Not everyone in America lives that way. We march for them.

We could all use some empathy in life. So maybe this isn’t about you. Maybe it’s about the DACA students who have their education threatened or the LGBTQ community who feels like their own government hates them. It’s about our Muslim sisters who are too often not included in the feminist mold. It’s about my sisters of color who still have to tell you their lives matter. You’ve probably never experienced what it’s like to be them, but what you should do is listen to them. Listen to their experiences and what they want in life. Your experience is your own, and there are millions of other people in the world with stories to tell. Just listen.

One day I hope you realize this women’s march was for you as well, regardless of if you were there or not.

To those who get it:

I’ll keep this part short. You understand why I marched. Most likely you were marching, too. At the very least, you were there in spirit or voicing your support as you watched the marchers across the world. To you, I want to say thank you. I want you to never give up.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you this wasn’t important. We came together in true solidarity. While the march wasn’t perfect, and maybe we had some of our own issues, guilt, and judgments we need to work on, we still came together to show our government that we will not stand for the policies that infringe on our rights. Don’t let someone tell you we didn’t do anything. This was important to me. It was important to you. It was important to nearly four million people in the United States. No one can tell you it didn’t matter.

I don’t know about you, but the MILLIONS of people getting involved (not to mention the rest of the world telling us they are with us) made me feel stronger than I have felt in quite some time, especially since November 8th. The election had me defeated and losing hope. I went to anti-Trump rallies. I’ve called and emailed my senators. I signed petitions, but nothing made me feel as powerful as marching alongside (figuratively and literally) all of you. You give me strength and hope. There are more of us than there are of them, and we will resist.

I am a straight, white, cis-gendered woman. I know that this presidency and the policies that are threatening our country are not going to affect me very much. I could lose my free women’s exams and my free birth control, which are not good things, but I will probably not fear for my safety. I will not fear for my life and whether or not I can step outside without judgment or hate. People won’t look at me differently. They won’t openly hate me just because they see my face or my skin. I don’t wear a hijab, so no one will scream hurtful and ignorant words into my face. I can hold my boyfriend’s hand in public and not even think twice about it. I don’t have to painfully deal with the fact that my president has bragged about sexual assault because I’m not a survivor. All I have is that I am a woman with a little meat on her bones who has been told many sexist things in her life about the way she looks and the way she thinks. I didn’t march for myself. I marched for you.

I want you to know that if you are forced to register under this administration, I will register with you. If you aren’t allowed to love who you want to love, I will fight with you. If you are shown and told that you don’t matter, I will tell them that you do. If you are being blamed for being a survivor, I will refocus the blame to the real problem. If you are being told this isn’t your country, I will open my heart and my arms to welcome you.

You inspired me deeply. You made me strong. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and everything that I am.