#like. ok. look you can have an inclusive space. or you can have an exclusive space. you cant have it both ways.

[rebellum]

[hermajestyimher]

She's 1000% right. I'm sick and tired of this crystal generation needing the world to bend over to appeal to them. Can we please stop celebrating mediocrity? Brands purposely degrading themselves to not be lynched by the mob are doing a huge disservice not just to themselves, but to society. When we look at people whom we admire, we admire them because we know that they are out of the ordinary and it generates in us a sense of inspiration and awe. That's why it's righteous for people like Candice Swanepoel or Adriana Lima to be regarded in the way they are and not Sally from the house down the block. Not everyone is destined to walk down a runway show, not everyone is destined to attend the MET gala, and not everyone is supposed to be the face of couture brands and coveted magazine covers, and that's OK. If you feel threatened by other people, look the other way, nobody is forcing you to support brands that don't align with you. You can simply ignore.

In life we all have two options, we either level up to reach the standard that we admire, or we simply appreciate others and move along with our lives focusing on the things that give us joy without the burden to reach standards that may seem unattainable. What we don't get to do is force our own sense of mediocrity and entitlement onto others to change the world around us to make us feel "seen" in every single space. Inclusivity when it's forced becomes cheap.

Let's please make 2024 the year of unapologetic glamour, elegance, opulence, and exclusivity again. We shouldn't have to ask for permission to stand out or seek to live the life we so deeply desire.

Credits: yourstylistgab

[daddyelliott1979]

Littles with Disabilities in kink Spaces

Another post inspired by my boy @squirtdaboi.

So today he did an amazingly brave thing and went to London, by himself for the first time, to a puppy event to meet up with friends.

Something to know about this amazing boy is he's partially sighted and has sensory issues, so this was a huge thing for him. So freaking proud of him!

We worked through lots of anxiety, and his so called friends kept changing plans which really doesn't work well for him- I have to reassure him when he comes to visit exactly what's going to happen - and I have zero issue doing as many times as he needs.

My boy went through a lot during the day, most disappointing was that friends abandoned him, luckily some really decent pups looked after him towards the end. Even making sure he got to his train. So thank you to our little heroes today!

Now here's the thing that angers me the most, as a Daddy who has 2 kiddos with Special needs, how the community treats those with different needs often leaves me utterly livid!

Worse is that most events are catered to the able bodied, often being in places where the disabled facilities are in the lady's toilets? If there is even that! In this day how is that even considered acceptable!?

Yes he's little, but he has some continence issues, so should he or others be discriminated against? Or find themselves in spaces that are really non inclusive?

Now I have to add that I spent 20 years working in adult and children support and enabling services, I'm a qualified Therapist, and have spent over 2 decades as an activist for the human rights and inclusion of those with different needs.

So I fully understand that most people aren't going to have the level of understanding and competency in these matters; but compassion doesn't require training, it requires genuine empathy!

As a community we have to start doing better at inclusion and creating safe spaces for those with disabilities, especially at events! A little bit of awareness goes along way!

No one is expecting you to be a carer, but if you are going to invite those with additional needs to events or play dates, have a basic understanding of their needs, ask what you can do to help and is there anything you need to be aware of!

And when playing with others this should just be basic etiquette and Safe play behaviour!

To event organisers, find out how you can make your event's inclusive and accessible for all! And yes that means you may have to ensure that there are facilities that are accessible should people need it!

We can do so much to make our kink Spaces more inclusive; see that shy person looking awkward? Maybe try to include them, ask them if they are ok?

As a person who is hard of hearing I can tell you how often people communicate with me in ways that make it impossible to hear- I often just give up reminding people and ignore them.

So imagine if you have more complex communication issues?

Again we can do so much to be inclusive, face people (don't always stare in people's eyes as it's anxiety inducing for some), use clear language, don't cover your mouth. Ask people what you do to support better communication; honestly you will find people will feel so enriched if you take little time to understand!

Conclusion

People with disabilities are at an increased risk of social exclusion, it can be a trial just getting to places (that's if someone lets them go!), so we can all do much to welcome people with open arms!

But remember not everyone likes being touched, so take "opens arms" as a metaphor, and at the very least ask before touching/hugging!

[letarasstuff]

Education is for Everyone

(A/N): It is based on this.

Summary: How does Spencer react to a crying child in his lecture?

Warnings: Not that I know, but lmk if there is anything triggering :)

Wordcount: .9k

✨Masterlist✨

_______________________________

Education is something that shouldn’t be exclusive to a certain type of person. Everybody, no matter their heritage, gender, sexuality, disabilities or marital status should be able to get any kind of education they desire. This is something important to Spencer and he makes sure to show his classes that everyone is welcome. That’s why he tries to make them as accessible as possible.

May it be a visual portrayal of the unit, name tags with pronouns for everybody or him being available for questions any time. Spencer wants to give every single human being a chance of schooling, may the barriers be as high as they are. As long as someone is willing to learn something new, Spencer is more than happy to help with any kind of assistance.

This spread through campus pretty quickly and now his classes have a great range of diversity because of it.

It’s not mainly young people anymore. Not seldom do students come in, who are older than Spencer is. There is a broad mix of skin tones. Also blind and/or deaf people visit his lectures. Amputees and persons with a mental illness like (social) anxiety or depression participate in class. It’s a safe space for many people, an environment where all of them feel comfortable enough to actually say something and ask questions.

The doctor built an atmosphere in his lecture room he wished he could have when he went to college.

It’s another week on campus for him and he really needs it. The last few cases at the BAU were really rough, especially the last one, where children were abducted in a 24 hours time span. Sadly, none of them were recovered alive when they finally apprehended the UnSub. That’s why the week off is such a relief for him, it’s going to take his mind off the sad sides of his other job.

Slowly but surely people start to fill in and occupy the seats in the auditorium. Some he recognizes, others are new. With many people knowing how much effort the young doctor puts in to structure his units as inclusive as possible, they want to take a look at how he does it. It’s understandable to him and everybody is welcome and maybe they learn a slice or two.

“Good Morning, everyone. I’m happy to see all of you, even though it’s ungodly early for some of you. You know, at 8 a.m. most brains”, he starts his lecture while trying to minimize the facts and stats that aren't important to the unit.

In the middle of his course someone starts screaming. Startled by the sudden noise Spencer stops his talk flow. He looks around to find the source of the noise. A woman is packing her things up in a haste and takes a crying toddler in her arms. She begins to walk out, her head hanging low in embarrassment.

“Uh, Miss? Hold on, please.” Spencer makes his way up the stairs, the toddler still crying. The mother waits up for him, desperately bouncing the child, but to no avail.

“May I?” The young doctor asks, gesturing to the kid. Hesitantly she hands her over. As soon as Spencer holds the toddler, the cries slowly die down. The mother looks confused just like the rest of the class.

“As you can see, little…” He trails off and waits for the woman to say her name. “(Y/N)” “Little (Y/N) here started to calm down when I took her. This is because children, regardless of their age, sense their parent’s distress and this in turn stresses them out. If you don’t mind, I can keep her with me for the rest of the lecture. You don’t need to leave.” At the end he turns to the mother and speaks to her in a soft tone.

Flabbergasted, the woman nods and goes back to her seat. “Next, we talk about”, Spencer continues his lecture like nothing happened. (Y/N) in her blue pajamas stays quiet until the end of class. She even falls asleep in his arms, drooling a little bit on his jacket.

After the class ended, the mother comes up to him and takes her daughter. “Thank you so much, Dr. Reid. I didn’t plan on taking her with me, but the babysitter cancelled on me and her father had to go into work today. I promise this won’t happen again. Next time I’ll stay at home with her, but I already struggled keeping up with your classes and I didn’t want to fall behind even more.”

But Spencer waves her off. “It’s ok, you can bring (Y/N) in at any time. I don’t want you to feel like you have to miss any lecture because you are a mother. There is always a solution to any problem. I’m always happy to have you and your daughter here.” He smiles at her, indicating that it is in fact no problem.

It looks like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and the mother thanks him before leaving the auditorium. It also helped Spencer on his side carrying the toddler. The innocence and calm radiating from (Y/N) reminded him of the good things in the world. And hopefully she comes more often into his class.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962

Spencer Reid x child!reader:

@ilovetaquitosmmmm

For this Oneshot:

@ellyhotchner

[what-even-is-sleep]

Hey uhhhh I wrote a fic for @phicphight if you want to check it out 

Based on this prompt by @ecto-american and beta’d by @2000dragonarmy:

Harriet Chin has been dating Vlad for a while now. Meanwhile, her son Kwan has been with his boyfriend Danny for a few weeks. It's time to introduce their respective boyfriends to each other, and what better way than a family dinner to meet them both at the same time? 

 read on ao3 or below

--------------------------------------------

“Thanks for having me Ms. Chin,” Danny said, shrugging off his jacket and shoes at the front door. Danny had been nervous for dinner the moment Kwan had suggested it over Doom Time. Their weekly gaming session has started out as an exclusive way for Sam, Tucker and Danny to connect since Tucker was off at UC Irvine and Sam was at boarding school in London. But Danny hadn’t been able to think of a better way to re-introduce Kwan to Sam and Tucker, and blunt, dumb shit had been Danny’s brand since the beginning of high school.

Sam and Tucker were pissed at the surprise inclusion of someone new(ish), but forgave Kwan before they did Danny. Kwan had shown up as a master at SoupCats (Doom Time was not exclusive to Doom) and helped the two destroy Danny in an evening. From that point onwards, Doom Time was a four person event.

Danny was afraid that his own introduction into Kwan's family wouldn’t be as smooth. Danny was a disruptor - infamous even to the old PTA at Casper High as someone who always ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and ran away from any responsibility. (It wasn’t his fault, really, ghost hunting and ghost-being-hunted didn’t exactly allow for excess free time.)

Ms. Chin interrupted his worried thoughts with a just touch to his shoulder as warning before he was enveloped in a full, strong hug. Her chin (hah) dug into his shoulder and she held him tightly for just a moment before pulling away and looking him up and down.

“Danny, Danny, Danny,” she said. She spoke like a late night TV host or a Jewish mother, with love and emphasis. “I have heard so much about you! And,” she grasped his hand and squeezed as she reached for his jacket, “don’t worry.” She winked, “It was all good.”

“Mom!” Kwan interrupted, leaning his chin over Danny’s shoulder and cracking a smile, “Give him a second to take it all in before you scare him.”

“Atch Kwan, hun, you know your mother. A journalist is always ready to meet the challenge of filling space. There will be no awkward silences with me.” She grinned back and turned to walk purposefully down the hallway.

Danny turned his head and squished his cheek against Kwan’s before moving forward. “Dude. Babe. I can see that crease in your brow and don’t you even worry about it. Your mom isn’t that scary.”

Kwan laughed and twirled his body so that they were facing each other. His eyes traced Danny's body from his brown slacks and slightly wrinkled button up to his chin and cheeks and mussed hair. Kwan landed on Danny’s eyes and somehow continued to search. Danny wondered when he had become someone to be looked at like that. His cheeks burned.

“Hey,” Kwan said, biting his cheek and furrowing his brows. “I know you’ve got some big horrible secret demons that you can’t tell me about yet, but I want you to know to not listen to them. You’ll be fine. Follow my lead on table manners and they’ll love you.”

Danny grinned, and nodded in agreement. He’d tell Kwan soon, he would. But for then he imagined a giant hand squishing his anxiety into a condensed ball. It was still hard to ignore.

They were still in the hallway and just around the corner was dinner with Ms. Chin and her boyfriend. Danny leaned forward and brushed his nose along Kwans cheek, then touched their lips together in a deeper acknowledgement.

After a few moments, Danny kissed the crease of Kwans mouth and stepped away, clasping their hands together instead.

“Hey,” he grinned, “let’s do this.”

It was going to be ok. Danny looked behind him as he turned into the dining room, tucking the image of Kwan as he was now, with lanky legs and sparkling eyes, deep into his body where all the happy memories lived. It was with that image in his mind that he turned around and faced the Kwans dining table.

…Fuck.

“Daniel,” said the boyfriend.

“Vlad,” said Danny, brows furrowing and jaw dropping slightly.

Smooth. Smooth response.

“Danny?” Kwan bumped into Danny from the back. “Wh-”

“Kwan.” Danny barely moved his lips to make sound. “Is this… I.. Your mom, she’s–”

“Yes you are seeing correctly. I am dating the Mayor.” Ms. Chin said, sweeping out of the kitchen and smiling at Vlad. “Don’t think about it too hard – it’ll boost his ego too much. Tea?”

Vlad smiled and picked up a wineglass before standing up and leaning to Ms. Chin on the cheek.

“Ah, but darling don’t you think the boys are old enough, say, to taste bitter grapes with us?” He raised the glass. “I propose a toast! I can’t believe your wonderful son is dating Daniel.” A small smile slipped onto his face as he rubbed his hand over Ms. Chin’s arm. She gave an exclamation of agreement and reached across the table to begin pouring wine into glasses enthusiastically.

Danny felt frozen in place. This… This was not great.

His chair screeched as Danny pulled it out slowly and carefully, never taking his eyes off of Vlad. He reached blindly out for the glass Ms Chin offered and almost spilled in on himself. He took that moment to assess. If Vlad began to do anything, Danny would excuse himself to the bathroom and go ghost. In preparation he’d have to keep observing. See what Vlad was trying to accomplish otherwise. Be covert.

Kwan snapped his fingers in front of Danny’s face.

Shitballs. Shit shit shit. But he could assess the situation and act normal at the same time. He was Danny Phantom. He had to be smart.

Kwan looked at Danny with concern and said softly, “Danny. Follow my lead.”

And so Danny did.

---

Nothing happened the rest of dinner. It was a casual, boyfriend meet son, mother meet boyfriend affair. Vlad seemed to enjoy Ms. Chin’s company. There were conversation-carrying glances and soft touches between moments. Kwan had been looking at Danny out of the corner of his eye, and more urgently with a raised eyebrow and irritated-confusion when his mom was looking away.

Danny had tried to eat everything that sat in front of him, but his stomach twisted with each glance towards Vlad and made the pasta inedible. He was still toying with his spaghetti as the clinking of cutlery slowed to a stop and Vlad stood, taking his and Ms. Chin’s dishes in his hands.

Vlad cleared his throat and spoke. “Why don’t Danny and I take the cleaning off of your hands. It was a lovely meal and it’s the least we can do. Plus,” he added, “It’ll give you and Kwan time to truly talk about Danny and I - imperfections and all.”

“What a wonderful idea doll.” Ms. Chin replied. “You boys do your thing and bond well.”

Fuck. Return of the shitballs. Danny was trapped. What could he do other than stand up and smile, and gather dishes to bring to the hell that was a kitchen with a closed door.

Vlad didn’t speak to him at first, just pointed Danny towards the sink to start washing as he brought in the rest of the dishes, and they began to wash and dry. And then it was small talk - “How’s Kwan, Daniel?”

“If you use this soap you won’t have to scrub so hard.”

“Ha! Cleaner than I’ve ever gotten - good job.”

“Feels pretty good, doesn’t it son.”

Danny dropped the bowl he was rinsing in the sink with a clatter. Vlad continued. “Doing the dishes is a good family chore. A good trial run here I'd say.”

Danny gripped the sink and gritted his teeth before whipping around to glare at Vlad. “Do not call me son. And Ms. Chin is not a trial run. I’d say I can’t believe you’d date an innocent woman just to get to me, but actually-”

“Tut tut tut.” Still polishing the cookie pan, Vlad raised a hand towards Danny. “I never said I was talking about Ms. Chin, Daniel. Though, true, she’s just a placeholder. It’s the whole Chin family that can’t last.”

Danny’s stomach dropped. “What are you–”

“Don’t raise your voice, son. They’re in the next room.”

Danny exhaled sharply.

“I wouldn’t be worrying about whether or not they can hear us,” Danny replied, “if you don’t tell me what the fuck you’re planning to do to them. Now.” His eyes flashed green with warning.

“Ah ah Daniel. …Danny. Inviso-Bill. Phantom. Think about it for a moment. Do you really think Kwan would be okay with you bringing this,” a flippant gesture to Danny, “level of danger to his remaining family? His future? Harriet and I find it so easy to talk to each other. I’m an open ear for all of her grievances– her mounting debt, how she’s going to pay for her son's college…”

Danny felt his muscles seize and extra teeth slice into place as he snarled.

Vlad turned to meet his gaze and continued. “You need to realize what is available to our type.” He took a step closer.

“You are part of my family, and we are not wholly homo-sapiens any more. We are evolved, and one of our very few vulnerabilities is truth. I will fight to keep that weakness hidden, so think carefully about who you share your secrets with. Kwan is physically strong, for a human, but Harriet has not kept from me the harms they’ve both endured. He isn’t strong enough for you.”

Danny bared his teeth. “You don’t get to decide anything for me.” And then he did something stupid. He spat at Vlad's feet.

Immediately the cookie pan fell to the floor as Vlad flew at Danny’s face and grabbed him by the neck.

“You boy,” he ground out, “are not in a position to make threats. Understood?”

Danny gritted his teeth and focused on breathing shallow. Stupid fucking human windpipes. A voice called from the other room and stopped his whirling mind.

“Everything good in there boys?” He couldn’t afford to lose them, not right now. And he knew that if Vlad had gone this far for his obsession, then the frootloop was unhinged enough to go the extra mile.

Danny stared at his reflection in the pan on the floor. His eyes traveled up into the red eyes of Plasmius.

“Understood.”

Vlad searched his eyes, nodded shortly, and then called back, “Just dandy, doll!”

__

The dinner ended with less fanfare than it had begun.

________

A/N: there may be more to this story, there may not. Who knows?

[intersex-support]

Something that makes me so frustrated and sad sometimes is the lack of widespread intersex community, at least in the USA (I know that there are countries and cultures where intersex community is a lot more prevalent, and I think that’s fucking awesome and that we have a lot to learn from countries with a strong history of intersex activism.) 

But I was just thinking today about how a ton of intersex people that I know have literally never known another intersex person in real life. How there are very very few intersex support groups, very very few intersex activist groups, and very few explicitly intersex spaces. Something that I think about a lot is how isolating of an experience being intersex can be, and how I know that a lot of intersex people I talk to have felt this. The lack of information, lack of widespread awareness, and lack of meaningful real life community support really contributes to us feeling alone a lot of the time, too. 

And I think it’s also hard because there isn’t really like a lot of mainstream intersex cultural elements-there’s not that much intersex art, storytelling, other things like that, and oftentimes things that are considered to be intersex culture are fucking offensive books written by dyadic people (thinking again about how much I hate Middlesex.) There’s some references to intersex culture in popular understanding-I’m thinking about bearded ladies in circuses and how that’s sometimes the first touchstone of intersex representation that we see. There’s almost no easy access or understanding of our history, and really not that long a history of intersex activism. And I think that in this context-when we are often overwhelmingly isolated and don’t always have easily accessible intersex art, stories, history, to latch onto-it really makes sense that we would be allied and included in the LGBTQ community. Like when we can’t find intersex only spaces-we still need safe spaces, we still need community resources, and oftentimes the closest people to understanding are going to be LGBTQ communities, especially the trans community. And when you look at our history of inclusion in these spaces, it makes a lot of sense. Also why it’s so so important for LGBTQ communities to be critical of intersexism-oftentimes it is actively dangerous for trans intersex people in regards to intersexism excluding us from trans resources that we need for survival. 

I think we’re seeing a bit more growth in intersex representation, intersex community spaces, and intersex art-but it’s still so so little and we as intersex people deserve community and deserve spaces to celebrate being intersex. And I think for the time being, a lot of those spaces are not going to be exclusively intersex, but are instead going to be shared intersex and lgbtq spaces and it’s so vital that dyadic LGBTQ people figure out how to embrace intersex people as part of our community. I really do deeply long for more intersex spaces and being able to find intersex community irl, and would love it if there were more accessible intersex only spaces, but until then the closest I personally am going to get is going to be wider LGBTQ spaces and there needs to be a space for me there, and a space for me in queer culture. 

disclaimer that if you’re intersex you absolutely do not have to identify as LGBTQ if that’s not how you conceptualize your experiences, and intersex people are free to add on and disagree with me! dyadic people ok to reblog.

-Mod E

[dammjamboy]

Hi, I saw the exclusion discourse going around and no one seems to be having like... direct conversations about it? And I'd really like to be more informed but I can't really do that unless i can actually talk to someone. I specifically want to talk about pansexuality- I do not hate pan people, nor think they're bad people, and harassing them isn't ok- but from what i know the pan label is deeply rooted in transphobia and biphobia. i could explain but you might already know of this (1/2)

look the idea of pansexuality being bi or transphobic is rhetoric started by exclusionists. yes, certain misinterpretations and misconceptions of pansexuality were spread that were bi and transphobic bc some people used pansexuality to mean attraction to "all three genders (men, women ans trans people)" and it was more inclusive than bisexuality which was attraction to just two genders. or some people would try to use pansexuality as "oh im attracted to personality" as if to imply bi people were only attracted to physical appearance. and YEAH these definitions are bi and transphobic, but these aren't what pansexuality has or does actually mean, it's just how people twisted and interpreted it. bisexuality has dealt with similar false misconceptions and definitions, where a lot of people would blatantly ignore or ommit the " or more genders" and took it to only mean "attraction to only men and women" when that's obviously not the case at all.

bisexuality is attraction to two or more genders, pansexuality is attraction regardless of gender. sure, of course there's going to be overlap between them, but that does not mean they can't coexist! that doesn't mean the differentiation isnt meaningful to some people. i have identified as pan for years, it was my first step into self discovery and it's one of the few aspects of my identity that hasn't changed.

i have seen and dealt with so much shit from panphobes and it's genuinely pretty fucking disgusting how they'll act sometimes, so excuse me for being a little mad and hateful when i see this vitriol being directed towards my friends and mutuals in this community. pan and aphobes sent death threats to a minor for making a post informing their followers and mutuals of someone in the fandom who has said some hateful fucking shit. so yeah im pissed, and im over this kind of behavior. to any pan or aphobes reading this, you're not being cool or edgy by hating on people for their identities. you're just being an asshole and you're making people, especially children and minors, feel threatened and unsafe in spaces where they shouldn't be having to worry about facing harrassment or death threats for identifying under labels and in ways that make them feel comfortable and happy.

[struwwelzeter]

So I read your reply to Nyarisu's comment on Lionheart and I'm really intrigued by your comments about how people understand punk compared to what it was initially. Could I possibly ask you to expand on this? Pretty please?

Yes you could! This is a very (very?) personal point of view and I know a lot of people will disagree, but here goes nothing, I guess. If you disagree with me (and somebody will), that’s fine, but I will not engage with anything that’s not a constructively put argument. I’ve spend too much time thinking about this for a “I don’t like what you’re saying and that’s why you’re wrong” anon to change my mind. Just putting that out there - with love ��.

The thing is, especially on tumblr but I think just in generally aswell, the idea of punk is presented as this ... Robin Hood kind of thing. Beat the system, stand up to bullies, live your own truth, all of that, but it always is presented as something that is supposed to come from a ... dare I say, nice place? Like those pictures of people in studded and sprayed leather jackets rescuing puppies. All of that, you know? And I don’t want to say that is wrong, because it isn’t, and I love the idea of that, it’s just not the entire truth.

Especially in the early to mid 70s, when arguably punk started, there was a lot of fatigue between an old and stuffy establishment and the lovey, dovey peace and love “let’s all be happy” movement of the hippie scene. I was at Force Attack in 2006, which is a punk festival (and possibly dirtiest place in the world) that got established in the early 90s and went on til 2008 (?), and even then some of the “death to hippies” sentiments ran pretty deep. And I know the counter argument to that will be a well meaning “well, that’s not real punk,” the problem is that I think it actually partly is. (Please keep the partly in mind for the rest of this argument.)

The problem with having the exact choice between “get a good job, built a nice house, think of what the neighbours will say, and don’t ask me about what I did in the war” and “we’re all a big part of one human family, and isn’t nature beautiful, lets all make peace, and btw we would have never done what our parents did” is that both models aren’t a sustainable life style for everyone. That’s why you get alot of people saying this is all fake bullshit, and they start being purposely offensive. This is why you get alot of Swastikas around the sex pistols, you get all these artists singing about suicide and incest and rape. It’s not that uncommon for some of those early acts to play with Nazi imagery, or claim that homosexuality is disgusting (despite the scene always being full of LGBTQ+ people), or idk, thinking it’s fun to piss on someone while they’re asleep. It’s alot of outcry, of saying life actually is this shitty and disgusting and I am gonna be that because in a way you will hate me either way. And it’s not always nice. Disdain and hate and petty selfishness are common human emotions and many of them are low and unhealthy, and honestly not nice or helpful or inclusive, but they are there, and I think alot of that early spirit was just about stopping to pretend that they don’t exist.

I think a reason for why we don’t think of the scene that way anymore is that many people very quickly outgrew that, and said “actually, we’re better than that, that’s not who we actually are. I sadly can’t find that interview right now, but Die Ärzte are actually a good exemple of that and they even admit it themselves, that there was a sense of “enough with the happy hippie bullshit, let’s disgust them” and then later going “uhmm - maybe that went a bit far.” I mean offensive or not, but ultimately a scene that is centered around artistic expression always ends with that question of creation, maybe like “if the world isn’t like what we want it to be, how do we make one we like?” - and then you end up with having to come up with answers that are more than just destruction. And then it turns into something else - something that I think is alot more like what tumblr seems to think punk is. And that’s a wonderful thing. Still - a side of punk, whatever that is, has always been what people like GG Allin (please read the wiki for context) have taken and pushed to the limits, and it just - isn’t nice. And here is where things get a bit tricky.

Because against that backdrop, things like John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) suddenly being a dirty old Trump supporter aren’t that surprising anymore. And then you get these 20 year olds “cancelling” the Sex Pistols, and I think there is just a bit of ... missing the point going on. I’ve read a comment on here recently, that basically said something like Richard should stop supporting the Sex Pistols (because he has that album in the back of the studio), and it’s just ... asking for a history to be erased that has rightfully been made obsolete but has still happened and was necessary at the time. You can take any of these early bands and pick their lyrics apart and find something that from our perspective now is disgusting, mean, exclusive, or outright racist. Songs about Fucking? Part of that record is a mysogynisy shitshow, something they were very aware of even at the time, and they still did it anyway because being disgusting was part of the point. The thing is though, the Sex Pistols were hugely influential, and alot of the positive things that grew out of that wouldn’t have been possible if kids like young Richard, or any of the bands you love that were influenced by them, wouldn’t have gotten that moment of “finally a place where I can put all of my petty hate”. It matters, and just because that moment is overcome, it doesn’t mean it should be forgotten, or stops existing in the people that lived through it.

I understand that the question of how much we should justify things with “it was the time” and how we deal with the result is an ever ongoing debate and their are many good arguments for why maybe we shouldn’t try to defend the wrongs of the past that way, and I want to point out that while I rarely agree on that in the first place (because I understand history as a natural learning curve where people aren’t perfect at the first try and it’s doing a disservice to humans just doing their best, but I digress and that’s a bit of another duscussion), I want to point out that I don’t want to defend anyone, rather I want to say “actually, being that horrible was often calculated, part of the point, and if you don’t like it, just leave it, fight it or debate it, but don’t pretend like it was a “missstep” or just a few black sheep of a scene that was never as nice or perfect as you want it to be.” You don’t get to erase half of a movement simply because you wish it wouldn’t exist the way it does - or well. I guess in this case mostly did - past tense.

The ugliness is part of the story to me, and it’s actually the bigger part of why I love this scene. I don’t need “punk” to define my politics, I need it to soothe my soul, and so did many, I think. The Sex Pistols breaking happened 20 years before my time, but I still feel connected to that world, and in particular the ugly parts of it. I often feel like I look at the world, and there are people that seem honestly shocked by the idea that maybe sometimes I find doing the right thing really hard, that I want petty, self serving revenge, that I don’t find it easy to not be selfish and unkind or sometimes want to hurt people because I am hurting myself and see an opportunity to do that. Obviously those aren’t nice things and I don’t want to be that way, but are you honestly telling me you don’t feel that? I find that hard to believe, and it leaves me with an ongoing question of if I am just worse than most people or if most people are just more fake. Both scenarios are equally shit. The ugly side of punk provides - not an answer to that - but maybe a partial solution, at least for me.

Another discussion we have all the time is about how what we consume or allow in artistic expression is influencing how we act as people in real life and how we want the world to be. Where do we draw the line? What is still ok? If I put me entertaining ideas about murder on a canvas, is that still good? what if it’s racism? What if it’s rape? We argue alot about how providing a safe space in art for those feelings is actually preventing us from acting on it in real life, how it’s an outlet of something we would never actually want or do, but then where is the limit to that? I am putting this intentionally controversial, but if we admit that most of us grow up with internalized racism and mysogyny, by that logic, why can’t I paint something that is blatantly hateful if I have those feelings? Maybe that is my way of fighting it, you don’t have to look at it? Not saying that’s what I am doing or would want to do, but what if? For some people Rammstein singing about not wanting to be Angels is crossing that line, for some of us that line is drawn alot later. Who is right? Isn’t that just personal sensitivity? Can you honestly rationalise that? Isn’t it just processing our different levels of petty hate in different ways? I don’t have the answers to any of that, it’s just questions I often have and that I think have to do with this, because alot of the nasty bits in punk will justify it exactly that way, as artistic expression. Alot of it isn’t as political as this scene is made out to be, it’s simply asking those things. I personally relate to that alot, as someone who arguably would draw the line of “we should stop doing this” in art very, very, very late - and certainly later than my own personal comfort zone.

I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense at all. I hope it does - and if it doesn’t it’s probably because I don’t know either, or because I don’t want to fully blow this up into an essay (sorry, too late?) or because I suck at making a point, or maybe because we simply disagree. All I know is that I sometimes see these posts of “what is punk and what isn’t” and it leaves me with this taste of “you’re describing a utopia and it’s cute and I want that too, but it’s not everything punk as I know it is, and it feels like you don’t want to see something that mattered too - even if it was brutal and disgusting.” And everytime I see it I feel alien, like something that mattered to me so much as a teenager and young adult gets taken away from me and made into something so sleek and pretty it becomes something unattainable to be that I simply don’t manage to live up to in the way I would like. I guess that is a petty, selfish way of looking at it too.

«It's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.»

- John Lydon

[thelostgirl21]

Pansexuality, Bisexuality, Asexuality, and experiencing sexual attraction towards a person regardless of gender...

Alright you guys, here’s the thing.

I’m seeing a lot of hurt, resentment, and misunderstanding in the pansexuality tag, coming primarily from pansexuals and bisexuals alike, and I think it’s high time we sat the fuck down together, and had a good heart-to-heart as a community.

Actually, I’m inviting asexuals to the table, too, because they happen to be much closer to a specific subset of pansexuality than a lot of people seem to believe, and might be able to offer valuable input and insight into that whole debate.

First, I know there are a lot of different views, versions, and definitions of what pansexuality is. Some identify as being sexually attracted to all gender expressions, others as being sexually attracted to people regardless of gender.

Here, I’m going to address what “regardless of gender” actually entails in terms of how one experiences sexual attraction towards another person without regard to their gender.  This is the definition of pansexuality that I wish to delve into and explore, so hopefully we may gain a broader perspective of why some of us feel that having a distinct space within the LGBTQ+ community matters.

First off, here is an especially important concept that does not seem to be well integrated for many people:

What orients human sexuality is not restricted to gender.

I repeat: What orients human sexuality is not restricted to gender.

What does it mean?

This means that every human being that do experience sexual attraction towards another human being does so according to a huge multitude of personal criteria that they perceive in another human being that - when combined together – trigger that sense of sexual attraction, and lets us perceive a person as being sexually attractive.

When we say that someone is "hot" and that “we want them"; usually, it is because there is that *special something* about the way they act, the way they move, the depth of their voice, the sound of their laughter, the mischievous glint in their eyes, their overall projected personality, how they carry themselves, their height, their weight, their confidence, their vulnerability, the shape of their forehead, their nose, the texture of their hair, the roundness of their buttocks, the culture they belong to, their intellect, etc., that is perceived as being sexually desirable traits to be found in a “mate”.

Some of these perceived traits tend to carry more weight, and thus will be taken into consideration, more than others.

However, assuming we are not asexual, we all sexually respond to an array of perceived physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, intellectual, etc. features we see in another human being that makes us go "Yup! I wanna have the sex with you!"

For the vast majority of people, gender tends to be what they assess first - something that is significant enough to orient their sexuality - or that is, at least, perceived as being significant in some way.

For example, they will see a woman with luscious red hair, a gorgeous smile, an aura of authenticity, a resonant laughter, a soft, curvy body, freckles, a shy gaze yet a very firm and assured handshake, and their body will respond to said woman in a way that awakens some desire in them.  They will want to have sex with that woman, and they will typically appreciate that she is a woman while doing so.

Some will have a preference for cisgender or transgender women, but for the purpose of the issues I’m wishing to bring into light, please always assume that whenever I am referring to a woman or a man, this includes both cisgender and transgender individuals.

This is crucially important. Because I’ve sadly seen many people claiming that they are “pansexual” because they like every gender, even “transgenders”, while arguing that bisexuals only like “cisgender men and women”, and that makes absolutely no sense.

By doing so, you are pretending that your sexuality is “more inclusive” towards multiple gender identities, while at the same time pretending that, in order to be bisexual, a transgender woman would need to feel no sexual attraction towards other transgender men, and/or women of her own gender.

You are unwittingly relegating transgender individuals to the role of being someone else’s object of sexual desire, while not giving them the role of being the ones expressing that desire in how they identify.

The gender is “woman”.  The gender is “man”.  The gender is “non-binary”.  The (absence of) gender is “agender”.

You absolutely have the right to be exclusively sexually oriented towards men whose assigned gender at birth (usually determined by their genitalia) matches their gender identity.  

But that is a personal preference of yours in “how you like your men”.  

I know quite a few girls that are not sexually attracted to men that are smaller than themselves, and yet they are still heterosexual or bisexual.

Preferring someone whose gender matches the gender they were assigned at birth based on their genitalia is nothing wrong.

Pretending that transgender men and women should be excluded from the definition of bisexuality based on being transgender, is.  It reflects a failure to acknowledge that transgender men and women are the same gender as cisgender men and women.

So, everywhere you see me refer to “men” and “women”, please do assume that it includes both cisgender and transgender individuals.  Whenever I am talking about a specific interest in certain types of genitalia (that are associated with the gender assigned at birth vs the gender identity of a person), I will make that precision.

Otherwise men and women are men and women, period.

That being said, to go back to the notion of all the different variables influencing our sexual orientation, I believe that in order to properly understand the nuance found in pansexuality, it would be helpful to take a good look at an asexual’s experience of their own sexuality.

When people hear “asexual”, they often make the mistake of assuming that everyone that identifies as asexual are sex-repulsed, or that they can’t find pleasure in the act of sharing sex with a partner, romantic or otherwise.

All that asexuality means, really, is that the person is not sexually attracted towards other people.

It says absolutely nothing about an inability to experience sexual arousal and enjoy an active, satisfying sex life.

What it tells you, is that other people won’t be what will trigger the desire in them to have sex.

Let’s say you love ice cream!

Most of the time, you eat ice cream on your own, because you crave how good it tastes and enjoy eating ice cream for the ice cream itself.

It relaxes you, makes you feel good, and is very self-gratifying.

The sight of another person holding an ice cream cone, or even explicitly offering it to you, does not make you want to eat ice cream, however.  Your cravings for ice cream happen totally independently of how other people behave about ice cream, about you, and are not tied to the social aspect of enjoying ice cream with a partner.

You’re fine managing your ice cream eating habits on your own.

HOWEVER, sometimes, when you are with someone you strongly care about and trust, even if their presence changes nothing to your own impulses to desire eating ice cream, since eating ice cream *is* something you find personally pleasurable, you may find yourself wanting to share that pleasure with them.

You might even be open to spoon-feeding them the ice cream yourself.  Not because you are instinctively driven to eat ice cream in the company of another and share it, but because you do enjoy the whole aspect of togetherness, and the strengthening of social bonds that eating ice cream together brings you.

For sexually active asexuals, “sharing sex” with someone is often something that they will willingly engage in because they are very receptive to the feelings of intimacy and togetherness that engaging in sexual activity with someone they deeply care about - or might even be romantically engaged with - brings them.

It becomes something that is sought as a way to reinforce such social bonds, rather than an instinctive drive to have sex based on a desire that is triggered by a partner.

A human being can desire to bond with another person through something that leaves them as vulnerable and open as sexual intercourse, without perceiving the person they choose to have sex with as being sexually desirable themselves.

What will happen is that they will find ways to sexually arouse themselves through tactile stimulation, certain thoughts, and/or other ways – often rather unique to them – that they have experienced with, and they know can trigger a state of sexual arousal in themselves.

Once sexually aroused, they are free to enjoy the sexual activity in the company of someone that they care about.

In the context of a romantic relationship, there is also the aspect of empathy, of desiring to make someone they love feel good, and happy.

But the acceptance and understanding that an asexual does not sexually desire their romantic partner, and thus respecting their own limits and comfort zone in terms of how much sex they are willing and comfortable to share with a sexual partner, is absolutely crucial.

They do get something out of it, too (i.e. it’s not JUST about making the other feel better).  But the drive to “eat ice cream together” may be less than in someone that sees “ice cream” in someone else’s hands, and can barely contain their excitement and need to eat some.

Some asexuals do not ever feel comfortable having sex with other people, and that is perfectly ok, too.

But being asexual, in the context of a sexual orientation, doesn’t automatically mean being unable to sexually engage in sexual activity with others, being repulsed by it, and/or finding nothing rewarding in having sex with others.

It just means that other people are not something that orients their sexuality, and that they don’t trigger anything in them that makes them want to have sex with them.  At least, not without some secondary objective (ex: fostering a greater sense of emotional intimacy) in mind.

An asexual’s sexuality can be expressed regardless of the person.

If you can understand that, then you might understand how being pansexual feels.

As a pansexual, I experience sexual attraction to a person, but said attraction occurs regardless of that person’s gender.

I do not find women sexually desirable. I do not find men sexually desirable. I do not find non-binary gender identities sexually desirable.  I do not find agenders sexually desirable.

I can listen to a bisexual trying to explain to me what they find sexually exciting about girls, boys, agenders, etc. using terms to describe certain gendered traits.

Except I am unable to personally relate to any of the feelings they are describing.

Not because I am gender blind.

I do see your gender.

Just like I do see how tall you are, what your body type is, your hair color, your nose, etc.

And yet, people do not typically go around insisting on defining sexual orientation in terms of:

- Heterosexuality: being sexually attracted to people with different hair colors than yours.

- Homosexuality: being sexually attracted to people with the same hair color as you.

- Bisexuality: being sexually attracted to both people with different hair colors than your own (experiencing patterns of heterosexual attraction), and the same hair color as you (experiencing patterns of homosexual attraction).

- Pansexuality: Being sexually attracted to a person regardless of hair color, without experiencing any patterns of either heterosexual or homosexual attraction.

They do, however, keep insisting that another human being’s gender is one of the many traits they have - that may or may not outwardly be express - that should make you feel “something” about them.

Gender is supposed to be one of the key factors of sexual attraction that orients one’s sexuality.

But that is not always the case.  My body, my sexual impulses, instincts, or drive - no matter how you wish to call it - do not respond to gender.

And insisting that I should find anything about one being a woman, a man, or otherwise sexually attractive quickly becomes irritating.

If I were to live in a world where hair color was perceived as playing an important role in someone’s likeliness to find a person sexually attractive – and people were persecuted and discrimated against based on the hair colors they found themselves sexually attracted to – I wouldn’t feel it would be any different than the sexual orientation system we’re stuck in right now.

In terms of the genitalia that is traditionally associated with the gender assigned at birth, or even reassigned genitalia, I do not find anything remotely sexually interesting about vaginas and penises (and all their variations).

Yes, they are physically there, I can use them in the context of sexual intercourse, but they don’t offer anything more stimulating or interesting to me than what could be achieved with the use of fingers, a tongue, and/or especially toys (toys are notoriously difficult to beat in terms of functionality and versatility, actually).

Your genitalia is not about me, but about you.  I do not find your penis or your vagina sexually attractive.  They are body parts that look rather weird and funny to me (I’m including my own vagina in that assessment), and I don’t get what’s supposed to be sexually stimulating or interesting about having the opportunity to see or interact with that part of someone else’s body.

I’m not repulsed by your genitalia, but they don’t inspire me to have sex, either…

…UNTIL I’ve been having sex with the same partner for long enough that I manage to generate mental associations between your vagina or your penis with other aspects of yourself that do trigger some sexual desires in me.

My sexuality is expressed in a way that is highly empathetic.  So, as soon as I’m starting to truly bond with a partner and develop a long term connection with them, their own expression of sexual arousal will be an extremely strong trigger in terms of how sexually attractive they will look to me.

When I see my partner’s penis, it’s not the penis itself that I see.  The image that will instinctively and automatically pop into mind is the way his body lightly trembles under my touch, it’s the delicious little quiet moans and sighs escaping his lips, it’s the hungry looks he gives me, it’s the intimacy and the vulnerability behind each action, it’s the light sheen of sweat covering his skin, the rise and fall of the chest as his breath quickens, the pulse on his neck beating increasingly fast.

Every penis in the world looks to me like an oversized big toe, and they are totally irrelevant to my sexual interests, except for being “instruments” that I can play to make my partner experience heightened sensations, and bring them sexual satisfaction…  

And I can play with every instrument of origin and/or with every reassigned instrument… or none at all!  If you’d rather use toys that you control by yourself, and have me interact with the rest of your body during sexual intercourse, instead, it’s 100% fine by me.  I don’t need to get in direct contact with your genitalia to find sexual intercourse sexually satisfying, either.

As long as it remains something interactive we are sharing together, my pansexual arse will be perfectly fine!

But there comes a point where my partner’s penis no longer quite looks like “just a penis” to me - it looks like the whole experience of having sex with him.

And I’m sexually attracted to him.  I’m sexually attracted to elements of his personality, yes, but also to his body.

A bubble butt remains a bubble butt, regardless of the gender it belongs to.  And bubble butts are very sexually attractive.

You’ve got the bubble butt?  In my own personal list of personal features likely to make me perceive you as sexually attractive, bubble butts rate very high.

So, while my partner’s penis does not orient my sexuality, and I could have done with or without.  My sexual attraction towards other aspects of him (oh yeah, he’s got the bubble butt, alright!) allows me to embrace that part of his body as something “more” than “just a weird looking big toe that inflate and deflate”.

The way I feel about vaginas is pretty much the same. I don’t find them attractive or interesting, but since I’m interested in making my sexual partner feel good, too, over time I’ll learn to develop an appreciation for my own partner’s vagina.

Therefore, trying to argue that “biological sex” or genitalia should be perceived as “mattering more” or being “more relevant” in the context of describing how we experience sexual attraction towards a person than one’s hair color – and therefore, I should pay more attention to something that is traditionally being used to define gender upon birth than someone being a ginger – does not work with a pansexual that identifies as such, because they experience sexual attraction regardless of gender.

I’m not repulsed by your genitalia, I don’t desire it. What I need, what I want, is having someone close to me I can kiss, caress the curve of the small of their back, run my fingers through their hair, bite their shoulders, grab that bubble butt with both hands and feel those muscles offer some resistance against my fingers, etc.

A person’s overall body is what is perceived as being sexually attractive and will orient my sexuality.  Their genitalia, or even specific gendered traits associated with their body, not so much.

Which brings me to the infamous question pansexuals keep being asked over, and over again every time they try to tell someone that they are sexually attracted to a person regardless of gender.

“Oh, so who they are, their personality, matters to you more than what’s between their legs or how they look?”

*NOISE OF RECORD BEING SCRATCHED. *

Alright, hold on.  Are you telling me that if you remove “gender” from the equation, regarding what we can find attractive in another person, the only thing you’re left with becomes some utterly disembodied entity that is “all hearts and no parts”?

Are you telling me that gender is something so big, so powerful, that someone’s whole physical appearance become entirely swallowed by it?

Are you saying that gender has absolutely no bearings, or influence over one’s emotional, intellectual, spiritual, psychological traits?

If that is, indeed, what you are saying, how is it, then, that society keeps yapping about how men and women are supposed to think, what they are supposed to wear, what they are meant to like and dislike, what personality traits they are supposed to have and/or are more socially appropriate to express, and how their relationship dynamic is supposed to be build in terms of how male and females relate to each other?

Socially, I think we can agree that talks of gender tend to be quite prevalent, and generally, gender is an aspect being perceived as coloring every single aspect of a person…

And yet, if I’m telling you that I can be sexually attracted to a person regardless of their gender, are you really telling me that the only place where, suddenly, gender seems to be important, is in terms of what’s between the person’s leg, and how they physically LOOK?!

How does that work for you?

So, here is what appears to get really confusing for both the pansexual being asked the question, and the one asking it.

People that have a sexual orientation towards one, or even all genders, will tend to find aspects of someone being a woman, a man, non-binary, or even agender sexually attractive.

They may love all forms of possible genders expressions out there, and maybe even love them all equally and for the same overall reasons.  Their body may experience sexual attraction towards men, women, and non-binary genders equally.

But there’s something about one’s gender they still perceive as being relevant and “hot” and they will notice as being sexually desirable in relation to gender.

They can read about what’s great about dating women, men, and non-binary (assuming they are also romantically attracted to certain people), or having sex with them, and personally connect with those feelings.

They might find penises and vaginas to be sexually interesting and stimulating, and the direct contact with a sexual partner’s genitalia will be something they enjoy, cherish, and naturally seek as being a significant pleasurable part of their sexual intercourse.

Their sexual instincts, their sexual drive, etc. does respond to the gender of their sexual partner.

A pansexual that experiences sexual attraction to a person regardless of gender does not experience such a response.

And, for those of you that are sexually sensitive to other people’s gender, it can apparently seem rather inconceivable that you can be totally dispassionate about gender when it comes to being in a sexual relationship with a partner.

Whether we are talking about a quick “one-night stand” type of encounter, or in the context of a long-term romance, gender is utterly irrelevant, and not an aspect of the other person that triggers any feelings of sexual attraction for pansexuals.

It doesn’t orient our sexuality.  We have no sexual orientation and have never known what finding women, men, or other gender expressions sexually attractive feels like.

So, as we are saying “we experience sexual attraction to a person regardless of gender”, people that like one or many genders out there will naturally go for what feels familiar to them.

They try to understand how that can even be possible.

For many, especially those that feel strongly about having sex with specific gender(s), the key component associated with a person’s gender seems to be the genitalia and/or other physical traits that tend to be gendered in their eyes.

A woman will tend to have a body that is less muscular, a higher pitched voice, wear their hair longer more often, they have enlarged breasts and nipples, etc.

There is thus a natural association between “how someone looks” and “gender”.

To the pansexual, while they may “see” the elements of physical femininity and masculinity of a person’s body, their brain does not respond to those perceived “gendered traits” as something exciting or desirable.

It feels neutral, irrelevant, we do not understand why we are supposed to care about the difference between massaging a woman’s breast or a man’s chest within the context of sexual intercourse, or how it’s supposed to be really different.

Ok, yeah, there is a difference, but in terms of how my instincts prioritize that difference, it’s the same as gazing into a pair of green rather than blue eyes.

That difference is so trivial to me that it is not worth paying attention to it during sexual intercourse.

Gendered traits are not where I find my sexual inspiration.  The physical traits I do find sexually attractive tend to be perceived as being very gender neutral in the context of sexual attraction, even if most people consider them “gendered”.

Like your penis, your vagina, or any reassigned genitalia, I can learn to develop an appreciation for your masculinity, your femininity, your gender-fluidity, etc. as we go deeper into the sexual relationship and it has the opportunity to evolve.

I may not give a damn about gender sexually or even romantically, but I care about you.

I care about making you feel valued, seen, and wanted for everything you are.

I may not be sexually or even romantically attracted to every single aspect of yourself, but just like an asexual might still take the time to “share the sex” with their partner because they appreciate the feeling of intimacy and togetherness, because they want them to feel good, because finding the right balance between their own needs and their partner’s needs matter (always withing their own personal limits and comfort), and thus, they will find their own “payoff” in the pleasure in watching someone they care about enjoy themselves in such a way…

Well, I’ll gladly worship at the altar of your femininity, and make a conscious effort to develop an appreciation for the gendered aspect of who you are in the context of sexual intercourse, so I can help fulfil that particular aspect of your needs. Whereas, as I stated earlier, someone that has a sexual orientation will see a woman with luscious red hair, a gorgeous smile, an aura of authenticity, a resonant laughter, a soft, curvy body, freckles, a shy gaze yet a very firm and assured handshake, and their body will respond to said woman in a way that awakens some desire in them.  And, in response, they will want to date that woman and they will instinctively appreciate that she is a woman.

A pansexual will see a person with luscious red hair, a gorgeous smile, an aura of authenticity, a resonant laughter, a soft, curvy body, freckles, a woman gender, a shy gaze yet a very firm and assured handshake, and their body will respond to said person in a way that awakens some desire in them.  And, in response, they will want to date that person and they will instinctively appreciate who she is, but without necessarily putting any emphasis on the gendered aspects of her identity.

However, since we do see gender, we can develop an acquired appreciation for it.  It’s so far down the list of things we may consider in a partner that it does not orient our sexuality.

That appreciation will not be instinctive, but a taste we will learn to acquire and manifest for the benefit of our partner and the health of the whole relationship.

Gender may be but one of the many parts of your identity, and carry no more weight when it comes to choosing a partner than your hair color from my perspective, if that is a part of your identity you feel strongly about and tend to put at the forefront, I will thus make it one of my priorities within our relationship, too.

I can’t control how my sexual instincts respond to you.  I can’t “make myself” be sexually attracted to you being a woman.  But I can easily appreciate the aesthetic beauty of your womanhood, learn to appreciate all the aspect of being a woman that matter to you, and regularly reflect those aspects back to you in a positive, nurturing, appreciative manner.

And my compliments will be sincere, whether I find those aspects sexually arousing or not.

I experience my sexuality in a way that is one “person” away from being asexual.

So I really can’t blame those that do experience heterosexual (attracted to a gender not their own), homosexual (attracted to their own gender), or both heterosexual and homosexual patterns of sexual attraction to be confused as to what “regardless of gender” really means for some of us, and thus jump to conclusions.

“Oh, so who they are, their personality, matters to you more than what’s between their legs or how they look?”

That’s simply their way of expressing “I don’t get it.  Doesn’t everyone have a gender identity?  How can you sexually disregard gender in the way someone looks while still finding them sexually attractive?”

The mistake they are making, in asking this question, is disregarding all the other aspects of a person that plays a role in their own sexual orientation, too.

Why, as a straight woman, aren’t they trying to get into the pants of every person they perceive as being male or that identify as men?

Gender may be one of the key factors orienting their sexuality, but they also have preferences in nose shapes, height, weight, voices, accents, attitudes, etc. that will orient their sexual desires.

Our inability to feel anything attractive about a prospective partner’s gender, doesn’t remove our ability to experience attraction towards other aspects of their physicality that we find sexually attractive.

Truth is, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of straight, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, among others, naturally prioritize personality and the overall “vibe” they get from a person over their physical looks and what’s between their legs.

But, just as someone who is gay may have no idea what being pansexual feels like…  A pansexual has no clue how being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual (in the sense of being attracted towards own gender and other genders) truly feels like.

We don’t relate to gender in the same way other people seem to.  At least, when I hear them talk about gender and describe how they feel about men, women, and others, that feeling doesn’t seem to match my own experience.

So, being continuously asked to define our sexual orientation in terms of gender attraction – when it has no bearings on our sexuality – at some point, might end up being perceived as some form of harassment and micro-aggression for us, especially when we are asked to “justify” how that can even be possible, and have people argue that because everyone has a gender, then we are all attracted to their gender by default.

(Yeah, everyone has a thumb by default, and no one is forcing me to define my sexual orientation by the fact that I’m sexually attracted to their thumb.)

So, imagine our relief when, suddenly, the focus is driven AWAY from people’s gender.

When we hear “Oh, so who they are, their personality, matters to you more than what’s between their legs or how they look?”, we are suddenly being offered the possibility of being sexually oriented towards a person based on something that is not defined by the one asking the question as “predominantly gendered”.

We very naïvely assume that, if the other person is asking the question, it is because heterosexuals, homosexuals, and bisexuals feel that a person’s looks, and/or their genitalia, typically matter more to them in terms of how they experience sexual attraction, than the non-gendered aspects of their personality.

If you ask someone who is straight “Does someone’s personality, who they are at the core, matters more to you than what’s between their legs or how they look?”

They may very well answer “yes”, because they will only think about the current context of that question, and find truth in it.

If you ask me, as a pansexual, the same question, my first instinct is going to be to also answer “yes”.

However, if I take a moment to fully analyse that question, the record goes to a scratching halt!

Not every pansexual has the required amount of patience and personal insight to dissect everything that is sadly implied by such a loaded question, and will instead focus on the overwhelming relief of having finally found an “out” from a system that doesn’t fit them.

They will embrace that suggestion, think that this sets them apart from those who do respond to gender as part of their sexual orientation, integrate it as a key concept of their whole sexuality, and start proudly declaring that they are pansexual, because they are sexually attracted to “hearts, not parts!”

Doing so, they sadly attract the ire of straight, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals that FINALLY have their own moment of epiphany and go “Wait a minute?!  Are you saying that all that matters to us in a sexual partner is what’s between their legs?! Are you saying we are all physically-obsessed whores that only care about looks without giving a damn about personality?!  I may be bisexual, but if a man has an awful personality, there’s no way I’m going to be having sex with him!  Get off your high horse, you pompous, higher-than-thou pricks!”

Suddenly, they all seem to forget where the suggestion that we were caring more about “hearts” than “parts” came from in the first place, and then resent us for it!

Yes, it is absolutely wrong to define our sexual orientation in such a way!

“Hearts, not parts” has nothing to do with pansexuality.

But just like I won’t blame people with a gender-based sexual orientation to ask the wrong types of question based on their own confusion and inability to spontaneously relate to what being pansexual feels like; I won’t blame pansexuals for having made the mistake of appropriating that slogan to try to escape a system that suffocates them, without realizing that they’ve failed to clearly help them understand what pansexuality is like.

I will correct them, and try to make fellow pansexuals understand that, while “hearts, not parts” may reflect something they consider as being an important aspect of their own sexuality, it is not what sets them apart from people with a gender-based sexual orientation.

Pansexuals like parts just as much, or as little, as people identifying as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.  

How much importance we instinctively assign to the physical appearance of the person we are sexually attracted to does not say anything about how we respond (or, more accurately, fail to respond to) gender.

All we are saying is how physically vs mentally and/or emotionally we tend to be sexually orientated towards prospective sexual partners.  This is an aspect of one’s sexuality that can be applied to all, regardless of how they feel about gender.

Even in the context of demisexuality, parts usually do matter.  Experiencing secondary sexual attraction, only after a strong emotional bond has been formed with someone, won’t remove the aspect that the demisexual then needs to experience a sense of secondary sexual attraction towards the other person.

If a demisexual wanted to have sex with every single person they emotionally connected with first, they’d be unable to form any sincere, trusting, platonic friendships.

Not all demisexuals are interested in being in a romantic relationship, either.  They can be sexually attracted to a very close friend they would trust with everything they are, yet don’t experience any desire to develop a romance with or become sexually exclusive.

The nature of the strong emotional bond that occurs before secondary sexual attraction comes into play can greatly vary from one demisexual to the next.

In any case, prioritizing a person’s personality over looks in one’s relationship is something that can occur regardless of sexual orientation and even romantic inclinations.  It does not set pansexuality apart.

What sets us apart, is our inability to perceive gender as something of any significant influence in the way we experience sexual attraction towards another person.

A pansexual grows up in a world that uses a classification system to define sexual orientation that feels confusing to them.

They see people around them getting all excited about a boy or a girl in school, expressing what they feel is attractive about them being a boy or a girl (back when I was a teenager, the binary was extremely predominant, so at least that aspect is slowly changing) without feeling any inclination either way, or even understanding what parts of them being male or female is supposed to be sexually (and/or romantically) exciting.

They will learn to parrot what they hear from others, to use other people’s terms to describe their own sexual attraction. They are so convinced that everyone MUST have a sexual orientation that they will be actively (and sometimes, desperately) looking for it.

They may identify as straight given they found themselves sexually attracted to someone who was a girl, and thus deduce that must mean that they “like girls”.

But then, another person they feel sexually attracted to a year later happens to be a boy…  So, are they bisexual instead?

Except, they no longer feel anything significant about girls in general…  Does that mean they are gay?

Then, they meet another girl, and feel sexually attracted towards her – same they did with the first girl.

Were they really bisexuals, but have just “forgotten” about it?

Except now that they are attracted to that girl, they feel nothing remarkable about boys in general, either…

What the hell is going on?!

We find people sexually attractive typically on a case by case scenario.  We know, deep down, we aren’t opposed to having sex with people from any gender, but we don’t find members of that gender sexually attractive per say.

If we look at our history, we will find people from all gender identities that we may have been sexually attracted to at different points of our lives, but we never feel like their gender mattered more than the color of their eyes or that there was a sense of attraction that came from how we perceived or acknowledged their gender.

Except we are constantly told about how great and desirable women, men, and other genders are.  

But no matter how much efforts to make to “feel something” about people’s gender, we don’t get it.

With time, we tend to feel like an alien within society and sadly, even among the LGBTQ+ community.  We internalize the way we process our sexual orientation and our lack of gender orientation as meaning there is something wrong with us, that we are “missing parts” that should be there, because every definition we see regarding sexual orientation fails to clearly reflect our reality.

We either adapt by constantly changing labels to describe our sexual orientation, depending on the gender of whoever we are in a relationship with at the time.

We end up giving in, and calling ourselves “bisexuals”, although the “regardless of gender” aspect of bisexuality tends to be absent / underrepresented within that community, and we are still surrounded by people gushing about liking men, women, non-binary, etc.

Or, we often end up making the choice of abandoning the system, no longer caring about whatever label people ask us to identify as, and often refusing to offer any clear or definitive answer to questions we feel don’t apply to the way we experience our sexuality in the first place.

If it appears I’m never quite offering you a satisfying answer, or you can’t accept I don’t feel anything special about the gender of a prospective mate, what else am I supposed to tell you?

When I’m not taking the time to really get into all those nuances and details, I do say I find men, women, non-binary people sexually attractive regardless of their gender, because I am able acknowledge that someone is a man, a woman, or elsewhere on the gender spectrum.

Society talks about people in terms of “men”, “women”, “bigender”, etc.  So, it makes sense to use the same language.  

Except, by doing so, I’m always referring to the fact that I can be sexually attracted to people that happen to be of all gender identities; and not expressing that I’m sexually attracted to them with regards of the gender identity they have, or what I see about themselves that I perceive to be feminine, masculine or otherwise.  Be those traits physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, etc.

Yeah, I’m sexually attracted to men, women, non-binary and agender people in the context where we are using those words to describe their gender identity; but it has nothing to do with my own instinctive sexual response to their gender.

I’m sexually attracted to brunettes, blondes, gingers, and other hair colors as well in the context where we are using those words to describe their hair color, and not my own instinctive sexual response to their hair color.

Oddly enough, I experience my sexuality in a way that is “inclusive” of all genders out there…  but only because my sexual impulses are instinctively rejecting gender as an aspect that influences my sexual desires towards them, and making me likely to want to get into a sexual relationship with them. Bisexuals usually tend to be openly appreciative of all forms of gender expressions out there, and welcome them with open arms.

Pansexuals will just want to have sex with you regardless.

While saying this, however, I’m aware that there may be plenty of bisexuals that identify with what I’ve explained since the beginning, and to them, this is also what their bisexuality means.

Maybe they don’t feel irritated by the way people keep insisting that it doesn’t matter whether one identifies as “sexually attracted to all genders” or “sexually attracted regardless of gender”.

Perhaps they decided that they were fine with adopting a label that was “close enough”, so that others would be satisfied with the answer, and leave them be.

Or maybe they got lucky, and found other bisexuals that clearly explained to them that it was totally normal to feel like gender was totally irrelevant to how you experience sexual attraction towards another human being.

But some of us did experience a lot of doubt and confusion that ended up taking a certain toll on our self-esteem (at least, for a while).

Some of us do feel more strongly about truly being seen for who we are: people without a sexual orientation with regards to gender.

Some of us also feel a special kinship with the asexual community, whose asexuality will sadly often be mocked, invalidated, or heavily questioned as soon as they choose to engage in sexual activity with a romantic partner.

I’m fully open to recognizing that the bisexual label, historically, might have been designed with the idea of including people that experience sexual attraction towards another human being regardless of gender into it.

But how we define sexual orientation and human sexuality, and the vocabulary used to describe it, is bound to keep evolving over the next few years as people start recognizing and identifying with complexities that weren’t as easily recognized, expressed, and accepted before.

It took me about 30 years to discover that there were other people out there that didn’t have any sexual orientation towards other people’s genders, and could be sexually attracted to them regardless.

I sincerely would have benefited from having had access to other pansexuals; people that, perhaps, would have been able to put words on what I was experiencing, help me understand and sort out my feelings, and figure out why being asked which gender I found sexually attractive tended to fill me with confusion and a sense of disconnectedness from the people around me.

I would have appreciated to have people describe sexual attraction and orientation to me in broader terms that put little to no focus on gender, and helped me explore my personal preferences in a more gender-neutral way.

What I’m trying to explain to you, is that I don’t feel that there is anything more inclusive, noble, or great about identifying as being pansexual, especially not as opposed to bisexuality.

But what I am trying to convey, name, and identify, is a very specific need that I had, growing up as a queer child, that sadly I feel hasn’t been addressed and properly met by the LGBTQ+ and the bisexual community back then.

It wasn’t because there were any ill-intents from bisexuals that would talk to me about how they found men and women, for example, sexually attractive…

It wasn’t because people were trying to be unwelcoming or deny my own experience.

It was simply because I did not have the words, the maturity, and the level of personal insight back then to futher explain what I was feeling.

I could not tell you why listening to bisexuals describe the way they were sexually attracted to multiple gender identities was generating more distress than it was helping me understand myself.

I could not tell you why I felt like my “sexual interests” kept changing according to whoever I liked at the time I liked them.

I could not properly realize that sexual orientation went WAY beyond gender, and that you could find a bubble butt to be a sexually attractive feature on someone, without giving a damn about any perceived male or female characteristics of said bubble butt, or the gender identity of the person you were sexually attracted to.

What I’m trying to say, today, now that I’ve had time to put all of this into words, is that those of us that experience sexual attraction towards other people regardless of gender might greatly benefit from having their own space.

I don’t care about calling it “pansexuality”.  You can call me “non-gender-oriented-sexual” or whatever else you like (as long as it remains respectful).

What matters to me, is that the current and future generations of LGBTQ+ kids be given the opportunity to meet with other people without gender-based sexual orientation, connect with others that can validate and clearly name what they are going through, and receive some guidance from those of us that have grown fully comfortable embracing that aspect of our sexuality and defining our sexual orientation in an alternative manner.

I am talking about clearer visibility, and access to resources for people we are supposed to care for and help.

I do not care about being right or wrong.

I’m telling you that some “non-gender-oriented-sexual” people, that currently tend to identify as pansexual, feel highly uncomfortable using gender to describe their sexual orientation.

And thus, insisting to put them all in the same category where a subset of people that understand what experiencing heterosexual (sexual attraction towards a gender different than our own) and homosexual urges (sexual attraction towards the same gender) feels like we are reinforcing the notion that there is something abnormal or wrong with them, rather than making it easier for them to get access to the resources they need and receive guidance from people that (fail to) relate to people’s genders in the same (or very similar) way they do.

I’m not trying to say the bisexual manifesto has no value or was wrong, either, simply trying to point out that there are some aspects and implications, regarding the personal experience of people that are sexually attracted to others regardless of their gender, that might have been overlooked back then.

And that we likely have everything to gain, as a larger community, by taking a good second look at all of our current definitions, without fear of redefining ourselves in a way that better reflects today’s context and reality.

I’m asking for help, understanding, acceptance, and hopefully visibility for others like me, so they don’t have to suffer the same issues I suffered from when I was a kid.

I want to help open the dialogue with the pansexual, bisexual and asexual communities, to get their own input on this and see what could be done to help us better support each other.

I’m open to many alternatives and solutions, but from the current look of things, I think this is a discussion that really needs to be had.

[dizexplainstheuniverse]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT ABLEISM IN WELLNESS.

Many of us carry the ableist ideals without even realising…

If we hold views about ourselves such as:

“I am too needy”

“Asking for help makes me a failure”

“I have to do this on my own”

This is ableism.

There’s a lot of shame that surrounds the idea that having needs is a problem that we have to solve – and we have to solve it by doing it alone.

This is entirely false. Without even bringing disability into the conversation, we’re already making an assumption that we need to be fixed, that there’s this ideal version of what health and wellness looks like.

Notions like ‘self-care’ are steeped in ableist culture. Three of the biggest issues I have with the wellness industry is that:

It's often used as a way to blame people for their lack of health.

It promotes a packaged idea of what health looks which excludes so many people.

There are a number significant physical, emotional and financial barriers to wellness.

If you look at the trends surrounding food choices, exercise, or products, the people speaking about them or benefitting from them are overwhelmingly able-bodied – and it even took me, a person with a physical impairment, quite a while to recognise this because of my own ableist views.

It’s thanks to my stubbornness and refusal to be told what I can and can’t do that I was able to access yoga classes, go on retreat and find my inner truth. However, the huge barriers and lack of awareness in ability diversity in these kinds of spaces make it impossible for many to access.

Firstly, self-care is often seen as a luxury - and sometimes it can be. But for people living with disabilities, those "luxuries" like therapy, a specific diet or yoga are crucial to our health and survival. Self-care isn’t just about a nice face mask and a slice of chocolate cake - it's also about creating a support system, avoiding toxic relationships and setting healthy boundaries for yourself.

Secondly, the stock image of self-care being a petite white woman in Lululemon is really damaging. We’re beginning to see progress in areas of inclusivity on gender, sexuality and race – but ability is being seriously ignored in wellness. For wellness to be fully inclusive, it needs to feature ability diverse bodies that move away from the social ‘ideal’. Ok sure - disability is an infinitely diverse spectrum which, of course, makes the task of accessibility for all not a particularly economically viable option. The truth of the matter is though, we’re currently ignoring the needs of every 1 in 6 people – which to me is insanity! This “one size fits all” approach is entirely based on a capitalist model of health and wellness, and it’s really toxic.

Finally, people with disabilities often experience significant financial barriers to health and wellness. Additional expenses from astronomical medical bills (and no, disability allowance or financial aid from the government IS NOT available for all people living with disability) often means that Instagram's version of self-care is simply not an option.

So, when I say disability – I’m talking about ability diversity; physical, invisible and neuro.

I subscribe to the social model of disability which defines disability as the systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion, which make it difficult or impossible for individuals with impairments to attain their valued functioning’s - rather than the dominant medical model of disability, which is a functional analysis of the body as a machine to be fixed in order to conform with normative values.

For example: if a person is unable to climb stairs, the medical model of disability focuses on making the individual physically able to climb stairs – to meet society’s expectations of what a body ‘should’ be able to do. The social model tries to make stair-climbing unnecessary, such as by replacing the stairs with a wheelchair-accessible ramp. Therefore, the impairment itself should no longer be considered disabling in that scenario.

If we consider the functionality of products, services and infrastructure from this perspective, then anything that is inaccessible to a specific group of individuals is quite simply bad design. Inclusivity should not be an afterthought once the needs of the majority are met – it should just be exceptional design thinking from the very beginning.

This is what I loveeee so much about the design of the 2012 Olympic Stadium here in London. From the stadium accessibility, to the competitors accommodation, to the spectator and at-home viewing experiences – absolutely everything was considered from an ability diverse perspective. Everything was intended to be accessible for everyone, which meant that even the audio commentary that was created for the visually impaired spectators were being used by most people in the venue who didn’t have a very good view of the games! Amazing – better quality service for all, right?

Ability diversity and ableism is an issue in wellness that we cannot continue to ignore.

If you’re a currently working in the wellness industry – if you’re a yoga practitioner, a fitness coach, dietician, therapist, if you work in areas of personal development - sex, love, relationships, holistic and spiritual – I really want to hear from you. I’d love to know what you’re doing to support ability diversity in your practice and if it’s not something you’re already thinking about – I’d really love to hear what your concerns are.

If you’re someone living with a disability and you’re here like, “Preachhhhhh!!”, then please get in touch with me via Instagram @dizexplainstheuniverse - I’d love to know what you’re experiences have been, if you work with any adaptions or any specific accessible techniques.

And actually, this is a call out to anyone. If you’ve got any ideas of how we can bring ability informed wellness into the industry, please get in touch – because being able to live your best life, to develop deep self-love, body confidence and participate fully in life, in love, should be available to absolutely everyone.

Instagram: @dizexplainstheuniverse | Facebook: /dizexplainstheuniverse

[ginnranger]

A Strange New Student

Summary: 

Ginn is a new student in a prestigious London private school. It’s pretty obvious she is not the type to be in private school, but is that going to stop her? Honestly, she doesn’t even know the answer to that one. 

But she does have a pretty good guess, when she meets Alex, Martin, George, Louise, and Elsie. They are pretty different from her. They seem nice enough, but will her past lessons allow her let them in? Another good question. 

Word count: 6542

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The large, stone hallways of Churchill high school were a lot less busy than Ginn’s old public school back in Liverpool. She guessed that was because barely anyone was able to afford the tuition to actually attend this school. How she got in was a complete miracle, sparked by some pretty unfortunate events.

The biggest understatement of her life.

Ginn was not used to anything that she had already faced in this new school at all, and she had only been in the building ten minutes. The students hanging around in the hallway before class were well behaved, milling around and chatting instead of running and fighting. The floors and lockers were clean, free of graffiti and chewing gum. The uniforms were the weirdest part; everyone wore it neat and proper, the boys’ ties being evenly tied, their shirts neatly tucked into their trousers, which were not sagging halfway down their butts, and their blazers free of burn holes and glue stains. The girls’ skirts were closer to the knee than the butt, their blouses also neatly tucked, and their cardigans neatly buttoned. Everyone’s shoes were perfectly shined, not a scuff in sight.

Every student had neatly styled hair, not a strand out of place. They all had perfect posture, shoulders squared and backs straight, the girls tending to keep their feet touching each other. Their faces shone with happy, satisfied smiles. There was no anger, hunger, or sadness in these people’s lives. Very different to what Ginn saw back in Liverpool. It was obvious these teenagers knew their place in the world. So did Ginn, and it was not surrounded by these people. They made that clear with their odd looks.

She stood out for many reasons around these people. For one, she was the only girl wearing trousers and a tie. Ginn flat out refused to wear a skirt, and the rules said trousers could not be worn without a tie, so she was stuck in the unflattering, unfitted, too big boy’s uniform. Her tie was relatively neat, but she had not buttoned the top of her shirt, and pulled the tie down slightly to accommodate the room the lack of a top button provided. her blazer sleeves had been rolled up slightly to accommodate her shorter arms. Her shirt was tucked in, but it was not neat. the sides of the shirt were bunched up, as she had tried to angle it in a way it was more fitted to her feminine frame. It was not working, but she felt comfortable. When Ginn stood, she leant on one leg, arms crossed, and her feet obviously not touching. Her shoulders slumped, and her hands folded into fists, no matter whether she was walking or standing. When she walked, her back curved forwards slightly, and her eyes shifted between everything that moved, glaring into every pair of eyes she met. Ginn had to be aware of everything that was happening around her. Just a little compulsion of hers. Her hair was cut short, mostly jar length, with layers getting shorter as they went up, and a fringe cut in line with her eyes, parted favouring the left side, and whilst that was not abnormal for girl, it was expected that she would make an attempt to calm and style her messy mop of ginger hair. But she didn’t. She liked it messy. It gave her an excuse to have her fringe covering her left eye. You see, Ginn had heterochromia. Her right eye was a bright, electric blue, whilst her left eye was a shining light brown, almost orange when the light hit it just right. Ginn preferred to cover her left eye with her hair, as it blended in with the orange strands better than the blue did. That, and the brown colour was not the genetic colour. Her mother had blue eyes, and her father had green eyes, so brown was definitely not a family eye colour.

Ginn could tell people were looking at her as she wondered the fancy hallways towards the administration office, though she couldn’t tell if this was because of her rough, stand-offish appearance, or the fact that it was early November, and she was a new student entering year 10. Honestly, Ginn didn’t care which one it was. She didn’t expect to form relationships with these people.

She managed to reach the administration office, where she was expected to pick up her time table and ID card, after a few minutes of cluelessly wondering around, following strange signs written in the worst font for someone like her; cursive. How is that acceptable, you may ask? It honestly isn’t, but this school had an aesthetic to stick to. Ginn was dyslexic, so anything that wasn’t block letters or her own handwriting was torture to read. As she reached the old looking, oak wood door, she straightened her back and readjusted her backpack, forcing her face to change from confrontational to neutral. This was the face she preferred to show in front of adults, as they could never figure out what emotion she was feeling so they struggled to ask her questions. She opened the door and walked up to the desk, waiting for the old woman sitting, typing on her computer, to look up at her. She did quickly, luckily.

“Hello there! What can I do for you today?” Her voice was far too perky and high pitched. It irritated Ginn’s ears. Ginn forced her face to remain neutral, pushing down her natural, uncomfortable reaction, so she could respond as quick as possible.

“I’m the new student. I was told to pick up my stuff here.”

“Ahh, yes! Ginn Ranger, am I correct?” The woman squeaked, smile never faltering.

“Yeah, that’s me.” Ginn avoided eye contact, uncomfortable with her full name being announced.

The woman rooted around the organised mess that sat on her desk, until she found the right envelope that held Ginn’s ID card and timetable. She handed it to Ginn and asked her to sit down for a moment, as the headmaster wished to speak to her before classes started. Ginn forced herself to swallow a groan as she nodded and took a seat next to the desk, facing the door to the headmaster’s office. Her leg bounced quickly as she stared into space, trying to concentrate on her thoughts rather than the loud world she lived in. She slouched in her seat after finding a comfortable place in her imagination to rest. Sadly, it only took two minutes for her to be called into Headmaster Windsor’s office.

“Hello, Miss Ranger.” Mr Windsor was far more serious. much more pleasant to Ginn’s ears. “It is a pleasure to finally have you here.”

Ginn only forced a smile as she sat awkwardly in the chair. Her eyes quickly scanned the room, taking in every detail she could. the shelves behind Mr Windsor mostly held the textbooks this school studied. Two of the four shelves held the textbooks. one held a collection of frames, some holding pictures of what Ginn assumed to be Windsor’s family, other holding certificates. One was a certification of first aid, one an inclusivity certificate, another being Windsor’s degree in teaching. The inclusivity certificate intrigued Ginn, as she knew for a fact that this school was pretty exclusive.

‘Guess it’s for everything except class.’ She thought to herself.

The final shelf held folders, ordered by category. The first was labelled ‘Enrolment’. The second was labelled ‘Disciplinary Reports’. The third was ‘Human Resources’. The fourth one was what Mr Windsor pulled off the shelf and flicked through. It was labelled ‘Inclusive Support’. Yay.

“So, Miss Ranger-” Ginn interrupted Windsor.

“Call me Ginn.” She said quickly and sheepishly, shoving her hands under her legs to avoid her usually gesturing that annoyed so many adults. “I prefer just Ginn.”

“Ok then.” Mr Windsor peered over the top on his reading glasses, unhappy with the interruption. “Ginn. Your old school transferred us your files and records last week, and I feel we must discuss some things before you head to classes.”

Ginn bit her lip and nodded. She had always gotten pretty good scores in lessons, but she was by far the favourite student to any teacher she ever had. She had a tendency to speak her mind, even when out of terms. Especially then, actually. She also did not have the best track record when it came to peer relations. Most of her past incidents were not her fault, but she had to claim some as her own doing. What could she say? She knows how to stick up for herself.

“These records say you are a very smart young girl, you could thrive in an academic environment, if provided with the right resources. This is why our scholarship program chose you to be our first representative of the… less fortunate.” Windsor hesitated with that last part. He really needed to brush up on his appropriate language book.

‘Just say I’m poor and move on.’ Ginn thought to herself.

“However,” the dreaded sentence conjunctive. “You do have a worrying amount of negative peer relations reports. I must tell you, Ginn. Fighting is strictly prohibited on the campus of this school.”

Ginn let her voice take the lead. “What’s your stance on fighting in self-defence? Mine is that is fine to fight, as long as you don’t start it. Pretty sure those records say that’s what I did.”

Oh dear. She really should have thought before speaking.

Windsor looked exasperated. Ginn was clearly not the first wise crack he had dealt with. “I believe anything can be sorted with the right words. As long as it is reported, it will be dealt with.”

“What about the times it can’t be reported?” Ginn’s voice deepened as she became serious. “That’s what happened in my experience. I couldn’t report it, and if I could, nothing happened, so I sorted it myself. Sure you wont have to worry though. This doesn’t exactly seem like the place where fights happen.”

Windsor chuckled and nodded. “You are an interesting young lady, miss- Ginn. I’m sure you will fit in with the class I have placed you in. All of your teachers have been informed of your mental heath and learning difficulties, as per your request.”

Ginn hated how that was phrased, but she thanked him anyway. ‘Gotta try and be polite’, after all.

“I have assigned a young man to help guide you around school as you settle in.” Oh no. forced interaction. “He should be outside now.”

as Windsor finished his sentence, the phone device on his desk beeped, and the voice of the receptionist through the door sounded out, saying ‘a Mr Peterson was here to see Headmaster Windsor.’ Windsor told the receptionist to send him in, and the device buzzed, causing Ginn to cringe. That sound was horrible!

Before she could fully recover, the door opened behind her and a boy around her age walked in. He had pale white skin, with bright blond hair, shaved at the sides and combed over, the parting favouring the right side of his head. His eyes were cornflower blue, shining and bright. He had a small, wonky smile on his face as he greeted the headmaster and took a seat on Ginn’s right side.

“This is Alex Peterson. He will be, what we call, your class escort.” Windsor introduced the boy to Ginn, and the boy turned to Ginn and smiled, offering his hand to shake, which she just looked at nodded to him. Windsor broke the awkward tension between the two and continued. “He will show you around until you are comfortable with your surroundings.”

Ginn hated this idea. She could see why they implemented it, many people would want it, but she was not one of those people. She would much rather just figure it out on her own, even if it meant being late to all her classes.

“The bell is about to ring. You two should head off now.” Windsor gestured to the door, and the two teens picked up their bags and walked out.

 “So…” The boy, Alex, said, drawing out the ‘O’ sound. “Can I see your schedule? Just so I know for sure where you are?”

Ginn wordlessly shoved the piece of paper into Alex’s hand, still avoiding eye contact with him. Alex shot her a strange look, realising this was going to be so much harder than he originally thought. He did think she would be quiet, being new and all, but dang.

“Cool, you’re in mine and my friend’s form.” he handed back the paper to the new girl and started walking, being closely followed by her. “You’ll like Mr Caxton, he’s fun.”

Ginn hummed in response. God, she was not making it easy for Alex.

The bell rang and Ginn tensed, her shoulders squaring, and her fists clenching. Another loud, irritating noise. This school was just made to make her uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, Alex had noticed her reaction to the sound. “You ok? It’s just the bell, no need to worry.” he chuckled.

“Fine.” Ginn grumbled through gritted teeth. She started storming off down the corridor without a plan, and luckily Alex jogged to catch up to her before she reached the turning point.

Alex desperately wanted to break the awkward air between them, but did not know how. This girl seemed tense, understandably, as she seemed quite strange to the standards of this school, so he did not know how to approach anything with her.

“So… where you from?” Alex asked, trying to study her body language. She walked like she was trying to look tough, as well as be silent in her steps. She succeeded on both aspects as she definitely looked intimidating, and her steps barely echoed around the halls.

Ginn subtly looked Alex up and down, figuring out his motive, in both the question and with helping her. He stood straight and proud, taller than her by a good few inches. Although, that wasn’t hard, as Ginn was only 5”3’. She estimated him to be about 5”9’, and she guessed he still had room to grow. He was looking at her expectantly with a small smile, his blue eyes shining in curiosity. She could see no malice in his wonderment, so she answered.

“Liverpool.” She said, bluntly. To be exact, she lived in a small terrace house, in Roscoe Street, very close to her primary school, Pleasant Street Primary. Ginn had hopped around several high schools in the past four years, so she couldn’t say how far she lived from them. She did not live in a great area, but it was close to the city centre, and she always felt safe there with her parents. She missed Liverpool.

Alex nodded, biting the inside of his mouth in mild frustration at Ginn’s refusal so converse. “Cool. Good city. What brought you to London then?”

“Family stuff.”

The two sighed, knowing that conversation was not going to happen right now.

 The two arrived at the classroom after everyone else had arrived and sat down. Alex greeted the teacher with a cheerful ‘good morning’ and he sat down on a table for four, with two other boys, whom he greeted and immediately started chatting and laughing with. The boy sitting next to him had slightly more tanned skin than Alex, but he was still quite pale. He had neat, honey brown hair, with a full fringe that was cut just under his eyebrows, the top of head was thick with hair facing forwards, and what Ginn estimated as one inch clipped shaving around the rest of his head. His eyes were forest green, thoughtfully staring at Alex as he spoke, but also at someone on the other side of the room Ginn couldn’t locate. The other boy had his back to Ginn, but from what she could see, he had dark, sun kissed skin, and the only messy head of mahogany brown hair she had seen in this school. Well, there was an order to this mess, unlike the mess that sat on her own head. His hair was methodically spiked up, then brushed forward. He appeared to have every portion of his hair cut to a similar length, apart from the front.

Ginn heard her name and she turned, seeing the teacher beckoning her towards his desk. she walked over, head down.

“You must be Miss Ranger!” Oh god, he was perky. “Now, I like to ask before I start teaching new students, if you don’t mind, what would you like me to call you, and what pronouns shall I use for you? And are they the same in class, privately, and in front of other adults?”

Ginn blinked at the sudden questions as she let her mind catch up with her ears. “Just Ginn, thanks. Female pronouns, all the time.” She said quietly.

“Perfect.” Mr Caxton smiled softly at Ginn, then continued. “I have been told of the support you require, so don’t be afraid to approach me any time!”

Ginn felt extremely awkward, biting her lower lip, and nodding, avoiding eye contact. She always hated it when her personal stuff was brought up by other people. She knew they were only trying to help, but it never helped Ginn. all she did was nod.

“Ok, so everyone in this class has their seat. I had everyone choose to sit somewhere at the beginning of the year and that is where they sit for the rest of the year. The only available seat is across from your guide, Alex. Go sit down, and we’ll start up, ok?”

Ginn glanced over at the table of three boys. She would be sitting next to the dark-skinned boy. He looked like the more energetic person in the trio. Freaking fabulous. At least the seat was on the left side, so she wouldn’t be bumping elbows with the seemingly right-handed boy.

Ginn had nothing against boys. Truly, she didn’t. She was just very insular, and teenage boys tended to be pretty rambunctious. She also didn’t exactly have a perfect track record with relations. Not just with boys, girls too. But, well, Ginn’s short, slim stature was not a good match up when she fought with boys. Luckily, she is quick, so at least she has that going for her.

She sighed and walked over to the table, unslinging her bag off her shoulder and sat down, immediately leaning on her hand and staring at the floor. She dazed, and started thinking about what she could draw. She thought of characters from tales she enjoyed, and she started moving her finger on one spot of the table, mimicking drawing. This was something she did when uncomfortable. Actually drawing is much better, but she hated showing others her stuff, so rarely drew when sitting at a table with strangers. Or classmates, as she should call them.

the three boys had noticed Ginn sitting down, and turned to her to smile and greet her, but she was avoiding all eye contact. Alex shrugged, realising this was going to be his week. Boy to Ginn’s right decided to break the awkward silence by introducing himself.

He went to speak, nudging her first to get he attention, but before he could speak, she jumped at the sudden touch, tensing her shoulders and clenched her fists, straightening her back and gasping lightly. Her duel coloured eyes stayed locked staring forwards, and she took a few breaths before she snapped her head to look at the boy and growl, “What?”

Now she could see his face, she took in his features. He looked nervous, likely due to Ginn’s aggressive nature. He had warm, russet brown eyes that where currently wide in shock. He was handsome, with a square jaw, and strong cheekbones. His mouth was tight in shock at her reaction. Luckily for him, he recovered quickly. His eyes softened into a more relaxed form, and his tight mouth morphed into a cool side smile.

“Hey,” his voice was smooth and joyous. Enjoyable to Ginn’s ears. Wait what? “I’m Martin Williams. This is George Groden, and you’ve met Alex. It seems like we’re desk mates!”

Ginn struggled to relax her muscles from the sudden touch. She swallowed and forced her hands to open as she shoved them under her thighs. Her voice was failing her, so she just looked back at the table and nodded, humming ‘mm hmm’.

The boy, Martin, made eye contact with the other two, concerned by the reaction. He decided to pry a little, tying to get Ginn out of her shell. “Ginn, right? Interesting name, never heard it before. Where’s it come from?”

Ginn was shocked by the question. Usually when people found out about her name, they made a joke about alcoholic parents, or threw out guesses as to what it was short for. Her name was Ginn. Not Ginera, or Ginevra, or even Geneva, shockingly. This question made Ginn happy, and her vocal cords decided to work.

“It’s a combination of Gill and Finn.” Ginn kept her head down but was smiling lightly for the first time in a while. “Gill was my mum’s mum, and Finn was dad’s dad. They wanted to honour both of them, so it was either Ginn or Fill, and Ginn was pretty gender neutral.”

She huffed in amusement at that last bit. the story of her naming was always interesting to her, especially when you think of the whole story of a young pregnant woman and her husband staring at each other, trying to make the other back down, until they came to the compromise of combining the names.

“That’s cool!” Martin said, enthusiastically. “You have such an interesting story! I’m just names after my grandad!”

Ginn smiled, amused by the boy’s excitement.

Before they could continue, the teacher cleared his throat and started the lesson. It was English. This was not the best subject for Ginn due to her dyslexia, but she had a creative mind, and enjoyed story telling, so it wasn’t so bad. Well, unless they were reading old stuff, like Shakespeare or Jane Austen, they were utter torture for Ginn’s brain. Sadly, that is exactly what they were doing. Romeo and Juliet, to be exact. They started the lesson reading the play, the characters being assigned to a random assortment of students. Ginn struggled to follow along as they worked, not understanding anything they were saying. The words were floating around the page, lines and letters flipping and swapping place, it was giving her a headache. It didn’t help that the most dramatic character in the play, Mercutio, was being voiced by Martin, who was slowly becoming more and more dramatic in his reading, his movements rocking the table, making reading even harder for her.

After they had finished the first four scenes, Mr Caxton instructed the class to discuss them as a table. Ginn was thankful for this as she could finally rest her eyes for a minute. She rubbed her eyes and led her hands up to brush her hair up out of her face, letting it fall how it wanted, which was apparently not in front of her eyes. She looked at the trio of boys expectantly, waiting for a conversation to start, when she noticed they were all staring at her. Alex looked shocked, staring curiously, eyes switching between each of her eyes. George seemed curious, one eyebrow raised, and a small smile spread on his lips. Martin was far too excited for Ginn’s taste.

“Woah!! You have heterochromia?!” He said far too loud. “That’s so cool!”

Ginn quickly dipped her head and brushed her fringe over her brown eye, feeling her face flush red.

“If you say so...” She muttered under her breath.

This conversation was clearly going nowhere, much to the dismay of the three boys. Ginn was obviously not a conversation person, and the boys were not interested in discussing Shakespeare, so decided to further press.

“You don’t think so?” George questioned.

“Let’s just say it’s not my favourite thing about myself.” Ginn grumbled, shooting them a sarcastic and awkward smile. The boys shared a look, all expressing different thoughts and emotions. Martin locked eyes with his friends, then looked at Ginn quickly, and back at them, wiggling his eyebrows and smirking. The boys shot him warning looks, but he ignored it, turning around to look at Ginn, leaning his elbow on the table and putting his head on his hand, wearing his flirtatious, lopsided smirk.

“Well,” He said, making Ginn look us at him. Once she saw his face, she huffed, rolling her eyes, and looked back down at her work. “I think they are beautiful, completing the gorgeous image you hold all over.”

Ginn felt panic rise in her chest. She had never been complimented like that before from the mouth of someone who... had little to no obvious ill intentions. This boy did not seem to be particularly threatening, but still, Ginn could not be help but be wary. She clenched her fist around her pen in panic, as her defence mechanisms snapped into position.

“Say anything like that again,” She turned and glared at Martin through her hair. “And I break your hand.”

Martin tensed up, squeaking in fear as his arm slipped off the table in surprise. Ginn did not break eye contact, however, needing to maintain her tough exterior.

“Well ok then.” He squeaked. Pleased with herself, Ginn looked back down at her work, deciding to do the work herself. The boys fell silent and just did the work, quietly discussing Shakespeare out of fear for their hands.

At the end of the class, after a long lesson of awkward silence between the four tablemates, the boys packed up and met with Elsie and Louise. Ginn had rushed out of the classroom a lot quicker that the others, so Alex had already failed at his job of making sure she was ok. This was going to be a rough day.

 The final class of the day was P.E. Luckily for Ginn, sport was something she excelled in. Unluckily for Ginn, she had to get changed in front of other people, which was less than ideal.

Alex instructed her to follow Louise and Elsie to the girls’ changing rooms. Ginn kept her head down and shuffled along with the other girls as they chatted, complaining about the lesson they were going into.

“P.E. sucks, I hate it so much!” Louise groaned, dramatically. “I mean, I like exercise, but the structure of P.E. is so messy, and its so boring!”

“I know!” Agreed Elsie. “It’s even worse right now, doing those weird drill things.”

Ginn perked up at that comment. If they were anything like the ones she used to do in Cadets, she was golden! She didn’t look at the other girls, but she did smile and huff in satisfaction.

“You like P.E., Ginn?” Said Louise, sounding surprised. The girl looked Ginn up and down quizzically. She did not exactly fit the typical description of a fit girl. She looked very skinny, but Louise guessed that was mainly due to her oversized uniform.

Ginn hesitated with her answer, wondering how to answer without sounding weird. “Yeah, kind of. I like exercise, and I’m used to pretty strict sessions, so nothing really bothers me much anymore.”

The other girls seemed satisfied with her answer luckily.

After only moments, the three girls had reached the girls’ changing room. As the tried to find a free section of bench to place their bags and clothes, Ginn was silently praying that no one would pay attention to her so she could change and slip out unnoticed. She utterly hated changing in public. Sadly, her prayers were not answered, as the only available space was on a bench in the middle of the room, with a group of chatty girls surrounding it. Perfect. The three set down their bags and started undressing, quickly swapping from blouse to P.E. polo shirt. Ginn was particularly mad about their easy method of swapping from skirt to shorts without presenting their underwear; slipping the shorts on under their skirts, then taking off the skirt from above. Ginn, wearing trousers, had no such luxury, so had to take advantage of her too big shirt and take off her trousers, hoping they would cover her behind as she slipped the shorts on. Now for the bit she dreaded: changing from shirt to polo. She wanted to do this as quickly as possible, but struggled due to her ever growing anxiety. She slipped off her tie and unbuttoned her shirt, then readied her polo shirt to be the correct way to slip on as soon as she rid her back of it’s professional cotton attire. Quickly, she took off the shirt, and immediately heard what she feared.

Louise and Elsie had gasped, quietly. They had finished changing and lacing up their trainers, and were waiting for Ginn to finish changing so they could walk out together, and happened to glance up when they saw her take off her shirt. The two girls were sitting on Ginn’s right, so they could see what Ginn was worried about clear as day. Right across her back, from the bottom of her shoulder blade, creeping up to the top curve of her right shoulder, were two long, pale, jagged, and bumpy scars. They looked awful, and the two girls were certain that they were from a horrible incident from a long time ago. This scared them, as they worried about Ginn’s safety and current situation.

Before they could say anything, Ginn tugged her polo shirt over her head, hiding the scars before anyone could ask questions, or, god forbid, anyone else saw them. Louise opened her mouth to speak. She was not sure what she would say, but it was instinct. Before she could make a sound, however, Ginn shot her a warning glare, her blue eye shining like a lightning storm, her amber eye shimmering like a raging fire. Her lips were tight and eyebrows knitted in a tight V-shape. Her ginger hair had fallen before her face, blocking the light from reaching her face, only making the looming pit of aggression in Ginn’s aura stronger. Her fists were tight. Louise only just realised the new girl’s flat and scarred knuckles. Louise immediately shut her mouth. She offered an awkward, slightly scared smile, but Ginn just straightened her back, slipped on her battered old trainers, and started towards the door. Louise and Elsie shared a concerned look, then darted up and dashed to keep up with Ginn, who had suddenly developed a quick, strong stride.

Once all of the students had gathered in the sports hall, the P.E. teacher, Mr Dullan, called registration and introduced the aim of today’s class. The class knew they would not like this lesson. Mr Dullen was clearly in a bad mood, he was completely stiff and glaring at everyone who made eye contact with him. Ginn was not happy when he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to face him when she marched into the hall, so he could interrogate her about who she was. He seemed satisfied after a full 30 seconds of comparing her to the ID picture that was on his register. But, this was a respectable school that definitely would not accept her doing what she wanted to do at that moment, and tuition was far too expensive for her to be kicked out on her first day, so she let it go.

“Ok, everyone!” Mr Dullen shouted, making a huge, distracting echo ring around the room. Ginn knew she would barely be able to understand him immediately. “I don’t want to deal with teaching you all today, so you’re just going to do run laps around the school grounds all lesson.”

The entire class groaned and started quietly complaining to themselves and their friends. Well, all except Ginn, who enjoyed running. Also, the echo in this room was getting to her, and she was finding it hard to concentrate. She silently thanked every deity she knew of that the run was outside.

“Alright, alright, quit the complaining!” Mr Dullen yelled, making Ginn bunch up the hem of her polo shirt in her hand to squeeze. She found early on that this was a better coping mechanism than her automatic reaction, which was covering her ears and gripping locks of hair and pulling. Distractions from bad noises are always oh so fun. Mr Dullen carried on, interrupting Ginn’s thoughts, “Everyone get your butts outside!”

The crowd of grumbling students headed towards the doors leading to the yard so they could start the run. Before Ginn could disappear into the crowd and go off to enjoy her run, Louise had grabbed her wrist and started to speak.

“Hey, are you ok? We should talk abo—”

“Do not touch me!” Ginn growled, ripping her hand away from Louise, immediately marching off in a strong, quick pace.

As soon as she set foot on the outside area of the school grounds and witnessed part of the crowd all heading in the same direction, she started her rounds of the school with a light jog, preparing her body and lungs for a long, pleasant run. She really needed to calm her mind, after everything that had happened today, especially in the last few minutes.

 Louise was incredibly confused by that reaction. She had noticed Ginn tense up and ball her shirt in her fist, and she knew Ginn had not calmed down from whatever emotion she was feeling after presenting those scars in the changing rooms.

“What was that about?” George said, the four friends walking up to Louise so they could walk the laps of the grounds together.

“She’s seemed pretty tense all day.” Alex offered. “Maybe you just scared her and she reacted.”

She definitely has something she’s hiding.” Elsie said, as the group wondered outside and started walking. “She had two huge scars on her back. She got real tense, more than usual, when we saw them.”

“Let’s go find out what’s up with her.” Louise said, determination in her voice. Then, she sounded unsure. “If we can catch up to her...”

Ginn was no where to be seen as they walked their round. They knew this because Ginn was extremely noticeable in the crowd of students, being one of the only people in the school with ginger hair. She was even more noticeable because her hair was messy and choppily cut short, and her P.E. kit, like her uniform, was too big and looked it. They walked quickly around the grounds, talking and looking around. Ginn was nowhere to be seen.

“She must actually be running.” Martin shrugged. “That girl is an enigma.”

“An enigma you’re crushing on!” Alex said teasingly, elbowing his friend in the side and laughing.

“Shut up!” Martin pushed Alex to the side, a crimson blush rising in his cheeks. “I am not!”

“Then what was that comment in the changing room about?” George smirked and raised and eyebrow.

“Ok!” Martin’s dramatic flare revealed itself as dramatically waved his hand in the air and pointing at nothing in particular. “You have to admit, she is quite pretty!”

Martin stared a the group, waiting expectantly for their response, to which he got a couple nods, but mostly just looks of ‘my dear boy, calm yourself’.

The group continued to walk around the school grounds, giving up on searching for the strange new girl, she was far gone and they could not see her at all. The lesson went by relatively quickly, the group only lapping the school once and only going another 20 yards before Mr Dullen blew his whistle and called everyone into the changing rooms five minutes before the final bell rang. The five friends wondered back into the school, avoiding the stares of disapproval from Mr Dullen.

Louise and Elsie were slowly changing out of their kits when Ginn finally appeared by their side. She was sweating slightly, despite the November chill outside, and her breaths were long, quick, and laboured. As expected, she did not greet the girls, she just started changing, first preparing her shirt to be quickly thrown on after she removed her polo. Louise and Elsie tried not to look at her, feeling her haste and discomfort with being around people after what happened earlier. However, Louise is a pretty stubborn girl, so waited for Ginn to finish changing before she confronted her.

“Hey, where were you all class?” Louise tried to keep her voice perky and welcoming, rather than the interrogating tone she almost used. “we were looking for you when you ran off.”

Ginn let out a small growl of annoyance. “Ahead of everyone. Just needed to run.”

She removed her shorts, her shirt covering her underwear, and slipped on her trousers, then sat down to put on her school shoes. She never looked at Louise. Not that that was expected. This girl is so strange.

“You must be quick then!” Louise laughed lightly. Ginn just hummed. “It’s pretty impressive, running is pretty hard.”

This made Ginn’s head snap up, shooting Louise a confused look. “How is it hard?”

Louise and Elsie shared an amused look. Elsie laughed lightly and said, “You know, keeping pace without losing your breath, stuff like that.”

Ginn hummed thoughtfully whilst finishing up lacing her shoes. Once she was done, she stood and picked up her bag, just in time for the final bell to ring. Ginn attempted to supress her cringe at the sound, but her efforts were in vane, as the other two girls noticed. Luckily for Ginn, all they did was share a look and stand with their bags.

“Not sure I follow, but ok.” Ginn broke the silence, starting to walk out alone. However, Louise and Elise had other plans, both speeding to catch up to her and standing on either side.

“You’re a real enigma, you know?” Louise chuckled. That was apparently the wrong thing to say, as Ginn glared at her, a quiet and low growl echoing from the bottom of her throat. Her eyes raged, like a fearsome lightning storm and a blazing fire. Even though she is a very small person, Ginn knew how to make herself look large and terrifying.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Erm... well, I... I just meant that you, well,” Louise stuttered and squeaked, as if she were learning how to speak again. “I just mean that you’re, you know, pretty mysterious...”

Ginn grunted and said something like ‘that’s the point’ as she stormed off, out of the building and around the corner towards the front gates, not to be seen again that day.

“Well, you kinda fucked that one up, huh?” Elsie chortled anxiously.

“Thanks for helping there Els. Come on, let’s just go find the boys.”

Alex, George, and Martin exited the boys changing room a few minutes later. The girls explained what happened as they walked out of the school and back home. The only thing they could all agree on when it came to Ginn: She would be very difficult to befriend.

[velveetacrackncheese]

The whole "forced diversity" shit is so stupid and it really makes zero sense to me considering the points made by geeks either refer to the bad writing independent of whatever race of gender said character is, or referring to something that necessitates the need for a poc to be in a film which shouldn't have to be the case. Women and poc shouldn't have to justify their existence in popular media. I'm sorry to say this but black people weren't invented in 2019. Gay people were not invented in the 21st century, the real world really do be like that and it's fine for there to be shitty gay romcoms as much as it's ok for there to be good films with gay characters in it without people feeling the need to point at those bad films and say "See this is forced diversity. This is why we shouldn't make gay movies anymore" like it makes no fucking sense. That's not to say there isn't a such thing as hollow representation and being disrespectful of the people trying to be represented, but that's more or less an executive decision made to try and appeal to more audiences for marketing purposes (Le Fou from Beauty and the Beast) that at times can be tone deaf or just so shoddy that whatever representation was there was probably only implied or just in the background somewhere, but I don't know a single person who thinks tokenism is a good thing, and even if tokenism is what "forced diversity" is, then why is the term "forced diversity" used to refer to other instances of supposedly unjust casting then? Who's a fan of queerbaiting? I don't get it because even then, it comes down to how it's written and framed. A gay character simply being "That one gay" is typically the result of bad writing and honestly I'd very much call that half-assed diversity since clearly they don't care about their gay characters that much aside from having "the gay" in it and nothing else. But like I said, that's tokenism, and for some, the mere sight of gay characters in nerd culture is enough for the anti-woke police to come and arrest you for inclusivity crimes. Diversity itself isn't even the problem.

Nothing is even wrong with diversity for diversity's sake. Doesn't inherently have to damage a narrative, and if we're talking "agendas" the agenda first and foremost is to make money. Their little faux progressivism is just a marketing tactic. There's no secret coalition of people in Hollywood "forcing the gays in" because they just really like the gays. They don't care THAT MUCH. Queer Eye doesn't exist because imaginary cultural marxists exist in Hollywood to reinforce "the gay agenda". Queer Eye exists to perpetuate the whole "conventionally attractive, flamboyant, gay friend trope" that's tired since it exists to hit a certain itch for straight audiences. Same shit with RuPaul.

"Ah but they wrote this character as being a black woman."

Ok.

"But see they did that because they wanted to really be inclusive and have some black casting."

Aight.

"They did this because they wanted to promote a super duper communist sjw agenda"

Cool. Why is this a problem? What makes any of this "forced". Have all the past instances of progressive messaging in other forms of media not counted as forced or "sjw?" If they come off a certain way with it's themes, that's probably intentional. That sucks. Guess Star Wars was sjw propaganda all along since it's about killing space fascists.

"But that character used to be a white man that's forced :c"

Like idk what to say to this other than the fact that inclusion and the changing of races for the sake of inclusivity is fine as long as that character is still well written, and even if it isn't, shouldn't mean to condemn the changing of identity of said character. Although there is a point to be made regarding creating new diverse characters instead.

"They hired that actress because she's black."

As long as they hire her while concerning the significance of her skills and talents and use that for a stunning performance featuring a black woman, then I'm cool with thinking about inclusivity in the hiring process.

This whole thing about promoting diversity somehow meaning not being able to write something well is nonsense, because at a certain point you aren't even talking about diversity anymore, so why bring it up? Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and if you want to get mad at executives for not giving the minorities they're representing the genuine care and fine touch they deserve, wouldn't it make sense to demand they write these diverse characters better? This especially matters if the narrative you're telling heavily relies on the identity of your cast, and is thus key to write those aspects regarding your characters well. A lot of this "forced diversity" talk just seems like lazy criticism while avoiding any substantial counter-criticisms by pretending to be nuanced about a very non-issue.

You'll have that one guy who goes on about how some scripts explicitly mention the identity of a character and it's like.... Do you think casting wonder woman as a literal woman, because her role necessitates she be a woman, is also forced diversity? It's literally in her name. What if there's a movie exploring themes of female identity and such. I feel like even if it isn't relevant, people just vaguely describe certain characters as male, female, whatever. When did scripts or directors stating that they wanted a woman playing a lead all of a sudden constitute as somehow forcing diversity LMFAO. "Oh well one is artificial while the other isn't" uh, what? Last time I checked all fictional narratives are artificially written and made into products for people to enjoy and consume. Nobody looks at the numerous bad films featuring straight white dudes and go "This is forced caucasity, this is why whites shouldn't be in movies" like what. I don't remember anyone making that argument when Samurai Cop or The Room was made.

I wish the people who complain about forced diversity would just say they don't like seeing certain demographics in their movies instead of playing 32-dimensional chess as a way to avoid getting called mean words. Like just peel the mask, this is so tiring. I'd rather you just say you don't agree with certain characters representing minorities you don't like instead of spawning a pointless debate. That's not to say everyone who pulls up the whole "forced diversity" schtick is bigoted, but y'all pls. The mask comes off when y'all claim Hollywood is "far-left" when the most left leaning thing in Hollywood is Mark Ruffalo.

[lightandwinged]

Alright, it’s review time, and it’s going to be spoilery and rambly because I’m still parsing my thoughts on everything SO. 

Sans spoilers: a solid and fitting conclusion, if a bit faster paced than I would’ve liked, but it adhered to the overarching themes of the Skywalker saga probably better than anything in the new trilogy has before, and I don’t know how, considering everything (namely that Space Mom is gone), they could have or would have done things differently. Not my absolute favorite (that will forever be RotJ), but still very good.

Spoilers below, be ye warned.

I found it utterly hilarious that the plot started with Kyle Ron finding the Macguffin and chillin out with Papa Palpatine while the Good Guys had to go on this entire huge quest to FIND the Macguffin to begin with, and the only reason he didn’t just fuck off and finish some dastardly plan while they were scurrying about and trying to find the Pyramid Of Doom was because he’s got a lot to work out in his feelings about Rey. Like shit, no wonder Papa Palpatine decided to just stick with his own bloodline for galactic domination, Skywalkers are useless.

(except Leia, who is awesome)

The inclusion of Carrie Fisher in this film was VERY well done, but it also hurt a lot because you could tell that her scenes were cobbled together from old material and not made of anything new. It was good and necessary, but it also just hurt, like a constant reminder that she’s gone and nobody could replace her ever. And I’ll get more to that in a minute.

The Macguffin questing honestly felt a lot like the first half of RotJ, where we have to go rescue Han right quick because Harrison Ford was pretty sure he didn’t want to Star Wars anymore, so here’s a sidequest for half the movie, with the only difference here being that the questline had to do with the actual Plot. I’ve been following the Star Wars leaks subreddit for a while (don’t read the comments, it’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy and bitterness), and I know that at one point, it was supposed to be this race between Team Dark Side and Team Light Side to get the Pyramid of Destiny and then they’d find out that oh shit, Sheev’s here, but that was scrapped... and I kind of wish it hadn’t been? It would’ve made the first half of frolicking through this planet... no this planet... no, no, it’s on this planet... feel a lot less distracting. 

The dynamic between Finn, Poe, and Rey was fantastic, because those three actors just have amazing chemistry on so many levels. They immediately fell into the dynamic of “we’re a polyamorous triad who’ve been living together for a while, and we really love each other, but we’re also a LITTLE BIT STRESSED RIGHT NOW OK” and that’s fair. I was glad to see all of it, and I just wish that we’d had more of it in both TFA and TLJ. It reminded me a LOT of how the best parts of the OT were always when Luke, Han, and Leia were together. 

And now I’m going to take a sulk break to think about what we could’ve had with that amazing dynamic.

I’m back. 

The new characters were some of the weaker parts of the film, I felt, save for Lando (because Billy Deeeeeeee). Dominic Monaghan, whom I love, could’ve had his role taken entirely by Rose, or Billie Lourde, and nobody would’ve noticed. And I don’t mind the addition of extra women to the cast, but Zorii and Jannah felt like they were just there to be like “Poe fucks women! Finn might too!” And... yanno, cool? But the OT3 stands. 

And then General Pryde, aptly named, should’ve been a bigger part in all three films because it was like... here’s this yahoo out of nowhere who’s apparently a really big Sheev fan and just... like... what? I mean, I’m a huge Sheev fan, too, but I wish he’d been more of a Piett, where we could’ve seen him worming his way up the ranks, which would’ve made his downfall more satisfying. Instead, it was just kind of like... eh? Cool, I guess? With Piett, you felt like “yeah, we’ve seen this guy fucking things up for our heroes for two entire movies now, and here he is, getting destroyed because of his pride, hahaha!” but with Pryde, it was like “wait, who are you? Oh you’re dead now? Okay, cool, I guess?”

And in conjunction with THAT, Hux was just wasted in this film. I fully accept the idea that he rose through the ranks because of nepotism or something, and I also fully accept that he’s an absolutely useless twink who can’t do anything without having Phasma top him weekly (she used to top both him and Ren, which is why they’re such disasters in this movie), but man, couldn’t we have like... taken him with us? Imagine the comedy potential as he’s brought back as a prisoner and Domhnall Gleeson gets even more screen time with Oscar Isaac. I don’t mind that he died a worthless death because he was basically a useless wretch, but I do feel like if the movie had given itself more breathing room, he could’ve been a lot of fun.

RELATED, the pacing. So in the beginning of the movie, the idea of a light skip (basically, just sort of using the hyperdrive without planning or anything) is brought up, and everyone involved in this action bounces from world to world to world in rapid fire fashion to get rid of a bunch of TIE fighters following them, and that’s roughly the pace of this film. There are a few moments of quiet and contemplation, but they’re so rare that they seem to last a lot longer than they actually do, and I think it’s mostly because this movie really feels like a Lord of the Rings style epic packed into a MCU time frame. And I’m not complaining about the time, because by the time the credits rolled, I had to pee so fucking badly, but I feel like also if we’d trimmed out a couple of things (like maybe we can get rid of Kijimi, I think it is? The snow planet? or just merge Kijimi and Pasaana?), we’d have had more time to breathe and that would’ve helped the pacing a lot. 

The slow moments in the film belonged almost exclusively to Rey and Kyle Ron, and honestly, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver both deserve some sort of award recognition for their acting, the latter particularly. Without going into wild details about the plot, Kyle Ron does change his mind and go back to being Ben Solo, and god bless you so much Adam Driver because the change is instantaneous and delightful. If we’d seen significantly more Ben Solo than Kyle Ron, I’d totally be on board with the r.3y.10.z because this child omg. As it stands, the kiiiiissssss made me do like

in real life. It felt... mm, unearned, we’ll say. Maybe as a moment of “oh fuck that was intense and now we’re both alive” I could’ve bought it, but it wasn’t that, it was supposed to be this “my looooove” moment and just... sorry, but no. 

BUT that said, while I think his death was the only way this series could’ve ended for him because a redemption arc would’ve required a LOT more time and energy, and that just... wasn’t going to happen. The time to have him make the turn if we were going to see a redemption arc was during TLJ, and since he didn’t make that change, we don’t get a Zuko arc. And that’s FINE because that’s a lot of work for a three movie series. And I don’t want a TV series devoted to Ben Solo learning to not be a dick to people. That’s exhausting. 

But I do wish we’d gotten more time with him. The brief time we had, the bit of Han Solo snark that came out (”ow”), that was all delightful and made me understand what people see in the character (who I hate because he’s a great character to hate). 

(omg while I was writing this, someone was saying that they were in a theater with someone talking about how the movie should’ve ended with Kyle Ron giving Rey a Force baby, and Y’ALL THERE IS NOT ENOUGH NOPE IN THE WORLD)

Anyway, bullets now, for the times I cried:

Literally everything with Leia, but especially that her last word was “Ben” and her using every last bit of her energy to save her son because I GET THAT FEEL, and honestly, the only reason she wasn’t there raining death and destruction on Sheev by herself for grooming her baby was because Carrie Fisher died. But anyway, from the moment she dropped her headset on, I was a blubbering mess.

And then Han, just a memory, but looking more at peace than he ever has. He convinces his son to come home, and Ben now says, “Dad?” and Han just says, “I know,” and FUFUUFUFALSKJDLAKSJDF: SOBBING

And then CHEWIE reacting to Leia’s death just... UGH. I am destroyed utterly, still. 

Luke finally managing to Force lift the X-Wing out of the water made me cry as well, weirdly enough. 

And then whatever emotion I felt when Rey heard all the Jedi, and it was LITERALLY EVERYONE WHO HAS PLAYED A JEDI EVER COMING IN AND SAYING A LINE like not just the familiar ones but the ones you wouldn’t know unless you’d watched all the TV series and extra material... it was so much more than tears. I couldn’t cry because it wouldn’t have been enough to encompass everything that made me feel. Very sincerely well done. 

All-in-all, yeah, it was really good. I don’t get what everyone is so fussed over with it... it ties up the themes of the entire nine-movie arc pretty neatly and does basically the best it can with what it has. 

But a bigger point in its favor, for me, was seeing Sam’s reaction to it: jumping up and down in his seat, gasping, grabbing my hand, whispering, “Mommy, they’re going to be okay, right?” and then cheering at the end. Star Wars, as a thing, isn’t for just one person or one group of people, but I consider how people who were kids when the PT came out say without a hint of irony that it’s not that bad, because to them, that’s what Star Wars is and always has been. The joy of it isn’t just the OT but those three movies that were “meh” to those of us who cut our teeth on the OT only. And in a similar vein, the ST is full of that joy for kids now. Like holy moley, Sam and his best friend geeking out over seeing each other in Star Wars costumes at Halloween was just worth everything.

So in the end, like I concluded at the end of TLJ, the message here is that it’s for them. And also that there’s always hope, that ultimately, even when it seems the odds are against light, there’s more of us than there are of them. 

[s-cornelius]

Defining Queer: An Ontological and Epistemological Discussion of Queerness

To start with, I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a sociologist. I’m just a linguist who likes to talk about stories and use jargon-y words. I’ve been in fandom (in some form or another) since the late 90s, and I’m a bisexual/queer ciswoman married to a man. I say all of this so you understand where I’m coming from (my positionality, if you’re nasty).

I’m writing this piece because I see a lot of people in fandom spaces using terms like “queer”, “cishet”, “queerbaiting”, and others. I find use of these terms to generally be vague, misleading, or just downright wrong. There seems to be consensus in fandom that these are Important Things to talk about, but there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on what they mean. So, as a queer woman who has engaged in fandom for 20 years, I want to talk about the idea of queerness and what it means to be queer.  

So, in this essay, I’m going to address three major questions:

What does it mean for an individual to be queer?

What does it mean for a relationship to be queer?

What does it mean for a piece of media to be queer?

I’m going to argue that for an individual to be queer is an ontological and epistemological issue, for a relationship to be queer is just epistemology, and for a piece of media to be queer is an epistemology plus diegesis. I’ll explain what these words mean (and how I’m going to use them), and I’ll have some sources sprinkled throughout. It’s generally Bad Academic Practice to source Wikipedia, but for the sake of accessibility and ease of explanation, Wikipedia is a good source for this essay.

Ok, so let’s define some terms. I’m going to start with the most obvious, but also perhaps the hardest to pin down: queer.

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community. (x)

So there are a few major takeaways for the word queer. The first one is that queer is inclusive--it’s an umbrella term. The second one is that it describes people who are not heterosexual and/or cisgender. A definition by saying “we are not x” is actually not a great definition, so we’ll come back to this point later. The third one is that queer is political, and it always has been; crucially, queer does not equal LGBT.

Now on to the jargon: ontology and epistemology both come from the field of philosophy, and diegesis has its origins in Greek theater, but I hear it mostly used now to talk about film.

Ontology is the study of being. Ontology asks questions like what is a thing? what exists? What categories of things are there? So, for my purposes, when I talk about ontology, I’m talking about categorization and identity. What are the labels we give ourselves? What categories do we sort ourselves into? How do we identify ourselves?

Epistemology is the related study of knowing. Epistemology asks questions like how do we know something is true? how do we define truth? how do we make justifications? For my purposes, epistemology has a lot to do with how we define social truths and norms. What is true about human gender/sexuality/etc.? How does queerness affect one’s beliefs? I use worldview as a kind of short hand for epistemology in this essay, though epistemology is really only one part of a person’s worldview. But, for my purposes, worldview works just fine.

Diegesis refers to anything within a narrative text--characters, plot, setting, etc. are all diegetic (or intradiegetic). Things outside the text, like the score of a movie or the UI of a videogame, are extradiegetic.

Ok now that we have all the jargon down, let’s tackle the first question: What does it mean for an individual to be queer?

As I previewed above, I define queerness for an individual to be a matter of both ontology and epistemology. I want to come back to the definition of queer here, specifically the part that defines queerness as “not cisgender and heterosexual”. This is a bad category ontologically speaking, because the definition doesn’t point to all the things that make up this category, but rather the things that don’t. Queerness, in this definition, is a catch-all; I’m not sure that’s really an accurate way to think of queerness. At least in linguistics, the catch-all category is for the default, unmarked cases, and queerness is not that at all.

So I’m going to switch things up a little and change this part of the definition. Instead of defining queer by what it’s not, I’m going to define queer epistemologically. Queerness is not just not being heterosexual/cisgender, but a rejection of the heteronormativity (“the belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation”). This rejection may derive from social ostracization and condemnation from same-gender attraction/behavior and/or gender non-conforming, but ultimately is not quite the same thing as LGBT.

Queerness and Queer Theory seek to deconstruct notions and norms of gender, sexuality, and all of the social baggage that comes along with them. Therefore, being asexual and/or aromantic is inherently queer as these identities are a rejection of social expectations for behavior. This deconstructionist impulse may even be at odds with people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender. For example, Natalie Wynn, in her video about Pronouns, discusses that her desire to be perceived as a woman is inherently counter to someone who seeks to eradicate or seriously challenge the gender binary (as with non-binary individuals).

None of this is to say that an individual person can’t identify as both L, G, B or T and also queer, but this is where we come back to ontology. Ontology has to do with how we identify and how we make categories. For example, I use both bisexual and queer to identify myself. I use bisexual because I experience sexual and romantic attraction to more than one gender, and I use queer because it includes this idea of challenging gender and sexual norms (and also it doesn’t necessitate explanation of all the details of my gender/sexuality).

Therefore, one person’s use of queer to describe themselves is both ontological, because they are defining and categorizing themself, and epistemological, because being queer is essentially a lens through which to know the world.

So, if an individual’s queerness is a mix of identity and worldview, what about a relationship?

A relationship can’t have an identity the same way that an individual human can, i.e. a relationship can’t pick a category for it to belong to because it’s not a sentient entity. Americans can categorize relationships by the genders of the people in that relationship--heterosexual for man+woman, homosexual for man+man or woman+woman. These categorizations, of course, exclude relationships that have more than two people, and people whose genders are not “man” or “woman”. But this still isn’t really the same thing as me, an individual person, choosing to use bisexual to label myself.

Therefore, a queer relationship isn’t really the same thing as a homosexual relationship, though they may overlap. Queerness, in a relationship, is entirely epistemological. How does the relationship operate?

Traditional heterosexual relationships (at least in 20th/21st century USA) privilege the man, and the woman is subservient. Men work outside the home and women raise children/do domestic work. Men and women in a traditional heterosexual relationship are supposed to have all of their emotional, physical, etc. needs met by their partner. Traditional heterosexual relationships are monogamous, both sexually and emotionally.

But a queer relationship questions accepted social norms. A queer relationship may not be monogamous, it may reject the traditional gender dynamic, and so on. What I’m ultimately saying is that a heterosexual relationship, that is a man and a woman in a relationship, can be queer. This is because queer relationship does not equal homosexual. I’ll give two examples.

I’ll start with the easier example: a heterosexual relationship only requires one man and one woman, but makes no stipulation that the man and woman have to be cisgender. There are plenty of transmen exclusively attracted to women and transwomen exclusively attracted to men. Just because the make up of their relationship is man+woman, doesn’t mean that their relationship isn’t queer. The queerness is baked in because they themself may be queer.

The second example seems to be more emblematic of a sticking point for some people. I am married to a heterosexual man, but we are in a queer relationship. Because I am queer, and it affects how I respond to social norms, I also reject heteronormativity in my romantic relationship. My husband and I have been together for almost 13 years and married for 3; for the longest time, I did not want to get married because the idea of marriage, specifically the traditional idea of marriage, disgusted me. To me, marriage is the realm of religion and the state, neither of which I wanted to be particularly involved in my relationship. The reasons we ended up getting married were practical (I now have health insurance!), but also because my husband is a big ol’ romantic and we compromised (we get married and I keep my name). This is just one example of how my notions of gender/sexual expectations have been a part of my relationship, but there are plenty of others. Also I am visibly queer and waiters often think we need two checks when we eat out together. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(If you want to see someone else talk about this, I recommend looking into Erika Moen’s autobiographical work. This tweet thread is just one example of her discussing being queer and being married to a man.)

Therefore, queer relationships are not about identity, but rather how the epistemology of one or both or all people in a relationship affects the operation and function of that relationship. A queer relationship is one that rejects heteronormativity, not one that exclusively consists of people of the same gender. This makes it sound like if a cisgender heterosexual man and cisgender heterosexual woman are in a relationship, it could potentially be queer, which I think is the fear of anyone who pushes back on the possibility of a man and a woman being in a queer relationship together. However, if the two individuals in a relationship are both cisgender and heterosexual, neither of them has rejected heteronormativity in one way or another (even if they have non-traditional gender roles in the relationship). Therefore, if at least one person in a relationship is queer (whether they be asexual, gender non-conforming, homo/bisexual, etc.) the whole relationship is queer.

Finally, I get to stories: What makes a particular piece of media queer?

As discussed for individual identity and relationships, a piece of media is queer because it has a queer epistemology. There is a way of constructing truth in a narrative that rejects heteronormativity, but it is important to discuss whether this rejection happens in the text of the work (diegetic) or the rejection is in social context in which the work was created (extradiegetic).

One interesting example is the Imperial Radch books by Ann Leckie. In these books, the main political force in the story doesn’t distinguish gender in its pronouns. Therefore, everyone the main character encounters is “she” regardless of their biology or gender identity. Within the story (diegetically), this is not queer. This is the established norm of a very large and powerful people, and just a function of their language. Now, outside the story (extradiegetically), the use of “she” is queer af. This is a deliberate choice by the author to question our assumptions about what is “normal” and “default”.

Steven Universe does something similar by having a race of sentient space rocks who only use “she” as their pronouns. Extradiegetically, this again challenges ideas about how the gender binary is “supposed” to work, plus the space rocks demonstrate a wide range of expressions of femininity. Within the story (diegetically), we see metaphorical of rejection of heteronormativity, specifically through Garnet and her story. Therefore, Steven Universe is both epistemologically and diegetically queer.

Does this make Steven Universe more queer than the Imperial Radch books? Maybe it does.

For me, Steven Universe “feels” queer, while the Imperial Radch books don’t. I really love the Imperial Radch books and the way they make you actively think about how “she” is generally not considered the default pronoun. But this is all outside the text. I engage with the text as a person in a particular social context where women are lower on the social hierarchy than men, but the characters in the Imperial Radch books don’t share this social context. The construction of social order for the gems in Steven Universe, to contrast, is similar to my social context, so both within the text and outside the text, Steven Universe is queer. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a certain amount of subjectivity here, but for me, a queer show is one that is both diegetically and extradiegetically queer.

This brings me to queerbaiting, a word that seems to mean almost anything in fandom. I’ve discussed what queerbaiting is and how to define it here and here, but I wanted to come back to the definition from @rainbofiction:

“Queerbaiting is clinging to the heteronormative interpretation on the surface of things, and refusing to invalidate it, but still trying to present a queer reading in the background; metaphorically selling the hetero story from the front door, and the queer story out back.”

Queerbaiting is not necessarily ship tease, though there seems to be some conflation of the two. I’ve seen it used to discuss Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Voltron, Once Upon a Time, and other shows. I think queerbaiting as an idea can really only exist in an episodic format, since (save for streaming shows) you don’t get the story all at once. By being presented the story and characters bit by bit, you as a viewer don’t engage with the story as something full and complete, but instead the story as it’s being built. Because you don’t have the full story, your understanding and interpretation of the work can be affected by the text itself of course (diegetic material), but also all the extradiegetic and paratextual stuff that exists alongside the work.

Let’s think about books for a moment, specifically self-contained, standalone novels. Let’s pretend that Pride & Prejudice were not a complete story presented all at once, but rather released chapter by chapter with weeks or months passing between each chapter. If you started reading from the beginning of the work, you might make up your mind from the beginning that Darcy is the worst, and you and your friends talk about how Darcy is just awful and that Wickham fellow is soooo much better for Elizabeth. You might expect the work to continue to justify your position (coming back to epistemology), but it purposefully does not do that. Elizabeth and Darcy grow and change over the course of the novel, and end in a place of love and mutual respect.

But imagine Pride & Prejudice were released in the internet age, and you’ve spent a year (or two! Or five!) waiting for the end of the book to come, and then … this? After you’ve spent all this time engaging with people, creating fanworks, speculating about this idea of Elizabeth and Wickham, and in the end you are not rewarded by canon for your investment.

This is what queerbaiting feels like. But does that mean this is what queerbaiting is?

When I’ve discussed queerbaiting before, I’ve argued that queerbaiting is so difficult to identify because it requires two elements: 1) legitimate queer subtext, and 2) intent by the author(s) to mislead or swindle the audience. Queerbaiting is also tricky to talk about because if the work is incomplete (i.e. released episode by episode over time), you just cannot know if you’re being queerbaited.

I personally don’t want to conflate queerbaiting with shipping, because I do think they are two discrete issues, but this conflation seems to be the only way fandom talks about queerbaiting. To demonstrate, I’ll talk about The Magicians (the TV show).

To start with, The Magicians is a queer show. The show frequently challenges assumptions about heteronormativity--specifically the idea of soulmates/destiny in love, and that one person + another person = happiness and fulfillment. We even have an analog of queerness as a social taboo, with human/animal relationships in Fillory. Therefore, epistemologically, The Magicians is queer.

The Magicians also has multiple LGBT characters, at least three of which are main characters. No one on the show has told us the audience how they identify, but we have seen Margo, Eliot and Quentin express same gender attraction in one form or another. Diegetically, The Magicians is queer.

So, now that I’ve show that The Magicians is both epistemologically and diegetically queer, let’s talk about why the q-baiting word is used in discussions of this show.

This season had a landmark episode (4x05) that essentially sets up romantic feelings between two men (Quentin and Eliot) as a pillar of the narrative of this season. The boys didn’t get together (for lots of reasons) in that episode, but that episode made it clear that they both love each other, and that love is driving both of them the rest of the season. But in recent episodes, one of the boys, who has already been established to be bisexual, gets back together with his ex-girlfriend.

To summarize: The Magicians set up the expectation that Quentin and Eliot will be together in some capacity (though the show overall seems less concerned with ideas like “soulmates” and “endgame” but that’s another essay for another time), but at this point, it has not followed through. Like with my P&P example, I understand why this feels like queerbaiting, but is it?

I’m going to start with the ontological perspective: Quentin is bisexual regardless of the gender of his romantic and/or sexual partner. However, Quentin isn’t a real person, and as I’ve talked about already, ontology doesn’t really work for entities that aren’t living, breathing people. Quentin hasn’t told us the viewers that he’s bi, so all we have to go on is her behavior (something that should never ever ever be used to talk about a real life person’s sexual/gender identity)--his actions as a fictional character in a narrative.

So looking at his behavior, at this one time slice in an ongoing story, it can appear like the expectations for a romantic relationship between Quentin and Eliot will not be met. But this comes back to the problem of episodic storytelling. It is impossible at this point to say “well I guess Quentin and Eliot aren’t endgame, hence queerbaiting” because the story isn’t over. We have one more episode to go in this season and (at least) another season on the horizon. Who knows what will happen between now and then.

Additionally, as discussed before, The Magicians is epistemologically queer. The Magicians is not giving us a heteronormative story with queer subtext--the queerness is inherent to the text (and not just because there are LGBT characters). So taking shipping out of the equation for a moment, The Magicians is not queer by subtext or interpretation; The Magicians is queer because it overtly rejects heteronormativity.

Here’s some ways it does this:

Eliot (a mostly gay man) and Fen (a woman) come to care for each other despite having an arranged marriage. They have a romantic, sexual, and familial relationship.

Penny40 and Kady were in love, but Penny23 loves Julia. Relationships aren’t set in stone, there is not one person “meant” for another.

Whenever expectations of straightness and man-ness are mentioned in text (see Hyman and Penny’s supervisor in the Underworld branch)

This is a non-exhaustive list, but it demonstrates how heterosexuality and all the other social expectations that come with it are explicitly deconstructed by the show. Therefore, The Magicians cannot queerbait because it is diegetically and epistemologically queer.

Ok, so I’ve covered a lot of ground, but here are my major points:

Queer =/=  LGBT, though the two do overlap. Queerness is a rejection of heteronormativity; it is radical, deconstructionist and political.

An individual being queer is different from a relationship being queer or a show being queer.

An individual’s queerness is a matter of identity (ontology) and worldview (epistemology).

A relationship is queer through the way it operates, the way it rejects heteronormative assumptions about how relationships should operate (epistemology).

A piece of media is queer through worldview (epistemology) but how much of that is baked into the text (diegesis) is important too

Queerbaiting is often conflated with shipping (specifically shipping on non-canon m/m and f/f pairings), but they are two separate issues.

It is impossible to know if expectations about a m/m or f/f ship will be met while the story is still in progress.

A piece of media cannot queerbait if it is epistemologically queer.

The reason I sat down and wrote this was to work through my feelings about what it means to be queer, and why I have always felt a little uncomfortable with the word “queerbaiting”. Queerness is something that is constructed in many ways, and I haven’t even really discussed much of the political or community issues. Ultimately it’s up to each of us as individuals to critically engage with both fiction as it portrays queerness, and how we police each other and reinforce categories. I think this essay can provide some framework for that engagement.

This was not written to invalidate anyone’s feelings; if you personally feel let down by a piece of media, you are entitled to those feelings. However, fandom can very quickly become an echo chamber, and rather than reinforce feelings, good or bad, I offer this framework as an alternative. It can helps us answer questions like : How does media construct queerness? Is it epistemological? Is it diegetic? Does it replicate expectations of heterosexual relationships but with people of the same gender? Does it stereotype? And by answering these questions, we can get to the heart of queerbaiting, both as a feeling and as something that exists in the world.

------

This essay comes out of many many long talks about gender and sexuality and queerness with @messier51. Her perspective helped me get my thoughts in order!!!

[trashyeggroll]

Look at you getting analytical on the ARROWs Professor Trashy. :) Next please do why not shipping a queer pairing on a show and or pointing out flaws about it doesn't make you homophobic! Sitting patiently for your class.

😘 I would be a terrible professor anon bc flattery would make me buy fyre fest 2 tickets

PARAMETERS/DISCLAIMERS:

1. So you said queer pairings WHICH I accept as a blanket term for LGBTQ+ on my blog, but I think based on how simplistic gender identity is almost exclusively depicted in US media so usually this just means canonically only knowing a character’s pronouns and I’ll come back to that. Basically, let’s assume for the sake of this we’re talking specifically about mlm and wlw ships.

2. I’m also going to assume you don’t mean where a character has canonically identified with a monosexual queer label, eg lesbian, and under the fairly narrow way sexual orientation is typically defined in media. Because yes, it is typically homophobic to ship a lesbian with a cishet man over litch rally any woman in the general setting, but more on that later too.

3. This would be a much less fraught issue if we had a robust catalogue of queer stories told by queer people with all kinds of endings (happy to sad) and genres (war movies to romcoms), but because that’s not how capitalism and moralistic censorship in media works… we know that our attention and dedication to a franchise/ship is what the studios want from us to get that content.

This topic is another one where people tend to focus on individual examples, but the real issue is the big picture and repetitive behavior as experienced by queer folks. Western media and the male gaze love a “lesbian finds THE RIGHT man” storyline, and it’s not a coincidence that that also is a line delivered in abuse to lesbians: “you just need to try some dick”. I’m sure lesbians are not the only ones who’ve experienced this but because lesbians are women, the element of misogyny adds an extra twinge of violence to that outlook.

But a less basic and depressing approach to this, the Captain Marvel/Thor v Captain Marvel/Maria Rambeau example is a fairly decent example where one meaningful look between m/f characters can set off an Internet shipping lovefest but then folks gets real “friendship is the truest love” re: someone with whom a woman has a substantive relationship that isn’t given a romantic label. But that argument will never be resolved by Discourse, right, because the canon is the only place that can clarify, and MCU never will, so we’re left to our own devices. That’s just one example among a repetitive behavior that makes mlm/wlw ships feel inferior. Please don’t @ me, ya’ll know this is a Space Wives house no matter what anyone says 💆🏻

OK, now—

Most of the time, we are left to infer a character’s identity the via relationships they have, rather than any spoken identity. And most of the time, we are put through some heavy handed coming out reference for wlw and mlm characters, but it seems like we are increasingly getting some actual, spoken identities, ex: Grace Choi says the words, “You do know I’m bi, right?”

But IRL and with media, straight people still are just there, right? That’s why the coming out narrative belongs to queer people, and straight people “coming out” ain’t cute solidarity. The absence of words is what makes characters straight (and sometimes it’s queerbaiting), and we are right to demand the actual language we use to form community is used in the media representing us, in a substantive and respectful way.

Also IRL, when we are kind and at our best, we know that someone who has identified as a lesbian for years entering a loving, healthy relationship with a cishet man is OK. Nobody’s being invalidated. It’s not commentary on my marriage to my wife. It has literally no impact on anyone but the two people in that relationship, as long as we on the outside aren’t trying to be the Sexuality and Gender police… which we humans are much more prone to doing with thousands of strangers on the Internet 😬

So keeping in mind that people get so worked up at least partially due to #4 above, I think the question isn’t even about the ships necessarily, but how this friction in fandom is occurring. First and foremost, we should listen, without defensiveness, to everyone who tells us that the things we say or create make them uncomfortable in some way, and that doesn’t mean you have to agree, because it’s up to you to decide to hold yourself accountable what you feel is right. And if you’ve ever been the person trying to hold someone else to account, same applies to listening to the answer (including not accepting half assed apologies or whatever you have the emotional bandwidth to do after saying your piece). I think that if someone is going to someone else’s blog, commenting on their content, essentially proactively taking steps to let someone know you don’t like their ship for reasons other than problematic ones… you’re just stirring the pot for no reason. Make your own posts. Keep it out of the main tags. Filter and block content and blogs that make you angry.

Anyway, how’s that for the windy lead up to my answer to the question, which is: When we’re dealing with labeless characters, no matter how they present or who they date in canon, I think everything is fair game for fanon, and there’s a weird demand for performativity in calling someone homophobic for not supporting a wlw or mlm ship. In a general sense, and given the disclaimers above.

The most important questions to me are: Is the construction of this fanon relationship healthy? Would they be happy?

Outside of that, if we don’t have any indication otherwise, what’s the harm in shipping a “queer” pairing, a straight pairing, or both? Or neither? Or, why are we playing into the baseline assumption that no label = cishet? And, isn’t it at least partially bi/pan phobic to call a m/f ship hetero by default? 🤔 Same for it being transphobic to call the characters cis by default? The “phobic” words aren’t really right here: It’s more like passive reinforcement of heternormativity.

HERE’S THE THING THOUGH: That’s where I feel like Tumblr discourse (and I don’t use that word as a pejorative) has full speed lapped Hollywood and Western media bc no fucking way do they get to make that argument at us. Not until they have given us the utopia world of #4. We’re still getting your Call Me By Your Name’s and MCU patting itself on the back for that one dude referencing a husband. They get no benefit of the doubt until they make real steps toward inclusion and giving as many people as possible the opportunity to feel seen and understood and well represented on a worldwide stage.

So what I’m saying is, I just don’t think there’s any reason to fight each other when identity is left in the air, amongst the fandom worlds. We turn to fellow fans and content creators for the rep we want, the ships we want, and to commiserate on the sins of canon. The real enemy is scarcity, specifically a false scarcity created by the capitalistic media world, and we should be together in demanding to be seen by culture as fully realized human beings with just as much of a spectrum of experience with the world as cishets.

[terfslying]

All longanon answers:

also why does nobody care that gc men/radfems talk positively about intersex issues FOR THEIR OWN SAKE not just to confuse people about sex. Some of us have CAH or AIS, PAIS. 2nd, a GC opinion: men want uteri & to go by she? Go for it. I think it's reactionary, & I'll be open about that, but it's not my choice. But pushing lines like "lesbians like dick, afab-exclusive=fetish" is WRONG. My family has already brought up transdick as a gotcha. Too few of yall care about fallout for gnc/gay people.

Not sure if this is out of order however: “afab-exclusive = fetish” is wrong, it’s not a view I support, and I agree there’s fallout for gay people, so why are you telling me off for pushing it when I don’t?

where do I see lesbians like dick? everywhere. Not explicitly here, though implied with referencing that some lesbians might like no-op transwomen. You are carving out a niche balanced view, and I appreciate that. Don't pretend like it's the majority of the trans/nb community, or the liberal or leftist take on things.

Why are you talking to me as if I am speaking for the entire liberal or leftist ‘take’? You’re talking to me, you get my viewpoint.

there's a lot more going on with ‘erase women’s anatomy and oppression’ than I even have knowledge of. But for me some big ones: it's no longer women's reproductive justice. It's pregnant people, despite us all knowing damn well the intersection between our potential reproductive system and how woman has meant (still means) property too often. Femininity isn't social control, it's fun! It's expression, medically necessary, a part of womanhood. Rapes/assault being covered up.

“Pregnant people” vs “pregnant women” is important in medical contexts to prevent female people being denied medical care on account of not being ‘women’. It also makes self-help resources more inclusive for gnc female people.

“Femininity isn’t social control, it’s fun!” - femininity is social control for female people. Non-female people practicing femininity are literally breaking their prescribed gender roles and undermining the patriarchy.

“Rapes/assault being covered up” - specific examples?

And I'm sorry but I've seen some of the same trans-activist people in threads you're on, who you interact with positively, say shit like "anyway terfs die". Now, maybe someone they perceive as a terf has threatened them. Someone I know to be trans has threatened me. Is it ok for me to go online and say "TRAs, die"? Ofc not. So you tell me you call hateful TRAs out equal to calling out terfs, and I have doubts. Perhaps you could title your blog Terfs and Misogynist TRAs lying, and work on that.

I like how manipulatively you have phrased, “someone they perceive as a terf” vs. “someone I know to be trans”. I’ve also seen hundreds of TERFs online post shit like “Trannies die”, and had death threats personally from people I KNOW to be TERFs. Both sides behave like shit in that sense, and both sides feel like they are on the defensive. The only way to end that nonsense is to STOP participating in “well they do _____ so it’s okay for me to do _______”. But guess what? I’m also not the Tumblr police. Do you personally check the blog history of every person you interact with on Tumblr to ensure they’ve never said anything Problematique? Because I don’t, sorry.

re: erasing women's oppression, there's also a deliberate attempt to chuck out all the shit from the 70s you apparently hate. God forbid we misgender a rapist, or "cancel" any man for misogyny, but reading even excerpts from old radical feminists? Heresy, evil, invaders. Quite fucking honestly, I'll look into the history, but this calling some women political lesbian and thus dead to us thing has all sorts of potential as antifeminist slander. Especially if men think they can talk on it.

I’m talking about actual events in the 70’s that set up the trans-discourse-in-lesbian-spaces-non-stop situation, not whatever shit you’re talking about here.

Also, I have literally done readings and annotations of many radical feminist texts on this site. Stop using me as a puppet to argue with every person you’ve ever thought was a TRA.

I’m also curious if when you became "ex-" radfem, does this mean you also became against being critical of porn and critical of the sex industry? Note - critical of the INDUSTRY and culture, as in the corporations and bosses, pimps, traffickers, johns, and the academics, "art", and media who cover it as queer or fun or sexy or a good way to pay off student loans... not the workers or the prostituted (i'm differentiating here based on a spectrum of how much autonomy and liberty is retained)

No, it doesn’t mean that. I’ve said before - I am pro sex-worker and believe in evidence based rules for helping women in that situation, which means no Nordic system, but I don’t believe that you can ‘manage’ any sex workers in a brothel-type situation without it being dangerous.

I also am passionately opposed to all kinds of trafficking and slavery for personal reasons, and that obviously includes people trafficked for sex work.

at the end of the day I'm still just like... why can't women who love cis and trans women (or men who love cis and trans men) just say you're bi and that's your preference? Why does gay and lesbian have to always theoretically be flexible? It's obviously used against us, in a biased manner (again, does anyone really expect and go after straight people to be flexible?) ... and is it really worth it? Is temporary relief of a social construct borne pain worth it?

It’s not for ‘relief of a social construct borne pain’ - it’s just to accurately describe myself.

Because I’m not bi. I’m a lesbian. I exist in my city’s lesbian society, as a lesbian who dates lesbians. Then later, I became trans-inclusive. ‘Lesbian’ has to be flexible because human beings are flexible.