#ive never seen someone go on a post about ''social norms work differently in different areas and here's why!''

[pieofdeath]

ok you should shut the fuck up <3

[burnedbyshoto]

@infinity2639 essay was really well made, it points out a lot of very true and concerning things, you should take a look at it.

for background, I wrote this chubby shouto just as a way to practice. it was done with the intentions of only being read by forty people at maximum honestly and it did pretty well for something I wrote in less than an hour, except I had one particular nasty comment from @infinity2639. now I won’t always say that comments are nasty, but they held no restraint in telling me that I was in the wrong for writing something like that - which of course they’re entitled to their opinion, but seeing that they were the only person to have this opinion i sought out how to improve on my writing because they spoke of how simple it was to fix. they then wrote a 21 paged “essay” which held no actual commentary on how to avoid writing such things, but instead ripped into every sentence and every word and chose to explain how it affected them. since it was a very me, me, me essay, I figured it was best to ignore it because I learned absolutely nothing from it other than the lengths people go to. so... consider this my response, and don’t come back asking for more details because I will not give any more.

so aside from the fact that the essay was written entirely on the basis that this one person decided to continue to read something that obviously triggered them instead of simply clicking off and realizing that this fic was not for them, let’s address these true and concerning things that they “pointed out.”

first and foremost this was a drabble, it was written on my phone and due to the nature of the content I went as far as to ask many people on how I dealt with the issues involving self image when you consider yourself to be fat/chubby/obese. I knew the dangers of what i was writing because yes, i’m not “qualified” enough to write on it from readers perspective, but I figured that maybe I could handle it from shouto’s. I got only positive reviews and feedback so I figured it was okay to move on.

this essay of theirs was obviously very, very personal - to the point where I will go as far as deeming it as being gatekeeping (this was supposed to be an essay on how to properly write on the topic of being self-fatphobic & writing healthy relationship dynamics, not a rant on how much they hated me). this was their opinion and in no way shape or form will I put them down for feeling this way. however, I will say if it made you uncomfortable yet you continued to read, it is not my fault nor shall you pin it on me.

you control your exposure to the content you come across.

the fact of the matter is that infinity and their supporting team of people are those i’m clearly having issues with right now, so it does little to make me believe that this is an actual issue and not boiled over emotions surrounding the ordeal on outside, uninvolved drama. i will admit that those own defensive emotions of mine are unwarranted because if you feel so strongly about my one work it doesn’t matter where you’ve aligned yourself, so i do apologize for initially not liking you - but seeing what you wrote and who you ranted to in those screenshots, i guess i wasn’t far fetched in my initial stance on you. the biggest thing again is that you decided to read something on chubby!shouto, you decided to continue to read through a fic that so very made you uncomfortable to the point that you were having panic attacks, you decided to finish it. I didn’t make you, I didn’t force you. when fics make you uncomfortable, click out of it. it is not my job as a writer to display only honey sweet intentions and if you’re expecting that, unfollow me.

moreover, i’m not an expert on this entire psychological thing - and I will admit that the only intelligence I have on it relies on things ive read, content i’ve watched, and my own personal feelings. obviously it wasn’t the best, I never have ever claimed to be someone who perpetuates only the cleanest and healthiest things even if I try to be well informed on the things I write because yes, while I don’t think you should learn from fiction, I understand that there are some people who do and I try to keep those in mind. the only thing I was trying to do was come at the fatphobic standpoint from a different angle. personally, if I say i’m fat, I don’t want people telling me that i’m not because I know the truth if I am or not. to me, fat has always been equated to being ugly/uglier. of course social norms today are evolving, but being fat is only deemed attractive if you are one curvy bitch, and I know for a fact that is not seen in every single person, so I tried a new approach. at the end of the day my opinion still is that being fat doesn’t make you ugly, and if that’s still an issue for you, are we really sure that i’m the fatphobic person here??? cuz it sounds like maybe it might actually be internalized in you.

but... it’s just.... concerning to me that the only people with your issues regarding my chubby!shouto post is basically you and only you. in the time it was posted I have gotten only positive reviews and anons. plentiful of anons and accounts have thanked me for my portrayal of the topic of being fat (after all, I was not discussing or debating the issues and technicalities of being fat, chubby, or obese) and going so far as telling me that your essay was complete bullshit, which I felt no reason to answer because still after all this time I keep my haters feelings in mind.

and i’m actually not a med student :( sorry that you esteem me so high that you believe that at 20 years old i’m already in medical school - so no, I don’t know the ins and outs of all of these things and i’m sure old doctors probably will fatshame and be much more fatphobic then I ever will be because again topics of being fat were different back then & fat itself isn’t universally applicable per person per case because everybody and person is different. people who have bmi’s far greater than mine are healthier and more fit than I am which is what matters at the end of the day. fat does not equate to health and beauty after all.

now the issues with the abusive relationship tendencies I guess you can pin that on me and my inability to elaborate my thoughts and intentions. verbally attacking was meant to be teasing but it didn’t sound correct/I couldn’t remember the word for teasing when I wrote it. i’m not always entirely articulate and I do fumble with my words and phrasings - as does anyone who writes for fun and not for a job - and if it hit you that deeply, i’m back to my square one thought!!!!!

stop reading things that make you uncomfortable :) it’s really not that hard at all, I promise.

[myfriendpokey]

clearance sale

clearing out some of my backlog of opinions before the new year so i can start anew. in this post I have accumulated some writing scraps on the only three topics: 1. finance 2. mystery 3. location

FINANCE

i enjoyed these recent-ish posts against the idea of indie sustainability, although as someone who already works a day job i always feel a bit ambivalent about the advice to just work a day job to pay for this stuff - - like yes, absolutely, do it, BUT sell your shit too in the knowledge that the type of precarity we associate w/ creative work is already in the process of being implemented everywhere else as well (or has already been - zero hour contracts, sub-living wages etc). like i am fortunate to still have a day job which pays a living wage and leaves me time to work on my own things on the side - but this feels like an anachronism rather than an inevitability right now.. maybe my unsustainable games will help keep me afloat when my job gets automated and i have to go work in an amazon warehouse, unsustainable games for an unsustainable job, ha ha ha. video games are an exploitative bubble but so is the rest of "the market".

it is true that this is a political problem rather than one in the narrow remit of things that can be fixed with the right 10-point sales plan- -  nevertheless i think the issue of trying to make even small money off these things will remain kind of pressing as, in turn, regular employment comes more and more to resemble irregularly compensated hobbyist labour.

anyway one point i found really interesting, which i think all the above posts kind of grapple with - - the idea that it's not necessarily more "realistic" to aim at selling 1000 copies rather than 100,000. i think while we make fun of the aspiring millionaires a lot of people have just been banking on the idea of a fertile middle ground between the two extremes of tiny and ludicrous amounts of sales, between boom and bust. i'm sure there are still people working in that space but it seems like it's shrinking.

one question brendan keogh asks in his piece is "why should game makers be any different  [from the norm of artists, musicians etc not really making any money]?" i think this can actually be answered a little - because hobbyist game development sort of exploded in tandem with the internet itself becoming more naturalized within everyday life, because the economic basis for indie games was always centered around the internet, which means people working in indie games were always in the vicinity of the massive, startling movements of capital that the internet rendered more visible and immediate. no more were the weird vicissitudes of the market hidden behind closed doors, in boardrooms or stock quotations - now you could log onto any site and see just bewildering amounts of money suddenly funnel into the pockets of this or that individual in real time, frequently to their own surprise as well. and i think this connected to something more general - a sort of ambient awareness of financialization, the way "the financial sector" cannibalized things like industry, the greater visibility of capital not as something embedded in some specific product or set of individual practices but as a kind of weird free-floating aura arbitrarily descending or departing. enormous reservesof "general" wealth became more visible just as the benefits and stability of waged employment became yet more desolate and i think you need to see the draw of one in part as a consequence of the other. 

gacha-capitalism, permanent artificial scarcity coupled with the vague, insistent prospect of fantastic gains, as long as you keep playing. which is a rhythm already enshrined in many areas of working life - broke college students and unpaid graduates hustling for eventual employment, waged workers grinding through until  retirement. but it's one the enhanced immediacy and swiftness of capital on the internet intensified and extended. fabulous payouts can strike anyone at any time, in exchange for slowly bleeding out the prospect of any other kind of livelihood. much like the austerity following the financial crash which levelled so many basic social services for no particular purpose other than the hope that doing so for long enough would please the gods of prosperity to start tossing money around again. all dues, no pay.

i do think it's worth being cynical about the efforts to domesticate this process, building a fair and sustainable biome within capitalism, by using the tools of that same capitalism etc.  but if the format can't be seperated from the wider world then that's something which swings both ways. for me the most interesting critical work around vgames right now is in the effort to move outside of the constant, numbing boom-and-bust cycles of capital, the idiot repetition of exhilaration and depression and exhilaration and it'll all be okay as long as we can hold out one more cycle, particularly when that's a rhythm which has been central to the development of the format from the beginning. i think anyone involved with developing videogames has probably seen multiple generations of cool shit emerge, get abruptly killed off and written out of history in accordance with market diktats, and then replaced with a new wave of cool shit whenever the investors shift gears into "expansion" mode again. a mode of thinking about and preserving what people do that stands in opposition to this is something i can easily imagine being more generally useful in the culture, as ever more areas of life and culture start becoming subject to the same questions.

MYSTERY

there's a mystery in depth and a mystery in shallowness. with depth the habitual glance of recognition goes out and falls through - you can place roughly where something is in relation to the world, but not what it's doing, not where it goes. as a presence it seems to require a new mode of attention to be recognized, which i guess is why it sometimes makes me uneasy - that challenge, the way that challenge can be moralized. are you a bad enough dude to engage with art?? if there are 100 black obelisks in a field which one do you decide to look at? and will it really turn out to be deep, or just dense?

videogames can feel like depth-worship, like the embodiment of an essentially cthonic system of values. how deep did you go and what did you see there? did  you find the gold bars in pac-man? (www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/spies.cgi?action=url&type=info&page=pmgoldbar.info.txt) did you see the secret ending? how far did you get into the game mechanics, into the lore? this marks the top 10 deepest players on this game. surpass  them... if you dare. an ethos of diligent attention, hierarchial levels of  understanding and initiate-dom, a sub-culture. and at best a maguslike  dedication to altered states of consciousness that i can respect, an interest in shifting through mangled pieces of debris in search of secret mysteries. at worst the authority cults and tests of true belonging that spring up around those mysteries, whose value is in being hidden and whose guarantee is in the strenuous effort with which they must be located. paranoia about true spiritual meanings being plundered by opportunistic interlopers. stay out. get good.

the videogame has the basic opacity of the computer system and the act of engaging with this curious abyss is allegorized into dungeons, castles, mazes. trapdoors and secret corridors. one pleasure in looking up older games for me is in seeing them recognize and learn how to thematize this basic sense of mystery. in bubble bobble the obscure scoring mechanics and secret endings are cheekily perverse, arcade challenge by another means - another system to game. in king's quest there's something like a crossfertilization between the strange causal voids of the fairy tale and the adventure game: "Exit the gingerbread house and go east and east. There is a large walnut tree here. Take walnut and then open walnut to discover a gold nut. Head east and take bowl . Look bowl  to see the words “fill” at the bottom. Fill and the bowl will fill up with a delicious stew." the wizardry games took the connection between mysterious game systems and occult knowledge much further - the "true" ending of wizardry iv means finding a secret chamber and answering a series of riddles based on your knowledge of the kaballah (or at least, kaballah-derived tarot interpretations).

it's easy to moralize depth - lotus eaters, magic islands. you wander through a strange land and then return to find it's 5 hours later and you forgot to eat. there's something creepy to me about depth on an industrial scale, about building huge tunnels with massive teams on forced overtime, and then a team of professional tunnel reviewers cautiously start descending on ropes and come back every so often and say, well, 20 hours in and it all looks ok, and meanwhile everybody else is jumping en masse. maybe that's more of an issue with consumer culture in general. but sometimes it feels like a way to avoid dealing with certain inherent limitations of that culture, or even limitations of art in general, by projecting those limits out to the end of ever-deeper tunnels that fewer and fewer people will ever see, the rest of them straggling back, exhausted, getting jobs. well, i can't tell you if red dead 2 is good or not. i only got 60 hours in, and i never even found all the falcons.

if the mystery of depth is having too much space for speculation to operate coherently within, the mystery of shallowness is having not enough space for speculation to operate at all: something is too manifestly there, limited, closed-off, it's hard to push it away to get some metaphorical breathing room. 

i feel this way sometimes reading writers like tove jansson, flannery o'connor - SOMETHING happened, the stories are short and clear and describe some definite event without too much uncertainty, they even have "broader themes" raised - but somehow the themes feel embarrassingly outsize for the stories, and the stories remain too clearly defined to sink back into the murk of a generalized moral or experience. they feel like moral stories when you can't work out what the moral might be.

robbe-grillet on raymond roussel: "Now these chains of elucidations,  extraordinarily precise, ingenious, and farfetched, appear so derisory, so disappointing, that it is as if the mystery remained intact. But it  is henceforth a mystery that has been washed, emptied out, that has become  unnameable. The opacity no longer hides anything. One has the impression of  having found a locked drawer, then a key; and this key opens the drawer impeccably... and the drawer is empty."

there's a famous shallowness to videogames as well that's most often caught by people outside the culture - when you see the fake videogames in a comicbook, or on tv, and they're named something like "washing machine simulator 3000" or "municipal tax assailants". and part of this also stems from the computer, the history of the computer as it insinuated its way into everyday life, as a mysteriously elaborate and convoluted way of doing just impossibly banal things, like balancing chequebooks or printing text. the stubborn thingliness of not-quite-functional machines, the way the thingliness glosses and corrodes their own internal fantasies, mirrors of the basic weirdness that is human consciousness as a material fact within the world. 

with my friend i used to joke  about "e3" just being the dumpster behind an abandoned gamestop - all those needy longform experiences frozen into evocative trinkets. find a nonfunctional disk copy of mario odyssey and it gives you all the same delight as playing mario odyssey, only without having to. i think there's something beautiful about that flatness, that directionless object-hostility, the rejection of the grandoise hero's journey fantasies that it implies – as well as something baleful, a rejection of consciousess in general, the idea that it could take you anywhere not inside your own head.

LOCATION

why are there so many videogames about going outside? every time i've played a videogame it's been inside a room, usually a dark one, mostly while still wearing my pajamas. for me it is an internal activity. but not only do all these games take place in fields and plains, they always talk about the wonders of going on a voyage, the beauty of the great outdoors, the superiority of the wandering main characters to the slugs and layabouts who sit at home all day.... it's weird to me, i demand we move past these cloying pseudo-critiques. raymond williams once pointed out that the first pastoral was written from the perspective of a rentier daydreaming of cashing out and moving to a country home. i demand more games with the courage of their implict convictions and that if they require you to sit motionless indoors  for hours they should explicitly establish and argue for a value system in which this is the best possible thing that you can do. imagine if movies were all set in dark chambers full of people sitting down - i think i can say they would be much less insipid as an artform. "all of man's problems stem from an inability to stay in his room".

(images: Gakken No O Benkyou Soft Kazu Suuji, Legend of Legaia, a Chinese bootleg cart, and ...Iru!)

[queerascat]

hi, ive sent you a question before about worrying of getting into the jet program and before i could finish my application one of the two big eikawas i applied to wanted to hire me on the spot! im leaving at the start of march im excited and have done my research but im worried about communication between me and my japanese co workers, being american i p much am a really direct person and i know japan isnt like that from living there for a few months, so do you have any advice on communication?

( re: this post )

congrats!! and 久しぶりです。 thanks for coming back and sharing the good news. :)

when it comes to advice, as i said to a recent anon, every situation is different. in fact, especially when it comes to advice, your mileage will vary no matter what i tell you, but here’s some general things to perhaps consider.

be flexible

because the sad truth of working in a workplace mainly staffed / run by Japanese people is that as a foreigner, there will be times when information that should have made it to you never does– or that makes it to you at the last minute and either way, you’ll be expected to roll with it. communication breakdowns due to language and cultural barriers are a thing, but as someone who has at least some level of competence in Japanese, it’s more likely (imho) that you’ll struggle more with the sheer lack of communication / information that comes your way. if you have foreign coworkers, watch and learn both what to do and what not to do and remember that if all else fails, hopefully you can go through a senior foreign coworker to better communicate with a Japanese coworkers.

be proactive

when it comes to getting information, be proactive while also being mindful of the line that exists between proactively acquiring information and aggressively acquiring it, as seen from the POV of your Japanese coworkers. sometimes they simply don’t know when you didn’t understand something important that was said, so it’s on you to follow up on that. other times school gets cancelled because of a ridiculous snowstorm and you don’t find out until you’re trying to get there but can’t because train service stopped, so you call someone to tell them you’ll be late and they’re like “late? what?? school’s closed today– no one told you??” that’s right, no one told you. “you’re supposed to wear a silver tie to this event! no one tol–” OBVIOUSLY NO ONE TOLD ME WTF.

*sips coffee that i ought to not be drinking but eh*

…anyway, ask questions. get answers as best you can. especially if you accidentally cross the line and begin to be seen as aggressive or “difficult” (ie. too direct), people will be more hesitant to approach you and communicate with you directly. also, if you feel like you’re missing something, chances are high that you are. and on a side note, if you have senior foreign coworkers, definitely watch, learn and information share from / with them– but more specifically, watch who they go to for information and how they go about communicating with others to get it.

＃頑張れKY

do your best to perfect the unperfectable skill that is “KY” or 空気読む / kuuki yomu– or in other words, reading a situation and telepathically knowing what is expected of you without anyone actually having to tell you. it’s a fine art that Japanese people are adept at and at times forget that– surprise! you’re not! why are they expecting you to KY like the rest of them??? all jokes aside, KY is something that as a foreigner we all gradually (or less gradually) learn to do out of sheer trial + error x time spent in Japan. you’ll struggle with it, but if you do manage to do it, it pays off big time in terms of aiding communication with Japanese coworkers AND students, not embarrassing yourself at events– and just generally fitting in, which in Japan means a lot less stress on your part.

i know that some of this sounds pretty negative and may even be the opposite of reassuring, but all of the above aside, i wouldn’t worry too much about communicating with coworkers ahead of having even met them or seen what your actual work environment / situation will be like. learning how to efficiently and effectively communicate with coworkers and not run counter to Japanese social norms is something that all of us learn as we go upon arrival in this country, even if we called ourselves having read up on or studied it prior to coming.

tl;dr: i wouldn’t worry. being a direct person is fine, so long as you know when and where and how to do it and that kind of thing you’ll learn with time and experience.

[animusalias-blog]

Feeling being Manipulated? How to Effectively Distinguish and Stay Away from Toxic People:

Before we get started on how manipulation works we needs to understand who frequently uses manipulation.

What is psychological manipulation?

A type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive. 

To explain it in a plainer way, psychological manipulation is making you to do what I want you to do, making you to feel the emotions I want you to feel. I don’t care about how fucked up the means are, and the ends usually benefit me.

As a result, it’s really important to distinguish healthy social influence (which respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject it) between psychological manipulation (underhanded and usually coercive)

Who usually engages in psychological manipulation?

First I want to stress that a personality disorder is a maladaptive fixed long-term behavioral pattern, so don’t worry if you occasionally behave like one or two categories mentioned below. It’s normal. Plus, official diagnosis of those mentioned above can only be made if the person is above 18 years old (shoutout to all edgy teens on tumblr). Although you can use self-reports, they can be inaccurate due to personal bias, and only a professional (e.g. certified psychiatrist) can give out the diagnosis. (So you can see why I’m not assorting respective characters in Ace Attorney to medical conditions mentioned below) 

According to Jernberg, antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic personality disorders are all organized at a borderline level of personality organization, and the three share some common characterological deficits and overlapping personality traits, with deceitfulness and exceptional manipulative abilities being the most common traits among the three.

Sociopaths, borderlines, and narcissists are often pathological liars.Other shared traits include pathological narcissism,consistent irresponsibility, machiavellianism, lack of empathy, cruelty, meanness, impulsivity, proneness to self-harm and addictions, interpersonal exploitation, hostility, anger and rage, vanity, emotional instability, rejection sensitivity, perfectionism, and the use of primitive defense mechanisms that are pathological and narcissistic. 

A sociopath (or a psychopath, usually referred as someone with antisocial personality disorder. Although there is still some controversy over the distinction among these three, I’m just going to use ‘psychopath’ as the term) is basically a person who has no affective empathy; exploitation is a primary means of relating to others. Irresponsible, impulsive, manipulative, deceitful, hostile, and callous. [below is excerpted from DSM IV-TR]

failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Borderline personality disorder is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by unstable relationships with other people, unstable sense of self, and unstable emotions. There is often frequent dangerous behavior, a feeling of emptiness, self-harm, and an extreme fear of abandonment. [Source: Wikipedia]

Markedly disturbed sense of identity

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment and extreme reactions to such

Splitting ("black-and-white" thinking)

Impulsivity and impulsive or dangerous behaviours

Intense or uncontrollable emotional reactions that often seem disproportionate to the event or situation

Unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships

Self-damaging behavior

Distorted self-image

Dissociation

Frequently accompanied by depression, anxiety, anger, substance abuse, or rage

Persons with Narcissistic Personality Disorder [according to DSM-V] usually display some or all of the following symptoms, typically without the commensurate qualities or accomplishments [Source: Wikipedia]:

Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from other people

Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.

Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions

Needing continual admiration from others

Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others

Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain

Unwilling to empathize with the feelings, wishes, and needs of other people

Intensely envious of others, and the belief that others are equally envious of them

Pompous and arrogant demeanor

TL;DR version of all three, in my words, a psychopath is a heartless outcast, your stereotypical villain/murderer, who thinks killing a person is no different from cutting carrots and will happily do it within a second; a borderline is needy, moody, insecure, who will threaten to kill themselves if they somehow think you will abandon them; a narcissist is someone controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others' views, unaware of others' needs and the effects of their behavior on others, and insist that others see them as they wish to be seen.

Why I write this long post?

I’m not saying all manipulators are these three kinds of people. There is indeed controversies regarding the classifications (for example, narcissism or psychopathy should be on a continuum instead of being categorized). I’m not saying you should be suspicious or hypervigilant of every single person. I’m not saying people are inherently bad, because each disorder only affect about 2% of the population. I’m helping you to trust/mistrust wisely and give your kindness to the people who deserves it.

1. I’m just saying if you find someone who exhibits some of these traits you should be cautious and don’t give them too mush trust/responsibility, or expect to be manipulated. If you are already with an abuser, then I encourage you to use the no contact rule or grey rock method to disengage from them. 

Why I’m telling you all this instead of simply stating “Leave toxic people”? Because a single simple statement didn’t give any actionable advice! Did every bad guy walk with a paper says“I am a bad guy” on the forehead? Of course not! 

2. Knowing the true colors of a manipulator can help you to effectively establish boundaries regardless of their words (glibness and superficial charm), promises (which will never be fulfilled) or innocent appearance (classic gas lighting technique). If they crossed your personal boundaries consciously and continue to manipulate you, burn the bridge. You know who they are and do not expect to change/heal them like in the movies (Psychopathy is, to a certain extent, a neurological disorder which caused their empathy deficit. The heritability of BPD has been estimated at 40%. NPD is notorious with their abusive relationship dynamics with the codependents )

3. If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. If you became too conscious of the viciousness of the three personality disorders and buy into the victim mindset, exaggerating the other’s wrongdoings and labeling them as personality disordered, Congratulations on the start to becoming a narcissist! I mean, be a healthy skeptic. 

Also, as you learn more about psychological tactics, constantly remind yourself to not become one of them and NEVER apply them, consciously or unconsciously, to others. Just don’t become the kind of people mentioned above.

[halcyon-bluevista]

My Coming Out Story! Bisexual Woman to Straight Woman. LGBTQ+ Friendly (NOT A TESTIMONY)

Hi! This is my story of coming out as a straight woman from a former bisexual women. Id just like to make the disclaimer that this is not a religious testimony, it is not an attempt to convert anybody and I am an ally of the LGBTQ+ community! I intend to share my story for myself and for others who may be looking for someone in relation to themselves for it has been my personal struggle to find advice, help, and sympathy on this topic.

I grew up in a Pentecostal church, attended church every Sunday and youth groups every Wednesday. Before I left the church and denounced my faith as a Christian I was a good little baptized church girl but had not yet been exposed to the hatred and or disbelief/ nonacceptance of the LGBTQ+ community within it. As I got older, and I started to understand the themes in service and youth group sermons. They became heavier and unjustified to me. It was hard for me to listen and accept the “sin” of same sex love. 

As a little girl (11-13), I had already innocently engaged in same sex acts with my girl friends. Playing imaginary games like house (as kids do), acting as the man/husband in the relationship, kissing, touching, reenacting the things we saw our parents do. I was definitely aware of my sexual attraction at a young age but had never been aware of the skewed views the world had on gay people, so sexual feelings were just feelings to me, I didn't know what I was doing just what felt good at the time. As I got older and dating came into play for us the norm was girl/guy relationships and that is what I fell into as well.

In 9th grade my mother came out as lesbian. By this time I had already been inching my way out of the church because of my counter beliefs. It came to no surprise to me really as I had already had a hunch, turns out it took her so long to come out to me because she thought I was homophobic, and oh was she wrong. I had already had my first girl/girl sexual experience and thought I was bisexual too. My aunt, a flamboyant lesbian woman who I adore and admire had me integrated into the LGBTQ+ community since I was 7. I have always loved everyone for whoever they are and whoever they loved, it never phased me. 

Since I had such a strong sense of community and acceptance around me, I never had to go through the struggle of coming out. Most of my friends had told me I was gay even before I fully accepted it myself and my mum had always encouraged me to bring home women over men. To me it felt like it was my destiny to be Bisexual. 

My first relationship was with a man and lasted about 3.5 years, grade 9-11. After this ended I wanted to explore my sexuality more, as one should if they feel inclined. Things were quite rough for me at home and I went through a traumatizing experience (sexual assault) that left me with no friends. From here I fell into the arms of a fairy tale of woman that showed me empathy, compassion and remorse in my time of need. I thought I had fallen in love, and I did, just not in the way I now know love to be as an adult. She was so freely open with her sexuality, and opened me up to so much in the LGBTQ+ community that I still hadn't seen (being from a small town). This came to an abrupt end to me as my traumatizing experience left me with a lot of unbearable baggage. So I moved to the city.

After moving to the city things didn't get much better. Things were still rocky at home for me. I left home at 16, taking on the world for myself. Renting, working, and going to school, through this I really dove into my bisexual urges. I slept with woman and men quite equally and declared myself openly a bisexual woman with no question about it. 

Im 21 now, and finally starting to figure out my sexuality. I have been questioning the psychology behind why im attracted to men and why im attracted to women and its been a frightening and difficult journey. If I dive into why im attracted to men it makes sense in my head, love, romance, lust, marriage, instinctual, future & growth, protection, and you know all the average straight people do das. But when I question why im attracted to women it gets gray. I cant see myself romantically involved with women, or see a future with them. I would be considered what is called a “top”,  to break it down in gender role terms, the man, I wear the pants when im with women. There had to be reason to this, why dont I feel romantic feelings to these women that im so blatantly attracted to if I can feel romantic feelings towards men? 

This is what ive come to, and remember this is a personal journey, I dont expect this to make sense or reside with other bisexual woman who also dont feel romantic feelings towards woman because sexuality is different for everyone. I think being with women gave me a sense of power and control. Something I lacked a lot of in my teenage years. What I also recently realized is that I dont let women perform sexual acts to me, because I lose that sense of control, something I only feel comfortable giving away to men. On top of this I see that when I did experiment with letting women try sexual acts on me, I couldn't get into it or id lose the feeling or desire completely and I have never reached climax or came close from it. I appreciate the intrinsic value of beauty women are born with and I think many and most women are born with this ranging ability. 

With all of this in mind I have come to the conclusion that I am not really Bisexual, but rather straight. Now, coming to this conclusion has been hard for a number of reasons. 1. I couldn't find anyone online or in real life with similar experience. This really bothered me, I know its not difficult socially to be straight as thats just the norm, but since my norm is the LGBTQ+ world, it was for me. I searched and searched and searched for someone or something I could relate to but all of my finding resulted in videos or articles or people talking about, Conversion camps (YUCK), religious testimonies where people have “seen the light of gods word” and now think they have sinned in their past, or extreme left/liberal men and women telling me I am being conditioned or brainwashed from my liberation. I WAS ANGRY and felt alone. I still am and this is why im writing this, in hope that someone going through a similar scenario can find this and feel comfort in the fact that they are not alone  2. I thought I was going to lose my community. Since I had no support system or advice/help on my coming out path, I had convinced myself the LGBTQ+ community would shun me for being straight ~which I now know is ridiculous because we love people with whatever sexuality they identify with~ The LGBTQ+ community has been my home and the number one place I felt accepted regardless of my sexuality. Losing them would be like losing my family. and 3. I didn't think people would believe me. To my friends and family ive always been the one so comfortable being the bisexual I thought I was. I was scared for the comments and justification I would have to bring to the table while making this bold statement. As I built up the courage to do this though, my lovely peoples around me have proven me so wrong and I cant thank them enough for it. 

Here is what I have to say to anyone who is coming to these terms for themselves. There is no one way street, if something can happen one way it can happen another. You are not losing anything by being your true self. Dont be afraid to come to your friends and community with your questions and concerns. If people accept you you're in the right crowd and theres nothing wrong with changing your sexuality as you grow one way or the other. We need to be comfortable with our sexuality and not be influenced or conditioned into thinking one way or the other but rather discover by exploration who we truly are. You are loved and if you dont feel that way there are people out there that will love you for you. Me being one, id also like to use this as a open invitation for people to discuss everything I have said either with me ~my inbox is open~ or in the public and I encourage people with similar experiences to share their stories so we dont feel so alone!

I genuinely thank anyone who took the time to read this lengthy post as its something iv wanted to share for a while. Peace & Love.