#like. i honestly don’t really care that gay and lesbian are used as umbrella terms. i’m just

[jackienautism]

maybe i’m just being a Bitch about it but like … is anyone sad at how lesbian is mainly used as an umbrella term? like. we don’t even really have our own term

[comingoutofthecauldron]

let’s talk about lesbophobia in fandom

i don’t like to use the word “lesbophobia” unironically because of all the gross radfem terfy connotations, so i will clarify right off the bat that i am neither a terf nor an aphobe and that if you are i want you off my blog like, right now. unfortunately, the meaning of lesbophobia has been so warped by alt right lesbians that seeing it in an unironic context makes me, a lesbian, uncomfortable, which speaks volumes in itself. so to clarify, lesbophobia is essentially homophobia with a pinch of sexism thrown into the mix, and it’s running rampant in supposed safe spaces and, more relevantly, fandom. 

/i’d also like to clarify that i’m not only speaking on lesbophobia, but also the general disgust and disdain for all wlw in fandom, and am using it as a sort of umbrella term/

lesbophobia and disdain for wlw has been around forever, but whilst gay positivity, mlm and mlm ships have been steadily increasing in popularity within fandom over time, wlw and wlw ships have remained perpetual underdogs. why? because lesbophobia has become a fandom within itself. both in and outside of fandom, we see instances of casual lesbophobia every single day—from aggression towards wlw to something as simple and prevalent as the complete and utter lack of sapphic ships and characters in media. hatred of lesbians and wlw is practically a trend, and it’s seeping in through the cracks of fandoms who are already facing issues with minorities and marginalized groups (i.e. racism, ableism). if you honestly think that lesbophobia isn’t prevalent as hell in fandom right now, you’re either not a wlw, you’re not all that involved in fandom, or you’re dumb as shit. 

just look at ships. in almost every single fandom, the ratio of mlm ships to sapphic ships is ridiculously unbalanced. people are quick to ship male characters who so much as smile at each other (and i don’t condemn that) but would never do the same for two women—even on the rare occasion that the ship is actually canon. i once wrote a wlw fanfic for a [predominantly straight] fandom, and received messages like this gem:

on the flip side of that, if there is a sapphic ship in canon or fanon, it is often fetishized and sexualised to a disturbing degree. there will be double the amount of nsfw art and fics, and ninety percent of it will be derogatory and fetishized as hell. having been actively involved in several fandoms over the past few years (and currently a content creator in one), i’ve seen instances of all this hundreds of times. people go crazy for mlm ships, but the second you say you ship/prefer a wlw ship, there’s always someone at the ready with, “i think all ships are great!” or “it’s not a contest” or “i prefer [insert m/m or m/f ship] actually” or “they’re my brotp!/why can’t you just let them be friends?”. not only do lesbians and wlw not get to have any rep in media, any rep that they try to create for themselves in fandom just gets attacked or ruined. this is so detrimental not only to all wlw, but especially to younger wlw who will end up being indoctrinated into this belief that their sexuality is something dirty, something that can never be tender and sweet but rather something that deserves to be preyed upon. 

building on that, let’s talk about engagement. i run an instagram account (where i have a significantly bigger following) as well as this blog for my fandom, where i post the content i create (mainly text posts). when i first started creating content, i made a lot for a relatively unpopular wlw ship, in which both girls are canonically romantically involved with a dude—though one of them is canonically pan. their canonical m/f ships are both very popular, and i noticed that my engagement was dropping every time i posted them, so i eventually just stopped. it wasn’t even a conscious decision; i merely resigned myself to the fact that the fandom didn’t want to see sapphic ships, and some people would even go as far as to condemn them. for reference, my instagram posts get an average of about 500 likes per post (popular ones usually exceeding 1k), but when i post this ship, my engagement drops to about 250 likes. similarly, my tumblr text posts have an average of about 140 notes per post (popular ones usually reaching up to 750), but my wlw content rarely surpasses 100. this just feeds the cycle of wlw never getting rep: if, like me, content creators become disincentivised by the lack of engagement with their sapphic content, they’re more likely to stop making/posting it, leading to further lack of rep—and when new content creators try to rectify that, they face the same problems. 

and then, of course, there’s the treatment of actual wlw in fandom. my best example of this is when my friend and i made an anti account on instagram (the first instagram anti account in that fandom), our bio saying something like “salty and bitter lesbians being salty and bitter”, and received an onslaught of lesbophobic insults and threats from angry stans within hours. (tw: r*pe) one commenter even went as far as to tell us that they wanted us to get r*ped. as well as this, i’ve seen so many instances of people using slurs against lesbians in arguments/in anons, often for no apparent reason other than they feel that they have the right. when i first mentioned i was a lesbian on instagram, my account only had about 200 followers, and within a day i lost 20. i also lose followers whenever i post f/f ships, not quite to that extent but enough for it to be noticeable, on top of the aforementioned engagement dips. in the face of all this adversity, i think a lot of wlw turn to mlm ships because they’re the closest thing we have to actual rep, but when we do we get accused of fetishizing them by the same people who fetishize us. there’s an endless list of double standards that non-wlw have been upholding for years, and i can firmly say that i’m really fucking sick of it. because of our sexuality, we will never be allowed to enjoy something without someone labelling it or us as dirty or otherwise problematic, when to them, the only problematic thing about us is that we aren’t pleasing men. 

as i mentioned before, the lack of rep for wlw in media is appallingly consistent, and part of that stems from tokenism. in a lot of modern mainstream media, you’ll have one, maybe two lgbt characters, and nine times out of ten those characters are white cis male gays. of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, that’s it. script writers and authors (especially cishets) seem to have this mentality of, “oh, well, we gave them one, that’s sure to be enough!”, which means that on the off chance you do get your gay rep, the likelihood of also receiving wlw or any other kind of rep becomes practically non-existant. this belief that all marginalized groups are the same and that one represents all is what leads to misrepresentation on top of lack of rep, which is what makes tokenism so dangerous. if you treat your only gay character badly, you are essentially treating every single gay person badly in that universe. so not only is lesbophobia and disdain for wlw harmful to sapphic women via their exclusion in media, it’s also harming those minorities who do get rep. when people try to defend lesbophobic source material, that’s when fandom starts to get toxic. the need for critical thinking has never been more apparent and it has also never been less appeased—and wlw are getting hit hard by it, as always.

finally, a pretty big driving factor of lesbophobia is, ironically, lesbians. my lesbian friends and i often joke that though everyone seems to hate us, no one hates lesbians more than lesbians do. though i’d say it’s most prevalent on tumblr, i see traces of it all over the internet. the growth of alt right lesbian movements is not only reinforcing hatred for lesbians, but also reinforcing hatred for bi and pan women. here you have these terrible lesbians using their platforms to express their disgust for bi/pan women, for aces and aros, for trans women/nb lesbians, and people see them and say, “gosh, lesbians are just awful.” and just like that, all of us are evil. occasionally, lesbian blogs that i follow get put on terf blocklists for no other reason than the fact that they have “lesbian” in their bio. and the lesbians that actually deserve to be on those blocklists? they’re too busy spewing misinformation about trans women and bi women to care, boosted up by their alt right friends in an ever-expanding movement. i’ve found that this heavily influences fandom on tumblr, lesbians often getting branded as “biphobic” when they hc a female character as a lesbian rather than bi or pan. this criticism of both lesbians and wlw by lesbians and non-wlw alike only ever allows lesbophobia to grow, both in and out of fandom. that said, lesbians aren’t to blame for their own discrimination; rather, many of us have been conditioned into subconsciously endorsing it after spending our entire lives hearing heterosexual platitudes about lesbians and sapphic relationships. homophobic cishets are and always have been the nexus of this oppression—the only difference is that now they can hide behind alt right lesbians.

one thing has been made apparent to me throughout my time in fandom, and that thing is that no one likes to see men “underrepresented”. people hate sapphic ships and lesbians so much because there is no room for men, and men Do Not Like That. so, like the worms that they are, they slither their way in, be it through fetishization or condemnation of wlw characters and ships, and they ruin whatever good things we have going for us. the thing about worms, though, is that they’re easy enough to crush if you’re wearing the right shoes.

so to all my bi/pan gals and lesbian pals: put on your doc martens, because we’ve got ourselves some lesbophobes to stomp on. 

[hellomynameisbisexual]

I’d go so far as to say that the nomination probably saved the site, in fact. For those who need a little background: despite being a small voluntary project the site was nominated for the 2014 Publication of the Year award by Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT charity, just nine months after its inception. This was a landmark step in Stonewall’s positive new direction on bi issues. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time Stonewall had specifically nominated a specifically bi publication or organisation for an award. At this point my co-founder, who was taking care of the business side of things, had recently jumped ship and I was seriously considering packing the whole thing in. I won’t lie, I was astonished to read the email.

I’d worked on a publication which won the award under my editorship a few years previously. Unlike Biscuit, however, g3 magazine – at the time one of the two leading print mags for lesbian and bi women in the UK – had an estimated readership of 140,000, had been going for eight years and boasted full-time paid office staff and regular paid freelancers. Biscuit, by contrast, was being dragged along by one weary unpaid editor and a bunch of unpaid writers who understandably, for the most part, couldn’t commit to regularly submitting work.

Little Biscuit’s enormous competition for the award consisted of Buzzfeed, Attitude.co.uk, iNewspaper and Property Week. We didn’t win – that accolade went to iNewspaper – but the nomination was nevertheless, as I say, a huge catalyst to continue with the site. I launched a crowdfunder, which finished way off target. I sold one ad space, for two months. Then nothing. I attempted in vain to recruit a sales manager but nobody wanted to work on commission. Some wonderful writers came and went. There were periods of tumbleweed when I frantically had to fill the site with my own writing, thereby completely defeating the object of providing a platform for a wide range of bi voices.

The Stonewall Award nomination persuaded me to keep going with the site

The departure of the webmaster was another blow. Thankfully by this point I had a co-editor on board – the amazing Libby – so I was persuaded to stick with it. And here we are now. I don’t actually know where the next article is coming from. That’s not a good feeling. But, apart from for Biscuit, I try not to write for free anymore myself, so I understand exactly why that is. As a freelance journo trying to make a living I’ve had to be strict with myself about that. I regularly post on the “Stop Working For Free” Facebook group and often feel a pang of misplaced guilt because I ask my writers to write for free, even though I’m working on the site for free myself, and losing valuable time I could be spending on looking for paid work.

Biscuit hasn’t exactly been a stranger to controversy, in addition to its financial and staffing issues. Its original tagline – “for girls who like girls and boys” – was considered cis-centric by some, leading to accusations that the site had some kind of trans/genderqueer*-phobic agenda. Which was amusing, as at the height of this a) we’d just had two articles about non-binary issues published and b) I was actually engaged to a genderqueer partner, a fact they were clearly unaware of. Now the site is under fire from various pansexual activists who object to the term “bisexual”. To clarify – “girl and boys” was supposed to imply a spectrum and, no, we don’t think “bi” applies only to an attraction to binary folk. The site aims the main part of its content at female-spectrum readers attracted to more than one gender because this group does have specific needs. But there is something here for EVERYONE bisexual. Anyway, it’s a shame all of this gossip was relayed secondhand, and the people in question didn’t think to confront me about it (which at least the pan activists have bothered to do). We damage our community immeasurably with these kinds of Chinese whispers.

Biscuit ed Libby, being amazing

Whilst trying to keep the site afloat, I’ve also been building on the work I started right back when I edited g3, and trying to improve bi visibility in other media outlets. I’ve recently had articles published by Cosmopolitan, SheWired, The F-Word, GayStar News and Women Make Waves and I’m constantly emailing other sites which I’ve not yet written for with bi pitches. Unfortunately, although I am over the moon to be writing for mainstream outlets such as Cosmo about bi issues, it’s been an uphill struggle trying to persuade some editors out there that they have more readers to whom bi-interest stories apply than they might think. It’s an incredibly exhausting and frustrating process.

Libby and I are doing our best with Biscuit. I can’t guarantee that I would be doing anything at all with it if Libby hadn’t arrived on the scene, so once again I would like to mention how fabulous she is. But we desperately need more writers. We need some help with site design and tech issues. We need a hand with the business and sales side of things. We can’t do it without you. And if you know any rich bisexual heiresses who read Biscuit, please do send them our way. 😉

Grant Denkinson’s story

denkinsonpanel

Grant speaks on a panel chaired by Biscuit’s Lottie at a Bi Visibility Day event

So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in. 


“I’ve been involved with bisexual community organising for a bit over 20 years. Some has been within community: writing for and editing our national newsletter, organising events for bisexuals and helping others with their events by running workshop sessions or offering services such as 1st aid. I’ve spoken to the media about bisexuality and organised bi contingents at LGBT Pride events (sometimes just me in a bi T-shirt!). I’ve helped organise and participated in bi activist weekends and trainings. I’ve help train professionals about bisexuality. I’ve also piped up about bisexuality a lot when organising within wider LGBT and gender and sexuality and relationship diversity umbrellas. I’ve been a supportive bi person on-line and in person for other bi folks. I’ve been out and visibly bi for some time. I’ve helped fund bi activists to meet, publish and travel. I’ve funded advertising for bi events. I’ve set up companies and charities for or including bi people. I’ve personally supported other bi activists.”


What made you get involved?

“
In some ways I was looking for a way to be outside the norm and to make a difference and coming out as bi gave me something to push against. I’ve been less down on myself when feeling attacked. I’ve also found the bi community very welcoming and where I can be myself and so wanted to organise with friends and to give others a similar experience. There weren’t too many others already doing everything better than I could.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“There have been great changes for same-sex attracted people legally and socially and these have happened quickly. Bi people have been involved with making that happen and benefit from it. We can also be hidden by gay advances or actively erased. We still have bi people not knowing many or any other local bi people, not seeing other bisexuals in the mainstream or LGT worlds and not knowing or being able to access community things with other bis. We are little represented in books or the media and people don’t know about the books and zines and magazines already available. The internet has made it easy to find like-minded people but also limited privacy and I think is really fragmented and siloed. It is hard to find bisexuals who aren’t women actors, harmful or fucked up men or women in pornography designed for straight men. We have persistent and high quality bi events but they are sparse and small.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?

“I’m fed up of bi things just not happening if I don’t do them. Not everything should be in my style and voice and I shouldn’t be doing it all. I and other activists campaign for bi people to be more OK and don’t take care of ourselves enough while doing so. People are so convinced we don’t exist they don’t bother with a simple search that would find us. We have little resources while having some of the worst outcomes of any group. I don’t want to spend my entire life being the one person who reminds people about bisexuals, including our so-called allies. I’m not impressed with the problem resolution skills in our communities and while we talk about being welcoming I’m not sure we’re very effective at it. I’m fed up with mouthing the very basics and never getting into depth about bi lives and being one who supports but who is not supported. I’m all for lowering barriers but at a certain point if people don’t actively want to do bi community volunteering it won’t happen. Some people are great critics but build little.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Why are we doing this personally? I’m not sure we know. How long will we hope rather than do? Honestly, are there so few who care? Alternatively should we stop the trying to do bi stuff and either do some self-analysis, be happy to accept being what we are now as a community, chill out and just let stuff happen or give up and go and do something else instead.”

Patrick Richards-Fink’s story

085d4de So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in.

“Mostly internet – I am a Label Warrior, a theorist and educator. Here’s how I described it on my blog: “One of the reasons that I am a bisexual activist rather than a more general queer activist is because I see every day people just like me being told they don’t belong. It doesn’t mean I don’t work on the basic issues that we all struggle against — homophobia, heterosexism, classism, out-of-control oligarchy, racism, misogyny, this list in in no particular order and is by no means comprehensive. But I have found that I can be most effective if I focus, work towards understanding the deep issues that drive the problems that affect people who identify the same way that I have ever since I started to understand who I am. I find that I’m not a community organizer type of activist or a storm the capitol with a petition in one hand and a bullhorn in the other activist — I’m much better at poring over studies and writing long wall-o’-text articles and occasionally presenting what I’ve gleaned to groups of students until my voice is so hoarse that I can barely do more than croak.” So internet, and when I was still in school, a lot of on-campus stuff. Now I’m moving into a new phase where my activism is more subtle – I’m working as a therapist, and so my social justice lens informs my treatment, especially of bi and trans people.”

What made you get involved?

“I can’t not be.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“I feel like we made a couple strides, and every time that happens the attacks renewed. I hionestly think the constant attempts to divide the bisexual community into ‘good pansexuals’ and ‘bad bisexuals’ and ‘holy no-labels’ is the thing that’s most likely to screw us.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?



“It is literally everywhere I turn – colleges redefining bisexuality on their LGBT Center pages, news articles quoting how ‘Bi=2 and pan=all therefore pan=better’, everybloodywhere I turn I see it every day. The word bi is being taken out of the names of organisations now, by the next group of up-and-comers who haven’t bothered to learn their history and understand that if you erase our past, you take away our present. Celebrities come out as No Label, wtf is that. Don’t they make kids read 1984 anymore? It’s gotten to the point now that even seeing the word pansexual in print triggers me. I’m reaching the point now that if someone really wants to be offended when all I am trying to do is welcome them on board, then I don’t have time for it.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Stay strong, and don’t give them a goddamned inch. I honestly think that the bi organizations – even, truth be told, the one I am with – are enabling this level of bullshit by attempting to be conciliatory, saying things that end up reinforcing the idea that bi and pan are separate communities. We try to be too careful not to offend anyone. Like the thing about Freddie Mercury. Gay people say ‘He was gay.’ Bi people say ‘Um, begging your pardon, good sirs and madams and gentlefolk of other genders, but Freddie was bi.’ And they respond ‘DON’T GIVE HIM A LABEL HE DIDN’T CLAIM WAAHHH WAAHHH!’ And yet… Freddie Mercury never used the label ‘gay’, but it’s OK when they do it. And he WAS bisexual by any measure you want to use. But we back down. And 2.5% of the bisexual population decides pansexual is a better word, and instead of educating them, we add ‘pan’ to our organisation names and descriptions. Now, this is clearly a dissenting view – I will always be part of a united front where my organization is concerned. But everyone knows how I feel, and I think it’s totally valid to be loyal and in dissent at the same time. Not exactly a typically American viewpoint, but everyone says I’d be a lot more at home in Britain than I am here anyway.”

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

hi!!!! i was wondering if someone can be non-binary and still go by she/her or he/him? the only reason why i’m asking is just because i’ve only heard of non-binary people going by they/them pronouns and i heard of someone who is non-binary but goes by she/her. i’m genuinely not trying to be an asshole, just want to gain more insight as i was a little confused. i’m so sorry if this comes across as rude or ignorant, really isn’t my intention :)

no problem! it’s a fair question. so it’s pretty much a two parter:

firstly, “nonbinary” is an umbrella term, it encompasses a lot of more specific labels underneath it that all have in common the fact that they aren’t binary - ie, not entirely male and not entirely female. you can identify as agender or genderqueer or bigender and be nonbinary at the same time, because it’s the label that includes all of them. however, you can also go JUST by nonbinary, if it’s what you prefer or if you feel like there isn’t any other more specific label that fits you perfectly.

i’m one of the latter; my relationship with my gender is a long ramble of different feelings and connections to femininity, masculinity, AND a complete lack of gender, and there just isn’t a word (that i’ve found) that actually describes it, so i just slap “nonbinary” on there and move on. 

but, the point being, somebody could be agender and use xe/xir, they could be genderqueer and go by they/them, and somebody could be genderfluid and go by she/her and he/him on different days, but ALL of them are nonbinary.

secondly, pronouns do not, in of themselves, strictly have genders. you know how flamboyant gay men will call each other ‘she’ and ‘her’? butch lesbians will also sometimes go by ‘he’ and ‘him’, even though they’re still women. gender presentation is not the same thing as gender identity, which is why a gay man in full drag calling himself ‘she’ is not the same thing as a trans woman. the way you dress or what you call yourself is not automatically the gender you are in your mind and heart.

for me, she/her is just what i’m accustomed to after using those pronouns my whole life, and i personally find they/them a little unwieldy and i just don’t care enough to go to the effort of asking people to use it. i don’t like being called/referred to as a woman, and if there was a singular neutral pronoun in english that was in common usage then i might switch to that, but it honestly just doesn’t matter to me very much. i present as an androgynous, somewhat butch female, and that works for me.

tl;dr - gender is complex and personal, people choose the labels and pronouns that match their own preference, and those preferences vary. hope that makes sense. 👍

[vtori73]

Content warning for Biphobia, also mentions of (but no actual details or anything) of harassment, assault etc.

Also the MAJORITY of this post will focus on Biphobia only because it's easier for my brain to stay on topic if I do that but I do get there are multiple intersections that can happen/that I could go into but at moment I am just choosing not too because it's just easier.

Something I wish that could be talked about more is how the first two, LG, within the LGBTQIA+ acronym can and often do weaponize their identities & the marginalization they face to use against any other marginalized identities they don't like (especially when it's involving LGBT BIPOC).

This is specifically something I've noticed happen often when Bi+ &/or mspec individuals talk about the rampant ongoing biphobia we have to face within these spaces but no one really seems to care. Even our own who tend to be less marginalized or are internalizing that discrimination will go to bat for LG who are being bigoted and use their identity as a a way to shield them.

This is specifically in reference to discourse around Bi lesbians but I'm also talking about ANY Biphobia I see which I have PERSONALLY been more exposed to by Lesbians then any other Queer identities. It's not even overt half the time, other times it subtle but pervasive & I & many people still notice it but try calling it out & you get nothing but "you're Lesbophobic" "stop bullying Lesbians" "that doesn't exist/that isn't a thing/your making that up/making up problems" etc.

Now this part is going to be "problematic" but I've honestly in recent years have become very uncomfortable around most cis Lesbian ONLINE communities because of this. I've blocked or muted multiple who are straight up biphobic or are more subtle such as hating Bi/Pan Lesbians & arguing "Bi's have no say on this" & using horrible ahistorical arguments or the good old victim blaming narrative of "well if BI Lesbians are allowed to exist men are going to harass US even more!" not only horribly wrong because men with boundary issues never gave a shit before about labels so why would they now all of a sudden? It's not like that kind of narrative can't at all backfire and be used by them if they find out about it as a way to excuse their shitty ass behavior (*cough cough* gay panic*cough*) but the also NOT so subtle insulting insinuation that Bisexuals (even straight women tbh) deserve/should expect the harassment just for being Bisexual/having the possibility to be attracted to men (& as an extra layer of "fucked up" statistically speaking Bi+ people have MUCH higher rates of violent/sexual harassment/assault against them then other sexualities & obviously gets much worse if you're also Trans so I don't trust ANYONE one who uses that as an argument against Bi Lesbians, ESPECIALLY Bi+ MSPEC individuals).

There are no solid arguments I've heard so far against Bi+ lesbian identities besides "Lesbians should be allowed to have their own thing!" Which... I mean... I guess? I just feel like I've RARELY heard this sort of thing from any other group, Gay HAS become an umbrella term whether Biphobes want to admit it or not. I don't feel like I've heard gay men go as hard as some Lesbians have about wanting their own space away from the "icky" Bisexuals. And I can say I don't see that talk really from other groups a whole lot either, occasionally of course it does happen bi/pan spaces against one another but I feel it's a bit more rare compared to how often I see exclusionist Lesbians not wanting ANY sort of contact or community space with people who don't exclusively use the Lesbian label so yeah i find it hard to not see this as more then respectable/rebranded Biphobia.

I'm just tired of it & wish Bi+ & MSPEC individuals could just catch a break for once & not have to deal with this FUCKING bullshit, we honestly deserve much better.

[yikesharringrove]

Quick q for your mango verse. Female alphas, do they carry?(and if they do carry, is it stigmatized?) and how does a female alpha/female omega pair produce pups? (Do they adopt?) (You mentiondd earlier that the only secondary gender to be determined by birth was a male omega, so I got curious) sorry/not sorry for making you expand this lovely universe of yours

I went in so DEEP this is all my thoughts on this universe and the gender/secondary gender politics of it.

Honestly, because this started as a drabble, I put SUCH little thought into it, lol, but as I’ve written, there have been more and more I’ve been dwelling on.

I’m gonna put it under the cut bc I talk genitals and stuff. Don’t want anyone to get uncomfy.

Here’s the Mango Masterlist, I’m gonna maybe put this somewhere in there. Maybe at the top.

So yes, how I always like to think of ABO is that male omegas have some combination of penis/vagina because I once read one where that was the case and I was like, hell yeah. It just kind of clicked into my brain.

Especially for this one, I’m not usually into mpreg unless it makes more sense for me, biologically, so like a trans person getting pregnant (which someone tagged the Mango series as trans!steve, which could TOTALLY work) or as I’ve written Steve, more on the intersex scale. I just think it’s interesting to bring this side of gender politics that very much exists into it and make it more.

HOWEVER, Steve can DEFINITELY be read as a trans man with a clit dick, so honestly, whatever you want. 

So, my original plan, when I introduced Robin, was to have her being a female alpha a kind of euphemism for her being a lesbian, and most omegas are female in this universe. My original thought was that female alphas would have a penis, but then I was asked to write about Nancy (and look me in the eyeballs and tell me that girl is NOT an alpha) so I was like, nvm and decided to scrap that, it also sets male omegas even further apart, as they are the only secondary gender to have a difference in external genitalia. I decided that when I wrote the part of them getting harassed.

So what I was thinking, was that Robin’s queerness comes in with her being attracted to other women, obvs, but also being attracted to other female alphas.

I think that with ABO, since they are these other secondary genders, there would be an even wider range of sexuality than in real life, so you could have omega women that are attracted to only alpha males, or only alpha females, or both or neither, etc, etc. Maybe a beta male that’s attracted to women, be they alpha or omega or beta. There are two different levels to sexuality alone that would be interesting to bring into play.

I think for Steve, he likes alphas. Doesn’t care male or female.

To me, for this universe, Steve is perfect for Billy. He likes the idea of omegas, but prefers males. Maybe he only dated male betas before he met Steve, so when he finds a male omega and it’s like he’s hit the Holy fucking Grail.

Nancy is an alpha that prefers betas, she likes to be more dominant, but doesn’t want someone to be completely reliant on her.

You bring up a SUPER interesting point, and I do really like the idea of. The world I've set up definitely caters more to alphas, but I think that there would be some kind of stigma against alpha women. I think a metaphor for it would be like, alpha males are the white cishet men of the world, they get away with everything and get it handed to them on a silver platter. There’s a LOT of privilege there. Alpha women are like white cishet women, they lose some of the privileges the men have, but they still have it WAY better than most.

So as I’m thinking about it, maybe because the way an alpha presents is their knot coming in, maybe when a female alpha presents, something similar happens where her clitoris enlarges. Because alpha males are rare, many alpha women date beta or alpha men, however, I think it’d be seen as kind of a pussy move by the world at large if a male alpha were to be with a female alpha.

Does any of this make sense? I honestly don’t know.

There are a lot of things I’ve thought about that I haven’t found a way of putting into the story since they are just snippets of time, but I thought it would be interesting to delve into Steve’s experience as a male omega, like maybe when he was born his parents could’ve had him undergo surgery and hormonal therapy to have him live as a female omega, as sometimes parents of intersex people do (which is something I DO NOT agree with, let people live) but they ultimately chose not to, which could then be reflected in how Steve’s mom tried to make amends after they moved to California.

This was a long tangent and didn’t answer a single thing you asked.

Female alphas carrying: I think yes, they can carry, but I think many would not want to. Part of the typical omega biology is wanting to carry pups, to nest and take care of life. I think many alpha women would choose not to have pups. They may feel the desire to reproduce, but don’t ultimately wouldn’t want to actually get pregnant. Maybe there is a well-established culture of omega surrogates. For female alphas that choose to carry, I think they would be looked at as lesser, like maybe they are with a male alpha, and she is seen as a lesser alpha for submitting to her man’s primal urge to impregnate, even though it was a decision they both made.

I think in this universe, female alphas/female omegas can’t procreate together, but as I mentioned, maybe there is a strong culture of surrogacy like many male alphas donate sperm and many female omegas are willing to act as surrogates for those that can’t procreate on their own, and having a surrogate or using a sperm donor is seen as fairly normal.

There is still a large sense of homophobia, as the stigma Billy and Steve face is largely that Steve is a guy, but that also has an air of anti-intersex or transphobia, seeing as the real rub is that he is a male omega, it’s the combination of the two that people are mostly discriminatory against. I think in terms of stigma, male alpha with a male omega is like, BAD, and then from most stigmatized to widely accepted and celebrated would be male alpha with male alpha, male beta, female alpha, female beta, female omega. 

To use an analogy from modern-day, a person may be accepting of a gay couple, but if they find out one of the people in the couple is a gay trans man, then they are transphobic and problematic about that.

Steve also is faced with transphobia and anti-intersex moments in the form of people asking him about his genitals. That is something that many trans and intersex people are harassed with and it’s disgusting, but I think that would be many people’s go-to form of harassment with him, like the guys in part 26.

As I mentioned, Robin may face discrimination from being a female alpha, being a female alpha attracted to women, but it is more the combination of being attracted to female + alpha that creates the same homophobia she would face in real life 1980s.

(I also was going to go into how transness may work in this ‘verse, since I think being under the trans umbrella would come into play with both sets of gender, and a person could be non-tertiary (? like non-binary but with 3 established gender roles) but this post is already so long if anyone wants to know my thoughts, feel free to reach out.)

I hope this kind of explained somethings, I went on long tangents without really answering your actual questions, and I kinda feel like J.K. Rowling not mentioning any of this stuff because it’s not a part of Harry’s journey, but this has been where my brain is at in terms of writing this drabble series. The more it progresses, the more I think about certain aspects of it, and I think a LOT about how gender and sexual politics would be established in this world.

As always, if I have said or done something harmful and problematic, please come and start a discussion with me, I am always willing to learn and I understand that in talking about certain things I do not experience, I can get stuff wrong and be insensitive.

[thepatricktreestump]

pride month asks!

some questions and answers about my experience with LGBTQ+

1.       What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? 

I identify as bisexual and genderfluid, so my pronouns regularly change from she/her to he/him.

2.      How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

I have always been a huge ally to the LGBTQ+ community, but one day I was stepping out of the shower, and kind of thinking to myself what the difference between having sex with a guy and having sex with a girl was. After contemplation, I thought to myself that they really weren’t all that different to me, and I’d probably enjoy having sex with a girl just as much as having sex with a guy. I researched online a little bit, and I figured out that yeah, I’m probably bi. Especially after I fell in love with both Brendon Urie and his wife Sarah, I was pretty damn sure I was bi.

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

Sometimes I do, but it honestly doesn’t bother me too much because I come from a very conservative, religious, small town background. I grew up in a private Catholic school where everyone is Republican and nobody even knows what being gay is, much less a different gender. So I’m kind of used to putting up a façade for others. As I graduated and moved away from my hometown, things have been much better, and by politely correcting others, I’m able to be confident in who I am as well as educate the people around me.

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

Oh god, haha. I distinctly remember that night when I knew I was going to tell my best friend I was genderfluid. I was so nervous and scared, I just sort of blurted it out over text, in all caps, like “I’M GENDERFLUID” and then I kind of panicked, so I proceeded to send her about a hundred Hamilton gifs to cover up what I had typed out and sent. Although it was awkward in the moment, we both laugh about it to this day, and she’s been so accepting and kind to me ever since that moment.

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

For my friends, it was a lot of anxiety and doubt. For my parents, fear and chaos. My friends didn’t understand, they thought it was a disease of some sort, and actually a lot of them stopped talking to me. Again, conservative religious background, but still, no excuse. I grew up in a very abusive household, and it wasn’t my choice to come out. My therapist had forced me to tell my parents in a session and it was an absolute mess. Coming out wasn’t the best experience, especially as a freshman in high school.

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

I kind of explained above, but basically not so well. My dad went absolutely off on me, and said some of the most horrible things I have ever been told in my life. He said that I was dragging everyone I knew towards hell, that what I was is unmoral, unnatural, and unnormal, acted like I was some sort of monster, said it was extremely difficult to even be related to me, and that I was corrupting his family and disrespecting his household. It was a miserable time for me, but through music, I was able to write a song about it that helped me cope.

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

A lot of people assume that because I’m bisexual, I’m some sort of fetish they can use to fulfill their dirty fantasies. I’m always asked to be a part of a couple’s threesome. I am told that the only reason I’m bi is because I want double the opportunities to have sex. It’s ridiculous and disgusting. I’m bi because I like people. Not because I like sex.

8.     Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

I really fucking love beanies! Most of the time I read that’s the essential clothing item for all genderfluid people, which makes me laugh, because it’s true. Combat boots or converse, black jeans, a band t-shirt, a sports bra or binder, a jean jacket, and a beanie is always my go-to outfit. So much so, to the point my sister told me that every time I go out in public I’m always wearing the same thing, which kind of makes me laugh.

9.      Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the magna, Tamen de Gushi, but I absolutely love it! That lesbian couple is everything! I also really love Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams, of course. Captain Holt from Brooklyn Nine Nine and his husband is amazing. Elijah Daniels and Sam also make me super fucking happy.

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

Growing up as a theater kid, I’ve always seen makeup as accentuated and over the top. I only ever wore makeup on stage, and even then, it was special effects type stuff, zombies and clowns and shit. Once I hit puberty though, my mom would force me to wear makeup because she said it would make me beautiful. I hated it. She would force me to put on makeup before I left the door and it made me have horrible self image issues. As I grew older, I found a love for makeup through beauty gurus and drag queens, and I sometimes dabble in it either for fun or for special events like prom or fancy dinners. I always prefer no makeup though, I feel like to me, wearing it is just hiding behind a mask.

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

ALL THE GODDAMN FUCKING TIME. Since I’ve gotten my haircut, a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Wearing a binder also helps so much! However, I still really want to start T and I think that will help a lot. Dysphoria affects me in so many ways, whether my self confidence or my body image, my anxiety and my mood, etc., a lot of it depends on how comfortable I am in my own skin.

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

Homophobic people are probably the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life, to be honest. I’ve heard thousands of dumb things come from their mouths. I think the most outrageous myth I’ve heard is probably that being gay is a disease, and that simply being around another gay person will make you gay. Like who the fuck comes up with this shit? Smh.

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

How creative we are. We’re resilient and outspoken and passionate, but most of all, so talented. The queer community is full of inventors, politicians, emperors, artists, directors, actors, musicians, and more. It’s gorgeous just how much we are capable of.

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

The discrimination breaks my heart. The fact that we are terrified to so much as hold hands with the one we love in public. To be beaten, tortured, and killed simply for who we are. That is what hurts me the most.

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

No, I find it sort of ironic every time there is a pride event I happen to have a concert on that day. Once, a Panic! concert, which honestly is sort of the equivalent of Pride. We went and there were so many LGTBQ+ flags and people and it was so gorgeous. I have attended pride prom once though, and it was probably the most fun I had ever had in a really long time.

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

I absolutely adore Miles McKenna. He has helped me so much in finding myself and accepting who I am. He’s such a huge spokesperson for the community and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

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

I’ve been in several relationships, surprisingly, through parties and discussions and friends. My s.o. right now I met through high school, which was crazy in itself, but we’ve been dating for almost two years now and I love them to death.

18.  What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is one of my favorite books ever and it’s about being FTM trans and I love it so much wow.

19.  Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

So very much. After coming out to one of my best friends, she stared at me, disgusted and went “well don’t try to have sex with me or anything” and then proceeded to never talk to me again. I’ve received dirty looks and glares, been misgendered on purpose, and even received death threats. It’s horrible.

20. Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

I love American Horror Story so much because of just how much representation it gives our community and how natural they make it seem! And of course, “Love, Simon” was an amazing movie that made me cry like a baby.

21.  Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

I don’t really know about bloggers, but definitely Youtubers! Shane Dawson, Miles Chronicles, Thomas Sanders, Ally Hills, Anthony Amorim, Elijah Daniels, Elle Mills, Garrett Watts, Sam Collins, Todrick Hall, and Trevor Moran are a couple of my favorites.

22. Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

I don’t think queer should be a slur. I think queer is a form of self expression and an umbrella term for the community, and I believe many other LGBTQ+ members agree. It’s a word that we take great pride in rather than shame or discrimination.

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

No, but god I would love to.

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

For me, it’s simply just a part of who I am. Just like the weather, my gender simply changes and I adapt to it. It makes me comfortable in my own skin and proud of who I am. I wouldn’t change being genderfluid for the world.

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

I fucking hate the idea of pushing a human being out of my vagina, and I would probably want anything else in the entire world other than giving birth. Being pregnant for nine months sounds absolutely miserable and dysphoric, and I cannot even imagine going through labor. However, I would like to have kids, just simply through foster care or adoption, never like my own biological children. There are more than enough kids who need good homes who already exist and I’m more than happy to give it to them.

26. What identity advice would you give your younger self?

You aren’t alone and there are so many people just like you. Your parents do not own you and cannot tell you who you are supposed to be. You are you.

27.  What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

Gender roles are complete bullshit. Let a guy be a stay at home dad. Let a woman be the working one. Everyone should have responsibilities regardless of their gender. If there’s dirty dishes, do the fucking dishes, don’t wait for your spouse to get home to do them. It’s absolutely ridiculous, really. Just do your part in the relationship.

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

It breaks my heart how much pain and suffering one has to go through just to be themselves, especially for women and trans people. It’s horrible.

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

It’s natural! It’s comfortable! And it’s normal! Being oneself is just part of life, there’s no need to have shame or guilt about it. Respect someone the way you wish you would be accepted and loved.

30. Why are proud to be lgbt+?

We have worked so fucking hard to be recognized for who we are. There’s still so much we need to do though, and we aren’t ever going to stop until every single one of our siblings gain the love and respect they deserve.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormless Ch. 13 – Everything’s awful but lesbians are in fact REAL

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

Turns out a preserved corpse of a Soulless person that the Kingair pack stole from Egypt is causing the humanization problem.  However somebody is after that coprse, and knocked LeFoux and Lord Maccon unconscious.  Alexia gonna have to fix everything herself HURMPH!

Chapter 13 – Everything’s awful but lesbians are in fact REAL

Wowzers! Here’s the climax chapter.  It won’t be the height of tension, but it will be the height of my irritated confusion.  My apologies for length, it was a long chapter, and full of a lot of bullshit. LET’S GO!

              We get a rare good moment where Alexia looks at the passed out Maccon and worries about him.  She makes a cute note about how his eyelashes are super long and once when she commented that she was jealous of his long eyelashes he tickled her neck with them.  This will be the last genuinely good thing in this chapter.

Alexia goes to a recently woken up LeFoux.  LeFoux is all distraught, and there’s a bullshit line about how being upset made her look slightly more feminine and Alexia, “Didn’t know if she liked that.”

              CAUSE SADNESS IS A WOMAN DISEASE AND ALEXIA ONLY CARES WHAT LEVEL OF CURRENT FUCKIBLITY YOU ARE! THE LEVEL OF EGOMANIA ON THIS BITCH!

              LeFoux is like, “Hey don’t be mad at the woman who shot me and your husband. She didn’t ~mean~ it.”

YES TURNS OUT THE BIG BAD OF THIS BOOK SERIES I FUCKING CALLED BACK IN CHAPTER 4 OF THE LAST BOOK!  It was Angelique! GOSH WHAT A FUCKING TWIST! YOU KNOW THE CHARACTER WHO, AT THE END OF THE LAST BOOK WAS DESCRIBED IN TEXT AS A BLATANT SPY! Yet the entirety of this book Alexia thinks its LeFoux and goes so far as to think she’s faking being shot? She turns out of the room and all the werewolves are sleeping and instead of…I DON’T KNOW letting them know she’s identified the attacker?  She just huffs that she must do everything herself.

GOD STUPIDITY AND A POINTLESS MARTYR COMPLEX IS REALLY FUCKING HOT! ALSO I’M GLAD THAT EVERY SINGLE WEREWOLF FELT COMFORTABLE FALLING ASLEEP WITH AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THEIR CASTLE THAT WAS EVEN ABLE TO PUT DOWN THEIR FORMER ALPHA!

So Alexia goes to the room where the mummy is, but Angelique is not there. So instead of disposing of the body that Angelique is clearly after, she’s runs up to the Aethongrapher room. Angelique is there and shoves her aside to escape the room. So they go back to the mummy room, and Angelique is trying to drag the body out of there.  Alexia goes to shoot some of her sleepy darts at Angelique but just as she’s about to Ivy shows up to stand in front of Alexia and whine that Alexia is being callous to her.  But as I have described before, this is not Ivy’s fault. Ivy’s kink is inconvenient timing. Blithering obtusely in front of a weapon while the bad guy gets away makes her CUM.  The TV hasn’t been invented yet so she can’t stand in front of it during a crucial part of a show/game.  SHE HAS TO FIND SOME WAY TO GET OFF!

DO YOU WANT THIS WOMAN TO NEVER ORGASM!?

Despite that Alexia is able to catch up to Angelique and knocks her unconscious with a hefty umbrella swing.  She takes the mummy outside, and dissolves it using the acid function on her umbrella.  I mean, I was hoping she’d go whole hog and it would come to life and fight them but WELP guess that would be stupid fun and we’re only allowed one of those things in this book and it ain’t fun.  When the corpse is just about pudding, Alexia goes back in and hears Ivy scream.

OH NO!

We take a break from this regularly scheduled programming to swap over to Biffy, Channing, and Lyall at the Westminster Hive.  Biffy apparently snuck in and broke their Aethonographer.  This is just to let us all know that the message Angelique tried to send before didn’t get through.  I mean targeting the Aethongrapher only, doesn’t make any sense AT ALL from their perspective and honestly you could have written the entire thing out to tighten up the story.  But like I guess it was real important to have that bit where Alexia has to try 2 rooms to find Angelique.

FUCK ME RUNNING!

So Ivy screamed because a woken up Angelique puts a knife to Ivy’s throat and is leading her up the stairs.  All the werewolves are there as well as Tunstell.  Tunstell gets out the magic gun, which by the way they start calling the ‘tun tun’ which makes a lot of sense and is totes keeping it tense. Shouldn’t it be the tun gun? WHATEVER!

They go up to a room and Angelique makes Ivy open a window.  Meanwhile Tunstell tries to sneak around the side while Alexia tries to distract her.  By the way this is the first time we hear that Tunstell is apparently a big dude. I had totally assumed that since he was described as a meek servant/actor coated in freckles that he was a 5’5” adorable waif boy who weighs 110 lbs on a good day.  I’m glad you waited till now to tell us that. After a bit of a scuffle Tunstell wrestles the knife away, saves Ivy, and Angelique tumbles to her death out the window.  The gun is never shot and Chekov leaps out to die on the cold hard Scottish earth like Angelique.

Apparently there was a rope ladder leading down that window that Angelique was really hoping she’d be able to escape down, with the knife to the throat of a hostage? OKAY THEN!  When Angelique woke up, why didn’t she just try to make a break for it, to avoid being persecuted by the supernatural police?  What was the point of the hostage thing? Why did she have this rope ladder prepared?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST BOOK! IT’S NOT GOOD ACTION IF THE ENTIRETY OF IT FALLS APART LIKE A BISCUIT IN TEA WHEN YOU ASK LITERALLY ANY QUESTION REGARDING IT!

You know what would have been a thousand times better?  If Alexia goes to question a recently recovered Angelique, and Angelique in a panic puts a knife to a dipshit Ivy’s throat by a window. Angelique demands to be given the body. Alexia explains that she destroyed it.  Angelique at first doesn’t want to believe it but eventually concedes. Saying something along the lines of, “…If I can’t deliver the body…then…then they’ll kill me…”  The people there try to reassure her that they can protect her.  However in Angelique’s stunned grief she slips from the window, Tunstell is able to grab Ivy but not Angelique.  Was it an accident?  Did she want to die on her own terms?  WE’LL NEVER KNOW?  The chapter ends where the crowd goes to check on her and Angelique is FOR SURE dead. LeFoux seeing the shattered body of her former lover, clutches Alexia and wails.

BUT NOPE IN FACT THIS HAPPENS NEXT!

So Alexia is the only one to go check the body.  Angelique is in fact dead, but turns into a ghost. Angelique tells Alexia to perform the exorcism, which means kill her for real real. Alexia wants questions answered first. Angelique says she’ll answer 10, Alexia agrees to this.  

So like…why are you going to respect her wishes now? Doesn’t she need to be persecuted under the law, or have proof of the Hive’s wrongdoing?  You maybe want to give LeFoux a chance to talk to her, since she was obviously really upset and protective of her before? GUESS NOT!

Angelique, before the questioning is revealed to have done this whole task for the immortality, since she previously and is still working with the Westminster hive. She is GIVEN immortality in the form of being a ghost and is immediately like NOPE I’D RATHER DIE. HUHHHH? MAYBE IT’S NOT IDEAL VAMPIRE THING BUT REALLY?

GOD WHATEVER IT JUST GETS WORSE ANYWAY!

Angelique says that it wasn’t her who tried to break into her bag or poison her. Alexia asks if LeFoux is trying to kill her, Angelique says probably not cause you’d already be dead.  AND LIKE WE ESTABLISHED THIS EXACT ANSWER TO THIS SAME QUESTION BEFORE. WHY ARE YOU WASTING YOUR QUESTIONS YOU COMPLETE IMBECILE!

It’s revealed that Quensel, the kid LeFoux was taking poor care of before, is Angelique’s son.  Angelique was trying to hide the fact she had a son from the vampires cause the vampires won’t turn her if she has any family. Apparently LeFoux, was trying to get Angelique to take care of her son and to stop the vampire biz by threatening to tell the Vampires about her son.  That didn’t work apparently.  We also confirm that yes, SHOCK OF SHOCK, Angelique and LeFoux used to be an item for many years.  So we have this OH SO DELIGHTFUL paragraph:

“Alexia had seen something of the kind in her father’s collection, but she had never imagined it might be based on anything more than masculine wistfulness or performances put on to titillate a John’s palate.  That two women might do such things voluntarily with one another and do so with some degree of romantic love. Was that possible?”

(Irritated Stare with the phrase [stares in gay judgement])

You’re 26 years fucking old, you’re well aware that gay men exist, LeFoux has been hitting on her blatantly this entire book and has been pretty much screaming how much of a lesbian she is.  Like you can have Alexia in bi-denial, sure, but for her not to even realize two girls can have sex and romance at one another outside of men JACKING IT!? FUCKING WOW!   I want to be clear and say that there is a myth that Queen Victoria didn’t think lesbians were real when she was enforcing the no homosexuality laws. TO BE CLEAR THAT IS A MYTH! PEOPLE IN VICTORIAN TIMES KNEW LESBIANS WEREN’T JUST A MALE CREATED HORNY MYTH LIKE HOW WOMEN LOVE THE TASTE OF JIZZ, YOU THICK-HEADED TWIT!

The last questions that Alexia asks basically are, “Is it possible for women to love each other?” and “You’re a cold bitch aren’t you?”  QUEEN PICKED TOP INVESTIGATOR HERE!  She then FOR REAL kills Angelique.  Also I’m glad she didn’t ask Angelique what they were planning on doing with the humanization corpse, because that mystery is probably what the entirety of the 3rd book is about.

So we head back in the castle to try to wrap this all up, and boy is it pointlessly messy.  I’m going to recount the items in order, so you TOO can realize what a clusterfuck this is.

Alexia tells LeFoux that Angelique is dead which makes LeFoux cry.  Alexia has a normal human response to seeing a woman she likes grieving.

“Lady Maccon envied her skill of crying with aplomb.  She herself went all over splotchy, but Madame Lefoux seemed to be able to execute the emotional state with minimal fuss.”

By performing some pretty sweet mental gymnastics to make it about herself. CONGRATULATIONS!  She does later say that the scene was painfully sad…but…your first thought, and the one you dedicate more than a sentence to is… “I wish I could cry as hot as she could?” MOTHER OF FUCK LADY!

Maccon takes Alexia aside and explains that LeFoux and he are besties despite not interacting with her at all this entire book.  He told his BFF4EVAH to keep an eye on Alexia.  Don’t know why he would have lied about this?  Maybe Alexia would have felt patronized? Alexia was attacked 5 times last book and needed to be saved 3 of those times.  There’s nothing wrong with that ratio, but there’s also nothing wrong with wanting to have back up if you’re in a dangerous profession. Besides that the two both love science and gadgets, and if he couldn’t predict that LeFoux would awaken his wife’s bisexuality too, it seems silly to lie to her about it.  

But my pity for Alexia runs dry again when, upon hearing Maccon and LeFoux are buds…she accuses Maccon of sleeping with LeFoux. And it’s like…

(Honestly, you people, and by that I mean straight people…are ridiculous.)

If Alexia is bi, it don’t matter she’s still in denial and acting like a straight up straighty.

You just found out that lesbians are real and that LeFoux is one of them, and YOU were the one to almost cheat on him with her, and you ACCUSE HIM? Are you FOR REAL!?  I mean this is just a set up for Alexia to realize SOME MORE that lesbians are real. I’m glad I’m reading one of those books where everything needs to be explained 5 times.

Alexia brings up the fact that Angelique turned into a ghost but exorcised her right away without considering if literally anybody else wanted to talk to her INCLUDING THE LONG-TERM –EX-GIRLFRIEND WHO WAS RAISING HER KID.  LeFoux is rightly upset at this and Alexia retorts with

“There’s no need to wallow.”

Now even Lord Maccon steps in like, “THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, SHE’S RIGHTLY UPSET!”  To which Aleixa points out OH SO RIGHTLY that LeFoux didn’t want to be girlfriends with Angelique again, so like…it makes no sense why she’d want to have some parting words or care about her living or dying.

THEN THIS TRANSITION SHEESH VERBATIM:

Lord Maccon looked at his wife appreciatively. “Good Lord, woman, how could you have possibly known that?”

“Well” – Lady Maccon grinned – “Madame Lefoux here did play a bit of the coquette with me while we were traveling. I do not think she was entirely shamming.”

I’m sorry what?  We already established that LeFoux is a vagatrian and had a relationship with Angelique.  Is she saying the fact she was flirted with PROOF that LeFoux is not in a relationship? Alexia, you were flirting back and you’re married. This is not a brilliant deduction.  We only have this transition so that Alexia can brag about almost BUT NOT ACTUALLY cheating on her husband.  And like…it’s one thing to take the piss out of him because he’s irrationally jealous.  However Alexia herself was like REALLY, REALLY irrationally jealous a second ago and it’s not really irrational since Alexia might have had sex with her if she came to the conclusion earlier that girls can like other girls.  SoOOoOOoOOoo great!

We continue to have pissing contests.  Maccon is mad that Alexia never told him she was almost poisoned, even though you’d THINK Tunstell would have brought that up to him since he’s his servant and he was the one actually poisoned.  LeFoux admits she was looking around for Alexia’s bag and that she wanted the humanization weapon too.  However she wants it NOT because she’s in the Hypocras club, but in the Organization of the Brass Octopus (OBO.)  The Organization of the Brass Octopus is a secret group of Scientists that is working to curb the power of Supernaturals and that the Hypocras Club was a ~militant branch~ of the OBO.  Alexia is bothered that Maccon didn’t tell her about OBO, since YANNO Alexia spent half the book thinking that her crush LeFoux wanted to genocide people like her husband.  Which yanno REALLY STOPPED HER FROM A LOT THERE!  Alexia tries to ask more questions about OBO and Maccon just answers them all with, “But it’s a secret!”

Really love that Maccon gets super mad when Alexia doesn’t talk to him, but when she asks questions he huffs and won’t tell her.  You could maybe argue that since it’s a secret society thing that Maccon shouldn’t tell her. He was sworn to secrecy or some shit.  But like also…a branch of this club nearly killed them both… and she’s in charge of the entire English government’s Supernatural balance system….Maybe it’s okay for her to know a little about a powerful organization in that country that’s supposed to do the same thing?

WHATEVER!

We end with LeFoux admitting she was LOOKING FOR Alexia’s bag but never went through it or messed up her room to find it.  Alexia for once has a normal reaction which boils down to, “FUCK THIS SHIT!” and storms out.  CAUSE WHY BRING UP SHE WAS LOOKING FOR IT AT ALL? That is pointlessly confusing.

So below I made a little chart with how easily it could have been to make this conversation flow better. Even if you want to keep in jealousy pissing contest which is also an EVEN WOMEN WOULD SEX ME STUPID HUSBAND!

I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about editing books…but I feel as if either the editors gave this a soft touch.  It seems like a simple fix that could have tightened it up and made it an easier read.

Say something nice Faps:

It was technically a climax

They technically tried to wrap things up

It has been acknowledged that yes LESBIANS ARE REAL

I did genuinely like Alexia having a vulnerable moment looking upon her knocked out husband and feeling protective of him.

[siriussly-serious]

I know some blogs from older trans people (I follow a lot of more conservative trans people, so maybe it's why they don't like it as much) who really don't agree with the whole 'queer has been reclaimed' thing. I think as a rule it's better to assume people don't want to be called by a slur which have hurt them and to use the LGBT acronym instead, don't you think? I really don't want to offend or hurt anyone :/

Mmmm, Okay a few things.

How would this come up in conversation? Like, you’re saying you don’t want to offend someone, which is great, but how would you do that, unless your standard greeting to strangers is “Sup Queers”. Which… might rub some people the wrong way, even if they are comfortable with the word, simply because you don’t know them well enough. Like…you’d know someone well enough already before you start that. They’re always able to say “Ohh, I don’t like that dude.” If someone doesn’t like it, that’s fine, but you can’t erase an entire community of people. That’s not how it works. Like, if you don’t want to be called queer, that’s fine. Let those people speak for themselves, and they never need be called that.

Yes, it has been used as a slur, but it’s moved on from that. So very very far from that. In addition to it being reclaimed a term of endearment, the same way some black people will be like “Sup nigga”, in the same way friends can say “Oh hey bitch”. It depends on who it’s coming from, the heart it’s said with, and if the person is overall comfortable with it.

There are queer people, and I don’t mean there are lesbians and gays etc, no I mean there are QUEER PEOPLE. People who don’t know where they fit, or fall under the umbrella of a few different terms and shouldn’t be made to choose. They’re not straight, they’re queer. I know plenty of people who are proud as hell to be queer.

I honestly don’t care where a person sits in the spectrum of the community, but no-one gets to speak for everyone. I just can’t stand when people say “Oh some people may be offended by -” Are YOU some people? No. I understand people wanna be all sjw, but sometimes it doesn’t work.

Obviously there are things were it’s a majority of people who are offended by something, such a racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc slurs which are the polar opposite in that 99% (for example) of people are totally against it, but there are some who are okay with it. In that regard, those words should just be erased unless you’re around people who have decided to reclaim it, and you know that everyone’s cool with it.

[edgywords]

This gonna be a long post. Very sorry. 

0. I apologize for my tone. I should have used a tone indicator or something because my attempt at showing I was genuine by using the word genuine came off sarcastic. You seem to have responded in turn. Even if that’s how you express yourself, given the earlier ‘write back soon xx’ I’m reading as sarcastic, I’m sorry for my role in that. I don’t want to fight. I don’t think opposing opinions in discussions have to lead to fights. /g

0. I am going to use the words “gay” or “LGBTQ” as umbrella terms for the community, as using the word qu**r makes me personally uncomfortable, so I feel somewhat uncomfortable saying it unnecessarily and repeatedly, and though I know a lot of members today have reclaimed it and I do not mean to take away from that, I hesitate to apply it to history and generalize the past community using it while I understand they didn’t really use a lot of the identity-specific language we have today under the LGBTQ acronym/community. /g

I am not an all-knowing God. The research I gaze my eyes upon does not have a magic spell which makes it free from error. Feel free to fact-check me. Just drop a source so I can check it out, pretty please. 

1. If a catalyst is defined as “an event or person causing great change” I mean, why isn’t Stonewall a catalyst? Is almost every LGBTQ person celebrating the event each June collectively wrong? Nobody has done any research except you? It’s not like Stonewall was the only important event for LGBTQ history but I don’t think any person declares it as so.

Anyway: if you didn’t know, people hate gay people a lot. /j

Past was no exception. Before Stonewall was no exception. In New York, life was made a pretty decent pain for LGBTQ people. It was seen as disorderly for gay people to gather, so they made policies to shut down our bars. That luckily got overturned in 1966, but showing gay affection in public was illegal, so they still hounded our bars.

You know “be gay, do crime?” Well, it was kind of “be gay, be involved with crime.” Gay people weren’t treated fairly by other businesses, so the mafia actually had a hand in plenty of gay bars. The Genovese family owned Stonewell. 

As it was registered, Stonewall Inn was private bar, and it actually didn’t need a liquor license gay bars had trouble with because patrons were supposed to bring their own. People also signed their names in a book. The Genovese actually paid off the police, pretty much, to turn a blind eye to the bar, and with little interference they didn’t exactly keep it in tip-top shape because I guess tip-top shape was too expensive for their tastes. 

Bars were usually warned before getting raided. In the raid that lead to the Stonewell Riots, they weren’t. They had a warrant, made their way in, acted like assholes, doing their arresting people thing and checking genitals in bathrooms and overall being, well, police I suppose, treating with the disdain society did, and people were fed the fuck up. 

They watched their community get roughed up by police, got angry, and then stuff was getting thrown, like stones and bottles and pennies, and honestly, good for them. Police hid in the bar, people set the bar on fire, which was taken care off and the crowd faded but over the next couple of days protests continued. 

As I said, Stonewall wasn’t the only or even most important thing. Important pro-LGBTQ groups existed before Stonewall. Other violent riots happened before Stonewall. They brought changes. They probably aren’t talked about as much as they should be.

But Stonewall inspired activism and a movement; LGBTQ groups for gay rights formed, such as GLAAD, PFLAG, Human Rights Campaign, Queer Nation. It got people talking. The anniversary of Stonewall was the first pride parade. Stonewall is now a national monument. 

We should not downplay the contribution of those at Stonewall, the brave move made by the lesbian getting shoved into a car by rousing the crowd and the crowd who then fought back. 

They hated us. They made laws against us. Literally we just wanted to do our thing. You know the whole, I’m paraphrasing, the child who is not embraced by the village’s warmth will burn it down? I would say the kid is gay and Stonewall was, at least one instance, one people really knew about, when they burned the shit. 

2.  I haven’t seen a ton about whether they started it or not. I’d love to see where the quotes and info about their arrival was from. They participated, though; they were important activists. And they, at least once, had been sex workers. Many of the people who attended Stonewell, and gay bars, were sex workers. Rivera was a sex worker. Johnson was a sex worker. They were POC. If not trans - I’ll get to that in a moment - then transgender rights activists. And there was still a community of trans people, gay people, POC, and sex workers working right alongside each other to for the right to exist as they were. 

Sex workers have been erased from our movement, our history, because it is looked down upon. You just need to dig a little deeper. We shouldn’t forget their contributions and the possibly inseparable, relationship between the movements for rights for LGBTQ and sex workers. LGBTQ people were discriminated against. They sold sex. They rallied for rights. Sex workers were discriminated against. They rallied for rights. These groups are not mutually exclusive. 

3. Gender was less understood back then. They barely even had “transgender,” it was basically just transvestite was which basically just a cross-dresser and the same word used to identify it as a mental illness. Is it not fair to be more inclined to identify as a drag queen, if that’s the understanding of what you were? Even if not, it’s not so simple as “I’m actually just a drag queen.” 

Rivera had a pretty complicated relationship with gender. She did identity as a drag queen. She also called herself a half-sister, a gay man, a gay woman, took hormones, and no, she wasn’t a big fan of the term “transgender.” She just wanted to be herself, and perhaps it is a little simplifying to label her directly as trans. Her identity was far more fluid than just a drag queen, though, and we shouldn’t label her as simply a gay man in drag. She would likely fall under the T in LGBTQ if all the labels we use today were around in her time. 

Similar to Rivera, the label “transgender” wasn’t a huge thing throughout her life. She also varyingly identified as transvestite, gay, a drag queen. “Gender non-conforming” is a pretty good way to put it all. Even if people maybe generalize her as trans as in specifically transgender, it’s pretty fair to say she would fall somewhere under the T in LGBTQ if she was alive today with all the different descriptive labels. 

Even if they weren’t transgender idols as in “they were idols and transgender” trans people can still pick people who were probably not cis on the gender spectrum and who were transgender rights activists as an idol. We can lift them up and appreciate their contributions to our history. 

//

It’s rather confusing, truthfully, to support diverse sexualities but not gender, or even sex working, likely, from your word change from sex work to prostitution,  and I’m not quite sure while why that’s where the line has been drawn. People do hate us all. In-fighting to this extreme extent isn’t doing much good. 

I don’t know how to tell you this in a way that sounds kind but truthfully, your tumblr account will not erase trans people. Your account, your activism, and your opinions will not change the real experience of trans people everywhere that have existed for years before you and will exist afterwards. You will not convince every single trans person they are not trans or every cis person and ally that trans people do not exist. In the most gentle way possible, the trans community will continue to thrive long after you are gone. To be honest I don’t understand why you’ve chosen this hill to die on but I know I don’t have to understand this specifically. I know what it’s like to be an exclusionist. Every single action of the group bothers you after you form your opinion. /srs, g

I just have to tell you it feels so much better to just let go. To release. You can still have your opinions but lose the passion behind it. It’s not kinder to the trans community. It’s kinder to yourself.

To be frank, I think a lot of exclusionist opinions stem from perhaps a lack of empathy—you just can’t understand how someone would feel that way, and because of it, it’s hard to sympathize or have compassion. You get upset when they express their existence and well, they shouldn’t identity that way so they can suck it up when they’re attacked. /s

This could possibly stem from mental illness or trauma, no matter how subtle the traumatizing experiences. I would ask you to look inside yourself to see if there’s a need not being met. Did you grow up with conservative people? Is your relationship with your caregivers okay? Really okay? Can you walk up to them and silently hug them? Are your conversations lively or awkward? Your siblings? Your friends? The people at your school? Last time you got a hug? How did you discover your identity? What was your internalized homophobia like? What’s your experiences with homophobia like? How does it feel to be rarely represented on the screen? Does it feel like a kick or a punch in the gut when you experience unexpected homophobia? When you’re alone do you feel lonely? Do you feel sad? Anxious? Do you truly like yourself? Do you feel loved? What about the Event? The Events, plural? What did you just think of and are you totally healed from it, and are you truly okay? /g

What do you hope to gain by pushing down the T, and does it fulfill you?

Sources: https://www.britannica.com/event/Stonewall-riots, https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera, https://time.com/5604224/stonewall-lgbt-sex-worker-history/, https://womenshistory.si.edu/herstory/object/sylvia-rivera, https://unitedagainstracismnm.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/marsha-p-johnson/, https://time.com/5604224/stonewall-lgbt-sex-worker-history/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_P._Johnson

also if ur one of those ppl that are like "the black and brown stripes on pride flags are uglyyy umu make it more aesthetically pleasing!!!" please stop talking i dont like you

[probablynotthatedgy]

I'm going to say this once and never again.

This pride month I have seen SO much bullshit. All the "aces aren't lgbt", the "you're not trans enough", all of the biphobic, transphobic, aphobic, etc comments, the apparent erasure of lesbians?? And just all of these stupid little internet wars. In no way am I "defending" aces because I'm not trying to put in my own opinion. Some aces consider themselves LGBT+, while some say they shouldn't be. The word queer is an umbrella term for anyone who differs from cisgender/heterosexual normativity. Maybe aces fit that description, maybe you don't think so. But does that really fucking matter? I think it just shows a lot about someone's character when they go out of their way to invalidate and personally attack people of a certain group. You've got to be kidding me. Who fucking cares?! If a cishet ace says that they're lgbt, well what the fuck am I going to do. If I do get annoyed or bothered by that I'm not going to flip out and scream at aces for saying they're ace. For saying they're lgbt. This is supposed to be a community of acceptance. You don't have to accept aces, just don't fucking go out of your way to say that none of them are lgbt. What I find funny is that DRAG QUEENS are accepted in the lgbtq+ community, but THEY FOR SURE ARE NOT "inherently LGBT". Oh, sorry did you assume their sexuality because they're drag queens/kings when that is a performing art? Wow I mean that is quite uneducated. Just like those who claim there is no ersure of bisexuals. As if there's no biphobic people in the community. Stop kidding yourself. There's so many biphobic and transphobic people in the community, which I don't even need to go into because its obvious and easy to find, this isn't even just one specific thing, I've heard many comments both irl and online. I wanted to talk about the "lack of lesbian representation" ie when Oreo had that ad with pride coloured oreo insides. There were a few flags, but not the lesbian flag. They could have put that in, but they didn't. Some people made attacks online, taking about how it was such bullshit that there was the (oh my god) ACE flag, but not the lesbian flag. 1) okay so, some people have argued in the past that, the lesbian flag, which is also known as the Lipstick Lesbian flag shouldn't be used to represent lesbians. There are 19 flags, and this is a sort of touchy subject as some think that it IS the official lesbian flag or others think that the rainbow flag should be used as it should classify ALL homosexuals, which honestly, I think that a lesbian flag would be better than that bc it isn't fair to group all homosexuals together, as gays and lesbians have their differences. Anywho, attacking other groups because you aren't being represented is incredibly immature and awful. That is not helping ANYONE. PLEASE STOP BEING A CHILD AND STOP STARTING SHIT BETWEEN DIFFERENT LGBT+ PEOPLE. i dont want to hear anyone of the lgbt+ community invalidating non-binary people, genderqueer people, pansexuals, bisexuals, demisexuals, and aces. ACES DONT HAVE TO BE LGBT TO EARN YOUR RESPECT.

like oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that there were specific rules for this community and assholes on twitter ran the community and totally fucking were there for the gay rights movement.

Please do not reply to this with any bullshit attacking me or any group of people. The point of this is that it DOESNT matter if aces are lgbt, if non-binary is real, if pansexuality is a thing, if bisexuality makes sense, if you do or don't understand transgender people. The point IS : respect people regardless of your opinion. Remember that regardless of these labels (and even people who dont use labels), these are each human individuals. You are entitled to an opinion, but don't take away from those who are happy being themselves. You have no right to kill someone's spirit and you are no better than any other human, even if that human identifies with something that you don't.

Celebrate your identity and live alongside others.

❤

[thecinephale]

Redefining Romance with The Shape of Water and On Body and Soul

By the time Katharine and I met in November of 2015 I didn’t care about romance. This word that had consumed me since I was a child no longer made any sense. My celibate adolescence was spent scribbling love poems and consuming movies like (500) Days of Summer, Beginners, and Annie Hall. But I’d since realized my poetry sucked and that Woody Allen’s body of work was nothing to admire. I was casually sleeping with a close friend and grappling with the absence of a core part of my identity. Ever since I was four and told my sister’s best friend I had a crush on her, liking girls and turning that like into a personal narrative was part of me. It was my way of being close to women and how I’d come to terms with what kind of man I could be. I wasn’t effeminate, I was sensitive. I wasn’t girly, I was romantic. 

And yet after years of crafting yarns from ordinary, or even non-existent, experiences, I was about to have my first truly cinematic meet-cute. Katharine and I met at Sleep No More during her very first performance. A friend of mine who worked there had been trying to get me to go for nearly a year and finally this night, for some reason, I caved. During the show I had four one-on-ones, immersive show lingo for private moments with performers, and I was more than satisfied with my experience. The show was just about over when I saw her, sitting on a suitcase at the end of an empty hall. Unsure if she was a performer or a tired audience member I slowly crept toward her. She stood up, took my hand, and we had a one-on-one. Later at the bar, my friend introduced us and we spent the rest of the night talking. A week later we were on a train together headed upstate.

This story is romantic in every way I could’ve hoped for as a teenager. And yet what I remember most from these weeks is the joy I felt getting to know Katharine. I was honestly a bit embarrassed having met her at Sleep No More since that place thrives off of people’s sometimes toxic fantasies. Especially because none of it felt that grand. I didn’t even think our first conversation could possibly be romantic until my friend asked me why I didn’t get her number. Our first date was upstate because she mentioned wanting to get out of the city before it got too cold and it seemed like a good idea. I didn’t know that she was the one. It was a date. I’d been on many first dates and planned to go on more. And while I did like her, I wasn’t obsessive. I liked her more on our second date than our first, and on our third date than our second, and today I’m more obsessed with her than I’ve ever been before.

There is a really simple explanation for this. Something about maturity and real, adult relationships. But this alone assumes that what I’d grown out of was romance, when in fact what I was really grappling with was male, heteronormative romance. I’d confronted the behaviors I’d copied for so long and realized they didn’t fit with who I was. But now what? A year and a half after Katharine and I met I came out to her and began transitioning.

***

It’s been a relief coming out, like I was holding my breath my entire life and can finally inhale and exhale like everyone else. So much of my life makes sense now in a way that it never did and I never thought it would. And one of the most rewarding aspects of my personal transition has been transitioning Katharine and I’s relationship as well, going from a seemingly heterosexual relationship to an openly lesbian one. There’s both liberation and emptiness in a relationship that is free from the vast majority of messaging received. Everything from fairy tales to Cosmo to the oeuvre of a known child molester has a lot less power when none of that stuff was ever meant to represent you. But there’s a reason why people enjoy that stuff. It feels good to be seen and it’s a relief to sink into fantasy. And while I’ve embraced the general umbrella by binge watching The L Word with Katharine and finally understanding my deep connection to Fun Home, Carol, and The Watermelon Woman, there’s still a searching for a love story like ours. A love story that feels outside of normalcy, that feels confusing and difficult and complicated yet ultimately just as fantastical and lovely. And it can’t just be solved by, say, a trans love story. I’d certainly welcome more of those (for now shout out to Sense8 and Her Story), but it’s deeper than that.

***

Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a ridiculous movie. That it’s currently the Oscar frontrunner is honestly astounding. Yes, it’s impeccably shot, designed, scored, written, and acted, but it’s also a movie that I’m at a loss to defend. On his podcast Keep It wonderful culture writer Ira Madison III was making fun of the movie and impersonated Octavia Spencer’s character with a simple “You fucking that fish?” I burst out laughing. Because it’s hilarious and because the scene in the movie isn’t actually that far off! 

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the film is about a mute woman named Eliza (the always great Sally Hawkins) who works as a cleaner at a government facility during the Cold War. The US attains a creature simply called “Amphibian Man” and Eliza falls in love with him (them?). So it’s sort of like Beauty and the Beast if Beast never really spoke, there was explicit sex, and Belle had a black best friend and a gay neighbor. There’s also a subplot with some Russians. And a musical number.

It’s goofy as hell and yet I spent a large portion of the movie in tears. It reached its scaly arm down my throat and grabbed my heart. Any moment where the Amphibian Man was on screen I had a voice in my head that just kept repeating, “That’s me. That’s me.” Now I don’t know what it says about where I’m at in my transition that I have an easier time relating to a fish man than Jamie Clayton’s awesome trans hacker on Sense8, but alas it’s the truth. Because if I’m being honest, I usually don’t feel like I’m being perceived as a woman, I rarely even feel like I’m being perceived as trans, but I do feel like I’m being perceived as a creature.

Watching Eliza not only fall in love with Amphibian Man but be the instigator of the relationship felt revolutionary and comforting in equal measure. Returning to Beauty and the Beast (also King Kong, also everything like this), it’s usually the creature that kidnaps or captures the virginal lady and has to convince her to love him. This always feels a little gross and undercuts the message of acceptance. But here Eliza is a sexual woman. From the beginning it’s shown that masturbation is a part of her daily routine. She doesn’t fall for the Amphibian Man because of a repressed desire. She falls for the creature because she feels a connection. She wants to help them live a life of freedom alongside her. She wants to teach the Amphibian Man how to live in her world because it would bring her happiness. 

Katharine didn’t rescue me from a lab. But she has helped me escape… something. She has helped introduce me to a confusing world of feminine expectations and desires that feel comfortable and natural and also confusing and impossible. And above all else she has done this because she loves me. She isn’t still dating me because she’s a good person (no matter what other cis-es like to suggest). She’s still dating me because she sees me for who I am and loves me. I’m insecure about a lot of things, but I know this to be true and it means everything to me.

***

Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul, another Oscar nominee (a longshot in the Foreign Film category) has faced a similar reaction to Del Toro’s film. It won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, yet almost every review even when positive points out the film’s silly weirdness. Also a love story, this time between two humans, Enyedi’s first film in 18 years is about a pair of employees at a slaughterhouse who realize that they’re somehow having the exact same dream about two deer. The people are Endre, the emotionally detached manager with a disabled left arm, and Mária, the new quality control inspector who is autistic and quickly becomes the butt of her coworkers’ jokes.

Again, I understand the reaction. The very concept of a love story at a slaughterhouse (featuring graphic scenes of slaughter) is already a stretch. Add the hokiness of nocturnal destiny, a subplot involving stolen bull Viagra, some deeply unpleasant narrative turns, and a formal approach as reserved as its leads, it’s unsurprising that many don’t know how to receive this film. It’s too open-hearted for the arthouse yet it’s not exactly fine-tuned for Nicholas Sparks. But for me, this film lived up to its title and infiltrated my body and soul, I connected deeply, and wept softly. And I’ve been unable to shake it, that initial feeling only growing since the first viewing.

There is an obvious contrast between the dream sequences with Endre and Mária as deer and the real life sequences of animals in cages having their guts torn out. It’s easy to read this simply as a statement between the purity of their love and the harshness of the rest of the world. But this ignores the unreality of the deer scenes and the specificity of animal imagery. Because a main thread through the film is that Mária and Endre don’t know how to be animals. Or in other words: Endre does not know how to be a man and Mária does not know how to be a woman.

The two male foils to Endre are his best friend, Jenö, and a new hire, Sanyi. Jenö is married and despite proselytizing the merits of keeping women in their place he does whatever his wife wants. Endre watches with the remove of a scientist as Jenö carries out a charade where he is able to assert his supposed masculinity while filling his more passive role. Sanyi, on the other hand, is naturally alpha, flirting with every female co-worker and ignoring his male superiors. Endre seems to pity Jenö and resent Sanyi, but it quickly becomes clear that who he has the most disgust for is himself. He grows wildly defensive when he is caught ogling a woman, insisting that he simply looked like all men would. The woman didn’t even seem to notice and doesn’t seem to care. He then declares multiple times later in the film that he would prefer to remove love and sex from his life rather than deal with the impossibility of filling the role of “man” in these encounters. He’s given up on it all until he meets Mária.

Mária also has two foils, Klára, a voluptuous psychologist who interviews everyone after the bull Viagra incident, and Zsóka, the oldest employee at the slaughterhouse. Klára is everything Mária is not. She’s comfortable in her body and comfortable around men. She expresses her feelings, sometimes even to the point of aggression. When Mária retells Endre’s dream, she is unable to push back against Klára’s anger or defend herself. Zsóka, who is even more comfortable with her sexuality than Klára, is much kinder to Mária. Instead of judging, she attempts to coach her in the ways of womanhood. This, of course, means posture, how to walk and talk, and, most importantly, what clothes to wear. Mária attempts to master these skills, like she does later with sex, with an obsessive precision.

Mária’s experience of gender is intrinsically tied to her autism. Her lack of awareness in how to act as a woman is similar to her struggle to generally fit in as a person. I’m hesitant to find symbolism in her character or draw parallels between our lives since her experience is so different from my own. But in my unqualified opinion the film treats Mária with a respect and fullness that leaves her as open to analysis and connection as any other character. It’s not autism that becomes ingrained in the semiotics of the film but rather the world around this one autistic character, the world around Mária. And I couldn’t help but feel parallels both to Endre’s attempts at manhood and Mária’s learning of womanhood. I couldn’t help but watch this relationship unfolding in a harsh world and think of my own. Mária and Endre’s budding romance faces plenty of conflict throughout the film but there’s an overwhelming feeling of destiny between them. The conflicts are not a result of their incongruity but rather the difficulties and pressures of their surroundings. Any conflicts within themselves are related to their individual difficulties with the world at large.

The dream sequences aren’t just beautiful and serene. They are otherworldly. Literally. The plane on which Mária and Endre connect is outside of real life. Their connection is dependent on both of them finding it within themselves to detach from their discomfort with society. In their dreams it is easy, but in life that’s really hard. Because it’s not healthy to completely detach (as fun as rainy days cuddling can be). The necessity is being able to carry on normal life with your partner and face a mutual unbelonging from our world. From our ableist world. From our gendered world. From our heteronormative world. From our transphobic world.

My connection to this film is reliant both on its silly romanticism and its severe honesty. Because that’s how I feel. Being with Katharine feels like it’s on another plane of being, in how I feel about her, in how happy it makes me to be near her, and yet real life can be really hard. This film shows the beauty in getting through that hardship with another person, the pressures it can place on a relationship, and the ultimate reward of working through it all together.

***

The Shape of Water and On Body and Soul have allowed me to articulate something about myself and my relationship that I’d previously failed to do. They taught me that romance, not just love but gooey-eyed, goofy capital R Romance, can be for all of us. That romantic doesn’t have to mean arrogant poems or chasing after girls in the rain. It can mean connecting with somebody when you feel less than human, it can mean facing a society that doesn’t want you with the help of another. And, most importantly, that this can all be silly and over-the-top in a way that will make half the audience laugh and half the audience cry. These films destroyed a line between romance and mature relationship that I’d taken as fact even though my own relationship is such an obvious combination of the two. They allowed me to see myself in a new way, to see Katharine in a new way, and to appreciate our relationship even more than I already did. 

So I’ll say it here. On social media, like an adolescent that will someday regret such an embarrassing overshare. I’m deeply, madly, overwhelmingly in love.

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

[mykidsgay]

Defining: LGBTQIA

By Kara Kratcha

Welcome to another installment of our “Defining” series, where we unpack various terms and identities. Do you have a word that needs defining? Let us know!

Define It: 

Ah, that acronym.* Sometimes called “alphabet soup,” the long and often-changing list of letters used to describe non-straight, non-cisgender identities frequently befuddles brains and ties tongues. Before I go any further, let me break it down for you:

LGBTQIA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual/Aromantic.

If you’re not sure what any of these individual words mean, I highly recommend you click on the link for that word and read the previous Defining entry. If you’re new to this LGBTQIA thing, then I recommend you read the entries for the letters after “LG” even if you have some idea of what they mean. I bet you’ll learn something or at least get to consider a new perspective.

Explain It:

There’s no denying that the acronym is clunky, so why do we use it? Although LGBTQIA can be a mouthful, it gives us a way to describe our community in its broadest sense.

Actually, in my experience, the “LGBTQIA community” is more like a group of loosely affiliated communities that sometimes band together out of solidarity, similarity, or necessity. Each LGBTQIA experience comes with its unique challenges and joys. However, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual/aromantic people all have something in common: we experience gender or gendered attraction and relationships that fall outside the norm. At our best, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and aromantic people are specially equipped to help each other out, build each other up, and affirm each others’ experiences.

“LGBTQIA” is not a perfect way to describe the affiliations of non-straight, non-cisgender people across identities, and it’s also not definitive. Some people just say “LGBT,” or “LGBT+” if they want to be inclusive but not type or say so many letters. Others argue that the acronym should be longer, often including a “P” to stand for pansexual or sometimes polyamorous, or another A to stand for aromantic or agender.

Still others, myself included, prefer to use “queer” as a broad umbrella term for all of these identities and more. I prefer to call myself “queer” rather than “LGBTQIA” because it is both more accurate and more inclusive. I could accurately say that I am a nonbinary, non-monogamous person on the asexual spectrum with an interest in people of all genders, but that’s honestly more information than I am usually comfortable sharing and more identities than I usually care to explain or justify. Instead, I often just tell people that I’m bisexual since it requires less explaining, but “bisexual” does not capture my full experience. There is very little language available to me that allows me to quickly convey that I don’t identify as precisely male or female, and often I don’t want to out myself as nonbinary for this reason. And that’s not to mention all of the rest of my, well, queer identities! For me, “queer” communicates all of my gender and sexuality experiences in a way that “LGBTQIA” does not.

But “queer” doesn’t work for everyone. Some straight trans women and straight trans men do not identify as queer because they view “queer” as a word related to sexuality rather than gender. For example, a woman who was assigned male at birth and is only attracted to men is a straight woman and may not identify as queer. At the same time, some LGBTQIA folks do not want to be referred to as “queer” because of its history and sometimes continued use as a slur. All of us, LGBTQIA people and allies alike, should respect how each person wishes to be identified by listening carefully to individuals about their experiences and preferences and then using the language that reflects those preferences.

It seems likely to me that the way we talk about ourselves as a community with many different genders, sexualities, and experiences will continue to evolve. As a person whose identities tend toward the neglected or altogether unnamed part of the LGBTQIA acronym, I do often feel alienated from the community as a whole. Still, I appreciate that we are striving to find language that invites all of us in. Ultimately, that is what we hope to do when we string together all of those letters.

Debunk It:

• The “A” stands for “ally.”

Straight and cisgender allies can play excellent supporting roles in LGBTQIA communities and activism, but it is important to remember that allies are not the stars of the show. Asexual, aromantic, and agender identities are forgotten enough without allies claiming the small spotlight of that final letter.

• Intersex, asexual, or aromantic people don’t really belong in the acronym.

If a person feels they are part of the LGBTQIA community, then I believe that person should be welcomed and allowed to explore. Intersex, asexual, and aromantic people experience gender, relationships, and attraction that do not match up with the straight, cisgender norm, and many therefore want or need to participate in the community. We make great advocates and friends, and we need camaraderie and support too.

Plus, every time someone claims that the IA’s don’t belong, that person may well be preventing someone with multiple LGBTQIA identities from feeling safe enough to fully come out to their peers. It’s difficult to feel closeted with other LGBTQ people because they are not accepting of all of your identities. Remember, it’s very possible to claim more than one letter! In my experience, it’s extremely common.

• “LGBTQIA” is always the most appropriate way to refer to a non-straight, non-cisgender person or group of people.

Not every non-straight, non-cisgender person or group of people identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual/aromantic. Often it is more appropriate to refer to a person or group of people by their specific, relevant identities. If you mean gay men, say gay men. If you mean trans people, say trans people, and so on. Don’t say LGBTQIA or even LGBT if you have not considered the experiences of TQIA people in what you’re saying or writing. Lumping all LGBTQIA experiences together when you are in fact only talking about a specific group or identity can make people with lesser-known identities feel more erased, not less.

• “But that’s too many letters and corresponding identities to remember!”

I feel you, but putting in the effort to learn about identities that are new to you will make it a lot easier to communicate with and validate your queer and/or trans family member. Besides, the best thing you can do for a loved one who you are trying to understand is ask thoughtful questions and then listen carefully to that person’s answers. Ask questions like, “How do you identify?” and “What does that word mean to you?” The actual person you want to learn about will be able to tell you much better than some definition on the internet.

*Yes, I know that it’s technically an initialism. Don’t @ me, fellow word nerds.

Be sure to check out the rest of The Defining Series right here!

***

Click here to read about our brilliant contributors!

[ididntlookback]

Tips on writing bisexual characters

hey, a bisexual writer here. I’m sharing my wisdom with y'all on how to write bisexuals bc i’m tired of them not accurately portrayed!! (note: i’m not saying that all bi people act and think like this, your bisexuality is your expression and i’m not trying to discredit that!)

 (Important!: if you are gay/lesbian, that’s not bi. Don’t think that you automatically can write a bi character perfectly because you’re lgbt. this post is for any non bi ppl! Also, this post also works for pansexuality. it’s just easier to say ‘bi’ instead of ‘bi/pan/poly’ the entire time, so i’m using ‘bi’ as an umbrella term)

Make it clear that your character is interested romantically in both/all genders: 

often, bi characters in mlm or wlw stories are only seen checking out a character of the opposite sex. They will just be like “lol that girl/guy is hot!” so that the author isn’t criticized for not representing them as bi. well this isn’t good rep! Bi people don’t only think of the opposite gender as “hot,” they are romantically interested in them and are interested in dating them and stuff. They’re interested in both/all genders the same way straight people are interested in the opposite gender and gay/lesbian ppl are interested in the same gender. 

You can accurately represent this by casually mentioning romances the character has had. For example, have the character say “She/he reminds me of my old boy/girl friend i had.” Maybe make a character the ex boy/girl friend of the bi character you’re writing. 

Note: if you are writing a bisexual guy in a mlm relationship (most common in fanfiction. ex: lance in a klance fan fic) make it clear that they romantically like girls. Don’t make them just flirt with a girl in one chapter and call that ‘bi representation’ because it’s lazy and lowkey trivializing bi people. I’m tired of seeing guys written poorly as bi in gay fan fic because in the show/book of that fandom the character is canonically interested in girls (AKA LANCE IN KLANCE FICS)

Talk to any bisexual people you know to get their advise: 

Like any other things you write, research is important. Don’t half ass the character and make their bisexuality some expendable fact that is poorly represented and unrelatable. This is someones sexuality we’re talking about. 

Ask any bi people you know for advise, they’d probably be happy to help. Don’t make a guess on how bi people think when it comes to romance. researching can make your bi character seem more realistic and will be much more relatable. 

(this one’s complicated) Don’t make ‘unhappy’ a synonym for ‘bisexual’: 

this goes for a lot more sexualities than bi ( it goes for trans/non binary ppl as well), but it’s important so i’ll list it. In so many tv shows and books, lgbt characters are always unhappy. they’re always stressing over their sexuality, or are getting bullied, or their parents are homophobic. Although these are very real issues that happen to lgbt people, sometimes it gets tiring to read about.

Seeing a happy, content lgbt character can be inspiring and just downright refreshing. For example, Apollo in Rick Riordan’s ‘Trials of Apollo’ series. Apollo is one of the most accurate and well written bi characters ever, and it made me really emotional when i read the books because of such a lack of bi rep in books and tv shows (cred to Rick! I love that guy!). Apollo is content in his sexuality, isn’t bullied because of it, and all his friends are fine with it. It’s so refreshing to see an lgbt character so happy and care free, and it allowed bi people (and lgbt ppl overall) to b happy in their representation and focus on the plot of the books instead of homophobia we are already so tired of thinking about. 

Note: if it’s a plot point in your story that they’re bullied/not content in their sexuality, that’s fine. It’s your story and i can’t change your plot. if you do write about this, though, please do so accurately. don’t use it as /just/ a plot point or for angst. Do it to raise awareness and bring to attention these issues/write about how these issues effect people. 

note: having the character joke about oppression makes light of a bad situation and is different from making oppression the characters entire plot. for example, in one of my stories some monster thing was like “Do you know how hurtful stereotypes are?” and my character scoffed and said “I’m cuban and bisexual, i’m well aware.” (yes that character was Lance don’t @ me)

Normalize the character: 

Try not to shove all the bisexualness into one chapter or paragraph. Bring it up periodically in casual remarks (as i talked about in my first point).

Don’t just make the character shout “I’M BISEXUAL HA” (although i do do that sometimes) because as a writer you’re supposed to be able to integrate the bisexualness into the character. just having an awkward coming out scene or having the character actually make a joke about being bi once every chapter is honestly lazy writing.

It’s great that you want to write a bi character, and the fact that you’ve read this shows that you’re interested in making the portrayal accurate, which is great. Just make sure you’re making the character bi for the right reasons, be open to criticism, and try to be as accurate as you can. thanks for reading! :)

[lesbian-ed]

So I’ve been talking to this girl and for the most part everything is great but she constantly calls herself gay and a lesbian while she’s actually bisexual and frequently hooks up with guys, it makes me really uncomfortable cause I’ve been told all my life that lesbians don’t exist and I’ll find the right man one day but when I confront her about it she just tells me it’s an umbrella term and it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t want to stop talking to her but what should I do?

Yikes. Lesbian is certainly not an “umbrella term”. It certainly does not “mean nothing”. I think all you can do since you do want to stay in contact with her is to explain what the value of that word really is. 

Explain that the word “lesbian” has a meaning, and that meaning very often goes completely unnoticed and unmentioned, but it has a lot of worth. Tell her that it matters that only homosexual women call themselves “lesbians”, so that other young women or even older women who are confused about their sexuality or questioning their sexuality know what to call themselves when they realize they are exclusively same-sex attracted women.

Give her an example. Like, the word “dog”. All “dogs” are "a highly variable domestic mammal (Canis familiaris) closely related to the gray wolf". The word “dog” has a meaning. We only call certain animal dogs. Let’s say all of a sudden, one mother starts calling all animals dogs. Then her child, who never knew what a dog was before that, sees her calling all animals “dog”. That child learns that animals are called “dogs”. And that child goes off to call what everyone else calls a cat, a horse or an elephant, a “dog”. 

That child won’t be able to communicate with other people, because to this child, the word “dog” means anything that’s an animal. If that child grew up to be a vet, it would be extremely confusing for them to talk to people, because every time they said “dog”, the child wouldn’t know what specific animal they’re talking about.

This is a silly comparison, but yeah. Words have meaning, and that meaning holds value. Lesbians are a community, we are a group of people, we have exclusive experiences, very different than the experiences of women who are attracted to males.

No lesbian can be with men, and therefore we are viewed as less than, and we struggle with a specific kind of homophobia that’s also laced with misogyny, aka lesbophobia.

Lesbians are not just “anyone”, we do exist, and we are held to certain standards and suffer certain injustices that only lesbians go through. When women who date men call themselves lesbians they dilute what our experiences mean, and they take the attention away from the lesbophobia that is still very much present in our society. 

So many girls come to us every day confused about what their sexuality is, confused about what it means to be a lesbian, confused because now people who date men and people who are men call themselves lesbians.

Lesbians are and will always be females who are exclusively same-sex attracted. 

Our experiences have value, we are not invisible, and every time a disingenuous bisexual co-opts our language and our culture, we lose a little bit more of who we are, and the small platforms we have to speak up for ourselves.

Humans created language in order to practically and objectively communicate. We cannot ignore that now, for the sake of “fun” and “lolz”. I’ve literally been told by a bisexual woman that she calls herself “gay” because “saying ‘I’m so bi’ is not as fun”. These people have no understanding of how homosexuality affects lesbians, and what we go through, and the self doubt we constantly deal with.

Being a lesbian, being homosexual, it is not “fun”. It is what it is. Lesbianism and homosexuality are not clubs. Our history and the words used to describe ourselves and our culture are things we have fought for a really long time to have acknowledged as not deviant.

It is not fair that anyone can come around and steal our language and our ability to communicate about our struggles.

Your “friend” is being very homophobic, and it isn’t fair to you or to any lesbian. Please talk to her, and if she continues to dismiss your pleas, honestly, she’s no friend of yours.

Take care,

Mod A

[spirkism]

on why queer isn’t a bad word

I’ve read quite a few posts from either viewpoint and so far I’ve kept my mouth shut on how I feel about this because I didn’t want to polarize - but lately I’ve seen more and more of the “but it’s a slur!!!” arguments and couldn’t take it anymore. I went on a twitter rant but promised to make a more organized and put together post so here we go. (it got quite long, I apologize)

there are a lot of wonderful posts about this out there already but I decided to still mention the points made there because honestly the more people hear it the better. feel free to approach me and I’ll link you to some of those other posts!

as a little backstory: I’m from Germany - aka a non-English speaking country and that actually plays a part in it but more on that later. I’m in my mid-twenties and I’ve identified as queer for about 7ish years now. I used to be very well connected in the community, especially the trans community and had some older friends who were there in the beginnings of our (German) community. so I know the history.

okay so, I’m just gonna list some points now in no particular order:

1. yes. queer is used as a slur. so is gay. so are basically all the other identities we have. because some straight people are assholes and are afraid of everything that’s different. BUT. queer has been reclaimed AGES ago. our forebearers fought long and hard to take it BACK from the straight people who stole it to hurt us. freely handing it over to our opposers now would be nothing short of trampling on our community’s history and invalidating the sacrifices the generations before us have made. also. “queer history”, “queer cinema”, “queer studies” are all legitimate (academical) terms. academics don’t cuss in their descriptors (and college courses).

2. queer is so much more inclusive than lgbt(+) or any of those acronyms. sure you could go lgbtqiaapf... but honestly that’s getting a bit ridiculous and frankly confusing. so for the sake of this argument we’ll stick with the “original” acronym LGBT. it mentions all of four identities. FOUR. out of the multitudes there are. I personally happen to have one of my identities mentioned there. that’s not a lot. but still, it’s something. my aroace nonbinary friend doesn’t have any. “but there’s the plus!” you say. great. a plus. lovely. how would you feel being represented by a plus that doesn’t tell you anything about what it actually means? exactly. that’s not representation at all. who tf even knows what that plus means. no mention of nonbinary people, fluid people, pan people, ace people, aro people, and the list goes on and on.  that’s why it’s an amazing umbrella term. everyone can find a place in it.

3. it’s welcoming. this point is kind of tied to my second one but it’s important in its own right so I decided to give it its own number. it’s welcoming to questioning people. you know you’re different? not straight? but are you pan? are you bi? are you ace? or maybe aro? are you trans? are you non-binary? who the fuck even knows. it’s hard. I’ve been through multiple of these and it SUCKS. so having a community who goes “hey we don’t care how exactly you identify, we don’t mind if you haven’t figured it out you, you have a place here, you’re safe here and no one is gonna police your identity or gatekeep you” is super important. trust me.

4. it’s often easier. if I want to let somebody know I’m “not straight” without going into the details of my identity, queer is just a lot simpler and the other person will immediately understand what I mean. sometimes I just don’t wanna let somebody know all of my identities. sometimes I really don’t feel like educating people on all the terms I use. but I still want to let them know I’m part of the community. and honestly sometimes saying “hi so I’m a pansexual gray-aro gender-nonconforming trans guy” is too tiresome/long. “hi I’m queer” is concise and understandable to pretty much everyone. sure, if you’re a cis gay dude, lesbian or bisexual person you can just use one of those words - good for you (no really, it is good for you and I’m happy you have these terms). but who tf (that isn’t as deep in the community as I am and/or on tumblr) is gonna know what I mean when I talk about my identity? fucking no one. you can’t really use “I’m LGBT” as a descriptor for yourself. saying “I’m gay” doesn’t work either cause then a) I might feel weird cause I don’t actually identify as gay and b) there’s gonna be shouts of “but you’re not gay, you’re not allowed to use that word!” - well what am I gonna use then? exactly. QUEER. that’s where my nationality comes in as well. here no one knows what the fuck ace / aro, nb or even pan is. but they know what queer is. it’s like that in a lot of the non-english speaking world. get out of your US sometimes, folks.

5. this one is near and dear to me. queer is so much more than just an identifier telling people you’re not straight. it’s more than a label. more than a community. especially in the beginnings of our history it was most often used to denote that you’re different. you’re not the norm. and you don’t wanna be. you’re proud of being different. you’re celebrating being different and you’re not ashamed of it. it means you don’t want to assimilate, don’t want to emulate the “normal” lifestyle, don’t want to be that “well, he has a husband but you know, he’s not really gay, he’s just like us” guy. (nothing wrong with having a house with a picket fence and two children though, okay, I never said that! I actually want that myself) the celebration of difference has always been a strong suit in our community. and personally for many of us. this is where my other “oddities” and differences interwine with my queer identity. I suffer from anxiety. I’m kinky. I’m a witch, I’m questioning my religious beliefs, I don’t give a fuck about gender roles and I’m just a general oddball. and that’s how I LIKE IT. I’m good that way. heck, I’m fucking GREAT that way.

there are quite a few more arguments to be made for the word queer but these are the ones I feel are most important.

so yes, I’ve identified as queer for a long while and I will continue to do so. as well as use it as an umbrella term for our community. if you personally come up to me and ask me not to use the word queer for you specifically of course I’ll accept that - but don’t you dare tell me how I can and cannot identify myself and my community. as cis gays and lesbians you might not need the word queer. and that’s good for you. (no really, it is). but as someone who isn’t one of these things, for so many of us, queer is a word we desperately need (for the reasons listed above and more). so PLEASE don’t take it from us. a lot of work and love went into that word and it would be devastating to lose all that love and hope and sacrifice. we must not let this divide us. we must stay strong as a community, ALL of us, especially in the current times. 

so no, I have never nor will I ever tag my identity as a slur and I urge you not to either. if for personal reasons queer is a triggering word for you, there are countless ways to get around that (just like with any other trigger - use tumblr savior, xkit or any other of those options). but don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

this has obviously just been my very personal opinion - feel free to add on to this!  I welcome discussion about it - with people who agree with me but also people who disagree - the only thing I ask is to please stay civil and not to become personally attacking.  thank you. sorry for making such a long and personal post but I just had to after all this time.

so to end this with an all time classic: WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER, DEAL WITH IT.