#not a single cishet person in this entire story. not a single cis person in that house. well except for dean but thats on thin ice

[sophaeros]

Wait what is shadowplay

edit: renamed to colourama drive

shadowplay is the name for me and @cluedoenthusiast's "tv show" :P (as in we would make it an actual tv show if we could) well actually side a is me and charlie's, @joshus-lobster's got side b which stemmed from the same initial conversation but then they had to drive and charlie and i spiralled off in one direction while they went off in another and by the time they came back online our ideas of the characters had diverged so far we just made them separate things. love side b always blowing them a kiss

anyway shadowplay side a is about nine people in britain living in a house together for rent reasons it's pretty slice of life very character focused. out of these nine there are four main characters: amy (he/they, 35), humbug (she/her, 23), florence (she/they, 30), and dean (he/him, 25). amy and humbug are siblings (amy raised her after their parents died,,not beating the traumatised oc stereotypes), humbug and florence are in the world's most committed situationship, humbug and dean are childhood friends (their other childhood friend sylvie completes the trio :3), and dean has..the world's most pathetic longest running crush on amy. it's a whole character arc you'll love the payoff (evil). florence and dean are regulars at amy's mechanic shop that humbug also works at

brief list of everyone else in the house:

jackie - he/they, 18, florence's little brother

whipper - he/him, 17

flo - he/they, 21 (unrelated to florence. yeah we thought it'd be funny), whipper's older sibling

sylvie - they/them, 23

mark - it/any, 34, amy's best friend, cryptid

supporting characters who dont live in the house:

georgie - he/him, idk an age yet actually probably early 30s at most?? hes nonverbal and uses bsl

beau - he/him, around the same age as georgie however old that is, also nonverbal. living embodiment of 👁️👁️. georgie's qpp (well. once they realise it)

duke - he/him, 17, he + whipper + jackie are the trio of little hellions

jo - she/any, idk age either probably late 20s/early 30s, manic pixie dream girl, mark's gf

..and their neighbours who are musicians in their 40s who are gay and married

THERES SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE. AND THERE ARE GOING TO BE MORE. HELP

[damnfandomproblems]

766348704849559552

I'm a prime example of this.

A bored anti accused me of transphobia, transmisogyny, misogyny, all sorts of pleasantries, just because I headcanon a character who is *very* commonly interpreted as cishet as... cishet. And because I headcanon that male character, being cishet, as not being turned on by someone masculine presenting, or someone with a dick. He is only attracted to feminine features. That's it. That's the offense. Ironically, they slapped me with a transphobia accusation even though I strived to include both cis and trans people, like me, in who he's attracted to by deliberately using language like "masculine/feminine presenting" and just keeping things simple. But let's be real, that was never going to be enough for this person, or people like them.

Despite the stupidity of their accusations, a good 50+ equally ignorant people, most of whom were barely out of their teens (if that), insta-shared the post and spread it without even bothering to fact check. I also got some bizarre insults in my inbox. Not one person came up to me and asked about anything (neither did the original anti), and the vitriol of it all really messed me up for months, gave me imposter syndrome, and made me wonder if I was a horrible person, or somehow blind to some kind of phobic language I was using, and it got so bad that I went to the hospital. I simply couldn't switch off the paranoia that these people were right somehow. I was already dealing with poor mental health which was the cherry on top of the cake.

When the harassment first started, I went through the post and, like anyone would recommend because it's common sense, I blocked every single person who had spread it. When I went back to block more people, one of the people I'd blocked had commented that I "already blocked them wow lol", and that it "must have been because they have a gay ship lol". Setting aside the "lols", which already shows they're not taking this stuff seriously... Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you'd think these numpties would at least have a *shred* of a clue and understand that I blocked them because they were harassing me for unsubstantiated claims, rather than the fact they had a gay ship, especially when one of my favorite ships is gay and I have dozens more where that came from. It's like they took the unsubstantiated claims and used it to build an entire new case with, when, hello, Occam's razor, anyone?

The whole thing made me out to be this massive bigot. Despite receiving reassurance from other mutuals and people I trusted, I spent a *lot* of time with intrusive thoughts telling me I was a bad person because of how bad the slander was; my brain just kept going, well, if it blew up this much, it must be you, not them. I kept trying to comfort myself but I didn't even believe my reassurances or others', despite rationalizing stuff over and over again. It took over a year to unpack all of it.

Compared to what I've seen other people go through, I got off *easy*. I didn't have other accounts tied to my main account. I never posted pictures of myself. I didn't use my real name or get doxxed. No, I just built up a rendition of a character for over ten years and had my credibility stolen in an instant. I suppose on the bright side, most people with a brain didn't participate and they still understand that I'm not a bad person. But there were a few people within that dogpile that I had seen plenty of times before, and I thought they were safe people. Now they think I'm a bigot and there's nothing I can do about that. I know their opinion isn't worth anything. They can't properly detect disinformation, they are reactive and bad at critical thinking. But it still hurts and it doesn't matter who they are because ultimately it still affected me profoundly for a year.

Moral of the story... Don't accuse people of stuff unless you know exactly what you're doing. Actually investigate, actually speak to them and others, and don't go out guns blazing with some kind of confrontational, stone-the-person, massive dogpile festival which, let's be honest, 99.9% of these people only participate in because they're bored and want to scratch an itch without any consideration for the consequences. Don't make people doubt their entire freaking existence and MO over stuff like this, it's beyond rank.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[cobragardens]

In the first essay in this post Maya Gittelman articulates something that I think is really important: it's not just the gender(fuck) of the characters' coding that makes Good Omens a queer story, it's that the story is about queerness itself.

Gittelman's essay:

The thing is, this is the shit I’ve been waiting for my whole life.

Before I knew the words, I was impacted by how every epic romance, every classic adventure, every story I had access to and enjoyed was cishet. I needed to translate either the story or myself to find myself in it—every single time. I grew up in the oughts, in the days of the Tumblr fandoms you’re thinking of. I wrote about this a bit more in my essay on the first season of Our Flag Means Death last year, and that first line applies here—queer heartache has never felt this good.

I’ve been able to consume a lot of queer storytelling lately—mostly white cis m/m, but not exclusively and more than I’ve ever been able to in my life, because I’ve been searching for it for a long time. Yet as we know, there are a lot of mainstream stories with queer “rep” that at their core about what marginalized queer people have been cautioning around for generations—normalization. Assimilation. Respectability. See, we can be just like you. We too desire to marry, participate as cogs in the violent machine of imperialism. We too want the right to give you our service, our allegiance. We too want to join your armies. I certainly can enjoy plenty of that media, but I’m still desperate for queer storytelling that’s not sanitized, not flattened out to fit cishet beats, something that tells a good story that’s queer on every level. And that means we deserve to see queer characters who are messy, who hurt each other, because sometimes, love isn’t enough.

While Good Omens in some ways still white cis m/m, it’s also not entirely, and what works for me is that it actually delves into asking the damned question: What if this love is a threat, actually?

What if this love is something that does disrupt your norms, your ways of life? What if it’s an open danger to the systems you’re used to? What if this love could disrupt everything? What if it goes against God’s will and Satan’s too, what if it flies in the face of the ineffable plan?

What I’m saying is, I’ve wanted stories that let queer people be characters, with all the nuance and complexity that entails. Stories that are queer, intentionally, in both subtext and text, that aren’t asking an audience to justify their right to exist. Instead, they’re giving voice to the specifics of queer experience that don’t typically get mainstream care, multi-season tenderness. We deserve queer love stories that are wistful, epic, tragic not because they’re of the “same gender” but because the tangled truths of safety and trauma are inextricable from queer love. We deserve stories that are queer as subtext and text, metaphor and central plot and side plot too. We deserve queer stories that explore how queer love is infinite variety. We deserve genre stories that explore what immortality or something close to it does to pining, to longing, for wanting the one person in the universe you can’t have.

We deserve queer stories without homophobia that still explore the traumas of marginalized desire, in which neither party is truly the villain, just victims of the same system, at different stages of knowing it.

Show me what it looks like beyond the happily ever after, the will they/won’t they, the beats of a privileged cis white coming out. Breathe arcs of nuance and poetry and history into it. We deserve that epic romance, and we deserve to see how much it can hurt, because the depths of that wound evidence the ferocity of that love.

Growing up queer can feel monstrous, and I need to see that on screen. When you get preached at that people like you go to Hell for what you are and the ways you want, you start to relate to the demons. When you’re taught the truest, most joyful parts of you are unholy, it’s fair to ask—why should I respect the authority of a system that hates me for reasons I can’t control?

You learn to disguise your desire, and it changes you. It changes you to choke down your feelings, to deny them, to believe that they are sin. You learn to pour them into the hidden language of love that arises between you and whoever you’re lucky enough to share it with, so you don’t learn how to say them aloud. (Their arrangement, “little demonic miracle of my own,” the fourth alternative rendezvous. This is what queer love has looked like for millennia: something beautiful and true, despite, despite, despite.) Unlike those whose love has only ever been legal, permitted, “normal,” “holy”—your relationship is inescapably shaped by the threat behind it. You don’t get to see them as often as you like. You don’t get to talk, either to them or about them, because it might disturb the precious existence you have carved out together. You have to make up excuses, you can’t admit to anyone exactly why you can’t stop going back, and in this way you don’t always have to confront it yourself.

At the same time, that’s why queer love can be one of the most powerful forces in the universe—it saved the world last time, even if they didn’t call it that, yet. Aziraphale and Crowley don’t know so many details about each other’s lives and yet they know nearly everything important.

This is love—this natural state of slipping into the truth, until you awaken to it, inevitable and encompassing, all around you.

You might find yourself almost helpless to the magnetism. You can’t stop going back, finding your way to them, taking the risk, basking in the thrill of the comfort of their company.

And that’s why this finale, this story, this couple works so well for me—it’s queer in the telling, and while it always has been, this season literalized it on a new level and that matters.

[navarresimp]

Since a pride parade since took in our city yesterday, where I assisted I wanted to once again highlight HOW IMPORTANT ACTUAL DIVERSITY WITHIN QUEER STRUCTURES actually is.

Yesterdays parade was really appealing. It was not political however. It lacked the energy and actual protest needs.

The reason was for the most part a lack of people who were not upper middle class able bodied white cis people in the queer council that organised the parade and the following event. I was the only trans person, the (seemingly) only disabled person and one of the few people who were lower class, present. And it really showed yesterday. During the parade itself there were no speeches addressing anything, not even the recent homophobic action against reading stories with queer aspects to kids by city council reps or the recent rise in fascism through the AfD that ENDANGERS QUEER RIGHTS. I (as I'm representing antifascist queer youth project in our city) was asked to tell our people who were attending to not bring any political flags (no antifa flags, no Palestine flags, anything that weren't pride flags, no political symbols), cops were very present and were also TAKING PICTURES.

All of the promo "art" on the flyers were also AI generated, my gripes with this regarding copyright were shot down however, as we supposedly had a license. I won't get into detail but it's become apparent, that AI does not ask for consent of any artists it sources it's images from. To generate the promo images it has most likely taken from independent queer creators, which just saddens me. The "art" itself just doesn't reflect any queer realities or experiences as you would see in actual art, it's just a head of a (very) white woman with rainbow hair.

Since our project was the location for the afterparty, I got a feeling they were trying to communicate with us as little as possible. First of all, during preparations last year, we offered that the party take place in our youth center, which was refused. Another location was chosen, but when it had to call off the event on short notice, I was approached and asked if we could host the event. I agreed, despite it being on extremely short notice and most of our active members being away for work on another big event near Berlin. The week before I ripped out a limb preparing and cleaning the entire house, our social worker doing overtime taking care of the drinks. We asked the council multiple times about security, with we'll talk about it later being the only answer. The thing being that the same day there was a public football viewing in the city center, where known Nazis were attending. We got a yes to security one day before the actual event, which wasn't enough time to get anyone with a 34a license, so we asked another autonomous project for security backup in which 3 people could assist. Long story short two Nazis showed up and were trying to get onto the event, luckily our security handled it and we were alright for the rest of the evening. I worked 16 hours straight the entire day, with DJing for the parade itself and covering the bar shifts for the after party (I did not get a single cent for this btw).

If you ever plan on doing a pride event, make that shit political and make sure the people involved are not worked beyond their limit. I genuinely think we achieved nothing yesterday and I have never felt this empty and exhausted after a supposedly queer event. Speak about injustices within your city and band together as a community to change what's bothering you. Break what breaks you. Visibility is nice, but why would we want to be seen when we don't show actual color, actual humanity. If we form ourselves to the view cishet people have of us, then what more is there for them to see? We spent so much time and money on a PR event, that doesn't focus on the community or of what makes us stronger together. We were literally parading through the streets in an orderly line like circus animals. Always to be observed, but at the same time always subservient.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Bisexuality didn't "feel right" as a label because you're biphobic and will do anything to distance yourself from bisexuality. Get well soon, the bi community will be here when you're ready.

Are you the raging homophobe anon back for round two or a new guy? ...It doesn’t really matter, you people are all the same.

If you are the same anon, then now I’m extra pissed off at you because do you have any idea how difficult it is to make fun of your messages? You’re making this really hard for me. First you send a five word ask declaring me a homophobe with no details, and it took a lot of thinking to come up with a vaguely funny response to such a lackluster prompt. You’re a really bad improv partner.

And now you send me this shit. Sorry everybody, no jokes today, now I’m actually just fucking furious.

Let me tell you a story, anon. When I was an innocent little twelve year old back in the far of reaches of 2011, I first discovered Tumblr, and soon enough I was learning about different genders and sexualities, and began exploring my own identity. As you already know since you’re sarcastically quoting me talking about my own fucking feelings, I’d been having a minor sexuality crisis for several years at that point, since gay, straight and bisexual were the only label I’d known before then, and none of them fit me. Despite me trying all of them. Multiple times. You condescending piece of shit.All this was resolved by me stumbling across a post defining pansexuality, and that being the first and only sexual identity that’s ever actually felt right for me. It clicked instantly, and has continued to be my sexuality for literally a decade now.

But back when I first started entering the queer community, pansexuality was actually pretty controversial. So was bisexuality. The two were just lumped together actually, because according to the exclusionists back then, bi/pan people are attracted to the opposite sex, and therefor are basically just straight. Actually they rarely cared enough to bother differentiating between bisexual and pansexual people, they just lumped us all in together as a bunch of heteros pretending to be gay for attention and oppressing the real gays. What a bunch of special fucking snowflakes, pretending to be gay for attention. So there I was, a twelve year old queer kid with a brand new identity, being welcomed by a bunch of exclusionists angrily yelling about how I was definitely just a hetero faking it for attention, and being pansexual was Wrong and Bad. But it was okay, because the exclusionists knew better than me. They knew how I really felt, and what my real identity was. They could fix me. I just had to agree with everything they said and become the person they decided I was supposed to be.

I didn’t do that.

Let’s jump forward a few years. I was older, and still perfectly confident in my identity as a pansexual. I hadn’t considered any other parts of my identity. Why would I? I just never really thought much about gender. Then shortly after my fourteenth birthday, I watched a short film online about a trans boy figuring out his identity and working up the courage to come out to his mother. I don’t remember what it was called or most of the details. All I remember was the last scene where the boy and his mother got into an argument about him not feminine enough, which ended with him screaming that he wasn’t a girl. And then I unexpectedly burst into tears because neither was I.

So that was a fun surprise. Once I pulled through that unexpected sobbing breakdown in the middle of the night and re-evaluated my entire life, I realized that yeah. I really wasn’t a girl. I wasn’t a boy either. Fortunately by then I knew that nonbinary people were a thing, so I had plenty of options. I spent awhile feeling things out and experimenting with different labels and pronouns before finally settling on agender and they/them pronouns. Which was great! I felt better than ever, and was confident that I had my identity down and everything would be fine. But everything was not fine. Because I’d been so happy about the biphobia dying down that I hadn’t quite noticed the exclusionists switching targets. Now the nonbinary people were lying. What a bunch of special fucking snowflakes, pretending to be queer for attention. The ones who wanted to medically transition were declared to actually be poor confused trans people who couldn’t get over their internalized transphobia to accept their True Identities. And the rest of us... well, we were just a bunch of cishet special snowflakes playing at being trans for attention, and oppressing the real trans people. I wasn’t agender. I was a cis girl making up fake identities for attention, and calling myself nonbinary was Wrong and Bad. But it was okay, because the exclusionists knew better than me. They knew how I really felt, and what my real identity was. They could fix me. I just had to agree with everything they said and become the person they decided I was supposed to be.

I didn’t do that.

Step forward a few more years, now to eighteen year old me. There’s no dramatic revelations or long struggles this time, just a slow realization. Because I’d been single for years, and I wasn’t bothered by that. I actually enjoyed it. Marriage didn’t sound very appealing. Neither did dating. I’d dated people before, but I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to; it was just... the thing I was supposed to do. I found people attractive, sure. But I hadn’t wanted to flirt with anyone. Actually, now that I was thinking about it, had I ever felt romantically attracted to anyone? I didn’t even want romance in fiction! So I experimented. Went on some dates just in case age made it more appealing (it didn’t). Began calling myself aromantic, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the longer I used it, the better it felt. It was right.

But once again, the exclusionists were back and even angier than ever. Because now aphobia was in full swing. After all, asexuality wasn’t really queer. It’s just not having sex! It’s basically straight! What a bunch of special fucking snowflakes, pretending to be queer for attention. And the aromantics, oh the aromantics who weren’t asexual were even worse. Because everyone knows that love is what makes us human. How could someone not feel romance? Us aro people weren’t just lying about our identities, we were pretending to not have feelings so that we could get away with using people for sex without commitment. Being aro meant I was an abusive sex crazed monster taking advantage of all the poor innocent allo’s. I wasn’t aromantic. I was a sexual predator making up a fake identity to take advantage of people, and even though I wasn’t actually sleeping around calling myself aro was Bad and Wrong. But it was okay, because the exclusionists knew better than me. They knew how I really felt, and what my real identity was. They could fix me. I just had to agree with everything they said and become the person they decided I was supposed to be.

And I didn’t fucking do that.

Look. I’ve been here for a very long time, and I have dealt with so many versions of exclusionist bullshit. Every aspect of my identity has been met with random fucking strangers online smugly informing me that I was wrong about myself and they were right. And that’s just the ones that wanted me to pretend to be something else; about half of the exclusionists didn’t make any attempts at conversion therapy, and instead skipped straight to suicide baiting. I’m not even getting into the actual homophobes I’ve had to deal with, or the TERF’s that have come after me under the assumption that I’m a trans woman. My point is, I’m pretty fucking used to this sort of thing.

This just hurts a little more, because like I said earlier, the first round of exclusionism I faced was just expanded biphobia. And the bi/pan community banded together in the face of that. We weren’t the exact same identities, but we were being treated the same, and we were similar enough that nobody really minded the difference. It was wonderful. Bi and pan people were a tightly knit group, and that was a sense of community I desperately needed when I was young. I’ve been seeing this coming for awhile. There’s been increasing amounts of bi people getting drawn in by exclusionist bullshit, and I’ve seen anti-pansexual sentiment growing. I just... really hoped it wouldn’t get this far. It’s sad, y’know? It feels like losing an old friend. I’m really disappointed that you think trying to force people out of their community is right. It’s fucking pathetic, and I hope that someday you’ll rediscover basic compassion and realize how much damage you’re doing to yourself and others. This sort of thing doesn’t help the bisexual community. It drives people away. It’s like the damage that TERF’s have done to the lesbian community; this sort of thing poisons the whole well. I hope you re-evaluate what you’re doing and find a more healthy mindset.

...But also at the same time: Who the fuck do you think you are? Take your condescending bullshit and shove it directly up your ass you fucking waste of oxygen. How the fuck dare you. Do you realize the fucking audacity it takes to claim to know someone's identity better than they do? You self centered egotistical douchebag. Your parents should feel ashamed for having raised such an utter failure of a human being. I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, but I can already tell you beat off twice a day to how fucking clever you think you are. If you ever darken my inbox again you’d better be damn sure you keep it anonymous, because if I find you I’ll kick your fucking teeth in, you smug piece of shit.

[pigspeetsandhooflikefeets]

Hey. I don’t like posting this because I like to be a positive person and this is a really cool and positive fandom, but I need to say please avoid melodicalmusic on DeviantArt/doggiebeats on Quotev. Initially I thought it was just someone who was missing the point, but they are far worse and actively harmful. (notes under cut)

melodicalmusic/doggiebeats is the author and illustrator of an au fic named “Velo Life”. At first glance it is harmless, the art is fine. The story revolves around a mask named Pap (a papillon dog) doing things, being an assistant to the monarchy, and dating Fox. Sometimes other masks get chapters, but the overall focus is on her oc, which is fine, as ocs can be good. The problem isn’t conception, it’s execution.

Transphobia: Melodic decided to cast Leopard as a non-binary intersex character. It was a fair design choice, other than the fact she referred to them as a “pseudo-h*rmaphodite”, which is medically outdated, as well as the inclusion of ‘pseudo’ is more offensive than the slur alone. Leopard has biological cubs, despite most intersex (obviously not all) being infertile or unable to carry children showing a lack of research on the topic, as well as it being a very dysphoric situation for many trans and intersex people.

Leopard was referred to as a “quing”, combination “queen” and “king”. Now. Mull over it. Okay stop mulling, because she had every inch to just use “Monarch”, such as “Monarch Leopard”, as well as titles like “Their/Your Majesty”, which works for both kings and queens, so it should have been suitable for Leopard.

Unprompted, she backpedaled saying “But I wanted Leopard in my AU to be a actual female. Cause I think it's for the best. Everyone kinda hated Leopard, but I love everything she does. No not Transgender, just really a female.”. Besides the fact she took it in her own hands to decide that a mask played by Seal was ‘now a cis woman’, she implies that trans women are not women, calling cis women ‘really a female’.

In her fic, the only other trans character is Egg, who is exceptionally ambiguous to being trans, not specifying if Egg is NB, FTM, or if he as well was going to be intersex. She dedicates a chapter to pride month, yet a lot of the focus is on the cishet masks (Pap (her oc), Frog, and Fox), as well as a concerning ship of T-Rex and Poodle, as everyone knows that T-Rex is somewhat coded to be a child, since Jojo was only 16 when she performed. Despite claiming to respect trans people, she only had two trans characters, and decided that one of them wouldn’t be trans anymore because “I admired the high-pitch voice that was fitted for the Leopard, it just suits SO well. Even if the show kept going, I always hear the digital high vocals.”. Call me crazy, but that’s not a reason to make a man a cis woman.

As a trans man, Leopard was disgustingly handled in the show with the panel first week, accusing Seal of ‘tricking’ them for wearing drag and acting feminine (not acting like a woman, acting feminine), and I hoped it wouldn’t leech into the fandom. Clearly I was wrong.

Homophobia: Where to start with this. As stated, she changed Leopard from a NB intersex character (in her original canon) to a cis woman. In the fic, Leopard is married to Nick. I don’t need to tell you that she made Nick x Leopard into a straight ship. She made the only gay ship tease in the show into a straight ship. I wish it ended here.

Somali, an oc, has potential. Not here, but he has it. Somali is gay. If you think I’m undermining his character, that is his character. Somali likes magic and theater, and is very flamboyant. He is a gay walking stereotype. In his description, it is stated, “The story is that he turnout Gay, Of course Pappy was Supportive, but she knew it wasn't fair, especially through everything she's involved.” If you need me to translate: Somali broke up with Pap after realizing he was gay. Pap saw that as unfair, and that she was a victim of being lead on because he found out he was gay. Yes, Pap is making Somali being gay and dealing with his internalized homophobia… about herself. She goes to the point of calling him her nemesis. Which is a... toxic way to refer to someone who broke up with you on clean terms.

Somali eventually teams up with Rottweiler, Pap’s brother (who abuses her, despite it being out of character in every means) and is. Evil, and he hates Pap now apparently. We can’t go a minute without the gay oc being evil huh. Somali being gay doesn’t add to the story, it just suggests the only reason he stopped dating her was that he was gay (which is bad and offensive in Pap’s eyes) because he is not shown to fall for Rottweiler, or have any crushes on other male masks. His homosexuality is an accessory tag, and it’s really not a good one when he is the only gay character with a lot of lines.

Every. Character. That. Is. LGBT. Is. A. Token. Ice Cream and T-Rex are the closest ones to not be tokens, as Ice Cream has a job at a diner and T-Rex gets lines, but T-Rex is only used for exposition, and again, a child shipped with an adult mask. Peacock’s and Rabbit’s role outside of the first chapter is to have a rocky relationship, being forced to rekindle their relationship after Pap tells them to do so for a love festival. Several of the female masks are bisexual or lesbians, but they add so little to the plot, that I don’t even remember which ships are which. Every [since Leopard used to not be but is now] main character is heterosexual and cis (Pap, Fox, Leopard, Kitty, Frog, Turtle, Rottweiler) which doesn’t imply that she actually is that pro LGBT. Drawings of hers for Ice Cream and Egg are captioned “Just something Gay for you guys to see~” (fetishizing much?).

Ableism: One of the ocs in the fic is a Red Panda, who is related to Panda (don’t be confused, animal wise they are not closely related at all). In the fic, Red Panda suffers from PTSD due to an accident which caused her to be disabled in the leg, who uses a single-leg-crutch to walk. The physical disability is handled well enough, not being a hindrance or made fun of, but her personality is the worst. Red Panda is a cowardly and sniveling child, scared of her own shadow and completely incompetent. Her PTSD is very thinly written, not giving her any specific triggers or reasons for anxiety. If her PTSD was presented with her being afraid of entering a vehicle or certain smells that would relate to the accident (rubber, smoke, leather), it would make sense, but Red Panda is scared of everything. On a dare, Frog tells Kitty to impersonate a mask. Kitty impersonates Red Panda, making fun of her cowardice, which can be an actual attack on people who have PTSD (like myself), Kitty justifies herself, saying she couldn’t think of anyone else, Red Panda immediately accepting it. Being a minor character, there is no time for her to develop, and the Red Panda we were presented with is already a mess.

In the same chapter that Red Panda is introduced, Axolotl (mentioned a lot later) dares Fox to remove his prosthetic arm. I don’t need to need prosthesis to know that asking someone to take their ARM OFF is unfunny and uncalled for. Pap, Fox’s girlfriend, decided to take the time and kissed the welt, commenting that it “looked interesting”. Don’t- don’t do that. Don’t kiss people’s scars or cuts or welts or anything related to their disability, especially without permission. Axolotl was being ablest to Fox and somehow Fox didn’t know better and forgot to tell her she was acting uncivilized, despite being one of the smartest masks in the canon.

Condoning Incest: One of the ocs in the fic is an Axolotl. The axolotl is Frog’s biological sister, Frog having Turtle as his adopted brother, which in fic Turtle is stated to have been adopted in Frog’s family for over 15 years. In the axolotl’s description, it is stated “Though Axolotl is a relative of him, She deeply has a crush on him. Which maybe weird but hey, Turtle's Adopted. So not a big deal”. No, it’s not ‘ok’ because Turtle is adopted, especially since they’ve been related 15 years. It’s not like Frog and Turtle are ‘close enough to be brothers’, they are related by law. Axolotl is presented to quirkily force a kiss on Turtle in one chapter, which she is not punished or condoned for 1. Sexually harassing him 2. Committing incest and putting it on his conscience, OTHER than her getting salmonella, which all characters who kiss Turtle are prone to getting (Ice Cream in chapter was stated to have fallen sick after kissing him). Axolotl is treated completely fine and Turtle has her in his band, regardless of the fact she is predatory towards him. Additionally, Axolotl is treated as a babysitter towards all of the children on the island, despite, again, sexually harassing someone she is related to, which people saw happen.

Incest is a harmful thing that can cause people to self-deprecate themselves or worse. It’s not a quirky “ha ha, they kissed, so funny!” because Axolotl DOES want to prey on Turtle. She DOES want to be with him. She didn’t CARE about his feelings, in the moment or after. It wasn’t a cute kiss on the cheek, and it wasn’t funny.

Fetishization of Japan: Pap is a weeeeeb. Pap is stated to be Japanese (her last name being Akita) which is confusing on account of the fact Rottweiler and her family are not shown to be Japanese? Anyways, Pap uses broken Japanese, completely unsparingly, and just says it in a way she expects everyone to understand her. It’s not Engrish, she speaks English well enough, she just adds it in sentences, and Melodic doesn’t even offer translations at the end of chapters. Phrases used are arbitrary, one some reason ending with “translator”. Entire sentences can be in Japanese, making the story hard to follow. If this fetishization of the language was limited to Pap, it’d be more tolerable, but other masks, ones who have no reason to know Japanese, use it as well, equally poorly.

Xenophobia: Some reason the USA and UK masks are all good guys (other than Rottweiler) but the German masks live in a ‘badlands’. German Monster teams up with Rottweiler and is his girlfriend, while German Dragon sexually assaults Kitty when they go through the badlands. There is no rhyme or reason why they are the scapegoated ‘evil’ series, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Inability to handle criticism: I tried. I tried my absolute best to tell her that what she was writing was harmful and past borderline offensive. I told her that Somali was a gay stereotype and very poorly presented, not getting a personality out of ‘likes singing’ (which all masks do…) and ‘is evil gay’. She didn’t care. We told her she was using slurs and that turning a mask played by Seal into a cis woman was offensive and transphobic (as well as Leopard already poorly being handled). She didn’t care.

In fact she more than didn’t care. She called us insensitive and whiny. Quote from her, "Now, I been feeling upset about some Haters/Karens harassing me on my AU ideas. And yes that's dumb.” Karens. You know, the stereotypical older women who hate the gays and trans people and bully people doing their jobs? Karens? Yeah, no. A Karen would be against any characters being trans or gay, insisting the show is for families, not telling them to stop using literal slurs (which have been outdated over 20 years) and to actually write gay characters. She genuinely acts like she can do no wrong and that everyone that doesn’t fawn over her is bad. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing and the lack of grammar, this is about how she is unapologetically offensive and writing triggering content for the sake of being ‘quirky’.

I’m not saying “go rally against her” or “dox her” or “flame her story”, I’m suggesting please don’t give her attention. She’s clearly a child, and she’s not willing to change. All we can do is limit how much attention she gets until she grows up.

[illnessfaker]

[ cw: f-slur, rape mention ]

no reblogs pls. this is a long vent.

haha not to be a hysterical faggot crippled shut-in freak or anything but the way ppl talk abt the defensiveness around the f-slur that some gay/bi male users (and some transfem users) on here as if it's some kind superiority pissing contest thing and not primarily about...respecting the boundaries and experiences of those gay/bi male (and transfem) users. like...being on this site as a fag-adjacent person (i say that half-jokingly because it sounds silly on one hand but on the other that's the most accurate descriptor of my gender identity, lol) is becoming increasingly draining and upsetting with how "progressive" homophobia against gay/bi men is apparently becoming, like, a meme among lgbtq people and that's acceptable somehow bc lgbtq people aren't cishets or because it's "only online" and therefore doesn't matter.

like idgaf abt ppl who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem) using the f-slur in every single context possible. if they're affectionately referring to their gay/bi male (or transfem) friends with that word (so long as said friends are comfortable with it) that's one thing. who cares. i even rb'd something where a cis butch (iirc) lesbian was talking about a gay man she knew who she was affectionatly calling a faggot and the things she said warmed my heart. if they're throwing it around at every opportunity or using it as an edgy insult against random strangers on the internet, that's another. the users on here who do the latter also regularly display behavior that like...shows a pretty clear disdain for gay/bi men (or transfem ppl) not apart of their online or "irl" circlejerks and echo chambers, and that is in no way disconnected from their love of using the f-slur, lol.

the "it's only online and so it's unimportant uwu go outside" thing also really feels like such a spit in the face as someone who both lives in a rural area full of cishet white men with guns that might try to kill me if i walked out of the house in drag (not to mention i live with my bf and his family and his parents are homophobes themselves i'm sure), and is also someone with health issues that usually keep me at home and in bed when i'm not working. i didn't always live here but even in my hometown the only "lgbtq space" i had was the high school GSA which didn't do shit other than the day of silence and was attended by people i did not feel safe around (e.g. my ex-friend who was very emotionally manipulative and ended up raping someone.) i don't have any other lgbtq spaces to go to other than online ones. if i never joined tumblr i might still be a self-hating cishet girl, or i might be dead, who knows. like, i've accepted at this point that personhood isn't something i'm allowed in (outside of my whiteness) so fuck me i guess if we need to but the idea that other young, impressionable, and/or traumatized lgbtq people who only can meet other lgbtq people and learn about lgbtq things online for whatever reason don't deserve to have us make an effort on cultivating internet spaces that are as accessible and safe for them as possible, or that their experiences and feelings are somehow unimportant is just...vile. like ofc not everyone needs to "pander" to "logged on" disabled fags like myself maybe but if you have any kind of large following on social media maybe consider that the things you say and do on said social media have like...an actual effect on other people instead of pretending that it's "just online" and therefore consequences for your actions either don't matter enough (to you personally) or somehow don't exist.

but going back to the fag thing, most popular lgbtq tumblr users on my dash i see nowadays just...simply do not give a shit whatsoever about gay/bi men, to the point they're normalizing "progressive" and "acceptable" homphobia against us bc they've convinced themselves due to the bigotry some gay/bi men (often cis, white, and wealthy mind you) exhibit we are "the cishets of the lgbtq community," despite horrific violence still being committed against us every day and despite other lgbtq people being capable of engaging in that violence themselves. ppl make thinly veiled jokes and memes where the punchline is men having sex with each other or effeminacy as if those things aren't primary avenues for gay/bi men being abused, assaulted, and killed (including acts of abuse and assault of a sexually-driven nature), as if said jokes and memes don't serve to normalize the mentalities that drive homophobic hate crimes. it's not like...a coincidence that most lgbtq people who makes these jokes aren't gay/bi men (or transfem). this doesn't even get into how things like homophobia and anti-effeminacy can pretty much boot certain gay/bi men from manhood...or womanhood...or any place in gender altogether.

call me exlusionary if you want but i think it's fair to say that the chances of people who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem*) facing the repurcussions of those mentalities in any meaningful way, the chances of these people actually having lived as or going to live as "faggots" is any meaningful sense is slim to none, and that's why they're so comfortable participating in this shit, and that's why i'm triggered(tm) by them "reclaiming" faggot (which doesn't really involve reclamation bc calling random strangers on the internet or gay/bi men you hate a slur isn't reclamation you morons), because frankly if you're not apart of either of those groups, you're just not a fucking faggot. it's not your word just because some rando on overwatch called you it for picking hanzo in comp. period. end of story. it's also just extremely absurd to try and claim faggotry as something you experience while...readily and happily engaging in homophobia and fag-hate (which isn't synonymous with the former term but i'm talking abt ppl who probably seldom ever engage which discussions and theory surrounding how homophobia instrumentates itself in society - or at least that which doesn't conform to their worldview). within the gay/bi male community there's plentu of masc "straight-acting" gays who weaponize this shit against fem gays and they (should) get held accountable in the same way. you're not special.

and god, being told my gendered experiences as a fag-adjacent person where (white) cafab women are fully capable of engaging in social forms of "oppression" against me and other fags in undeniably gendered ways is somehow an outlier and therefore not reflective of broader social by (white) masc urbanite tbros with definitively more social standing than i'll ever have in my life, as if i somehow developed this understanding of gendered violence just based off my own life and not...the reported and sometimes even recorded experiences of countless other fags who get mocked and silenced because anything that deviates from a watered down, shoddy cis feminist take on gender is fake news(tm) or bordering on saying misandry exists (like no it doesn't exist but acting as if homophobic shit like anti-sodomy laws, for example, has zero to do with gay/bi men's manhood is just nonsensical). convos on here abt gender being mostly dominated by (white) cafab women or sometimes (white) masc trans guys is such a mistake lmao.

anyway i'm tired and stressed and pretty done with having "acceptable" homophobic shit shoved in my face on a daily basis both online and offline but nevertheless i must persist because i'm not lucky enough to have anywhere else to go, really. just...think critically abt ur actions regarding gay/bi male sexuality and gender-stuff pretty please. please.

( *disclaimer just in case that i definitely don't see transfems as some "type" of gay/bi men. there are transfems who identify with gay/bi manhood and/or faggotry. there are transfems who don't. that's entirely up to them. thank u. )

[gayregis]

which characters are trans this is a scientific inquiry

all of them except vilgefortz and leo bonhart

ok ok jokes, ill go more in depth... some of this is taken from things ive written before but not posted. also for anyone reading this im non bee nary so know that im not trying to describe the experiences of different identities in first-person, i’m basing this off of both my own and my friends’ experiences... none of this is “OMG YES CHARACTER ANGST >:))” but rather depicting personal struggles in fictional characters, so just know that  the more difficult subjects that may be covered are not there just to see the character in pain, but rather to think about their eventual resilience against it and development afterwards

for geralt and yennefer i have more specific reasons why i think being transgender actually fits with their canonical characters & related story arcs, and then for the rest i have headcanons and maybe some reasoning but not a lot.

geralt: geralt already represents how a struggle with toxic masculinity and expectations of masculinity can influence one who wants to be seen as masculine to deny and bury their emotions. him being trans develops upon the aspect of his struggle with emotions, ive seen my friends who are transmasculine / myself when i used to ID as transmasculine struggle with showing emotions bc of feeling like you’re going to be misgendered if you shed a single tear. in canon, we already learn that kaer morhen has a bit of a macho culture (just fyi eskel and lambert and coen are trans too now, don’t go getting any idea that those guys are cis) and i believe that the “witchers have no emotions” thing is like 5% actual biology and 95% being raised to fight and not to feel. vesemir is a good father but he just wasn’t very emotionally nurturing, it’s the caste’s way of raising kids that geralt breaks out of.

i think geralt’s self-image also speaks a lot to the feelings of harsh internal transphobia. he constantly others himself from others and feels like people view him as different, which is metaphorical for any marginalized group under the sun, but also is very common for lgbt ppl. again this is smth ive really struggled with within the past few years so im just projecting/know what it feels like and feel that how geralt sees himself in canon is similar to a view suffering from internalized transphobia.

geralt's character already redefines manhood because he has to learn what it means to be a good father. and i think him being trans would be representative of his constant learning and growth as a person, yet also somewhat involved with his self loathing and feeling like just Him Existing is an affront ... but of course he unlearns this with time and love from others and all of his character development

yennefer: yennefer’s whole backstory revolves around defining who she is and defying the people who mistreated her and told her she was nothing. canonically yennefer of vengerberg is the story of the successful self-made woman... her life as janka she would rather forget, no one calls her by that name, and no one ever would because its not who she is nor who i think she ever was. 

shes incredibly strong-willed and knows what she wanted from life but some things are terrifying to reach out for, like love and acceptance. yennefer has a conflict with love and being loved because that was never a safe topic for her ... (also sapkowski handled this specifically poorly imo, but:) yennefer canonically struggles with being loved for who she is. i think she deals so much with her previous abuse and again, expectations from parents, and coming to terms with the fact that she survived it all. also this isnt even touching upon her arc regarding motherhood. wanting to give a child your everything and everything that you never had... the love and kindness that no one gave you...

ciri: ciri hesitated to ever identify with “girl” or “boy,” she’s also i think the representation of childhood in general, she’s naturally curious about gender presentation as she ages and just never really cares to commit to gender. i think she’d say she was a girl but only reluctantly bc she just doesn’t care much.

dandelion: [from his TV Tropes page:]

he’s an artist and a musician, he’s not gonna be cishet...

ok in a more serious context i think he’s a nonbinary guy, i think him being trans might explain why he has way more friendships than relationships with family members. dandelion, like yennefer, is also someone that had to define who he was for himself, i mean for one his stage persona of dandelion is entirely an artist’s creation/hyperbole of himself, i think he also had to think abt his inner identity too

his gender is also just “your friend that comes to your house and eats all ur chips and drinks all ur beer and passes out on top of you on the couch”

milva: ok unfortunately i currently think milva is the token non-trans friend (she’s nonbinary just doesnt think of herself as trans) but it’s only because her major arc in baptism of fire revolves around her pregnancy and miscarriage and just bc she is not trans doesn’t mean she doesn’t go through her own difficult struggling process surrounding her womanhood. she struggles enormously throughout the series and in her backstory with defining herself between two rigid identities: the feminine maria and the cutthroat milva. in her talk with geralt, she reveals how she feels trapped between these two identities and feels like they cannot coexist. i feel like she’s a nonbinary/gender non-conforming butch* lesbian whose struggles with sexuality intersect her struggles with gender and what it means to her to be a gnc woman. also you have to consider that milva was raised in a small village in lower sodden so she understood gender in the very strict roles ascribed to men and women, so she felt like she couldn’t be a woman unless she was this very traditional idea of what a woman is “supposed to be like,” which she’s both been trying to shape herself to be and also running away from simultaneously. she learns to accept herself within the hansa bc they love and support her for who she is, and she doesn’t need to be strictly feminine or masculine to be understood by them

* i know the terms nonbinary and gnc and butch didn’t exist in the 1260s tyvm, i’m just saying this as how i interpret her in a modern context

regis: gender is a human sociological construct so basically don’t ask him unless you’re prepared to listen for 20 minutes. vampires can exist noncorporeally so they can exist without gender, also i hc the telepathic vampiric language is nongendered as it’s a transmission of pure thought, will, and force, so it doesn’t even use any grammar. i also hc that vampires just appear the way they feel in terms of appearance and age (e.g., regis at around 300 when he died still looked 25 bc he was as stupid as a 25 year old, now he’s calmer and understands more, so he looks middle-aged). when chilling out with humans regis will be referred to as a man bc that’s just how he appears but it’s an identity he had to learn about and adopt, not something he was assigned. most vampires look androgynous anyways bc they just feel androgynous, how are you gonna feel a gender when you don’t know what a gender is... if you HAD to understand him with human labels / put it in a modern context (like if i was making an modern real life AU) i’d say he’s a nonbinary trans man. 

cahir: much like geralt i think cahir’s story is one of living up to expectations, but cahir’s actually takes it a step further because his major motivation in his backstory is trying to prove to his mother that he can be a good son that will make her proud and gain honor for the family... he seeks validation from external sources but faces ruin when he learns that war is not the way to prove one’s prowess and skill

angouleme: shes trans and i simply say so bc shes very cool and funny and i dont think a cis person could be this cool and funny. also i think the story of a runaway teen who was abandoned by her biological family and found solace in a new family is both very good and featured in a lot of trans ppl’s narratives. she kind of exudes this “im finally at a point in my life where i’m safe and cared for, i can start HRT now, let’s gooOOoooOOooo” energy. 

[my-darling-boy]

SO I’ve been getting people in my inbox asking me if I could explain the struggles of being trans. Obviously I’m willing to educate but there’s a LOT to unpack on understanding that, so to narrow it down, I’ll list things I or some trans people close to me have gone through to give you an idea of the difficulties. I obviously don’t speak for all trans people but as a trans man myself, I have Been Through Some Things

//Rape mention, self harm mention, suicide mention//

•When I came out at 14, I lost all my friends aside from one. I was bullied extensively behind my back. I was dragged to church by my friends who wanted to cleanse me of my “sin”

•I was the only out trans man in my entire school of 2000 students. I knew zero trans people. Everything I had to learn as a kid about being trans was done so entirely by myself. Additionally, the school’s Gay-Straight-Alliance Club kicked me out because I was a masculine trans man

•My parents lied and told me I had certain health concerns which would prohibit me from medically transitioning because they didn’t want me to do it

•I had zero support system. I almost attempted suicide at 14 and self harmed frequently from 13-18 years old

•Many trans people develop eating disorders; for a lot us, we feel we can avoid being misgendered if we look a certain way. It can be caused by depression or from a means of “controlling” something about ourselves when our lives are out of control; I developed anorexia at 16 and struggle every day with it still at 21

•I was constantly told by cis “friends” even cis LGBQ+ “friends” that I would never find anyone to love me because I was trans

•I should point out, I’m not trying to attack other cis LGBQ+ people, I’m trying to point out that injustices and bullying towards trans people happens WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community by cis members. As in, being gay doesn’t mean you’re immune to being a transphobe

•Starting at 14 when I came out, I was constantly asked about how I would have sex since I was trans by both adults and classmates

•I was preyed upon in high school by a guy who had a trans man fetish. The vast majority of trans people will experience a form of sexual abuse/harassment at least once from cis people. Trans people are sometimes seen by cis people as being part of a fetish or like a “sex toy”, thinking we’re just here for their disgusting kinks

•Kids in the hall would pass me at school and make comments like “is that a boy or a girl? *laugh*” or refer to me as an “it”

•There were so little resources for trans people where I lived that I became the trans man every trans person came to for advice meanwhile other cis members of the LGBTQ+ community had many friends to confide in. Trans people are often barred from being accepted into these cis LGBQ+ circles

•A trans man friend of mine, who was a minor at the time, was raped by an adult cis man in a men’s restroom minutes from where I lived. I refuse to use public restrooms due to this fact alone, no matter how cis I look when entering a men’s restroom

•In many places throughout the world, it is illegal to use the restroom of a different gender than you were originally assigned. Even just minding our own business and using the restroom is for some reason an issue among cis people. In one restroom I could be harassed and in the other, I could physically assaulted. Or arrested! Testosterone was the only way I could go into the men’s restroom without being preyed upon by cis men and even then, I have to wait for the place to be empty, even if it’s legal for me to be in there

•When visiting dangerous areas, I have to bind my chest for 12+ hours because I never enter a place where I can take the binder off. In a very conservative area that strictly prides itself in male/female cis people, trans people feel forced to make sure we LOOK either way or else we could be harassed/jumped, as there are places not far from me where non-binary/trans/trans-nb people will not venture to because it’s unsafe. It would be easy to hide I’m gay in a dangerous area, as I just don’t mention being gay, and you can’t inherently “see” as person is gay as it’s a sexual orientation. But in a dangerous area, if I say I’m a man and someone catches on to the fact I’m not a cis man, bad things could happen to me. (I’d like to add that the vast majority of trans hate crimes have been against black trans women and murders in general of trans people have skyrocketed in recent years. A vast majority of these hate crimes are committed by cis white men.)

•A lot of emphasis is put on cis appearances in the trans community, which isn’t always the product of just wanting to express yourself in ways that are traditionally cis. Sometimes we are put in certain situations where we unfortunately MUST look either strictly, stereotypically male/female in order to avoid harassment, and it’s completely anxiety inducing and/or degrading. Some trans people sometimes feel forced to transition to fit in, and a lot trans people are AFRAID to transition or dress without accordance to their original assigned gender because of how we are mistreated by cis people when we do so

•Touching on that, I have encountered people referred to as “transmeds” which are those trans men who think trans men must have gender dysphoria in order to be trans, or that you must want to medically transition to be trans; they commonly place stereotypical, often conservative and toxic, masculine requirements to be a trans man. Many trans men like myself speculate they are the reason why toxic masculinity still thrives like a disease among the trans community. Conservative ideals like this damage the trans community by asserting a trans person DOES look and act a certain way, which is an idea incidentally trans people strive to dismantle among cis people

•Since I’m a trans, gay man, not only can I be bullied by CISHET MEN but also CIS GAY MEN and additionally even other conservative TRANS MEN. If you’re a gay, bi, etc trans person within the LGBTQ+ community, you often face more types of discrimination than cis LGBQ+ people, especially if you are asexual on top of it all, like myself

•Trans people also often encounter terfs, cis “feminists” who believe trans women aren’t real women, and these individuals are found to confidently defend racist, N@zi, white supremacist, and other bigoted attitudes, so just..... gross people

•As a trans person, you’re sometimes made to feel as though you can’t be proud of yourself the same way you can be proud of being gay or lesbian. I’ve witnessed people praising someone for talking about being gay everyday while those SAME PEOPLE complained a trans person talking about being trans ONCE was “annoying” and just “ vying for attention”. Cis people, lgbq+ or not, are sometimes made so uncomfortable by trans people they think calling them annoying will silence them. It’s happened to me almost every single time I’ve tried to come out which is what ultimately led me to be ashamed of myself for many years

•Cis people can often be so unaccepting of our identity that they will intentionally not work on using our correct name/pronouns, withhold using the correct name/pronouns as a form of punishment, or go behind our backs and use the wrong pronouns/name because they don’t think it’s important. Cis people have the luxury of always having their name and pronouns as being a given, and those same people think we are so below them, they think they can choose when we do or do not deserve to be called what we should be called. Deadnaming/intentially misgendering a celebrity you don’t like or person you’re angry with is STILL transphobia

•Just recently, a cis manager outed me to my entire workplace as being trans. Outing someone as trans is VERY DANGEROUS. At the end of the day, you never know who that information could be passed to. Knowing that someone is trans is NEVER your decision to tell people, it’s their private information. If you out someone in a workplace environment, you can and mostly likely will lose your job. However inversely, it is still possible in some places to be fired solely for being trans. If I was in a bad part of my country, her outing me could have cost me my job. Every job I have held thus far has always ended with a cis manager not knowing how to keep their mouth shut about my gender.

Basically, trans people struggle everyday in a vast number of ways and the magnitude of their hardships often go unnoticed due to transphobes or uninformed cishet people trivialising or censoring trans voices. And these are just a FRACTION of things trans people have to deal with regularly. If you aren’t trans, you can’t claim to know what we’re going through. You can only listen to and be there for trans people, read their stories and experiences to be aware of their struggles and how you can make sure you aren’t creating an unsafe space for trans people.

~Terfs and transphobes do not interact~

[yeswevegotavideo]

@thegrandwilde, I got inspired from our earlier conversation and you did say you like getting introduced to new music so… (Though actually, feel free to ignore this post entirely, I just like info-dumping about They Might Be Giants and this is a convenient excuse to do so lol)

Apparently it was three asks, maybe there were more I didn’t see, but these are the songs I’ve seen referenced in those weird ass tmbg asks (Spotify links):

The Mesopotamians

Birdhouse in Your Soul

Don’t Let’s Start

And really, those are great songs, but speaking as someone who has obsessively listened to this band for 32 (of 36) years, these are some equivalent or better ones under the cut. One from almost every album, actually.

(*Favorite albums)

Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head (They Might Be Giants, 1986)

Their least-refined album, being their first, but full of a lot of gems, actually.

Ana Ng (Lincoln, 1988)*

Much more polished than the first. This one’s hard to choose one song from, nearly every one is gold.

Your Racist Friend (Flood, 1990)

Probably their most popular album, at least from my era? Extremely popular among Mormons for reasons I’ve never really understood.

I, Palindrome, I (Apollo 18, 1992)*

Arguably my favorite album to this day, not just from TMBG, but generally. It’s actual perfection, is all. Next to impossible to choose a single song to feature.

No One Knows My Plan (John Henry, 1994)*

Their first album after adding more members/instruments, including some horns, which they would keep from this point forward. (Now they’re two Johns, two Dans, and a Marty). Arguably their first commercially viable album, and likely the thing that got them noticed by TV producers. (Soon after this, they wrote The Daily Show theme and have been more or less industry staples ever since. They wrote the Malcolm in the Middle theme song, as well.)

Pet Name (Factory Showroom, 1996)*

Another basically perfect album, next to impossible to choose a single song from. I only chose this one because it’s awesome and a bit more chill than a lot of their stuff.

Doctor Worm (Severe Tire Damage, 1998)

One of their better-known songs, from an almost entirely live album, but not a live song. I see people quoting this one semi-often and wonder where they heard it.

Reprehensible (Long-Tall Weekend, 1999)

The first full-length online-only album ever released by a major artist. Which is amazing. (They were also one of the first major artists, if not the first, to have an official online radio station, in 1999. Which is insane.)

This song is a good representation of a mainstay of TMBG: pairing perky pop melody with vaguely (or sometimes blatantly) sinister lyrics or subject matter. One of my most favorite musical tropes (gee, I wonder why? Lol)

My Man (Mink Car, 2001)*

Released around the time John Flansburgh started his electronica/hip-hop fusion side project, Mono Puff. I’m not wild about the project, but being in that headspace did wonderful things for this album.

This song is featured to demonstrate their extreme, general nerdiness (especially John Linnell’s, who is my preferred John). Insofar as they have managed to turn the 3 word phrase, “I am paralyzed” into a 3 minute song, without once using the actual phrase.

Experimental Film (The Spine, 2004)

A good, solid album, another one it’s hard to choose one song from. The video for this song was done by the Brothers Champs, creators of Homestar Runner. The story goes that they each found out the other were huge fans of theirs, collectively did whatever the middle-aged man equivalent of a fangirl-squeal is, and began collaborating immediately. They still do, occasionally.

The Cap’m (The Else, 2007)*

It took me a while to warm up to this album, but now I absolutely love it. While looking for a song to post, I realized one of the anon asks quoted this song.

The Lady and the Tiger (Join Us, 2011)*

A nearly perfect album marred by a couple of songs that I legitimately dislike. That is…not a thing I say about TMBG often. *shrug* They can’t all be Apollo 18.

This song baaaarely squeaked by ahead of You Probably Get That A Lot, When Will You Die?, and Cloissinné because the Bassline. Fucking. Slaps.

Money for Dope (Album Raises New and Troubling Questions, 2011)

Released as a companion to Join Us, including some songs cut from the album along with some b-sides, live tracks, & remixes. It’s got some good shit on it, including Marty Beller Mask, easily one of the most surreal songs they’ve ever written.

But I featured this song because it was the inspiration for my The Young Ones: Love & Mobsters fic: Dope, and because it’s one of their many songs that is literally just a list of things, which is very them.

Call You Mom (Nanobots, 2013)

Another solid album, but not one of my favorites. It might just be too new for me (she said of the 6 year old album), but it might just not be one of their best albums. *shrug*

They Might Be Giants has a very distinct sense of humor. This song is just about the perfect example of that.

Erase (Glean, 2015)

The first album released after they started their new Dial-A-Song project, which they turned into a song-a-week challenge. As a result, the album isn’t like, exceptional, but there are a lot of gems, actually.

This is my favorite song on the album because it’s about the creative editing process (yes, a rare TMBG song that is definitively about something) and I feel it on a spiritual level.

Bills, Bills, Bills (Phone Power, 2016)

I’m not familiar enough with this album to have much of an opinion on it, I don’t listen to it much. But I had to include this song because I legitimately fucking love TMBG covers, and this one was…unexpected, lmao.

Mrs. Bluebeard (I Like Fun, 2018)*

The first album released after the 2016 election, and it shows, with a strong thread of fears about aging, loss, vague despair/disappointment, and political anger (An Insult to the Fact Checkers is a blatantly anti-Trump song). I fucking love it.

This song is just really well composed, and also demonstrates a strong feminist sensibility, rarely seen in ostensibly cishet(?), white, male baby-boomers (young ones, but still).

(Yes cis, dunno if het? Neither are particularly effusive about their personal lives. They’re both married which, of course, means literally nothing.)

I mean, they’ve clearly always been liberal commie bastards (see Your Racist Friend above), but they’ve become more vocally so over the past few years.

[probably-enjolras]

i would put this in the tags but i need people to know this story. ‘‘twas the year 2014 and i but a we child in 6th grade had a pinterest account and had discovered the world of shipping through reposted tumblr screenshots. i knew what otp meant and i had personal investments in percy jackson ships and later that year, the start of my destiel phase. what does this have to do with real life? well. i showed my friends this new world of shipping and that started a series of events that made 6th grade objectively the best year of my life. at first, all the shipping was fictional. then my friend had an on again of again relationship with a guy in our school. so on the off times she would ship herself with him and write fanfic about the two of them. then when she realized that the rest of us were single (i was closeted as bisexual and a trans guy at the time, so i was seen as a cishet girl) and needed boyfriends so we got shipped with people in our grade. one of my friends was shipped with the guy she actually had a crush on and he had a crush on her while me and my other friend got stuck with people who fit the characters relationships in our percy jackson role play that we did. but it didn’t end there. others got wind of shipping and it became an entire class event. if you showed any interest in a person of the opposite gender, you would be shipped. i actually was helping a guy friend who wanted to date one of my friends and because we were close we got shipped. it got so bad that my english teacher had to tell us to stop and we couldn’t talk about shipping in class anymore. to this day people cannot say the word “kk” in front of me because it was the ship name between me and another guy in my class. the shipping and rumors of who was or wasn’t dating continued even after the teacher told us to stop. the next year i came out as bi and had a huge crush on the only other openly queer person in my grade (he’s a trans guy but at the time he identified as a cis lesbian) and we would hold hands because both of us have severe anxiety and neurodivergencies that make us sound and touch sensitive so we would hold hands to ground ourselves. i would steal his hat and we would flirt. the number of times i was asked if we were dating when we weren’t is so many that i can’t count. and what was the response i would get when i told them we weren’t together? “aww but i ship it!”. we did end up actually dating for about 7 months in 8th grade but i had to end things because my mental health got worse. the relationship was fine though.

so yeah. that’s how my middle school got shipping banned from english classrooms and how i introduced an entire grade to writing fanfiction. also i got tumblr in the spring of my 6th grade year so you can imagine how that helped the situation…

reblog and put in the tags if people ever shipped you with one of your friends and how did it turn out

[autumndiesirae]

Response to @bigmeangatekeeper’s ‘Why I’m Exclusionist’ Page

So recently I came across by far one of the most bigoted exclusionists I’ve seen in a while, that being @bigmeangatekeeper. Normally I block and ignore these sorts of people but given the exceedingly harmful and frankly disgusting rhetoric espoused on this person’s blog, I felt it was necessary to make a formal response, even if the person in question isn’t going to listen to reason or care.

I’m going to be mentioning @herefortheace​ and @justaphobethings​ in this post for their reference, as the arguments presented here are common exclusionist rhetorics and also to share my resources with more inclusionist blogs.

DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a ‘callout’, not is it intended to call upon my followers/anyone to attack this blog. This is merely a response to tired old exclusionist rhetoric by an asexual who is sick of people legitimately trying to act like their gross views haven’t been time and time disproven. I also won’t be addressing this blog’s status as a truscum as that isn’t relevant to this post.

TW FOR RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT DISCUSSION AND RAPE APOLOGISM.

PAGE LINK

First thing’s first. While I do not automatically exclude LGBT aces, I exclude cishet aces AND homo/transphobic or homo/transphobia apologist aces. It’s not just about the cishets. It’s about so much more.

As stated hundreds of times before, there definitely are homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, sexist, and racist asexuals. There are also apologists for these asexuals. Absolutely no one is arguing that these are problematic people. However, exclusionists like to pretend that the occasional ‘bad’ asexual is somehow a representative of the entire community, to which I respond ‘how then do you feel about TERF lesbians or biphobic gay men?’ Because if a few bad members of a sexuality are enough to warrant that entire community being removed from the LGBT community as a whole, then this rhetoric should be applied to every single sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet, asexuals and aromantics get singled out for this time and time again. It’s almost like exclusionists are unwilling to admit that they just want to remove asexuals as a whole and are only grasping for excuses so much that they will use the occasional problematic ace as a gotcha to push forward their ideologies. It’s funny because half the time what exclusionists define as ‘homophobic asexuals’ are often either blatantly obvious trolls or minors simply making jokes or having fun with their identity.

Also, thank you for including SOME aces! We appreciate you soooo much for driving a wall between our community! /s

The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.

There are also many “SGA and trans” aces who are against the gatekeeping and feel that they are hated by these aphobes.

You’re not protecting me by being an ace/aro exclusionist.

What we hear when you say “I only support SGA Asexuals/Aromantics”

my favourite thing is when aphobes try to tell me that their aphobia doesn’t apply to me / affect me because “[i’m] queer for other reasons”

okay, you wanna know why I’m for including all aces in the LGBT+ community?

Why your acephobia and arophobia is really just bullshit

it really annoys me when I see Discoursers say they support LGBT+ aces, just not cishet ones.

when you say “i accept sga and trans aces and aros but not cishet aces/aros because they’re straight”

Suffering! Suffering?

when people ‘accept’ sga/mga/non-cis aces and aros, but not others, what it actually means is they accept the part of you that isn’t directly tied to your asexuality/aromanticism

if ur gonna fuckin claim those four letters cover them & the whole damn community, they sure as fuck can cover aces as well

“Ace discourse” is really a Tumblr-only thing

I’m a lesbian ace and I’ve never felt more worthless and disgusting than this ace discourse

The reason even trans and bi/gay/pan/etc asexuals get defensive when you talk about cishet aces/aros not being part of the LGBT+ community is because you’re erasing a part of our identity??

If you talk shit about aces/aros with the disclaimer “cishet” it still affects all aces. Saying “notably cishet aces should all go die” still makes all ace/aro people feel like they are being called out.

Your “discourse” is harmful to all asexuals. And PS, your rhetoric is literally indistinguishable from TWERF rhetoric.

It’s about the blatant homophobia, transphobia, and serophobia in the ace community.

Again, this may exist in some members of the community, but that does not magically erase the status of the community as being LGBT. If it did, TERFs lesbians would have caused the lesbian community to be no longer considered LGBT.

It’s about there being no consistent definition of asexuality, thus allowing literally anyone regardless of relationship status, libido, etc to claim the ace label, and thereby try to shoulder their way into the LGBT community.

There is a consistent definition of asexuality. It’s ‘a lack of sexual attraction’. Libido, relationship status, etc, do not have any role in the asexual label. This has been the definition of asexuality for years. Looking up ‘asexuality’ on Google literally explains this:

I found these in one quick search. What’s your excuse?

The reason there appears to be ‘no consistent definition’ is the fault of non-asexuals and exclusionists pushing their own definitions of what asexuality is so that they can later pretend that its the asexuals who are changing the definition. The idea that asexuals never have sex was a misconstruing of the description of sex-repulsed asexuals. The idea that asexuals don’t have a libido also came from this. Asexuals can and do masturbate (for pleasure or stress relief), have sex (for pleasure or to have children), etc. These are not related to the definition of asexuality.

Additionally, if the fact that there isn’t a consistent definition of asexuality bothers you, then why not address how bisexuals and pansexuals don’t always have a consistent definition for their sexuality either? Some bisexuals claim the bi label is only for men and women, some say it includes nonbinary people, some say bisexuality is a transphobic label compared to pansexuality, etc, etc.

It’s about asexuals telling traumatised people/mentally ill people/dysphoric people/autistic people/CHILDREN that they’re ace rather then encouraging them to consider other reasons why they might feel sex repulsed.

Telling an individual ‘have you considered you may be asexual’ is not the same that saying ‘you are asexual, no arguments, you just are’. A person suggesting a label is not forcing anyone to co-opt that label. In addition, sexualities are fluid. I know many people who identified as ace at a younger age and then identified differently at an older age. I know many people who are the reverse. Are there individuals who identified incorrectly as ace at one age and feel upset or angry about it? Absolutely. But that is not the fault of any asexual who suggested the label. And, again, sex repulsion is not the requirement for being asexual.

It’s about asexuals not understanding that asexuality is not comparable to other sexualities bc it’s about how you feel attraction instead of who you feel attraction to

“Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied over time, it lacks a precise definition.” From Wikipedia

A Definition of Sexuality

Sexuality is no longer just about ‘who’ you experience attraction to.

It’s about asexuals hypersexualising all other sexualities (most particularly gay people) and making us out to be fucking sex craved deviants

Citation fucking needed. Also, yet again, a few asexuals doing this (not that I have ever seen any aside from one extremely obvious troll doing this) is not somehow a representation of the entire community.

It’s about asexuals pushing the toxic and harmful split attraction model even though it’s been shown time and time again to allow people to explain away their internalised homophobia/biphobia, and encouraging microlabelling that just confuses people more and causes divisiveness in the community

What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)

There is absolutely no evidence aside from exclusionist rhetoric to uphold the idea that the SAM is homophobic or toxic. Additionally the SAM is used by non-ace and non-aro people regularly - I am familiar with many people who make that distinction in their romantic and sexual orientations, such as one friend who is pansexual but heteroromantic (in that she will have sex with all genders but prefers to romantically date men). It seems your bigger issue is the existence of microlabelling, which while that is a debatable problem in this community, at the end of the day it really isn’t any of your business. The only real source of divisiveness in this community is gatekeepers like you.

It’s about asexuals erasing gay history and literally just fabricating false stories for asexual representation, usually at the expense of gay people

Citation needed, once again.

Asexuals recorded as “Group X” in the 1948 Kinsey Reports

What is asexual history? The 19th and 20th century

From The Westminster Review, a political magazine, in 1907; an essay by Helen Fraser called Women’s Suffrage, on how if women got the vote, butch and ace women were gonna dominate the whole thing and screw it up for all the Real Ladies.

The Spinster Movement, and how they were treated as queer

From “Feminism,” by Correa Moylan Walsh, 1917

the “aces/aros were part of the bi community until they very recently chose to split off, so stop telling them that they have never been queer or that they don’t belong in ‘the LGBT community’” masterpost

asexuality existed before David Jay and AVEN

“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part One)

“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part Two)

It’s about asexuals stealing autistic terminology, and creating false axes of oppression that make literally everyone who isn’t ace their oppressors

The ‘actuallyasexual’ tag supposedly being stolen from the ‘actuallyautistic’ tag was never proven to be a legitimate claim. Autistic people have repeatedly come forward saying that this was never the case. Since I am not autistic, however, I won’t press on this particular point. If anyone is autistic and has some information on this, please DM me.

It’s about adult asexuals literally acting like children and using the ‘uwu im a pure ace’ response

Citation needed. I’m sensing a trend here.

Any asexual who partakes in, excuses, or explains away this behaviour in the ace community is dangerous and could easily cause harm to the LGBT community.

Once again - TERF lesbians, transphobic gay man, etc. should also be included under this rhetoric if you’re going to treat asexuals this way, otherwise you’re just being a hypocrite.

Asexuals are not oppressed under homophobia or transphobia. The LGBT community was not built just to combat oppression, because that would mean women and POC would automatically be LGBT, which is absurd. The community was developed specifically so that SGA and non-cis people would have a place to get away from societal homophobia and transphobia, and to push back against legally instituted oppression, like fighting for gay marriage, and to get laws put in place that protect us from hate crimes.

Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand,a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. 

Secondly -

“The LGBT community has always been about fighting homophobia and transphobia/we came together to fight homophobia and transphobia”

“Homophobia and Transphobia”: What does the LGBT+ community fight for?

The modern American movement was first known as the “gay community” when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the “gay and lesbian community”. (Good reading on the subject.)

“After the elation of change following group action in the Stonewall riots in New York, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, some gays and lesbians became less accepting of bisexual or transgender people. Critics said that transgender people were acting out stereotypes and bisexuals were simply gay men or lesbian women who were afraid to come out and be honest about their identity. Each community has struggled to develop its own identity including whether, and how, to align with other gender and sexuality-based communities, at times excluding other subgroups; these conflicts continue to this day.” (source)

“From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people gain equal respect.” (ibid)

These are scans of a gay magazine from 1999 showing that 48% of those surveyed did not believe that trans people should be a part of the gay community.

The community’s boundaries have always been in flux

Insisting that LG people have always been accepting of bi and trans people is incredibly revisionist and does a great deal of injustice to those who have been excluded.

While I agree that asexuals go through some discrimination, ‘aphobia’ is not an axis of oppression because it is not institutionalised. The discrimination asexual and aromantic people face is based within rape culture, toxic masculinity, traditionalist values, and misogyny.

You sound like transphobic sexists who claim trans men do not experience transphobia that is specific to trans men (transmisandry) much in the same way that trans women experience transphobia specific to trans women (transmisogyny).

First of all, what do you use as the definition of ‘institutionalized’?

Second, why are you acting like asexuals are seen as some ‘other’ group rather than a part of the LGBT community when institutionalized discrimination is being discussed?

Third, ‘institutionalized discrimination’ was never a requirement to be LGBT. By that logic, a gay man who lives in a country/state where gay marriage is legal, conversion therapy is banned, and who has never experienced any form of anti-LGBT discrimination in his life is straight. That’s an asinine proposition.

For some examples of asexual-specific discrimination - 

“My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”

“My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”

“My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”

“My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”

“My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”

“My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”

“My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)

“My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)

“My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”

“I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”

“My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”

“My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”

“My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish - which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”

“I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”

“The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”

“I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”

“I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”

“I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfishand childish.”

“I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfishand childish.”

“I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfishand childish.”

“No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”

Dr Gordon Hodson wrote this about his 2012 study:

In a recent investigation (MacInnis & Hodson, in press) we uncovered strikingly strong bias against asexuals in both university and community samples. Relative to heterosexuals, and even relative to homosexuals and bisexuals, heterosexuals: (a) expressed more negative attitudes toward asexuals (i.e., prejudice); (b) desired less contact with asexuals; and © were less willing to rent an apartment to (or hire) an asexual applicant (i.e., discrimination). Moreover, of all the sexual minority groups studied, asexuals were the most dehumanized (i.e., represented as “less human”). Intriguingly, heterosexuals dehumanized asexuals in two ways. Given their lack of sexual interest, widely considered a universal interest, it might not surprise you to learn that asexuals were characterized as “machine-like” (i.e., mechanistically dehumanized). But, oddly enough, asexuals were also seen as “animal-like” (i.e., animalistically dehumanized). Yes, asexuals were seen as relatively cold and emotionless and unrestrained, impulsive, and less sophisticated.

When you repeatedly observe such findings it grabs your attention as a prejudice researcher. But let’s go back a minute and consider those discrimination effects. Really? You’d not rent an apartment to an asexual man, or hire an asexual woman? Even if you relied on stereotypes alone, presumably such people would make ideal tenants and employees. We pondered whether this bias actually represents bias against single people, a recently uncovered and very real bias in its own right (see Psychology Today column by Bella DePaulo). But our statistical analyses ruled out this this possibility. So what’s going on here?

If you’ve been following my column, you’ll recall that I wrote a recent article on what I called the “Bigotry Bigot-Tree” – what psychologists refer to as generalized prejudice. Specifically, those disliking one social group (e.g., women) also tend to dislike other social groups (e.g., homosexuals; Asians). In our recent paper (MacInnis & Hodson, in press), we found that those who disliked homosexuals also disliked bisexuals and asexuals. In other words, these prejudices are correlated. Heterosexuals who dislike one sexual minority, therefore, also dislike other sexual minorities, even though some of these groups are characterized by their sexual interest and activity and others by their lack of sexual interest and activity.

This anti-asexual bias, at its core, seems to boil down to what Herek (2010) refers to as the “differences as deficit” model of sexual orientation. By deviating from the typical, average, or normal sexual interests, sexual minorities are considered substandard and thus easy targets for disdain and prejudice. Contrary to conventional folk wisdom, prejudice against sexual minorities may not therefore have much to do with sexual activity at all. There is even evidence, for instance, that religious fundamentalists are prejudiced against homosexuals even when they are celibate (Fulton et al., 1999). Together, such findings point to a bias against “others”, especially different others, who are seen as substandard and deficient (and literally “less human”). “Group X” is targeted for its lack of sexual interest even more than homosexuals and bisexuals are targeted for their same-sex interests.

From news coverage of a recently published study (2016):

What should the average person take away from your study?

Since I first became interested in the issue, I have come to conclude that U.S. society is both “sex negative” and “sex positive.” In other words, there is stigma and marginalization that can come both from being “too sexual” and from being “not sexual enough.” In a theoretical paper, I argued that sexuality may be compulsory in contemporary U.S. society. In other words, our society assumes that (almost) everyone is, at their core, “sexual” and there exists a great deal of social pressure to experience sexual desire, engage in sexual activities, and adopt a sexual identity. At the same time, various types of “non-sexuality” (such as a lack of sexual desire or activity) are stigmatized.

For this particular study, I identified thirty individuals who identified as asexual and asked them first, if they had experienced stigma or marginalization as a result of their asexuality, and, second how they challenged this stigma or marginalization. I found that my interviewees had experienced the following forms of marginalization: pathologization (i.e. people calling them sick), social isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority (i.e. people not believing that they didn’t experience sexual attraction). I also found that my interviews resisted stigma and marginalization in five ways: describing asexuality as simply a different (but not inherently worse) form of sexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; coming to see asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach.

I hope that average people would take away from this study the idea that some people can lead fulfilling lives without experiencing sexual attraction but can experience distress if others try to invalidate their identities.

Some of the social isolation we aspecs experience comes from religious communities. Indeed, the popular myth that religious people revere aspecs is very much NOT TRUE. For example, read “Myth 8″ from the VISION Catholic Religious Vocation Guide:

MYTH 8: Religious are asexual

Question: What do you call a person who is asexual?

Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist.Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well. As such, they’re most likely unhappy. All people are called by God to live chastely, meaning being respectful of the gift of their sexuality. Religious men and women vow celibate chastity, which means they live out their sexuality without engaging in sexual behavior. A vow of chastity does not mean one represses his manhood or her womanhood. Sexuality and the act of sex are two very different things. While people in religious life abstain from the act of sex, they do not become asexual beings, but rather need to be in touch with what it means to be a man or a woman. A vow of chastity also does not mean one will not have close, loving relationships with women and men. In fact, such relationships are a sign of living the vow in a healthy way. Living a religious vow of chastity is not always easy, but it can be a very beautiful expression of love for God and others. Religious women and men aren’t oddities; they mirror the rest of the church they serve: there are introverts and extroverts, tall and short, old and young, straight and gay, obese and skinny, crass and pious, humorous and serious, and everything in between. They attempt to live the same primary vocation as all other Christians do: proclaiming and living the gospel. However, religious do this as members of an order that serve the church and world in a particular way. Like marriage and the single life, religious life can be wonderful, fulfilling, exciting, and, yes, normal. Yet, it also can be countercultural and positively challenging. It’s that for us and many others. If you thought religious life was outdated, dysfunctional, or dead, we hope you can now look beyond the stereotypes and see the gift it is to the church and world.

NOTE: YOU CAN BE A GAY CATHOLIC PERSON BUT NOT ASEXUAL, BC ASEXUALITY DOESN’T EXIST (yet somehow we’re also “most likely unhappy” and “oddities”). I sincerely hope and believe that not all religions characterize us aspecs this way. But here are some personal accounts I found on a reddit site answering the question “Do any religions have a negative stance toward asexuals?”:

Please note that the Christian pastor in the last example was fearful (or something?) that an asexual was helping to lead a youth group and kicked them out of the church as a result.

(Not to mention that there is now a published dissertation with a whole chapter dedicated to understanding why a-spec people have been erased from history and virtually invisible up until recently, which is a very real issue in this debate that cannot be ignored).

This argument is as tired as the rest of the ones you’re putting out. And since i know you’re just going to ignore this with some backhanded commentary - 

If we give primary sources based on lived experiences (which is the basis of qualitative research, which founded so much of the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and more, and is still used today as a very common research practice), such evidence is dismissed because it’s not academic or in a news publication. Never mind that this practice of citing tumblr blogs for personal experiences is similar in practice (if not as rigorous) as netnographic research (a practice developed by Rob Kozinets, whose book on it has close to 1500 google scholar citations, and whose seminal article on it has over 2000).

If we give articles from press outlets, they are dismissed as commercial and therefore not acceptable. (I could find a lot more of this, but look, it’s happened a lot and not main point here).

If we give academic citations, such as the study that was published a few years ago (what I’ve seen referred to as’ the Group X study’ by discoursers), they are dismissed (read, not ‘debunked’ because that is a different thing) because popular press such as psychologytoday.com dared to cover the story, or because they don’t believe the need for such study exists, and because someone hadn’t read the original research so felt free to critique it’s methods (????).  Slightly more legitimately, I’ve seen it dismissed based on the use of convenience samples (though I can’t find the link), but it’s worth pointing out that the actual research also used a sample drawn from the general public. And if you’re dismissing a study based on the use of a convenience sample, you can also throw out about 90% of academic research done in psychology and related fields in the past 40 years. Almost all research uses convenience sampling, and this study actually went beyond that anyway.

(For the record, that study also goes a long way to explain why intra-community aphobia exists, if you read the full article, and finds that the more biased people are also more right-wing authoritarian and endorse social-dominance orientation, basically meaning they “endorse dominance and inter-group hierarchies”).

Source with more information

Literally every argument for ace oppression, like corrective rape for example, is not ace exclusive. On the other hand, gay and trans people face specific pointed prosecution for being non-cis or SGA.

“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”

No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.

“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”

The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”

It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and gender non-conforming people in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.

And regarding ace-specific discrimination, I provided a wall of it, if you’d like to scroll up and read it again.

I’ve been beaten bloody while called a fag and a tranny and left for dead. I’ve had a guy rape me while aggressively misgendering me and telling me what a freak cuntboy I was. Those attacks were specifically because I’m trans and gay. Ace people are attacked because they won’t have sex, not because they’re ace. It’s just good old fashioned rape, there’s no hate crime element I guarantee it.

I’m very sorry that happened to you.

I was repeatedly molested by my first boyfriend because he told me that “wouldn’t be ace anymore when he was done with me”. I’ve been punched, thrown to the ground, and had my nose broken because I wore an asexual flag pin on my backpack, with people calling me a disgusting queer. My girlfriend of five years, the person I intended to marry, cheated on me with a mutual friend because I was asexual and ‘didn’t validate her body’. And, as I already shown, my experiences are commonplace for asexuals. Your trauma, as horrible as it is, does not give you any right to say that an asexual who is raped and told “I’ll fix you” is not ‘good old fashioned rape’.

Please read this and tell me about how there’s no hate crime element to it:

“‘I just want to help you,’ he called out to me as I walked away from his car,” she explained. “He was basically saying that I was somehow broken and that he could repair me with his tongue and, theoretically, with his penis. It was totally frustrating and quite scary.”

Sexual harassment and violence, including so-called “corrective” rape, is disturbingly common in the ace community, says Decker, who has received death threats and has been told by several online commenters that she just needs a “good raping.”

“When people hear that you’re asexual, some take that as a challenge,” said Decker, who is currently working on a book about asexuality. “We are perceived as not being fully human because sexual attraction and sexual relationships are seen as something alive, healthy people do. They think that you really want sex but just don’t know it yet. For people who perform corrective rape, they believe that they’re just waking us up and that we’ll thank them for it later.”

“There is a real fear even among the asexual community that people who identify as anything other than heterosexual will be harassed and assaulted,” wrote “Angela,” a self-identified aromantic ace. “They have a reason to be upset and a reason to be afraid, it has happened to many people before.”

In response to the post, an anonymous user wrote, “[A]sexuality is not a thing. You are just ugly and no one wanted to date you, so you made up a thing to cuddle your lonely self as you cry into your pillow. Also, I hope you get raped. It has a dual benefit, you’ll get laid finally AND put you into your place as well.”

The comment triggered a firestorm, with some asexuals speaking out and sharing their own experiences involving sexual violence.

Asexuals and ace activists say the conversation about sexual assault in the asexual community is part of the wider societal discussion about rape culture generally and about corrective rape in the queer community specifically. They also say it speaks to a bias and an invisibility that asexuals face in everyday life.

Source

Asexuals and aromantics are notoriously homophobic, transphobic, and serophobic in their arguments. I personally have seen them say things about inclusionists like ‘I hope they get antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea and crabs in the same week’ (actual quote), I’ve been told ‘you probably have aids’ because I’m a gay man, I’ve seen them argue that non-ace people can’t be raped because we constantly want sex and have had my own assaults denied, etc. This wasn’t just one incident, it’s a pattern. Over and over ace people wish violent sexual threats on non-ace people. They call us disgusting. They call us filthy. They call us ‘the oppressive monogays’ and ‘filthy allos’. I’ve had them go so far as to fling homophobic slurs at me, and say we deserved the aids crisis. Sorry, but any group that is totally fine with even some of its members being that actively, unabashedly homophobic has absolutely no place in this community. I wouldn’t let my grandfather who called me a pathetic fag into the community either, no matter how much sex he did or didn’t have.

I like how you say ‘actual quote’ and yet do not provide a single link, screenshot, or even falsified anonymous message as proof of this.

For the 100th time - the behavior of a few asexuals does not represent the entire community, otherwise TERF lesbians, transphobic gay men, biphobic trans people, etc, would mean their entire community are no longer considered LGBT.

Would you like a glimpse at some of the behavior exclusionists that are ‘real LGBT’ bestow on asexuals?

Comparing aces and aros to Trump  (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to Pence  

Comparing aces to Ronald Reagan (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to a literal slave owner

Making fun of aces not being accepted by their parents and of aces finding this upsetting (making it into a crytyping “joke”)

Making aces feel shitty/shaming them for telling their parents they’re ace because it’s supposedly “unnecessary”

Saying if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy

Doing their best to sexualize the orientations of aces, in so many cases. The link before these two is also connected to that. They treat our orientations like (graphic) details about “our sex lives”, frequently acting like if we want to talk about them ever we’re gross/creepy

This one is also “nice” re sexualizing aces (one of many examples of ppl also engaging in sex-shaming while they’re at it, saying only one’s partner should know anything about one’s “relationships with sex”. Except this person goes kinda even further)

More sexualization, when I say this freaks me out as a WoC, I’m told this white person gives no fucks and wants me to be miserable

Another person who says the identities of aces but also of aros need to stay between them and their Partners because they’re “TMI” and inherently sex-shaming somehow

Oh yeah did I mention, much the same with sexualizing aros and ppl frequently link our identities to misogyny and to using people while they’re at it

Making light and fun of ace WoC asking to not be sexualized because don’t we know aces have done Bad things and so we deserve it/don’t get to complain

One of many examples of white people who hate aces+aros talking over PoC and trying to erase us from our communities (+usually when we call that shit out they don’t care. This is actually one of the more cordial responses I’ve come across despite the lack of apology lol. [Eta: my wording here was misleading before, they weren’t talking to me - I’d also called them on this but they ignored me. Sorry for the confusion!] Also, I have a tag somewhere with several non-black/white ppl who made Rachel Dolezal comparisons to shit on aces/aros). Another example of talking over us here complete with condescendingly lecturing a PoC about racism

People like this saying outright they hate aces

Saying sex ed shouldn’t teach about asexuality

Outright stating they think being ace/aro gives people privilege (because supposedly aces+aros both benefit from conservatives pushing for abstinence)

Outright invalidating the identities of aces (who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have)

Calling asexuals demons

Outright calling aces and aros a “plague” and saying aces/aros regardless of other identities all need to be kicked out of the LGBT+ community.

Erasing the identities of people who speak out against anti-ace/aro shit to declare them “straight” or “cishet” …or saying that treatment is what they get for being “traitors to their own community”

Ignoring the boundaries of aces/aros who have them blocked and don’t want to be vagued to make fun of them …

…or even to continue sexualizing them after they have made it very clear that shit freaks them out (cheerfully doing this to a WoC)

Someone saying asexuality does not exist and “encourages slut shaming”

Spamming the ace positivity tag with vile hate (ppl have talked a lot about how this harms and endangers especially mentally ill ppl)

“aces are embarassing“ in the positivity tag

Posting nsfw content in the ace positivity tag and being completely unapologetic, apparently using the reasoning that our identities are inherently nsfw anyway (see the “TMI discourse” aka people sexualizing our identities)

Calling aces and aros a “sexuality fandom” while pretending we’re a group full of people with every privilege imaginable, bored of being accepted by everyone and of having no Actual Problems in our lives. This kind of nasty erasure constantly goes on and is a big tactic in this mess tbh

Wanting aces to be “exterminated”. For good measure putting this in the ace positivity tag

This disgusting vile shit that I don’t even know how to sum up but it includes wishing death on someone

Talking about wanting aces/aros dead after somehow misunderstanding(?) a post that was very clearly not about asexuality or aromanticism

Graphically telling aces to die

Specifically telling ace kids to kill themselves

Did I mention that many people in this mess have wished death on aces and aros and that they often put it in positivity tags. Some of the most messed up shit I’ve seen is missing because I didn’t reblog/respond to it at the time or can’t find it right now

And I know anons don’t count as hard “proof” for anything but have the less graphic one of the death/rape threats I got in my inbox for speaking out against anti-ace/aro shit (still kinda eerily detailed though. Not linking the other one because it is extremely graphic)

Comparing aces to a literal white supremacist (in the positivity tag)

Again someone invalidating the identities of aces who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have

Sexualizing aros again, not caring about how it affects particularly aro PoC. And here two other ppl sexualizing and demonizing aros, like in posts further above claiming (non-ace) aros just use people for sex (said on positivity post).

Someone sexualizing aces again and engaging in sex-shaming at the same time, as usual with the claim that literally no one but a partner “needs” to know our orientations

Those Rachel Dolezal comparisons I mentioned made by non-black/white people who want to use antiblackness for what they call “ace discourse”?Yeah here is one white person doing it and here is another, even worse example where a white person goes “this is like if I pulled a Rachel D. and put on blackface and used the n-word…” (paraphrasing here). Here is the latter person utterly dismissing me being upset by their antiblackness (because black ppl’s pain only matters when it’s useful)

[For ppl who don’t know: Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who pretended to be black and built her career on it. White people sure as hell do not get to compare this shit to anything that is not antiblackness and use black people’s pain for their own purposes.]

A white person using antiblackness as a weapon against aces and aros in general (aka “ace tumblr”), acting smug regarding how supposedly we’re all so racist and “get triggered” by black people existing. (I am so tired of white ppl using racism as a cheap “gotcha” against aces and aros - groups which include PoC. And who then ignore or belittle PoC who call them out)

White person randomly informing WoC aces/aros can have white privilege

Again someone claiming ace privilege exists and here another person doing it adding to the post further above, claiming aces/aros have privilege for being ace/aro and that this is the case bc people who don’t have sex are privileged (wrong definition of asexuality… also of aromanticism??… and also no. No.)

What I mentioned about ppl telling us asexuality/aromanticism are not orientations but only ever modifiers? It’s happened a lot but here’s one example. And here’s someone outright saying aro aces don’t have an orientation but only modifiers.

Here’s the same person who said aro aces don’t have an orientation later turning around saying the orientation of aro aces is determined by how they behave and who they have sex with.

Another person putting nsfw shit in the ace positivity tag (link is to nsfw text)

And people try really hard to justify despising aces and aros by pointing to shitty people who share our identities/orientations. Honesty is secondary in this. Here you have someone taking a shitty post from an obvious nasty troll blog to say this is why ppl hate aces, and later when having the troll thing pointed out to them saying they already know. The post got over 3k notes.

“asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves”, with a second person in the thread agreeing

If you’re interested, some way back I also made a link-less post that is important to me talking about how nasty and harmful the racism and erasure of ace and aro PoC in all this has been

These are not even referring to more recent horrors that the exclusionist community has forced down our throats.

They don’t have a coherent definition of asexuality. Literally there’s no cohesive definition. None. Some of them say it’s people who feel no sexual attraction, some say it’s people who feel no sexual desire, some say you can have and enjoy sex and still be totally valid uwu, some say you can only have sex to please a partner, some say you have to be sex repulsed, the list goes on and fucking on. If we let in a group that has a definition that’s this fucking loose, we are opening the door for literally anyone to shoulder their way into this community.

I’ve already addressed this. There is a consistent definition. One Google search gets you that definition.

And even if there wasn’t, or if certain people reframe the definition to better mesh with their own personal experiences, why are you not extending this same rude-ass rhetoric towards bisexuals and pansexuals who constantly argue over the definitions of bi- and pansexuality? Why are you not extending this towards cis lesbians who argue if trans women can or cannot be WLW? Why are you not extending this towards cis gay men who argue if trans men can or cannot by MLM?

No one is ‘shouldering’ their way into any community. The asexual community is already a part of the LGBT movement. They’re not leaving just because you make rude posts like this.

Almost every single exclusionist I’ve spoken to has thought at some time or another that they were ‘demisexual’ or ‘grey-ace’ or some other bullshit ‘aspec’ term.

Exclusionists who do identified or have identified as asexual are not some sort of ‘gotcha’ for how the asexual community is bad. Once again, ace people expressing their experiences and suggesting to someone ‘you might be ace’ are not somehow homophobic or forcing people to be LGBT any more than the people in my life who told me I may be trans or agender were transphobic or forcing me to be trans or agender. If someone no longer identifies as asexual because of any given reason, that isn’t the fault of the asexual community for expressing that the option exists.

Have you ever spoken to an asexual who first found out about the definition of asexuality? Let me share my experience - when I first discovered the definition of asexuality and realized ‘oh, that’s me’, I sobbed tears of joy and relief for hours. I spent ages pouring over asexuality resources and participating in forums and embracing my new identity. And my experience isn’t some one-off thing - if you look into asexuality forums and websites, this is something many of us experience. In a world so overcharged with sexuality and people constantly telling us ‘you’re broken’, ‘you’ll find the right person’, etc, etc, an allosexual will never ever know what it’s like to have this feeling of relief that an asexual experiences when they first find out that’s an option.

Asexuality isn’t a spectrum. You either want sex/feel attraction to some degree (non-ace) or you don’t (ace). You don’t need a label for not wanting to fuck strangers. In fact, most people don’t want to fuck strangers. Demisexual is the norm!

“Why is there no coherent/consistent definition of asexuality???”

“Here is my (wrong) definition of asexuality! If you disagree with it you’re a homophobe!”

And that’s why the ‘asexual community’ should never be allowed in bc it’s an excuse for cishet people who don’t like hookups to invade spaces that were specifically made to get away from cishets.

We’re already allowed in. The ace community isn’t some out-group trying to get into the LGBT community. We’re here, and we’re staying, even when whiny exclusionists like you try to make these gotcha-style posts. Asexuals aren’t cishets, no matter how much you cry about it.

“Straight” isn’t a sexual orientation, it’s a position of power.

A-Spec Identities are Not Secondary.

Invisibility is Not a Privilege.

“passing privilege” is not a real thing.

Straight-passing privilege: a myth

Bad arguments against allowing a-spec to identify as queer

Having your identity erased is not a privilege.

asexuality, like bisexuality, is deliberately misunderstood by out groups in order to exclude us.

ace/aro people don’t “only” experience attraction to the ‘opposite gender’ or any other. that’s the point. we also experience a lack of attraction, either romantically or sexually, and that lack of attraction is part of our identity.

Straight is not default.

How many straight people do you know that want to kill themselves because of their orientation?

The closet is not a privilege

On that point—you can absolutely be ace and cishet. First of all, you can be asexual, cisgender, and heteroromantic (or aromantic, cisgender, and heterosexual). That’s pretty obvious. If you can have gay ace people, you can have straight ones. But that’s not even the most important point.

Yes, you can be a ‘cishet ace’, in the contexts you described. The reason people despise being called ‘cishet ace’ is because it’s being referred to in the traditional ‘cishet’ context of ‘non-LGBT person’.  Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.

Let’s talk about the marginalised sexualities in the LGBT community. Prior to the introduction of the wholly unnecessary, toxic, and damaging split attraction model (I’ll get into that on my next point), homosexual meant homosexual and homoromantic. The sexual suffix designated the sex of people you’re attracted to. Homo meaning same, thus, same sex attraction, because that’s how Latin works. Same for bi. Same for hetero, even. Asexual is the only one that attempts to redefine this system. It should mean a- (meaning none, or lack of), therefor attraction to no sexes. It’s pretty simple. But the pure aceys saw the sexual suffix and immediately thought ‘oh that means fucking right?’ And decided they had to change shit.

Once again, citation needed. Stop trying to redefine asexuality and speak on behalf of asexuals. Asexuality IS ‘attraction to no sexes’. You’re so desperate for material that you’re pulling shit out of your ass to pin on ace people.

The split attraction model is massively harmful. It encourages internalised homophobia and compulsive heterosexuality. My gay ass for AGES was like ‘I’m grey-ace homosexual biromantic uwu’ because I thought I couldn’t just be a filthy homo, I had to be special somehow, I had to make myself available to women in some way even if it wasn’t sexual availability. The SAM causes LOTS of developing LGBT kids to struggle with denying their own identities under the guise of embracing them through microlabelling. Among teenagers it’s almost like a damn contest, like who has the most obnoxious, convoluted label. It’s stupid and damaging.

Can you provide any non-tumblr sources about the SAM being problematic? Because I have only ever seen exclusionists on this hellsite trying to claim this. Additionally, your experiences are not universal, they are not a ‘gotcha!’ for the ace community, and they are not a valid argument. I spent 5+ years believing I may be transgender, before establishing I likely was not. I do not in any way blame the transgender community for making me think that way, because it was not the fault of any trans person for providing resources for me and supporting the possibility. Healthy exploration of one’s sexuality and gender is OKAY. It isn’t a bad thing, despite what exclusionists like to claim. If you identified one way for a while, and then no longer identify that way, that is HEALTHY EXPLORATION AND GROWTH, not internalized homo-/transphobia and not the fault of any asexual.

Also, the SAM is only commonly used amongst ace and aro people anyway, since it offers a chance for us to distinguish what kind of ace we are. If you can acknowledge that ‘cishet aces’ exist who are heteroromantic and asexual, then you shouldn’t have any issue realizing that biromantic, panromantic, homoromantic, etc aces also exist and may, you know, want to acknowledge that part of themselves? I am romantically interested in men and women - should I ignore the SAM and just call myself aro/ace anyway even when that isn’t an accurate description of who I am? Am I hurting myself by giving myself a more specific label?

Another serious topic I need to discuss: Ace advocates encouraging children and teens to identify as asexual. Literal children shouldn’t be experiencing sexual attraction. I’ve seen ace people telling a TWELVE YEAR OLD that she was asexual because she didn’t feel any interest in sex. She’s a child. Of course she didn’t. I was told when I was 14 that I was ace and I, being a vulnerable child, embraced the label and carried it til I was 17.

No one ‘encourages’ children and teens to identify as asexual, ESPECIALLY not children. Once again, someone saying ‘you might be ace’ is NOT forcing that label onto someone. YOUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT UNIVERSAL. YOUR HATRED FOR THE ASEXUAL COMMUNITY IS NOT A STANDARD.

I was 14 when I discovered asexuality. I was ruthlessly mocked in school for not having a boyfriend. Many people in my class were discussing how they had lost their virginity and the sexual endeavors they took part in. Yes, at FOURTEEN. 13+ year olds are not innocent children who do not experience any form of sexual attraction or libido. It is far more damaging for teenagers growing up to NOT know there is an option to be asexual and force themselves into dangerous and harmful sexual situations to ‘fit in’. The number of asexuals I know or have spoken to who were forced to have sex, send nude pictures of themselves, or otherwise been put in a sexual situation they didn’t want to be in, simply because they didn’t know that being asexual was a valid option that existed and thought they were broken, is immense. THAT is a unifying asexual experience that an allosexual will never understand.

The reason you can be too young to identify as asexual and not too young to identify as lesbian/gay/bi, is because LGB people experience attraction of ALL sorts to the gender(s) they are attracted to, and romantic attraction develops much earlier than sexual attraction (that’s why we have puppy love and not puppy lust). Asexuality as it is defined presently is purely about sexual attraction.

I thought you said there WAS no coherent asexuality definition? Can you at least try to have a coherent argument?

By your logic, 12 year olds who feel they are transgender and go on permanent body-changing hormone blockers/HRT that they may eventually regret are more valid than a 15 year old using the label of asexuality that they may eventually move away from without any damage. That is asinine.

Honestly it’s far more creepy that way exclusionists constantly talk about minors and sexuality. You guys are more obsessed with it than any asexual who suggests or acknowledges the existence of asexuality to someone.

Lastly, asexual and aromantic people absolutely deserve a sense of community, a sense of belonging. They absolutely need a place where they can interact with people who are like them! The problem is, LGBT people and ace/aro people don’t have that much in common. At all. We don’t face the same issues either. If LGBT people could make our community amidst serious legal and social ostracisation and oppression, without the help of the internet, ace/aro people can absolutely make their own community in the cyber age that is relevant to the issues they face so that they don’t talk over the serious topics the LGBT community discusses.

You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.

Bonus: This is a list of all the mainstream LGBTQ groups that include asexuals.

Also, we do have our own community, because every letter in the acronym has its own community and yet is still part of the acronym, and yet you fucking shits won’t stop sending us hate and bombarding us with shit meant to trigger and harass us.

I genuinely don’t expect you to read or attempt to acknowledge any of this - that’s simply the way exclusionists are. However, you are wrong. You are not helping anyone by being an ace exclusionist. You are simply a vocal minority and a bigot - nothing more, nothing less. 

A full list of resources and information can be found HERE for further reading.

[kuuderekun]

Magical Girl Site, Transgender Representation and The Batman Question.

Magical Girl Site, Transgender Representation and The Batman Question. 

For the second week in a row Magical Girl Site is the only show I really want to comment on.  But I'm still enjoying all the shows I'm currently watching. I mentioned in my Astolfo post how I don't use the term "Trap" to describe characters who are actually Trasngender.  The only problem with making that hard distinction is Japanese media doesn't always use the same terminology we use in the west, so it's not always clear what the writers are going for.  For example I'm still not sure what we're supposed to think of Ruka in Steins;Gate, I like that in the new series they seem more comfortable with their gender identity, but I'm still unsure what it's supposed to be. Episode 7 of Magical Girl Site introduced the character of Kiyoharu Suirenji.  Going off what we see in this episode alone I would have to conclude she is a Transwoman and not merely a Crossdresser because of her using the girl's bathroom and that being an issue.  I don't think a CisMale Crossdresser would use the girl's bathroom.  However her seemingly not objecting to others calling her a boy complicates the matter, but it could be she's just someone who doesn't want to get confrontational about it.  But I also could have missed something there since I'm watching it Subbed because there is no Dub. In the episode's MAL forum one user who's read the Manga says the character is definitely a Transwoman.  That user is defending using the proper terminology to refer to her.  However there is at least one user there being very blatantly Transphobic. Most of what we see of the character in the episode I like.  However we are given a glimpse of the character having a dark side, with her saying she'll get revenge in the distant future.  Now this is a Dark Magical girl show where most characters have something dark about them.  But I'm still recovering from the disappointment of my favorite Western TV show of all time, Pretty Little Liars blowing it with it's handling of this issue. People sometimes ask whether bad representation is better then no representation.  It is interesting that if this show had never brought the issue up I would probably have never singled it out to criticize for lack of Trans representation.  But as soon as they provide some representation it doesn't take long for me to start being on edge about her being mishandled.  I'd been praising the show for it's unsanitized depiction of Bullying, I should then be thrilled to see that theme expand to showing the bullying Trans Women endure.  But instead I'm worried about the implications of this character either turning evil or dying. But I now realize that, yeah, I should be criticizing Magical Girl shows for failing to include trans representation (and even Sailor Moon fails to include any true Trans representation, the Starlights were simply a gender bending gimmick).  They frequently try to have very diverse casts allowing many different kinds of girls to be magical girls, representing many different forms of the adolescent female experience in Japan.  I think we're long overdue for a Trans Magical Girl and it's unfortunate that the Dark Magical Girl Genre people are back lashing against now was the first to do it. This subject happened to be on my mind already before I saw episode 7.   You may have noticed I posted about a Batman movie that features The Riddler yesterday.  Well Batman and The Riddler being on my mind reminded me that back when I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what kinds of Batman films I'd make I had came up with a concept that re-imagined The Riddler as a Trans Woman.  But then decided that I wasn't comfortable casting a Trans character as a villain in our current climate. Homosexual representation in media has reached the point where you can have Gay villains without it automatically reinforcing the same harmful stereotypes that used to keep Gays only as villains or victims in American fiction.  But Trans representation, especially for Trans Women, has not, as clearly shown by what happened with Pretty Little Liars.  I absolutely believe the writers of that show had the best of intentions, they wanted to say Transphobia is the ultimate cause of the tragedy, but regardless Charlotte being the only Trans representation the show had left the LGBT community who at one point loved the show deeply offended. Ironically this Trans Woman Riddler idea had developed in my mind before season 6 of PLL happened.  And yet my vision for The Riddler was influenced by PLL before the Trans Woman aspect was a part of it.  PLL started airing back when Batfans were still hoping The Riddler would be in the third Nolan Batfilm.  And I from day one immediately felt how -A operated on PLL was a good reference point for how to "Nolanize" The Riddler. So in hindsight Charlotte DiLaurentis kind of resembles the Trans Woman Riddler concept I'd been thinking of.  And how that whole controversy helped shape how I think about this issue is probably a factor in why I dropped the idea.  Still my envisioned backstory for her (which I don't entirely remember) was far from identical.  And of course I also regardless of the character's gender or ethnic identity prefer The Riddler to not be a murderer.  It would be admittedly hard to keep that in tact when making The Riddler the main antagonist of a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, but I do think it's workable. So in that sense my Riddler was closer to Mona then Charlotte. But now I can't help but wonder if outright abandoning it was simply the Cowards way out (Realistically I'll probably never get to make a Batman film anyway, but this is hypothetical).  For example if I have good guys in the movie who are also Trans that could certainly help make it salvageable. Part of what was so harmful about the Charlotte story-line was caused by the need for it to be a twist, that the character who turned out to be "Charles" had been posing as a Cis Woman.  And that's the main problem with my initial concept here.  The starting premise before any Gender issues factored into it was allowing a Batman movie that's actually a Mystery/Detective story by having us not know who The Riddler is.  But I now realize that the concept can be reworked so that whatever name She is using before the reveal she can still be openly Trans.  The thing is I'm kind of killing that mystery aspect for future use by giving it all away publicly now.  Only way it could work for someone who'd read this post is if multiple Trans Women are in it.  Oh wait, that happens to also help fix keep her from being the only representation. The YouTube Channel FilmJoy did a video last year called The Batman Question which I watched today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwzE2J7bo0c&t It was about the idea of allowing more then just CisHet White Men to play Batman and other major Batman characters.  Janelle Monae was a choice brought up a lot, and she responded that she'd rather play The Joker. And that reminded me how members of Batman's Rouges Gallery are Pop Culture Icons and that almost every Actor wants an opportunity to play one.  And I personally would cast an actual Trans Woman to play the role (The Pedantic Romantic could make a good Riddler).  So perhaps we shouldn't exclude the Trans Community from being able to play those roles out of fear of how it can go wrong. The Riddler is often viewed as Batman's smarted nemesis, his greatest intellectual threat. After all Eartha Kitt wasn't counterproductive for Black Women.   KyleKallgrenBHH in his recent video on The Watermelon Woman talks about how for a long time Black Women weren't allowed to be Sex Symbols in America.  So in that context one getting to play the greatest Sex Symbol of American Pop Culture was downright revolutionary.  And so in today's climate maybe Catwoman should be the first Bat Rouge to consider allowing to be a Transwoman? You may ask, why was it that my mind went there for The Riddler first? Another question you may ask is, how would I handle naming this Transwoman reinterpretation of Edward Nygma? Well the answers to those questions are kind of the same. When I starting of thinking about what I'd do for a Nolanesque Riddler story.  I first decided "The Riddler" should be a name given to them.   They would identify themselves in their messages as simply -?  Again influenced by -A on PLL. Then I first started thinking about the character's Gender as I was playing around with the inherent pun of E. Nygma, and the idea entered my head to use the name..... ....... Annie Nygma...................... And from there I thought first just of making The Riddler a woman, an idea which technically had done before at least by Cosplayers.  But I also thought about having her use multiple names and for the sake of Nolan style realism not having any Nygma name be her birth name.  Then I heard of this Edward Nashton name that had emerged as an alternate name for The Riddler, I don't know who used it first but I heard of it via The Riddler Blogs, a fan film project derivative of The Joker Blogs. And then I thought about how Transmen and Transwomen naturally tend to change their names from what they were given at birth.  And so the idea popped in there to have Edward Nashton be the name assigned at birth, and Annie Nygma the name she chose when she accepted her Gender Identity, because she was into Riddles and Puzzles. I'm not Trans, I can't actually relate to these issues.  So I simply don't know what the right answer is.  Perhaps it's a good idea for me to put this experience out there and let someone who is Trans use it for their own Fanwork if they see value in it. Part of the reason I was ashamed of this for awhile is it didn't originate much from a place of caring about representation.  I've always been a believer in Trans rights, but it was in recent years I've become much more sensitive to this and other Social Justice issues. The more recent ideas I've come up with for characters who are Trans have been making them heroes.  Like the idea of the Vordenberg who Carmilla had a romance with being a Transwoman.  Or my desire to tell a story about Lancelot as a Transwoman (using the name Lanzelet), as well as Perceval as a Transman.  And my idea for a fictionalized French Revolution shared cinematic universe innovated using Chevalier d'Éon in the Captain America/Wonder Woman/King Kong role as the one who's origin story film is set in a previous era.  And interpreting d'Eon as a Noble Honorable and Heroic Transwoman, not doing weirder ideas like the Anime about her and Fate Grand Order do.  The only Fantastical aspect will be keeping the character young in the 1790s.

[yelloskello]

personal ramblings below

so a lil bit earlier my friend n I were talking about Gay Stuff and I mentioned to them how I don’t really get hyped for it anymore because a: I see it everywhere, every day, all day, and b: I don’t really feel much solidarity with the community, and then my entire car ride home I was thinking about it, so here’s like a big post on my feelings on the matter

I am like a checklist of everything that makes a bad queer person that neither The Gays nor The Straights want. I’m bi (just pick a side) in a long-term “”””het”””” relationship (you’re basically just straight). I’m genderfluid (the fuck is this mogai shit) with no dysphoria and only mild euphoria (hackles raise among tru//scum). I’m ace (bad, fake, cringy) and gray-aro (bad, fake, cringy). 

Best case scenario, i’ve been watching The DiscourseTM on this shit for months, and i’m burnt the fuck out. I don’t feel wanted anywhere. I feel bitter. I feel no connection to a community that has such a vocal chunk of it telling me i’m not welcome for one of the litany of things listed above, if not more. Worst case scenario, I feel like if I do actively celebrate being a member of the community, i’ll be seen as a CisHet Invader, fake, just wanting to be oppressed so badly, i’m not really a member of the gay club, get the fuck out.

Objectively, on a societal level, shit getting gayer is great. Almost every webcomic I read is either super queer or ends up turning super queer after a while. Gay shit is permeating popular media quickly, especially cartoons and shows for kids. I see books at barnes and noble nowhere near the LGBT section that include info about the female protagonist having a female love interest on the back cover. This is awesome. I will fucking fight cis straight people who will moan about this.

On a personal level, though, I don’t see myself in this shit. The only ace or aro people I see are either shown in an entirely negative light, or are written from a misinformed or ignorant perspective with little nuance or variation of How You Can Be Ace/Aro. Bi people only matter when they’re in a relationship with the same gender, and half the time when that happens people just erase the bi part. Genderfluid representation doesn’t exist, and if it does, it sure as hell doesn’t look like me. So like while it’s cool for some lady character to get a girlfriend, it’s hard for me to be hyped about it personally, because I don’t... See myself in her. 

I didn’t realize I was bi until after I was already in a long-term relationship with a dude, who is great, and i’m not gonna fuck up a perfectly good relationship for the sake of exploring my sexuality. I may never get to experience dating women or nb people. I’ve even missed out on being single and feeling justified and valid in openly talking about how gay I am, because it’s always gonna be tainted with that feeling of faking it. It’s important for me to see bi people being able to enjoy relationships with multiple genders, including the “””opposite””” gender, for this reason.

all this to say when I see people reveling in queer culture, I just don’t really feel connected to it for the aforementioned reasons. I’m a Bad Queer who feels tired and unwelcome. I’ll support the normalization of LGBT stuff in popular culture, absofuckinglutely, but I just can’t get excited or feel included until I see stories like mine out there. i’m on the sidelines and I feel like that’s where people want me to be.

this is just my personal issues with my little plot of trees in a much greater forest. i’m tired my dudes.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I have been reading and reblogging some of your posts and wanted to thank you for that detailed account. I have been out of fandom for a while, and antis really baffled me at first. But now I have a question: Could you talk some more about how current antis relate back to the LJ social justice scene and when the morph from debating fanworks to dissing people happened? Thank you!

I’m glad you’ve been enjoying this blog!

I think this reddit post does a nice job of summarizing the history of fandom and how it’s led to our current point. But I’m going to go more into how tumblr’s very structure led to a ‘race to the bottom’ sort of enacting of punishment via social justice.

Almost all of this is from personal observation, having been here since late 2010.

To get more into the actual history of it: Racefail ‘09 is the name given to the big, public 2009 debates about racism in genre fiction (published fantasy and sci-fi), which happened primarily on livejournal and private websites. (Racefail was itself the result of the rising awareness of social justice in the real world thanks to the democratization of information via the internet.) Racefail raised a couple of big questions: were non-white (and non-straight/non-cis/non-male) creators being silenced and erased in published genre fiction? And were the stories being told primarily racist/sexist/homophobic and lacking in representation for non-white/Western cultures (and LGBT+/queer/female stories)?

From everything I’ve read I feel like a lot of good came out of these talks; in particular, it greatly raised the awareness of social justice in genre fiction and fandom spaces - which had been there before, but not quite so prominent.  But one major bad came out of it: it revealed, via the shitty behavior of one member of the genre fiction community, how social justice could easily be used as a silencing tactic by applying arguments meant to dismantle power structures to individuals who may (or may not!) benefit from those power structures.

Fast-forward to 2010-2012 tumblr. LJ has undergone multiple journal purges and partial restorations, been bought out by a Russian company, and - final straw - changed the way anonymous threaded posts were handled, ending its value as a space for anon memes like kinkmemes. Fandom dispersed. A not-insignificant number of us eventually end up on tumblr, and those of us coming from LJ have brought with us a greater awareness of social justice, particularly lgbt/queer culture and feminism.

At the same time, Facebook has opened its doors to everyone instead of only allowing college students to use it. Facebook has almost single-handedly popularized the notion of making your offline life publicly available online.  Gone are the days of keeping your age, real name, and offline identity hidden; we share everything except maybe last names and exact locations.

Tumblr democratizes the fandom experience like never before. Livejournal and forums had moderators; tumblr has none.  Communities are gone - instead we have tags where people gather to talk about shared interests. People who previously felt shut out, forced to be ‘lurkers’ because they had nothing to say, could now have a blog and share the work of others via reblogging. The main way to gain social capital is by having the most followers and therefore the most widespread content.

But tumblr is a weird experience compared to other blogging sites because at the time it was the only one with a ‘reblog’ function. any one post can go absolutely viral and the people who see it beyond your immediate circle will lack the context of the rest of your blog. This means that either every single post needs to be entirely self-contained … or get wildly misunderstood. (Guess which one happens.) It also means that that the posts that spread the fastest and furthest are the short, witty ones or - you guessed it - the controversial ones. Finally, people tend to not fact-check - if something is interesting and seems believable, people reblog it uncritically. Tumblr’s dashboard structure actively encourages people to not leave their dash to look at provided external links - you’ll lose your ‘place’ on your endless-scrolling dash, and the little ‘home’ button in the corner is reminding you how many new posts have been created since you last refreshed. You don’t have time to fact-check.

Controversy without context is polarizing - without the original context, people provide their own context and agree or disagree based on a bunch of assumptions. Tumblr is a breeding ground for this. Opinions don’t get more nuanced - they get more vitriolic, more sharp and quick-witted.  And with people not bothering to fact-check or click linked information, misinformation spreads like wildfire.

The early experience of fandom on tumblr is one of widespread acceptance. Possibly because FB does this, people feel safe to share their age, sexuality, and gender on their tumblr profiles - and those identities get more and more specific as people learn more about gender identities and sexual orientations that are off the gender binary. People spread educational posts about queer/LGBT+ culture, feminist theory, and racism alongside fandom posts.  The importance of minority representation in the media is a hot topic and posts that criticize media for their lack of (or bad) representation get thousands of notes. Social justice theory - fighting the appropriation of colonized cultures by imperialists, promoting the voices of the oppressed over those of the privileged, the right to be angry because of the oppression and trauma you’ve experienced, not tone-policing people who have been hurt, and not erasing the experiences of others - are widely discussed.

A lot of good came out of this, too, but I believe a natural backlash resulted. Earnestly working to promote the voices of the least privileged and trying to avoid silencing or erasure, what started as an effort to even out the social strata gradually became a kind of reversed social strata. People who were oppressed on any axis could not be corrected by anybody of lesser oppression - it was considered to be silencing. People could not say their feelings had been hurt by a marginalized person’s word choice - that was tone policing. 

And this led to a secondary, and probably lesser conclusion: people who identified as ‘privileged’ - that is, white, cis, straight, mentally well, able-bodied, (and male) - felt guilty for all the privilege they had. and the promotion of marginalized voices over their own - the tendency to tell people, regardless of the validity of their points, that if they were privileged their voice did not matter - to escape their privilege, at least on tumblr.

I think we hit Peak Tumblr in 2012-2013-ish. Non-human and nonbinary identities proliferated. Asexuality awareness exploded, as did other lesser-known sexualities and paraphilias.  People wondered what it meant to be trans in a world with no gender binary. People self-diagnosed severe mental illnesses.  And this unto itself wasn’t a bad thing!   Probably many people learned a lot about themselves from the openness and acceptance.

However: there’s no way to know how much of this was from people self-discovering and how much was from people who realized that unless they had some axis of oppression they could point to they could be silenced.  And people were extremely open about these identities as well: despite all of the talk about social awareness, interactions on tumblr suggested that most people still assumed that everyone else was white, cis, straight, able-bodied and mentally well (and therefore completely unaware of social issues and in need of education). And due to how tumblr’s reblogging system could separate posts entirely from the context of the original poster’s blog and personal details, this assumption happened a lot!

Whatever the actual numbers of people who were self-discovering versus self-deluding, this extreme acceptance got its own natural backlash. It wasn’t possible for everyone on tumblr to be oppressed, but everyone on tumblr seemed to be finding some way to be marginalized - they weren’t cis, they were ‘a demigirl’. They weren’t straight, they were ‘gray asexual’.  There had to be some way to distinguish the real marginalized people from the fakers.*

Enter gatekeeping - which seems reasonable enough at first, given the sheer number of people who are claiming to be part of the marginalized club. People start making fun of ‘transtrenders’ and ‘starselves’ and say ‘heteroromantic demisexuals’ are ‘just normal’. People call one another ‘cishet’ specifically to erase their gender identity/sexual orientation.

This environment makes tumblr ripe for radfems, who greatly benefit from people putting limits on what identities other people can have. And radfems feed the gatekeeping mentality, leading to more and more policing of one another on tumblr instead of acceptance.  Instead of trusting others to be honest about their gender identity, sexual orientation, race or mental health, people increasingly decide the identity and experiences of others based on whether or not they say and do the right things.  Conversely, if you say or do the wrong things you are ostracized and your identity is erased using the reverse social strata of tumblr: ’cishet’ becomes shorthand for ‘ignorant asshole’ - and ignorant assholes are not to be listened to.

One no longer has to identify wrongly to have the wrong identity to be worth listening to. One only has to do the wrong thing.

So how does this tie back to debating fanworks vs dissing people?  Well: tumblr isn’t just the home of social justice. It’s also the home of fandom, and these two spaces heavily overlap.

Like our genre fiction friend that I mentioned back at the beginning of this long-ass post, tumblr had already begun - with the best of intentions - to silence people for having the wrong level of marginalization.  And when radfems and gatekeepers entered the scene, one’s level of marginalization became a function of how you behaved.  Now you had to behave right to have the right to be listened to - and fanworks, far from being the exception, are the rule for determining if people behave ‘right’ in fandom spaces.

In other words: debating fanworks/fan opinions and dissing people have become the same thing.  If a fanwork is for the wrong pairing, that makes a person a bad person.  And bad people are only able to create bad fanworks.

This attitude is how you get things like ‘if you ship [x] you’re straight’ and ‘oh, you ship [x], your opinion on this unrelated social justice issue is invalid’ or ‘i’m not surprised to find that this person is [x]-phobic, they created problematic fanworks.’

And that’s where we’re at today.

Man this is much. I’m sorry for your eyes.

*And in case it isn’t obvious, I think policing sexual orientations and gender identities is nonsense - demigirls and gray-ace people count as much as everyone else.

[kiramartinauthor]

Writer to writer, how do you go about creating characters who extend beyond your sphere of personal knowledge. I don't want to be one of those cishet white writers who only write cishet white characters, but equally as terrifying is misrepresenting whatever group I want to give representation to. Its a really big dilema for me because I have not been exposed to a whole lot in my life yet, so my go to point of reference for creating realistic human characters is myself. Please, any tips?

My main character is biracial, so I get ya. I am not Japanese, so I’ve done my best not to misrepresent Japanese people. As far as tips, this sphere of race/gender/sexuality/ability/etc, while scary on the outside, is much the same as any writing. And this is the part where I make a list. Because, well… lists.

1.    Find an understanding through research. This type of research is so important because you need to understand the culture of the group as well as what’s okay vs not okay. After all, your character would probably know all of this and it’s your job to represent your character as accurately as possible. For example, if your character is LGBTQ, you could start a polite dialogue with some out, open, and willing to talk LGBTQ folks. Ask them if they’d be okay with answering a few questions about your characters/concepts/etc. Many people (including my queer self) would be delighted that you would even care and be more than happy to help you. Just keep in mind that it’s best to get multiple perspectives on any topic because no one person is the Voice of Their People™. If you feel awkward about real life talk, internet talk works too. If you feel awkward about that, there’s plenty of resources just a Google search away—it’s just like any other part of the process.

2.    Make them human before anything else. Just because a character is, for example, a person of color, their entire identity doesn’t revolve around their skin color. Basing their personality off of one aspect of their life is a great way to make very stereotypical and offensive character. Obviously, people are more than just a single identity. Understand that there are many different people in the world and that just because some people are of the same race/gender/sexuality/ability does not mean they will all have the same experiences/personality/culture/etc. We’re all human first, so treat your character like a human. Also know that the problem isn’t only in who your character is, it’s in how you present them through their POV.

3.    Don’t preach what you don’t know. If you are not in the same demographic as your character, it’s best to avoid making the book’s main conflict about their experience with oppression within their demographic. Example: I am a cis woman, so writing a novel about a trans woman coming to terms with her gender identity is a hugely inappropriate. It’s so deeply intimate and not only would I have no fucking idea what I was talking about, but I’d be silencing the voices of those who are already oppressed. It’s great being an ally and all, but taking their stories and their struggles without having more than a skin deep understanding is not okay. Instead, use your privilege to lift up those identifying writers/stories and support the ever-loving shit out of them.

4.    Enlist beta readers. If you’re worried that people could take something the wrong way or that your character isn’t coming across right, enlist beta readers within that demographic that might be able to shed more light on it. Ask things like: “So this character has depression, did I present it right?” This DOES NOT mean to recruit allies and hang on to their every word. Allies are great, but they can be like over excited dogs. They just want to help you do the thing, but in the process, they can break EVERYTHING. Listen to them of course, but know that they have no better judgement than you—their voices are not the ones you should be following through on. Granted, it can be hard finding multiple identifying people who are willing to beta a whole book, so if you have non-identifying people saying a certain aspect of your book is ignorant/disrespectful/etc, listen to them and check in with someone who is open and willing to talk. (See #1.)

5.    Listen to the voices within the community. It’s that easy and it’s the most important one. Don’t magically cure disabilities. Say that your bisexual character is b i s e x u a l. Listen to what people within these groups have been saying forever.

All this being said, sometimes certain specific things can just plain not fit with your book’s plot/theme/characters/whatever. A lot of the time (especially in think pieces), being politically incorrect is used as a tool to shed light on the problems in the world around us, but know that some people might only see it as problematic. What you decide to do is ultimately your judgment call and you can only act with the best intentions. Hope this helped!

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