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hellomynameisbisexual · 4 years ago

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Dr. Lauren Beach was 14 years old when she/they first came out as bisexual. Beach revealed the truth to friends and curious classmates at her/their suburban Michigan high school. The reactions varied, but not many were affirming.

"I experienced a lot of people who eroticized my attraction to femme people. It's like, 'oh, you're bi. That's so hot,'" says Beach, who has a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, developmental biology and genetics.

Other friends asked Beach if she/they were doing it for attention. Beach says only three people, including Beach, at her/their school were openly out as queer. Instead of being embraced by them, Beach received flak for her/their sexuality.

"One of the other people there who was queer was like, 'You're a fence sitter! You're a switcher. You can't be trusted, you might date men after dating me," recalls Beach.

This kind of biphobia, which perpetuates stereotypes, hatred, and prejudices about bisexual people, is not uncommon — even (or sometimes especially) within the queer community. Stigma against bisexual people stems from a larger culture of homophobia, Rory Gory, digital marketing manager of the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, wrote in an email to Mashable.

"Since bisexuals often move between straight and queer spaces, they are subjected to both homophobia and biphobia," Gory explains.

Bisexual people make up a sizable population within the LGBTQ community, given more than 50 percent of queer people in America identify as bisexual, according to the Williams Institute. The think tank does research on sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure stereotypes don't influence laws, policies, and judicial decisions. To be clear, bisexuality means a person is attracted to more than one gender. It doesn't mean bisexual people are more sexually active than others or going through a phase (two common myths).

As a teenager, Beach bought into stereotypes about bi people. But now 22 years later, she/they are a professor at Northwestern University where she/they focus on the health of bisexual people and works to dispel myths about them. Additionally, Beach co-founded the Chicago Bisexual Health Task Force, a coalition that advances the heath equity of bisexual people.

Mashable spoke with Beach, and representatives from advocacy organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, and the Trevor Project to learn about the unique challenges bisexual people face and how to be an ally.

1. View bisexual people as individuals

It's easy to lump a single group together but resist that trap. Like anyone else, bisexual people are individuals and their personalities and preferences vary. As Beach says, "there's not one single experience of bisexuality."

For example, Beach is asexual or ace. This means Beach doesn't experience sexual attraction, but she/they are romantically attracted to people across the gender spectrum. One can be both asexual and bi, with some asexual people preferring to identify as biromantic. Although many asexual people are not interested in having sex, some may choose to engage in sexual activity; asexual people can have varied preferences and experiences. Beach's experience doesn't mean all bisexual people feel the same way.

Getting to know more bisexual people can help scrub away your pre-conceived notions. You could already have friends who are bisexual and not know it. Be open about your intentions to learn so you can tear down your misconceptions about bisexual people, Beach recommends.

"You'd be surprised by how many people are like 'Oh, I'm actually bi. Let's talk," says Beach. "From understanding the breadth of experience, you personalize people."

2. Challenge negative stereotypes

As you expand your knowledge about bisexual people, speak up when you hear people perpetuating harmful misperceptions. Sometimes we don't even know we've absorbed negative stereotypes if we're not informed, says Mackenzie Hart, coordinator of GLAAD's Media Institute, which advises media, television, and film professionals on accurate LGBTQ representation.

An easy way to interject when you hear a myth about bisexual people is to say, "Actually, that's not true, my friend who is bisexual does not fit that stereotype," suggests Hart. It can also help to arm yourself with accurate statistics to further back up what you're saying, says Madeleine Roberts, HRC's assistant press secretary. HRC is a helpful resource for these stats.

"Barsexual" is a hurtful label often used to demean bisexual people. It refers to the incorrect belief that bisexual people will only interact with certain genders when they are intoxicated, explains Hart. It upholds the myth that bisexual women are actually straight as it implies they only flirt or make out with women when drunk. It also contributes to bi erasure, which GLAAD says happens when "the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright."

You should also push back against the harmful stereotypes that bisexuals can't be trusted to commit to a relationship, says Gory. "Embrace bisexuals as valid members of the [LGBTQ] community, rather than referring to them as 'allies' of the community."

Additionally, you can be an ally by understanding certain words and promoting proper usage. For example, you can clarify the difference between bisexual and bi+. Bi+ is an umbrella term inclusive of people who are pan, queer, fluid, and those who don't prefer labels. Use the full acronym of LGBTQ rather than gay as an umbrella term for queer people, explains Roberts. By taking these steps, you can "create spaces where people are hearing these words," says Hart.

3. Healthcare providers need to educate themselves

One time, a clinician asked Beach how many sex partners she/they had.

"I was like, OK, what do you mean by sex?" says Beach. The practitioner questioned why Beach would ask this. Beach told the clinician she/they are bisexual and, therefore, needed clarification about what sexual behavior she was referring to.

"She got really uncomfortable and said 'deep vaginal penetration,'" says Beach. "She started off guessing. She said, "you seem like a nice girl. So what is it, like one or two people?"" says Beach. The provider then said, “So, what you’re saying is more than 30 or 40 people.”

"It shows how someone [in a healthcare setting] can make this jump based on biphobic stereotypes of what my sexual behavior would be,” explains Beach.

After that encounter, Beach never went back to that doctor. To this day, Beach doesn’t have a designated primary care provider.

“I have to work up the emotional energy to want to go put myself through that potential experience," Beach says about seeking out healthcare.

Beach's experience isn't uncommon. Biphobia may discourage bisexual people from going to the doctor, with 39 percent of bisexual men and 33 percent of bisexual women reporting that they didn't disclose their sexual orientation to any medical provider, according to a 2012 study by the Williams Institute. Comparably, 13 percent of gay men and 10 percent of lesbians did not share their sexual orientation with a doctor.

Providers shouldn't presume anyone's sexual behavior because they know their sexual identity, says Beach. Hart echoes this advice. A doctor once asked Hart, "Are you seeing anyone?" Hart said no. She then asked, "If you were seeing anyone, would you be seeing a woman, a man, either, or other?" It wasn't perfect, Hart says, but asking open-ended questions that are inclusive of gender nonconforming people made Hart comfortable enough to see her again.

"Even if you aren't sure of certain words... you can make it clear you aren't going to be judgmental and you understand there's a wide array of experiences," says Hart.

4. Uplift bisexual people of color

Roberts recommends following prominent bi+ people of color on social media such as singer and actor Janelle Monáe, NFL player Ryan Russell, writer and transgender rights activist Raquel Willis, and politician Andrea Jenkins to become familiar with their lives. The next step is to share their stories with your friends and family.

At last year's Academy Awards, actor Rami Malek won Best Actor for his portrayal of British singer Freddie Mercury. Malek described Mercury as gay during his acceptance speech but Mercury was actually bisexual. Willis called out the bi erasure in a tweet.

Of the four people Roberts listed, two (Willis and Jenkins) are transgender. Just like one can be asexual and bi, one can also be transgender and bi. In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality surveyed 27,715 transgender people from every state and D.C., U.S. territories, and U.S. military bases abroad and 14 percent of respondents described their sexual orientation as bisexual.

To ensure you're not erasing transgender bi+ people's identities, always use inclusive language like "siblings" instead of "brothers and sisters," says Roberts, when addressing people as if they're family. This guarantees you're not assuming every bi+ person (or anyone generally) identifies as either male or female.

Taking into account the role intersectionality plays in the lives of bi+ people is important — especially when you're looking to amplify their voices.

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ginmo · 5 years ago

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...This response took me a million years, because there’s so much textbook abuse and mislabeling that I was like where do I even fucking start and how do I come at this. I’m still not happy with my approach but here we go. Sorry. This is going to be long.

Why do people abuse?

Domestic violence and abuse stem from a desire to gain and maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abusive people believe they have the right to control and restrict their partners, and they may enjoy the feeling that exerting power gives them. They often believe that their own feelings and needs should be the priority in their relationships, so they use abusive tactics to dismantle equality and make their partners feel less valuable and deserving of respect in the relationship. [x]

Abuse is habitual. Everyone on the planet has either intentionally or unintentionally done an abusive act, emotionally or physically, in one of their relationships at some point in their life, but that doesn’t mean that relationship was abusive or that the pair was mutually abusive.

It’s also not uncommon for an abusive relationship to have a degree of abuse from both parties involved. Many victims will unconsciously do something abusive as an attempt to bring balance to the relationship and gain some control, but those incidents are isolated and not “habitual,” which puts them in the overall victim category.

In this abusive relationship:

Jaime is the main victim. Cersei is the main abuser. There’s nothing “mutual” about it.

“lmaoooo Jaime CHOSE to be in this relationship”

I’m aware that GRRM probably intended Jaime to totally jump in 100% by his choice, but that doesn’t change the fact that literally every person in an abusive relationship appears to have chosen to remain in that relationship. Hell, I knew my abuser was abusive before I even got into a relationship with him, but I did it anyway because, man, he was charming and persuasive. He unconsciously used that charm, manipulation, and seduction to keep me hooked while chipping away at my identity. Victims of abuse all have a choice, in theory, but the reality of it is messy, because there’s manipulation at play and a great degree of delusion.

Cersei is guilty of narcissistic abuse.

It’s perfectly valid to view Cersei as a narcissist. She obviously isn’t diagnosed with anything, but I’m reading her as a textbook narcissist so… let’s play. Before I dive into all the abuse, I’m going to dig into Cersei’s narcissism, because it plays into the interpretation of their dynamic.

“You can argue, well, does she genuinely love her children, or does she just love them because they’re her children? There’s certainly a great level of narcissism in Cersei. She has an almost sociopathic view of the world and civilization.” (Also look up: malignant narcissism and sociopathy)

GRRM then immediately makes a comparison to Jaime, contrasting their abilities to love.

“At the same time, what Jaime did is interesting.”

He goes on to describe Jaime’s action of pushing Bran, implying he did it out of genuine love for others (since he used the word genuinely for Cersei and then compared). [x]

“LMAO BUT JAIME IS A NARCISSIST TOO”

No lmfao. Someone can appear narcissistic at times and swing on that spectrum, but that doesn’t make them a narcissist or show they have “a great level of narcissism.” One of the main defining characteristics of a narcissist is a lack of empathy. I’m not even going to dig up all of the empathy examples, because the above comparison from GRRM should be enough to tell you he isn’t writing Jaime as a narcissist and going that route would take this way off topic. Just… read his chapters lol. You don’t even have to get far into his POVs to see empathy and how his thought process is intentionally written to be different than Cersei’s.

Anyway, my level of sympathy for Cersei is entirely wrapped around her narcissism. To me, what’s sad here is the idea she can’t experience true intimacy and is completely unaware of it. She loves Jaime, and I truly believe she believes she loves Jaime, but in reality it’s only at the capacity that narcissism allows.

Narcissistic Abuse:

“Narcissists don’t really love themselves. Actually, they’re driven by shame. It’s the idealized image of themselves, which they convince themselves they embody, that they admire. But deep down, narcissists feel the gap between the façade they show the world and their shame-based self. They work hard to avoid feeling that shame.

Many of the narcissist’s coping mechanisms are abusive — hence the term, “narcissistic abuse.” [x]

I mean… that’s kinda sad? I feel for her in that sense, but, as the article says, “Abuse is abuse, no matter the abuser’s diagnosis.”

Needs to Look Like Her

There are several examples of Cersei commenting on his changed appearance and how she doesn’t like it. That isn’t too weird, since people have their own personal preferences and hey, maybe she just doesn't like beards? But no. That’s not the case. She doesn’t like the changes, because it means he looks less like her. It 100% is about Jaime being male Cersei - an extension of herself.

“Nor did Jaime help her mood when he turned up all in white and still unshaven, to tell her how he meant to keep her son from being poisoned. - AFFC

“his face was thinner, with hollows under his eyes and lines he did not remember. I don’t look as much like Cersei this way. She’ll hate that.” - ASOS

(and lol so tempted to go into how Jaime’s facial hair is symbolic of his identity shift and how that relates to the separation with his twin).

“Jaime likes looking like Cersei too”

Oh does he? If that’s still so then why isn’t he shaving his beard for her?

Has he ever been disgusted by her looks? Does he ever look at siblings and get irritated if he thinks they look more alike? When he noticed his change in appearance did he think, “I hate that we look different” or did he think, “Cersei will hate that”...? (Also, when he thinks that he would be Cersei in fucking ASOS - *pre-handchop which is pre-arc-* that’s a laughably obvious set up for the identity aspect of his arc with that belief being destroy, you dense- ...*deep breath* moving on)

I’m sure he romanticized the looks to an extent, but it’s been made clear that it’s far more important to Cersei than it is to him, since she often makes note of his change in appearance. This is even shown in a scene where Cersei is observing Loras and Margaery and getting annoyed that they look more like twins than she and Jaime do.

For some context, Cersei was watching them dance.

“They could be twins, Cersei thought as she watched them. Ser Loras was a year older than his sister, but they had the same big brown eyes, the same thick brown hair falling in lazy ringlets to their shoulders, the same smooth unblemished skin. A ripe crop of pimples would teach them some humility. Loras was taller and had a few wisps of soft brown fuzz on his face, and Margaery had a woman’s shape, but elsewise they were more alike than she and Jaime.

That annoyed her too. -AFFC”

Narcissistic abuse includes emotional and physical and is used as an umbrella term for the two when they’re done by a narcissist, therefore slightly changing the context of the abuse.

I’m not going to pretend that GRRM sat down with a sexual narcissist checklist, created from the hours of research through his dinosaur computer, BUT he clearly is aware of basic narcissistic and abusive dynamics. It’s… really not that hard. And even if you don’t think he consciously did it, her behaviors are still aligned.

“LmAo CeRsEi’S ‘EvIL VaGiNa’ - MiSoGyNiStS!”

…manipulation through sex is an actual fucking thing that’s genderless.

Right lmfao this is going to be long.

“A sexual narcissist is a person who uses sex as a tool to emotionally manipulate their victims to get what they want.”

People admit that she uses sex as a tool to get stuff done, claiming its her form of power in the patriarchy. What they fail to consider is that Cersei does this frequently to Jaime - a person who is meant to be her lover - which… makes him a victim of narcissistic abuse. Don’t believe me?

I’m going to be using this article to break apart sexual narcissism. If you want more just research. They all pretty much say the same thing, but I chose this one because I prefer the structure. The article breaks examples into categories:

Sex is used to manipulate/persuade

Excessive focus on physical over emotional

You Exist to Serve the Narcissist’s Needs

Constantly Puts You Down

Reacts Negatively When You Don’t Give Them What They Want

Treats You Poorly / Neglects You After Sex

Infidelity, Violence, and Sexual Addiction

This whole post has been a nightmare to organize. Tbh most of the examples I’ll use fall under MULTIPLE categories. The scenes are like fucking Russian dolls of abuse. Or like… Abuse Inception. Abuse within abuse within abuse, so I had to just pick and choose which ones to put where.

Charming and Romantic – But with a Catch

“Many sexual narcissists can come across as alluring and attractive, especially during the initial stages of a relationship, when they’re trying to win you over. Like a master salesperson, they use charisma to get your attention, flattery to make you feel special, seduction (flirting, gifts, dinners, get-aways, etc.) to lift you off your feet, and persuasion to get you to give them what they want. Some sexual narcissists are very good in bed (at least they think they are), for sex is used as a tool to impress, entrap, and manipulate.

While there’s absolutely nothing wrong inherently with being charming, romantic, and a good lover, the narcissist crafts these traits in order to use others. He or she is not really interested in you, but only what he wants to extract from you (often to fulfill an inner emptiness due to the inability to create true intimacy).”

You can even find some meta that almost word for word says what’s described above, but they erase her doing this to Jaime - her partner- and frame these actions as feminist lol.

Eel Alley.

“But,” Jaime said, “there’s Casterly Rock …”

“Is it a rock you want? Or me?”

She then starts to seduce him to show him what he can have, to have the scale weigh in her favor. Manipulation through sex.

“He remembered that night as if it were yesterday. They spent it in an old inn on Eel Alley, well away from watchful eyes. Cersei had come to him dressed as a simple serving wench, which somehow excited him all the more. Jaime had never seen her more passionate. Every time he went to sleep, she woke him again. By morning Casterly Rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest.” - AFFC

There's no indication whatsoever that Jaime had any intent to NOT wed and be Lord of Casterly Rock. He wasn’t really into Lysa but he never straight up refused to take on the role he was born into. In fact, he even kinda fancied Catelyn lol.

“Lord Hoster kept me for a fortnight whilst mulling his reply, and sat me beside his daughter Lysa at every meal.”

“Small wonder you took the white. I’d have done the same.”

“Oh, Lysa was not so fearsome as all that.” She had been a pretty girl, in truth; dimpled and delicate, with long auburn hair. Timid, though. Prone to tongue-tied silences and fits of giggles, with none of Cersei’s fire. Her older sister had seemed more interesting, though Catelyn was promised to some northern boy, the heir of Winterfell …”

And lol

“but at that age, no girl interested Jaime half so much as Hoster’s famous brother, who had won renown fighting the Ninepenny Kings upon the Stepstones.” - AFFC

He doesn’t even say, “but at that age, no girl interested Jaime so much as Cersei.” No. The Blackfish. Had Catelyn been unbetrothed, it’s not a stretch to think that Jaime would have been entertained by the idea of their betrothal. This was before Cersei seduced him at Eel Alley.

“hE GaVe HiS ConSenT”

Yeah, after she manipulated him through sex LOL. IT’S RIGHT THERE.

“Jaime always wanted to join the KG!”

“He had joined the Kingsguard for love, of course”.-ASOS

(HEY! Just like that tall, blonde, “beauty” he’s been hanging out with HHMM)

He wasn’t going to join the KG before Cersei gave him “love,” which is why he was asking about Casterly Rock and talking about Tywin, as if this was an idea he hadn’t thought of before. (Knight and KG are not synonymous). He joined “for love” AFTER she gave him intimacy, showing him what he could have if he agreed to stay by her side forever.

She even murdered Melara -HER FRIEND- for saying she wanted to marry Jaime one day. She kept trying to rob Jaime of a life outside of her, and yes I use the word “rob,” because it was through narcissistic abuse. She literally turned up the passion and kept waking him up with sex until he gave his consent.

And “by morning” Casterly Rock was “a small price to pay.” A SMALL PRICE TO PAY. That means it was worth something of value to him and then “by morning,” after she woke him up over and over and over until he agreed, it became a “small price.”

Also keep in mind that when Cersei was begging Jaime to join the KG to be close to her, she was legitimately crushing hard on Rhaegar not long before... she’s allowed to fantasize about marriage with Rhaegar, but Jaime isn’t allowed to fit his role and marry?

“once she had drawn a picture of herself flying behind Rhaegar on a dragon, her arms wrapped tight about his chest. When Jaime had discovered it she told him it was Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys. [...] By night the prince played his silver harp and made her weep. When she had been presented to him, Cersei had almost drowned in the depths of his sad purple eyes. He has been wounded, she recalled thinking, but I will mend his hurt when we are wed. Next to Rhaegar, even her beautiful Jaime had seemed no more than a callow boy. The prince is going to be my husband, she had thought, giddy with excitement, and when the old king dies I’ll be the queen.” -AFFC

Like… fuck…

Later on, when Jaime is developing into his own being and becoming aware of the bs, the Eel Alley scene is brought up again.

“Cersei.” He spoke slowly, like a man waking from a dream, still wondering where he was. “What hour is it?”

“The hour of the wolf.” His sister lowered her hood, and made a face. “The drowned wolf, perhaps.” She smiled for him, so sweetly.”

There’s the use of charm. Normally you could argue that she was honestly happy to see him. But what does she say next and what does he associate with that encounter?

“Do you remember the first time I came to you like this? It was some dismal inn off Weasel Alley, and I put on servant’s garb to get past Father’s guards.”

“I remember. It was Eel Alley.” She wants something of me. “Why are you here, at this hour? What would you have of me?” His last word echoed up and down the sept, mememememememememememe, fading to a whisper. For a moment he dared to hope that all she wanted was the comfort of his arms.”

And he wasn’t wrong. She did want something from him. So no. It’s not in his head.

“Jaime, Kevan has refused me. He will not serve as Hand [...] “You must be Tommen’s Hand.” -AFFC

This time he realizes what she’s doing. Using her outfit, she’s causing a recall to a past manipulative event that worked, exposing her intent, which is why Jaime immediately recognizes it as something she wants from him. This also implies that he now views their encounter at Eel Alley as Cersei wanting something of him since the two encounters were directly associated.

Here’s another moment of manipulation by a sexual narcissist.

“My sister wanted the girl to lose a hand. The old penalty, for striking one of the blood royal. Robert told her she was cruel and mad. They fought for half the night … well, Cersei fought, and Robert drank. Past midnight, the queen summoned me inside.”

Failing to get Robert to side with her and do something, she then summoned Jaime to give him the attention she knows he wants. You see where I’m going here?

“The king was passed out snoring on the Myrish carpet. I asked my sister if she wanted me to carry him to bed. She told me I should carry her to bed, and shrugged out of her robe. I took her on Raymun Darry’s bed after stepping over Robert. If His Grace had woken I would have killed him there and then. He would not have been the first king to die upon my sword … but you know that story, don’t you?” He slashed at a tree branch, shearing it in half. “As I was fucking her, Cersei cried, ‘I want.’ I thought that she meant me, but it was the Stark girl that she wanted, maimed or dead.” The things I do for love. - AFFC

This isn’t Jaime interpreting the incident incorrectly. This is character growth.

GRRM is speaking through Jaime by destroying the illusion and becoming aware of the reality he has been living. Because the lights are turning on for him, the things I do for love can take on a new meaning here. It’s more like the things I do to earn intimacy. He’s jogging down memory lane and realizing that every time (shown or told about in the books) she approached him she was trying to get something from him or trying to get him to agree with her. There was always a motive apart from a genuine desire to give and receive love, no strings attached.

Excessive Focus on Physical Over Emotional

“The sexual narcissist’s style of love-making is often focused on appearance and image, with a keen dislike for flaws and weaknesses from oneself or the partner. The love-making is less about two human beings connecting, and more about measuring up to idealized expectations. Try as the sexual narcissist might at physical grandiosity, there’s inevitably something missing in their performance: genuine human emotions.”

Mm yes.Going back to this as an example:

“his face was thinner, with hollows under his eyes and lines he did not remember. I don’t look as much like Cersei this way. She’ll hate that.” - ASOS

“The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel … whole.” - AGOT

“I need you. I need my other half.” He could hear the rain pattering against the windows high above. “You are me, I am you. I need you with me. In me. Please, Jaime. Please.” - AFFC

People use Cersei’s romanticized twin comments as evidence to show that she genuinely loves Jaime. This also can connect to the GRRM quote mentioned above about her genuine love capabilities which can be argued as “lol no”.

She does not have “genuine human emotions,” because her words and feelings are from a narcissistic desire to be whole through the idea that Jaime is an extension of herself. So… yeah, if she thinks Jaime is herself as a male (“you are me, I am you”), then she’s missing half of her until he’s inside her, making her whole. Her, her, her, her.

Also, that’s a move to try to strip him of his own identity, his own person, and is a fucking massive red flag that this is how the relationship began. Does he ever try to persuade her to do shit by reminding her that they’re the same person? Like ffs.

She does this while trying to manipulate him using sex. He’s not listening to her, so she begs him to be inside her. Hey, why not? We’ve seen this work before.

“Every time he went to sleep, she woke him again. By morning Casterly Rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. He gave his consent, and Cersei promised to do the rest.” - ASOS

You Exist to Serve the Narcissist’s Needs.

“After the initial courtship period during which he or she tries to impress and please, a sexual narcissist may begin to demand that you cater primarily to his own selfish needs. He may expect you to be “on call”

Okay I bolded that “on call” bit, because she does go to him when she wants something, and then gets hella mad when he refuses. But I know some people will use this to be like BuT JaImE TaKeS hEr WhEn He WaNts and like.. Yeah, fair enough, you can make that argument, but… that’s leaving out context. He goes to her because she’s withholding intimacy and only initiates when she wants something from him. I’m going to play devil’s advocate and say it does fit. Remember what I said in the beginning that it’s not uncommon for victims to act in ways that are problematic (hate that word) to try to get back some control? Yeah. Apply this here. His unhealthy response is a reaction to her using intimacy as a tool.

“and satisfy sexual desires at his pleasure, require you to engage in sexual acts which only he enjoys [doesn’t really apply], or demand that you limit your other activities to be more available. Rather than being an individual with your own thoughts, feelings and priorities. The sexual narcissist expects you to exist merely as an extension of his or her wishes. ”

Cersei resents Jaime for disagreeing with her and thinking on his own. Literally the “you are me” bs and how she gets really angry when he begins to challenge her and goes against her wishes. She views him as someone who needs to cater to her, All he’s doing for her to slap and throw nasty words and cups at him is just... not doing what she asks him to do... his existence in Cersei’s life is simply to cater to her.

Constantly Puts You Down

“In order to put up a facade of superiority, and disguise hidden insecurity and inadequacy, some narcissists will constantly put other people down, to boost their own desirability and acceptability. In a sexual relationship, some (but not all) narcissists may also target their partners for ridicule, blame, shame, sarcasm, and overall marginalization. By subjecting the partner to an inferior psychological position, the narcissist is able to exercise a greater degree of dominance and manipulation.”

I mean… Do I really need to provide examples here? This is actually similar to the next one, so I’m going to put my examples there.

Reacts Negatively When You Don’t Give Them What They Want

“Since many sexual narcissists can't stand disappointment or rejection, they will frequently react negatively when you don’t give them what they want, in the way they want it. Some of the common responses include:

Anger – Tantrum. Negative judgment. Personal attacks. Ridicule.

Passive-Aggression – The cold shoulder. The silent treatment. Withhold of love and affection [which ties in to withholding intimacy examples I provided above]. Sarcasm. Calculated separation.

Emotional Coercion – Blame. Guilt trip. Calling the partner ungrateful. Threaten to withhold love and intimacy (such as it is). Pretend narcissistic victimhood.

None of these responses are those of a mature, reasonable adult. The sexual narcissist, by acting like a petulant child or a bully, hopes the drama and manipulation will hook you back in, so you’ll once again “belong” to him or her.”

Some of this is physical abuse too, so I’m sticking those under here. And yes, slapping counts as physical abuse and it doesn’t matter who the hell does it.

“Rule? I said naught of ruling. I shall rule until my son comes of age.”

“I don’t know who I pity more,” her brother said. “Tommen, or the Seven Kingdoms.” She slapped him. Jaime’s arm rose to catch the blow, cat-quick … but this cat had a cripple’s stump in place of a right hand. Her fingers left red marks on his cheek. - AFFC

Keep in mind that every time Jaime’s reflex goes to his face to block a blow it’s a sign that this is a behavior he’s used to. Sometimes people use the, “I don’t know who I pity more” line as well for “mutual abuse.” Context and… where’s the lie? Lmao.

Most of the time he’s being straight with her. Snarky ass? Sure. Abusive? No. Intent is key. She puts him down to shame him and attempts to decrease his self-worth. This is a control move, because she throws cruel words at him when she is unsuccessful in getting what she wants. He sometimes calls her a fool and one time asks if she’s drunk or stupid, because she’s legit spiraling into a paranoia and he’s going wtf lol. He’s not trying to make her dependent on him through the use of his poor language.

Anyway, back to physical.

Jaime felt his anger rising. “True, Loras does not leer at your teats the way Ser Osmund does, but I hardly think—”

“Think about this.” Cersei slapped his face. Jaime made no attempt to block the blow.

“I see I need a thicker beard, to cushion me against my queen’s caresses.” He wanted to rip her gown off and turn her blows to kisses. He’d done it before, back when he had two good hands.”

People love to use this against Jaime. Ffs. He’s literally trying to fucking defend himself from physical abuse by trying to diffuse the situation through sex, turning “blows to kisses.” This is one of those messy situations where it’s a victim trying to gain back control in an unhealthy, arguably abusive way. Does that make them anywhere near “mutually” abusive as if they’re 50/50? LMFAO no.

“Would Your Grace honor her white knight with a dance?” She gave him a withering look. “And have you fumbling at me with that stump? No. I will let you fill my wine cup for me, though. If you think you can manage it without spilling.” - AFFC

She turns him down with her disgust over his missing hand and then allows him to fill her cup I-

“Get out, I said. I am sick of looking at that ugly stump of yours. Get out!” To speed him on his way, she heaved her wine cup at his head. She missed, but Jaime took the hint.” - AFFC

Alright this big one…

WST:

“You mustn’t let Father take him from me. Jaime, please.

“I can talk to him, but he will not listen …”

“He will if you agree to leave the Kingsguard.”

“I’m not leaving the Kingsguard.” His sister fought back tears.

“Jaime, you’re my shining knight. You cannot abandon me when I need you most! He is stealing my son, sending me away … and unless you stop him, Father is going to force me to wed again!”

Guilt tripping and playing up the loving language.

Also, off topic, but I just want to point out that it’s funny Cersei came to him in Eel Alley to persuade him to join the KG to be with her. Jaime said they can’t get Tywin’s approval, so then she fucks him all night and he agrees. They played as lovers before that moment, but that was the night that sealed their affair to one another, to remove himself off the market and stay by her side forever. In this scene, she’s coming to him to ask him to LEAVE the KG, knowing Tywin would approve, and when he’s questioning the idea she tries to have sex with him, BUT he refuses her so her plan doesn’t work, making this moment the solid beginning of their downfall lmao. The opposite of Eel Alley.

“It makes no matter who they wed me to, I want you at my side, I want you in my bed, I want you inside me. Nothing has changed between us.”

Increasing the level of manipulation through intimacy since her previous persuasive strategy wasn’t working.

“Let me prove it to you.” She pushed up his tunic and began to fumble with the laces of his breeches. Jaime felt himself responding.

“No,” he said, “not here.” They had never done it in White Sword Tower, much less in the Lord Commander’s chambers. “Cersei, this is not the place.”

“You took me in the sept. This is no different.”

She drew out his cock and bent her head over it. Jaime pushed her away with the stump of his right hand. “No. Not here, I said.” He forced himself to stand. For an instant he could see confusion in her bright green eyes, and fear as well. Then rage replaced it.

Angry reaction due to refusal of sex. Childish reaction from not getting what she wants which quickly turns into bullying.

Cersei gathered herself together, got to her feet, straightened her skirts. “Was it your hand they hacked off in Harrenhal, or your manhood?” As she shook her head, her hair tumbled around her bare white shoulders. “I was a fool to come. You lacked the courage to avenge Joffrey, why would I think that you’d protect Tommen? Tell me, if the Imp had killed all three of your children, would that have made you wroth?”

Lol people thinking she was there to hang out with him. She admits to only being in there to ask something of him. “I was a fool to come.” Don’t miss out on the angry, nasty response because she was rejected and couldn’t use her favorite go-to manipulation tactic.

“You great golden fool. He’s lied to you a thousand times, and so have I.” [...]

“You had best go, Cersei. You’re making me angry.”

“Oh, an angry cripple. How terrifying.” She laughed. “A pity Lord Tywin Lannister never had a son. I could have been what he wanted, but I lacked the cock. And speaking of such, best tuck yours away, brother. It looks rather sad and small, hanging from your breeches like that.”

She’s trying to establish superiority by attempting to break him down, using his disability against him and attacking his manhood.

More?

“Gold? Or silver?” Cersei plucked a hair from beneath his chin and held it up. It was grey. “All the color is draining out of you, brother. You’ve become a ghost of what you were, a pale crippled thing. And so bloodless, always in white.” She flicked the hair away. “I prefer you garbed in crimson and gold.” - AFFC

I mean…I think that’s enough.

lol jk

“Tell him what has happened, and write … write …”

“Yes, Your Grace?” She licked her lips, shivering. “Come at once. Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.”

“As you command. ‘I love you’ thrice?”

“Thrice.” She had to reach him. “He will come. I know he will. He must. Jaime is my only hope.”

“My queen,” said Qyburn, “have you … forgotten? Ser Jaime has no sword hand. If he should champion you and lose …”

We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. “He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake.” - AFFC

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SHE

FUCKING

THOUGHT

ABOUT

HOW TO WORD IT

TO GET HIM TO COME BACK

SHE CONSCIOUSLY, FORMULATED A PLAN TO WRITE “I LOVE YOU”

SPECIFICALLY THREE TIMES

TO “REACH HIM.”

SHE. LITERALLY. ADMITS. TO MANIPULATING HIM. THROUGH EMOTIONS.

“Come at once,” she said. “Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.”

Vyman was hovering by the door, waiting, and Jaime sensed that Peck was watching too. “Does my lord wish to answer?” the maester asked, after a long silence. A snowflake landed on the letter. As it melted, the ink began to blur. Jaime rolled the parchment up again, as tight as one hand would allow, and handed it to Peck.

“No,” he said. “Put this in the fire.”-AFFC

And Jaime had so much character growth by that point that IT DIDN’T FUCKING WORK LMAO. Her game isn’t working anymore. And not only is she trying to manipulate him through loving words, she’s also NOT GIVING A FUCK ABOUT HIS LIFE OUTSIDE OF HERSELF, because she’s acknowledging that if she’s going down then she’s taking him with her. T

he loving thing to do would be, “Jaime, I won’t allow you to be my champion. You’re missing your good hand and can’t win. I don’t want to be the one to cause your death.” But Cersei never gave a shit about his life outside of her so... not a shocker. (Also I just lmao that around the same time Cersei is trying to get Jaime to come back for his death sentence, Brienne is out there willing to literally hang by a noose to save him. Great contrast.)

On to Jaime…

I did a bit of research to see why the fuck people think Jaime is abusive towards Cersei. Almost all of the examples involve their type of sex play, his thoughts (WHAT LMAO), and… not understanding the difference between toxicity and abuse. Abuse is always toxic, but toxicity isn’t always abusive.

I’ve been in both an abusive and toxic relationship and the difference was that my partner in the toxic one wasn’t trying to establish constant control through various different methods. He wasn’t using me for his own gain or trying to make me feel like garbage about myself. He didn’t become physical when I went against him. In my non-abuse toxic one, we were like each other’s “drug.” Extreme highs and lows, propping each other up on a pedestal, losing ourselves within the relationship by wrapping our happiness around the other. The twins are definitely toxic, mutually, but some of Jaime’s unhealthy behaviors are confused with abuse and, ironically, his more questionable actions stem from Cersei’s abuse on him.

Quoting this again since it’s like a million pages up:

Why do people abuse?

There is a difference between UNHEALTHY/TOXIC and ABUSIVE.

Don’t come at me about the patriarchy being the reason why Cersei can’t be abusive towards Jaime (yes… I’ve actually seen that hot take). Within their own personal dynamic, Cersei has power over Jaime just by the nature of him being in the KG. She literally uses her position to tell him where to go and what to do, and even oversteps her boundaries sometimes by giving orders for him.

As stated above, she manipulated him into joining the KG with implied promises of being together always. She then had affairs behind his back, used intimacy to persuade him, and cruelly put him down when he didn’t want to do the things she asked of him. That’s Cersei trying to maintain control of their dynamic. This is a “pattern of behavior” that dates back to at least Eel Alley.

Unhealthy/Toxic

There isn’t a clear line when a relationship becomes unhealthy or abusive. This means it might be hard to figure out what kind of relationship you’re in. Remember that abuse is all about power and control. An unhealthy relationship might involve a power imbalance, being mean, ignoring boundaries [x]

Unhealthy behaviors can appear to be abusive behaviors, and certain toxic acts can turn into abusive over time, but they’re not the same thing.

For Jaime’s side of the “abuse,” he falls more often into the “unhealthy” category. I’m going to respond to a meta I came across recently.

“Jaime has channelled all his sexual desire into Cersei for most of his life (even thinking “I’ve been too long away from Cersei” when he experiences some arousal upon seeing Brienne naked), and that is not something one partner should put upon another. He judges the attractiveness of other women in reference to Cersei: Brienne, once, and Hildy the sex worker in ADWD. Cersei is a person, not a standard of idealised beauty.”

People twist the entire context to make him appear to be somehow abusive in a situation that actually…. sounds like a victim. Cersei wants that level of devotion from Jaime (and so do some of her stans), which is literally exactly why they don’t think Jaime and Brienne are a love story and why Cersei is like LMAO HER? Jaime would never leave me for that creature! SHE’S UGLY.

She lived her whole life knowing that Jaime only had eyes for her, and the irony of “not a standard of idealised beauty” is that Cersei wants to be the standard of idealised beauty. He’s not “putting” anything on her. He’s reflecting what she wants and what has been reinforced since childhood.

Besides that, I don’t see why it’s so wrong for Jaime to think Cersei is the most beautiful woman on the planet lol. And way to miss the entire fucking point, because the point is that YEAH, their entire relationship is superficial. Superficiality is unhealthy to an extent, but it’s not “abusive.” Jaime has only been with one woman his entire life and now he’s finally starting to encounter women away from his sister, so of course he’s going to compare. It’s like if you never left your town but one day decided to venture out into the world outside of it. You’re going to compare the buildings, the culture, etc because your mind is going to be expanding.

“ Until late in ASoS, he does not value his Kingsguard vows except as they allow him to be close to her. (Again, mutually abusive relationship; Cersei’s actions were vital in getting him into this position where he has nothing but her.)”

HOW IS THIS ABUSIVE ON JAIME’S END? And I already discussed how she manipulated him into that situation with Casterly Rock being something of value to him.

“Cersei has no meaningful relationships with anyone or anything outside of Jaime and her children. This is bad for both of them. So much of their emotional energy goes into each other, fostering the sense that they are not independent, whole people, and reinforcing the sense that the relationship is the only thing of value in their lives.”

Yeah! It is! And since Jaime is in the KG because Cersei convinced him to join, and she literally murdered her friend because the girl expressed wanting to marry Jaime, I WONDER WHY JAIME HAS NO FUCKING LIFE OUTSIDE OF CERSEI? As for Cersei, she CHOOSES to limit herself to Lannisters. Jaime isn’t forcing her to not have friends what the actual fuck. Cersei murders her friends lmfao.

This is unhealthy, not abusive, on Jaime’s end. HE isn’t the one “fostering the sense that they are not independent, whole people.” As explained above, CERSEI is the one repeating this over and over, using it to convince him, to control, to attempt to rob him of his identity when he tries to stray. So on Cersei’s end, yeah, that’s abuse.

“For all his idealisation of her and their relationship, Jaime’s trust in Cersei is also a very brittle thing. When Tyrion tells Jaime “she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know,” while still believing Cersei’s declaration that Tyrion has “lied to you a thousand times, and so have I” was “a clumsy attempt to hurt him,” he doesn’t do what someone in a healthy relationship would do, and ask her. Whatever trust he has in her vanishes in two sentences, one about Cersei’s honesty, one about her fidelity.”

And… his… lack of trust was justified anyway? LMAO. He even thinks at some point that Tyrion IS lying. And when he’s away from Cersei in ASOS, he doesn’t imagine her fucking other people while he’s gone, because he trusted her. He genuinely believes that she’s faithful to him (which is precisely why he felt so betrayed). But he also trusts Tyrion, so he went back and forth, wondering wtf was the truth.

AND HOW THE FUCK IS LACK OF TRUST ABUSIVE? This is another case of IT’S UNHEALTHY to have little to no trust in your relationship. Not abusive ffs (!!!)

“Jaime is abusive because he coerces her into sex”

BTW, a person who laughed at me and said this also is a huge twincest shipper which… why… do you… romanticize it and claim their love to be True.. If… you think… he does that?!

Pretty much everyone brings up “sexual coercion.” And you know what? Fair.

But... Jaime and Cersei are drawn to a messy push-pull sex play. She says no and then “weakley” pushes him away.

There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He watched, wide-eyed and frightened, his breath tight in his throat. The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her throat. “Stop it,” she said, “stop it, stop it. Oh, please …” But her voice was low and weak, and she did not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast. -AGOT

This is GRRM trying to clarify that this is their messy sex dynamic. I mean, he has a fucking little kid observe this all “oh hey but she isn’t pushing him away guys! It’s all good, guys! That’s just them!” Like he’s taking down notes. The 4th wall being broken here is almost jarring.

This sounds a lot like the scene at WF.

“No,” she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons …”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference. “Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.” She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei’s heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined. - ASOS

In both scenes she’s weakly protesting which implies it’s a form of their sex play, and she’s being turned on by him “taking” her. This depiction of sex was actually really trendy in the media not too long ago, so honestly the sex scenes for this “edgey couple” just exposes his age. That push-pull, yes/no, “he can’t resist me” wasn’t nearly as controversial as it is now. He was literally writing what used to be seen as hot. It obviously did not age well.

And GRRM never meant for Jaime to be interpreted as a rapist.

"If the show had retained some of Cersei's dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression – but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline. That's really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing … but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons." [x]

“Jaime thinks of her as a whore”

WHY IS THERE A THOUGHT POLICE? How is it abuse that he thinks a word with zero abusive action attached to it?? And like fuck LMAO Cersei is the one that goes off with the word “whore” quite often, in a misogynistic way.

What’s even stupider is when Jaime thinks of her as a “whore,” he’s just reciting what Tyrion told him, word for word. The words came from Tyrion, so Tyrion’s words are playing out in his mind.

“Cersei is a lying whore, she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son.” - AFFC

Oh, how Tyrion was sniggering.… a lying whore … fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack … - AFFC

And he even removes the whore bit.

“If so, we might have coaxed the truth from them.” … she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know … - AFFC

Ser Osmund Kettleblack paced beside them in his white enamel plate and white wool cloak. “… she been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know …” - AFFC

Jaime could feel his phantom fingers itching at the sight of him.… fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know … - AFFC

Strong and vigorous and handsome, Jaime thought.… she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know … - AFFC

He wanted to kiss her, carry her to her bedchamber, throw her on the bed … she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy … - AFFC

That only made her laugh. “We all have secrets, brother,” she replied. … she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know … - AFFC

Now there’s this time where he says,

Jaime gave a shrug. “My apologies if I mistook you for something you’re not. My little brother has known a hundred whores, I’m sure, but I’ve only ever bedded one.” -ADWD

OMG EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING NOW IT’S TIME TO OFFICIALLY STAMP HIM AS A MISOGYNIST AND THIS AS MUTUAL ABUSE towards someone who isn’t even fucking there and for bitterly thinking of his cheating partner as a whore in a world that throws that word around like it’s candy at a parade.

Since “whore” in Westeros is more loosely thrown around than it is in our world, the incredibly hurt and angry Jaime thinking she’s a whore for sleeping with multiple people behind his back is not that fucking wild. Do I think that's sexist? Yeah. Do I think it’s healthy? No. Do I think it’s a realistic response that a very hurt person would think, especially in a world where it’s a common term? Absolutely.

“He dreams about hurting her though so lol he’s clearly violent against her”

(yes I’ve unfortunately seen this a lot)

Hey all... I have a confession to make...

I dreamed about pushing a certain politician in front of a bus and bashing D&D’s teeth in. I also had a dream where I kicked my sister because she ate my last piece of cheesecake. I’m so sorry. Please lock me up and throw away the key until it’s time for me to be executed.

Last night he dreamed he’d found her fucking Moon Boy. He’d killed the fool and smashed his sister’s teeth to splinters with his golden hand, just as Gregor Clegane had done to poor Pia. -AFFC

… he DREAMED it.

PEOPLE ARE FUCKING USING THIS AS EVIDENCE FOR MUTUAL ABUSE BECAUSE HE DREAMED IT.

You know partly why? Because they THINK he’s going to murder her or harm her, so they’re prematurely calling him abusive and removing literally all the context because... IT HASN’T HAPPENED. They’re essentially accusing a man of doing something before he even does it without even knowing FOR SURE if he’s even going to do it, USING THIS DREAM TO ACCUSE HIM LOL.

god THIS FUCKING FANDOM I-

DREAMS. ARE NOT. ABUSE

I’mcryingwhydoIhavetosaythat

Not only is it in a dream, but like, idk, why do you think he’s having those violent dreams? Did she do something to really hurt him so his pain is manifesting in his subconscious as violence? IDK just a wild guess! Maybe he specifically thought about smashing her teeth in, because just previously they were speaking about how Ser Gregor did the same thing to Pia. You know... kinda like me dreaming about angrily pushing my cheating ex down the stairs after I watched a murder mystery documentary where someone was pushed down a flight of stairs. (Oh but my ex was a man, so it’s just viewed as a dream).

… the cringe of the thought police...

Yeah. I’m done. I didn’t even dig up all of Cersei’s instances of abuse and this thing is like fucking 20 pages long. So even IF you view Jaime’s thoughts (!!!!) as abusive and IF you believe he was full on coercing or raping her, they still aren’t nearly MUTUALLY abusive, as in 50/50 abuse, and I’m just going to circle back around to what I said in the beginning about the main victims reacting in problematic ways.

Anyway. I always start these as calm and cool and then end with all caps and a glass of wine to chill me out. All I have left to say about whatever that “mutually abusive” meta was is

#longest one I've ever done heads up LOL #jaime lannister #asoiaf #probably have a million mistakes and a thousand regrettable things but I'm tired and want this done #but honestly thanks anon #I was legit wanting to write about this for a long time #abuse

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fagsystem · 4 years ago

Text

It's been a couple years but like Noah just made his video reflecting on his mistakes and apologizing for it and he's right, it's a healthy excerise to do. I don't know whether or not I directly invalidated or hurt anyone, I have memory problems and I can't remember. Regardless, I held these believes and that is more than enough to apologize for.

TW: transphobia, biphobia, aphobia, racism, cultural appropriation. I don't know what being a jerk to otherkin folk is called, but that too.

Here's some things I'm sorry for having believed in the past:

I'm sorry I believed microlabels are stupid. They're not and I use a few myself. It's just a way of turning your experience into something tangible and finding others like you, to feel less alone.

Similiar to the last one, I'm sorry I used to dislike the mogai community. I used to blame transphobia on them and that's not okay. It's never been the fault of trans people.

I'm sorry I used to make fun of neopronouns. I believed that's why I was experiencing transphobia, I blamed it on trans people just living their lives. Not only did I ignore the history of neopronouns, but I acted as though I had authority on other's experinces. I don't. It doesn't matter how arbitrary the pronouns. If it makes someone comfortable and they want to use them, then it's not up to me to ask why or find some scientific reason, it's up to me to respect them and validate their real experiences.

I'm sorry I used to call bi people transphobic. Terms change over time and most people define it as attraction to multiple genders. I had absolutely no right to deminish this identity that's been around to decades based off of the prefix bi meaning 2. Respecting people's identities are far more important than some arbitrary grammar rules. I didn't listen to people with the label saying that's how they defined it, I listened to people who didn't know what they were talking about.

I'm sorry I used to invalidate a large part of the asexual community. I believed that it was a black and white topic. Despite not even identifying as aspec at the time, I felt like I had some sort of authority to talk on a topic that has absolutely nothing to do with me. I considered anyone who has any sort of sexual attraction or even a sex drive to be allosexual and just "trying to be oppressed". Your identities are all valid and I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I used to invalidate a large part of the aromantic community. Not only did I consider asexuals and aromantics the same and judge people for being allosexual and aromantic, but I also believed that it was a black and white topic. Instead of listening to your experiences and learning, I just decided you all were "cishet white teenage girls who wanna be oppressed so badly". That was absolutely horrible of me and I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I made fun of otherkin folk. I'll admit, even now I'm probably not as educated or understanding of the topic as I should be. But I'm neurodivergent myself and I understand how someone would identify more with a special interest or an animal than they do as human. I should have recognised that what I was doing was exactly what others do to me. There is absolutely no excuse for the actions I had. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I used to believe that it was okay to do things from closed practices. Before finding out Wicca was founded by a white supremisist and that most of the popular practices within the community are stolen, I used to be one. I thought that some closed practices were okay to do because "oh everyone does that". That's not how it works. Wicca itself was created by stealing the beliefs of Native Americans. This happened during a time where Native practices were being criminalised. While their cultures were being destroyed and erased, while they were being persecuted for it, Wiccans could practice their religion openly and freely with no concequences. I did not educate myself or research into any of it and what practices they might have come from. While I don't believe that during the short time I was practicing that I did anything from a closed practice, excusing it was not okay by any stretch of the word. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I used to believe in a lot of ableist spiritualisations of things, specifically neurodivergent people. Things like starseed and indigo children. The origin of that was that they were terms created to dehumanize disabled children and treat them as less than human.

All of those were from the ages of 12-13, I'm 15 now.

For all of these, this next one especially, I have had the instinct to defend past me and justify his actions. Things like saying how young he was, how he was 12-13, how his only exposure to things were through certain circles, but that doesn't make it okay. There is absolutely no sort of excuse or justification. I don't want anyone to reblog this and accept my apologies if you're not from the community for the apology you're accepting.

I'm sorry I ever supported iDubbbz view on the n-word. I knew enough about it to know that it was a word white people shouldn't say, but I didn't know why. He said that him saying it, reclaiming a slur that does not belong to him, is taking the power away from it. He blamed people who called him out for it for giving a slur power. I knew that there must be something I was missing so I never said it, but I had access to the internet. I could have googled it. There is no sort of excuse for it, it only being something I believed for a short stretch of time and my age didn't change that that's what I thought. I'm sorry.

I understand if this makes some people want to unfollow me or if it makes people dislike me. I understand if people don't forgive me. What I did was not just made okay after I realised I was a part of those communities. I have no right to form an opinion, positive or negative, in terms of forgiving myself for what I thought about communities I was not a part of.

I have always prided myself on how understanding I am of others, how I haven't done "problematic" things, but really I just didn't have a platform to do them on. These are all things I could just leave behind me unsaid.

But I think this is important.

It's important to recognise when you fuck up so you can do better.

Ignoring that I've done some really shitty things doesn't mean they didn't happen.

This is important to do and I'd recommend you do it too. Whether it's publically or privately. Recognise that you did bad things. It doesn't make who you are now bad.

Having said that, the concept that it doesn't make now me bad and that I did shitty things that no one owes me forgiveness for co-exist.

I didn't share this to get apologies and reassurances that "it's okay". It's not okay. It wasn't okay at the time and what I did is still not okay. It might be in the past, but I still held those beliefs and may have hurt people because of them.

If you're a part of a group I'm saying sorry to you can forgive me. But we all need to learn that not only do we not need to forgive people for the things they've done in the past, but that forgiving someone doesn't make what they did okay.

If you're a part of any of the communities and have something to say, you can reblog or comment or message me or send in an ask. But you don't have to say anything if you don't want to. It's not your responsibility.

If I have said anything that sounds like justifying or excusing my actions, please tell me so I can fix it. I don't have time right now to go back and proof read, but I tried to apologize. Apologies can include context as to what you're apologizing for, but not justification of what happened.

I hope you all have a nice day.

#self call out #call out #tw #long post #apologies #racism #homophobia #transphobia #biphobia #cultural appropriation #ableism #aphobia #arophobia #acephobia

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olderthannetfic · 6 years ago

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I just realized it’s Fandom First Friday and the topic is meta!

For months, I’ve been slowly working my way through How To Be Gay by David Halperin, which talks about drag queens and how certain aspects of gay male culture appropriate from women to empower gay men. (Halperin uses the word ‘appropriate’ extensively, not necessarily in a negative context.) He brought up some points I thought were highly relevant for thinking about slash.

Last February, I went to Escapade and chatted with a bunch of acafans. To my total lack of surprise, they too love Halperin’s book and had the same reaction I did. I thought when I finish the book, I’ll write up some meta. But I got busy, and it’s a long, dense book. So then in August, I went to the final Vividcon. There, I ran into Francesca Coppa and mentioned this idea. Her response? “Oh, I just wrote a journal article about that.”

…

AHAHAHAHA! Oh god, we are the same person.

(NB: We are not actually the same person.We just have similar first names, similar fandoms, and similar flists back on LJ, have done similar fandom history oral history projects, go to the same cons, and have both been on the OTW board. Laura Hale once went so far as to “out” me as her. And now we like the same academic books too. Heh.)

So, obviously, now I have to write meta about this, and Fandom First Friday is the perfect time to take a stab at it. I have so much more to say and I want to go back through How to be Gay and pull out many more amazing quotes, but better to write something than wait for perfection.

What I found the most interesting about Halperin’s analysis was that he points out that women may find these funhouse mirror versions of femaleness upsetting, and those feelings are completely understandable and valid, but they don’t make drag any less empowering or significant for gay men. He neither thinks that we need to get rid of drag nor that women should stop having those reactions.

He also talks about how subtext is often more appealing than text: when he first started teaching his college course ‘How to be Gay’, on which the book is based, he assumed that students would connect more with literal representation of their identities. That’s the narrative we push: now that we have literal X on TV or in a Broadway show, we don’t need subtextual old Y anymore! Instead, many of his students loved things like The Golden Girls and failed to connect with current gay representation.

It’s a long book, but what many of his ideas boil down to is that a Broadway show that is massively subtextually queer allows the viewer to identify with any of the characters or with all of them simultaneously or with the situation in general. It’s highly fluid. Gay representation often means a couple of specific gay characters with a rigid identity. Emotionally, that can be harder to connect to.

Sometimes, allegory gets closer to one’s own internal experiences than literal depiction does.

Coppa’s article (book chapter?) is about exactly that. It’s titled: Slash/Drag: Appropriation and Visibility in the Age of Hamilton. She uses Halperin’s book but extends the idea further. I particularly liked her example of how female fans use Bucky to tell stories that are essentially (and often literally) about rape. His story is about a loss of bodily autonomy and about having one’s boundaries violated in a way that is familiar to female fans, but he’s a male action hero, so those stories don’t have the same visceral ick factor as writing about literal rape of literal women.

Partly, that’s due to how society treats men vs. women, but it’s also about which fans are writing these stories and which fans are the target audience of them. Just as a cis gay man appropriating Joan Crawford to talk about his experience of gayness isn’t really for or about women, most slash fanfic about Bucky being victimized isn’t really for or about cis gay men.

It was on the dancefloor at Vividcon that I realized that, as a woman, I have this unconscious feeling like I am appropriating gay men’s culture when I’m into Joan Crawford and other over-the-top female performers. It’s ridiculous! How can I be appropriating a female celebrity from gay men? But it’s an experience I share with lots of other women. Telling women we have no right to things is the bedrock of our culture.

That feature film Slash, which featured a bunch of cis male slash writers was inspired partly by the male director going on Reddit and finding a bunch of gay guys saying that slash squicks them. He felt that he was being progressive by erasing women.

On Tumblr, the fujocourse gets reblogged not just by toxic pits of misogynist, delusional bullshit like thewoesofyaoi, but also by seemingly reasonable fans. Hell, I’m pretty sure I used to suffer from this problem myself: I remember a time when I felt like I, as a bisexual woman, liked slash better, differently, and more correctly than straight women did.

I no longer feel this way.

There are lots of reasons for caring about slash, some of which are just about the pretty, some of which are more about gender, and some of which are more about sexual orientation, but after seeing decades of arguments about who is allowed to like slash, I have come to the conclusion that none of them are valid. All of them are “Not like the other girls!” and hating on femaleness. Some of the fans who do this are female and some are not, but it all boils down to not feeling like women have a right to a voice.

And then there’s Halperin calmly asserting gay men’s right to self-expression!

It struck me like a bolt of lightning because it was so self-assured. He never doubts that there’s something valid and important about giving gay men space to explore their own emotional landscapes. Literal representation is important, sure, but so is the ability to make art that speaks to your insides, not just your outside, and that sometimes means allegorical, subtextual art played out in bodies unlike your own.

“Fetishization” a la Tumblr often means writing stories with explicit sex or liking ships because they’re hot. Sometimes, it means writing kinks that are seen as dark or unusual. Frankly, this sort of fujocourse boils down to thinking that sex and desire are dirty and that m/m sex is the dirtiest of all. I do write some ~dark~ kinks in my fic because, for one thing, I’m a kinky person in real life, and for another, I often use fic to explore the experience of having dark thoughts and wondering what that says about me.

A lot of slash writers are exploring feelings of victimization. Another big chunk of us explore things like rape fantasies from the bottom: maybe we have and maybe we haven’t experienced assault in real life, but for all of us, having that kind of rape fantasy brings up questions of whether we’re asking for it, whether it’s okay to be into that kind of thing, whether it means something. Another chunk of us are exploring a different kind of “bad” thoughts: feelings of aggression, violence, dominance. In my own work, I’m interested in sadists and how they come to terms with their desires, but I think slash is also often a way to explore any sort of violent, dark feeling, not just rape fantasies from the top. Society tells us women aren’t allowed to have dark thoughts–hell, that we’re not capable of impulses that dark. Sometimes, it’s easier to write even a relatively banal action story about a male action hero because he, in canon, is allowed to have the feelings and impulses that interest the writer.

The fujocourse is all about saying that women aren’t allowed to have dark impulses ever. That we’re not allowed to be horny. That we’re not allowed to enjoy art for the sake of an orgasm. When we depict people not precisely like ourselves, we’re overstepping. When we make art for our own pleasure instead of devoting our lives to service, we are toxic and bad. Any time. Every time.

It’s just another round of saying that women’s pleasure is not valid and women’s personal space should not be respected. No hobbies for you: only motherhood.

And yet that’s not actually what most slash fans think. I was heartened to read Lucy Neville’s Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica. A friend read it recently and was trying to guess which quotes were from me. I have to admit, I was playing that game too! I honestly couldn’t tell, until I looked at demographic info, that some could not have been mine. They sounded so familiar. On Tumblr, I tend to wade into meta discussions, so I see a lot of loud, divisive views. I especially see a lot of views that, over time, make me start to wonder if I’m a crazy outlier. Intellectually, I know that this is all down to bad curation of my dash and a love of browsing the meta tags. I didn’t realize how much it had crept up on me unconsciously–how much I had started to feel like I had to justify and explain the most basic and common experiences of being a slash fan.

What was interesting about Neville’s book is how alike many of the women sounded. Now, no one book represents everybody, and she makes no claims to have figured out the exact size or demographic breakdown of fandom. Her focus is on women who like m/m material, whether slash or porno movies or anything else. At the same time, though, she surveyed heaps of women, and the responses were amazingly similar. Nearly every quote in that book strikes a chord with me. Nearly all of them, with a few minor variations, could be something I’ve written. Gay, straight, bi, asexual: we all had many of the same things to say about slash and what it means to us.

So, some brief, and more digestible thoughts:

Slash is “overrepresented” in meta and scholarly literature because people still ask us to justify ourselves constantly.

People ask us to justify ourselves because they assume that “good representation” is literal representation.

There are key emotional, psychological aspects of our experiences that are often better expressed allegorically, whether we’re gay men doing drag or women writing slash or any other sort of artist.

Here are some choice quotes from Coppa. (I will restrain myself and not just try to quote the entire thing. Heh.)

“There are endless transmedia adaptations of characters like Sherlock Holmes or Batman, so it is clearly not appropriation that’s the issue: it is the appropriation by the other—by women, in this case.

One could argue then that it is our awareness of this appropriative doubleness—of the familiar characters acting in an unfamiliar script, of the female storyteller animating the male characters— that boots slash out of “literature,” with its illusions of psychological coherence (see Edwards’s Chapter 3 in this volume), and puts it instead into the category of performance, itself so often associated with the fake, the female, the forged, the queer. My argument in this chapter is that it might be useful to compare slash to other forms of appropriative performance; drag comes powerfully to mind and, more recently, the musical Hamilton. These are forms where it’s important to see the bothness, the overlaid and blurred realities: male body/Liza Minnelli; person of color/George Washington.”

“In his book How to Be Gay, David Halperin (2012) discusses the ongoing centrality of certain female characters to the gay male cultural experience and takes as his project an explanation of why gay men choose those particular avatars and what they make of them. Halperin argues that gay men use these female characters to articulate a gay male subjectivity which precedes and may in important ways be separate from a gay male sexual identity (or to put it another way, a boy may love show tunes before he loves men, or without ever loving men). The gay male appropriation of and perfor- mance of femininity effectively mirror—in the sense both of “reflect” and “reverse”—slash fiction’s preoccupations with and appropriations of certain (often hyper‐performatively) male characters in service of a female sensibility; in both cases, appropriation becomes a way of saying something that could not otherwise easily be said.”

“A character like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne speaks, obviously, to boys who are getting mixed messages about what successful manhood looks like in the twenty‐first century—it was hard enough in the old days to be Charles Atlas, but today you have to be Charles Atlas and Steve Jobs at the same time, which is a problem of time commitment just for a start. But these characters speak to women, too: differently. The doubled nature of the paired male characters taken up by slash fandom—these aliens, these costumed heroes, these men wearing man suits, men in male drag—make them appealing sites of identification for women, or proxy identities, to use Halperin’s (2012) term; that is, they provide “a metaphor, an image, a role” (185). They are sites of complex feeling.

But what these characters are metaphors for, what they make us feel, is not simple, singular, or easily reducible. Halperin takes hundreds of pages even to begin to excavate the complicated web of meanings around Joan Crawford; I am not going to be able to unpack any of these iconic male characters in a few paragraphs, and it is also the nature of fandom to build multiple and contradictory meanings around fan favorites (and to get into heated arguments over them).”

[In Halperin’s class] “Works that allowed gay men to be invisible were preferred to those where they were explicitly represented. “Non‐gay cultural forms offer gay men a way of escaping from their particular, personal queerness into total, global queerness,” Halperin (2012) writes. “In the place of an identity, they promise a world” (112). I would argue that slash offers something similar—that queer female space, as well as the ability to escape the outline of the identity that you are forced to carry every day—and that for gay men and slash fans both, the suggestion that you would restrict your identification to those characters with whom you share an identity feels limiting.”

“Visibility is a trap,” Phelan (2003) concludes, referencing Lacan (1978) (93): “it summons surveillance and the law, it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperial appetite for possession”—and fans on the ground know this and talk about it in very nearly this language. Again, this is not to say that fans—or gay men, for that matter—do not want or deserve good representations: female fandom, slash fandom included, championed Mad Max: Fury Road, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and the new, gender‐swapped Ghostbusters, all of which have multiple and complex female characters. Rather, I am arguing that representation does not substitute for the pleasure or power of invisibility; for, as even the most famously visible actors say, “But what I really want is to direct.”

#fandom meta #fandom first friday #fujocourse

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queenofthecommunistcannibals · 6 years ago

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@yikes-trademarked

i mean yeah, the post has nothing to do with it just comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to people who are genuinely oppressed in a modern day society. how are asexuals ‘neglected’ and ‘isolated’? so most people experience sexual attraction and you don’t, whoop de doo. nobody actually cares if you do or don’t experience sexual attraction. if you could please give me an actual, real life, not someone-calling-you-a-plant-online example of asexual discrimination then i’ll take back my words

___

@yikes-trademarked I super love how instead of apologizing you are doubling down. Okay. I'll give you examples. Here are some general prejudices that affect aro and ace people. They aren't in any real order.

•Until the DSM V asexuality was considered a mental illness. Despite the fact that now we are "allowed" to "identify" as asexual HSDD (Hypoactive sexual desire disorder) is STILL considered a disorder. So instead of trying to help a person accept themselves as asexual allosexual (nonace) doctors will try to "fix" someone if they want to. Asexuality is still seen as something to be cured. It is still a dysfunction in their eyes, they just hide their prejudice a little better.

•Asexuals have been harrassed and raped in an attempt to fix them. Asexuals and aromantics are often seen as a "challenge" to be harassed into affection.

•Mainstream Christianity discriminates against asexuals as they do other queer identities. Here is one quote from a document called "Asexuality and Christianity" produced for Asexual Awareness Week (the fact that we get "awareness" rather than "pride" ain't great either)

"While celibacy is officially considered a good stance in religion, declaring oneself disinterested in sex is often met with disapproval. Asexuals have been told that they are rejecting God's gift of sexuality, that they are just as bad as homosexuals because they are not 'normal'...or people decide to pray to God for them to be fixed or for the Almighty to send the right person for them to fall in love with."

Or from the horse's mouth "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." This was written by two Jesuit priests David Nantais and Scott Opperman. In other religions this is also often true. I know more about Christianity personally but I know similar doctrines exist in Islam and Orthodox Judaism. Not to mention the notion that marriage is the only acceptable option in these religions (unless you are Catholic clergy) and children are a necessity. Hell, according to the conservative traditional gender roles of these religions even an otherwise gender conforming aro/ace doesn't fit (not marrying, no kids, no family, all that).

•Dehumanization from all sides. We are told to be human is to love and that love is nearly always put in romantic or sexual context. Indeed NOT being capable of or experiencing romantic or sexual love is often used as shorthand for someone being a bad person (As Dexter [from Dexter], for example, becomes more sympathetic he develops the ability to feel sexual/romantic love. Robots in fiction can be asexual and aromantic but only if you want to show them as apart from humanity. Once you want to make it clear they have a soul they have to experience some kind of romantic urge or longing. Like Data from Star Trek) An article in Psychology Today by Dr. Gordon Hodson Ph.D. (who specializes in studying dehumanization) postulates (with a study to back it up) that asexuals are the most dehumanized sexual minority.

•On the specifically romantic asexual front in many places do not consider a marriage valid until it has been consumated.

•In media in which asexuality and aromanticism are not proof of evil they are judged to be not real. Here is one of if not our first actual representation in media. In the film Nymphomaniac the SELF-PROCLAIMED asexual character turns out to be a rapist who the protagonist murders in what is supposed to be a "woo! You go girl!" moment. AT BEST this says asexuals aren't real. We're just sexually repressed misanthropes. It might also imply that asexuals are base animals who are waiting to strike. THAT IS ONE OF THE FEW TIMES THE WORD ASEXUAL IS EVEN USED IN MAINSTREAM FILM! I cannot think of a single other.

•We are erased constantly in real life and in media. Here are two examples of active erasure, Jughead Jones (canonly aro/ace in the comics and coded as such since day one) was straight-washed for Riverdale. You may say "oh maybe they didn't know" (which is bullshit) then consider example two: Sherlock Holmes. Holmes (who I adore) has long been one of the few characters that has been "allowed" to aro/aces, but when the creators of BBC's Sherlock were explicitly asked if he was aro/ace they said he absolutely wasn't.

This is part of what I am talking about. We are not allowed to exist. We are invisible.

•Asexuals and aromantics are somehow toxic in our mere existence. We make kids think it is okay to be like us and are poisoning their young minds. We hate sex and thus are against the sex positivity movement.

•"Virgin" is an insult and we are treated as constant children. Somehow we have failed to grow up and cannot be treated as adults.

•And here is what I was really talking about SOCIETY IS NOT MADE FOR US! CULTURE IS NOT CONDUSIVE TO OUR EXISTENCES! I didn't know asexuality was an option until I was about 24. And before that I, like many aro/ace people, put myself in a lot of situations and relationships to "fix" myself. To make myself normal. My first and only sexual encounter was one of the things that sent me spiralling into a serious depression. I didn't know that it was okay to not be interested and to say "no.". So I said "okay" because I thought it was what I had to do to be a normal teenager. I don't know if I ever shared that online before so congrats you got me so mad I revisited my personal trauma. From childhood we are told falling in love is the ultimate reward. As teens we are told we gotta get laaaaaid. As adults not being involved in a sexual/romantic (often indistinguishable) relationship is WEIRD and TROUBLING. I have been told by people who don't know I am asexual that asexual people are "too weird" or even "creepy." The idea that someone might not be capable of romantic love sets off people's red flags that said aromantic might be crazy.

•We are surrounded by sex and romance constantly. Constantly. It is inescapable. In your real life I want you to pay attention to romantic or sexual imagry and storylines around you. There is no break. No alternative. This is what I mean by "invisible at best."

•Also, we are denied a history. It is very hard to prove absence but often sexless figures are immediately dubbed to be gay/lesbian because of their lack of interest in "appropriate" gender. Forgetting entirely that asexuality and aromanticism are options. Then when the question is raised they maybe a figure WAS aro and/or ace we are told that we are """"stealing"""" history. There is like one person in history we are allowed: Nikola Tesla. I love him very much, but he also fits the bill as a weirdo asexual. Because anyone who was the least bit acceptable to society must be allosexual. An example in reverse, Queen Elizabeth I, Britain's most beloved monarch, who never married, never was romantically or sexually involved with anyone (aside from being assaulted as a teenager), and was in her era very famously THE VIRGIN QUEEN who used her virginity as part of her persona to great affect. She is not considered asexual or aromantic and never has been. I have seen a biographer bend over backwards to get away from that accusation including using an incident where an elderly Elizabeth flashed a dignitary to make him uncomfortable as proof that she was allo. We can't have this awesome historical figure be one of those creeps right?!

•i am not even going into the history of how "sexlessness" was historically treated, especially in women. Let me just say that "spinsterism" was considered a danger to children and young women.

•NOTICE I WENT THIS WHOLE POST WITHOUT MENTIONING ASSHOLES WHO USE THE DISK HORSE AND BAR US FROM QUEER CIRCLES EVEN THOUGH SOME STUDIES FIND ASEXUALS HAVE LOWER SELF ESTEEM THAN ANY OTHER QUEER GROUP AND WOULD REALLY BENEFIT FROM A COMMUNITY!! THIS POST IS ENTIRELY EXAMPLES OF NON ONLINE PEOPLE BECAUSE SOMEHOW YOUR CONSTANT ABUSE OR REFUSAL TO RECOGNIZE ABUSE IS A-OKAY BECAUSE IT IS PART OF "THE DEBATE" BECAUSE SOMEHOW OUR EXISTENCE IS ACCEPTABLE DEBATE!

These are just some examples. People are free to add more but I am tired. If you want links I will dig them up.

Sincerely,

Fuck you.

I apologize for the "fuck you" but the exclusionist attitude is so disheartening. It is bad for not only aros and aces but also the queer community in general. We should be in this together! Fighting for one another side by side! We should be there for each other for hardships and for celebrations. I think it is vital that exclusionists really examine what and who they are actually fighting against.

#asexuality #my posts #asexual #aromantic #lgbt+#queer

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aroworlds · 6 years ago

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Because this is a very long, multi-part ask from an anon, I’ve copied the whole thing into a new post for ease of reading:

To be honest, in the past I was on the exclusionists’ side with the SAM (Split Attraction Model). It’s harmful! Stop forcing it on people! Attractions don’t need to be separated like that! Even though I myself am technically aroace. I was angry because I felt like I was being erased and spoken over in the ace community. I felt like I was being forced to separate my romantic and sexual attraction when they weren’t separate. It made me furious that I couldn’t make a post or comic calling myself asexual without some ace commenting, “no, asexuality is actually x aces can do/feel y that’s not what asexual means!” As if I’m confused.

So basically I hated that the SAM was forced on the word asexual any time someone used it. I’ve somewhat changed my mind recently: I now understand that splitting attraction is crucial to some people, but I do think we need something else because I can also understand genuine reasons why some are adverse to it and feel like its forced on them. There has been concern with using existing terminology and splitting them into romantic and sexual attractions.

Maybe instead of doing this we could create terms that are shorter and mean the same, combining the two attractions into one distinct identity. For example, a panromantic asexual is, uhh, tresexual? Not the real alternative–just to show what I mean. Arosexual or aseromantic could be umbrella terms for aspecs who feel one type of attraction and not the other. I’m not saying we should abandon the terms we have now.

Like I said, I’m not against the SAM any more (I’m sorry I ever was) and definitely think anyone can identify how they want. But I think we as a community need labels that are more concise and convey more information. I think it will make it easier for aspecs to find people that are most like them instead of just one part.

Just so folks know: you (general you) don’t need to insist to me that you’ve changed your ways. You don’t need to prove to me that you’ve learnt better. You can just say “I no longer believe that” and leave the conversation there. I dislike the purity culture tendency of having to constantly demonstrate one’s growth and resulting apology in order to reveal a less-palatable truth about the people we were, and I’m not going to demand it of the people who are doing the risky and dangerous thing of revealing their past in conversation with me.

We can’t grow as a community unless we talk about the beliefs we held and why we held them. We will fail in outreach to others if people don’t feel safe to talk about their history–we will fail to learn the unspoken undercurrents of why harmful attitudes are compelling. Folks who have learnt and changed are a vital bridge between two sides, and I think any requirement to constantly apologise or offer up reassurances for making a mistake long after is only going to stop the people we most need to hear from talking to us.

And oh is this a reason we need to better discuss and understand.

It is difficult to have conversations about aromanticism that encompass the non-split attractions of asexuals and aros who don’t use the SAM while still highlighting the experience of aromanticism as felt by folks (ace and allo alike) who do need the SAM. The fact that I’ve had to write out your identity with such a clumsy, ridiculous line to clarify your shape of ace against other shapes of ace encapsulates this in a nutshell: for crying out loud, asexuals who don’t use the SAM! That’s not your ace identity! The fact that I do not know a better way to talk about you (or the non-SAM-using ace character in an earlier ask) in clear, simple, concise language is a problem. I shouldn’t have to keep referencing the SAM just to clarify your particular identity and experiences. Anon, I know you live this and don’t need my explaining to you the exceedingly obvious, but I’m writing this out because my attempt to respond to you is such an example of the problem you’re discussing with how we use the SAM, and it only worsens when you have to endure folks correcting you in discussing your identity. When I can’t even respond to your asks to validate you without floundering, we have a problem.

Right now, we either push aside non-split aces and aros to focus on the rough groupings of aro, ace and aro-ace, or we settle on awkward attempts to include you. Neither is good enough.

I want to stress that you should feel angry, othered, alienated and hurt by the sheer degree of circumlocution needed to talk about your experience as distinct from folks who identify as aro-ace and alloromantic asexuals, and the corrections you endure when you do talk about who you are without it. I’ve felt the pain of losing a word myself: when I came out as agender in 2012, it meant genderless (other neutral-gender meanings now used for agender were covered by neutrois) and it is a difficult and alienating thing to see my identity used to include other experiences of having a gender. In my case, I do have the word genderless to fall back on, but I still feel divorced from a word that was once fully my own. I am still corrected by agender-as-neutral-gender folks telling me it isn’t a problem that agender is conceptualised as a gender instead of as the absence of one, even though said conceptualisation is a constant microaggression I endure from the non-binary community. We talk on the evolution of language in LGBTQIA+ communities and the importance of accepting these shifts to be more inclusive; we don’t talk about the pain of having one’s identity shift to mean broader umbrellas and how to manage when we’ve lost that precise word to say exactly who we are. We don’t validate each other in our feelings of losing language, and in not doing this, I think our activism falls short.

When we do try to talk on the pain of this language and identity loss, we’re seen as regressive or hateful–even exclusionary. We’re seen as holding back the LGBTQIA+ community’s progression and growth. Is it any wonder that some folks lean in exclusionist directions when there’s no space to recognise, discuss or explore our feelings?

The fact that ace means many things is a problem, and most of us, myself included, lean on aro-ace in our conversations because we don’t have the lexicon to handle aces and aros with non-split attraction.

At the same time, anon, I am so leery of conjuring words for allosexual aros to describe individually the combination of our split attractions.

My first argument against is that aromanticism already makes us less allosexual to non-a-specs. Conversely, allosexual attractions also tend to make us less a-spec in a-spec spaces where aro is treated as a second thought to the ace. Alloromantic asexuals have the advantage of ace being an aspect of their identity, the more recognised and centred side of the a-spec umbrella in a-spec spaces; allosexual aros have the disadvantage of being aro, the less recognised and actively de-centred side of the same umbrella in a-spec spaces. To have a word that doesn’t specify both the aromantic-spectrum or the allosexual attraction identities seems a thing that to me will be taken advantage of by allo-allo spaces and a-spec spaces alike, to further erase and deny whichever part of allo-aro they find inconvenient or difficult. It will also exclude us from the communities based around our allosexual attractions, communities that already erase and deny us.

The reason I tried to deny my pansexuality for so long, to ignore the fact that both grey-ace and ace didn’t fit me all the time (honestly: more of the time) was to better belong in a-spec spaces–to be included in the community in ways aro alone, at the time, didn’t grant me. I felt I had to be aro-ace because aro wasn’t enough to be heard and accepted. Even now, there’s little to no conversation on being gay and aro, bisexual and aro, heterosexual and aro, or lesbian and aro (amongst other allosexual aro identities) in aro-spec spaces, and language that doesn’t name our allosexual attraction, I fear, won’t halt that trend.

Secondly, our attractions are split, so why not the language used to describe it? Why shouldn’t the language directly encapsulate the nature of our identities and experiences by requiring two words to communicate it? My abrosexuality and my aromanticism are two different things–shaping each other, yes, but separate experiences nonetheless. I have no need to merge them together in a way that is unnatural to me. I want the world to see the component parts of who I am. I see your suggestion as a way to un-split our language, to create singular and unified terms for two experiences. While there’s every possibility that some folks will like this, I think it diminishes and disregards the reasons why many aro-aces (especially in aro-spec spaces) ID as aro-ace and why many allo-aros require two words.

Lastly, I do not see how the structures of the words you’ve offered are any improvement on already-extant language (like “pansexual aro”) in terms of communicating meaning when this is already communicated without undue difficulty. We already have umbrella terms in allo-aro and allo-ace; I don’t understand the point in replacing these with another single word.

The problem is not the existence and use of the SAM. The problem is not the terms aro-ace, allo-aro and allo-ace. Introducing specific un-split words for the combination of a person’s split romantic and sexual attraction isn’t a solution, anon, because it does not address the problem we’re facing in how we use language or how it is currently harming you.

The problem as I see it is that “ace” is used to mean, simultaneously, allo-ace, aro-ace, ace-spectrum and non-SAM-using-ace. That’s four different meanings and experiences attached to the same word! That is what we need to address: the fact that there is no distinct, non-clumsy term for depicting precisely how you are ace, because it can be used, alone, to mean four different things. That is where the lack of clarity lies, not in words like “pansexual aro” or “panromantic ace”. In fact, if using “allo-ace” were more common (as a descriptor, not an identity) in ace-spec spaces by allo-aces, I suspect it would be easier for you to exist as ace alone without using the SAM and enduring the “but aces can experience aromantic attraction!” corrections.

In that light, it seems to me that the easiest solution for clarity of language and expression of pride and identity is to crate a new modifying term before “ace” and “aro” for non-SAM-using aces and non-SAM-using aros. This is not a good answer and I will acknowledge that. I’m sure, anon, that you connect to ace as much as I connect to agender, that you want to use your own word to describe who you are. I’m not offering this lacking knowledge of what it’ll cost you to conjure a word that describes, solely and specifically, non-SAM-using ace when ace alone fits that use in your heart and history.

This way, though, better fits how the community already uses language; it doesn’t require a complete overhaul of established terminology. It also gives you space to communicate your shape of ace now without waiting on the rest of the ace-spec community to catch up.

I’d look at finding another word or prefix, so we have aro-aces, allo-aces and [invented word]-aces. In other words, every ace fits under the umbrella of ace with an accompanying prefix describing their shape of ace, so you don’t have to identify as aro-ace or reference the SAM at all. Uni-aces/aros? Mono-aces/aros? A prefix that means “only” or “wholly”? I don’t know what that prefix might be, and I am not the right person to choose it–this conversation should be had amongst a-specs who don’t use the SAM. I’m just throwing out a couple of words so folks get a sense of what I’m suggesting and how it might work.

I’ll stress that I don’t mean that you need to identify as [invented word]-ace: I don’t identify as allo-aro or aro-ace, but instead use those words to communicate my experiences where appropriate and as a reference to how I am aro-spec. I mean this usage in the same way: you identify as ace and ace alone, and when someone questions you or expresses confusion, this is a tool to describe how you are ace, just as allo-ace and allo-aro describes a way of being ace and aro.

I do want to conclude by validating you, again, anon, in your pain–and you are free to disagree with my conclusion, as is anyone else. Please, everyone, take my words as a discussion point, disregard them where necessary and get a conversation going, even if that conversation is proving me wrong, because we need a solution above all. I hate that in writing this post I must hurt you by using clumsy and alienating constructions to convey my meaning. There’s nothing right about my language in this post, and I am so sorry that I don’t know how better to refer to you as the ace you are and refer to, specifically, your shape of ace.

Whatever happens from this post on, we must do better.

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akria23 · 6 years ago

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Okay let me start off by saying you do not have to agree to engage in this post - I speak most of my time on this page debating/arguing with people. I do not block people for disagreeing. I don’t believe in blocking people if I’m not ‘winning’ so I can have the last word (that happens to me a lot so intrusive not to do it). As long as you don’t don’t call me out of my name or infer things about me I will be cordial - imma give you what you give me (so just remember that). I am ating @optimisticdays because I said I would. I’ve also deleted the other post after speaking to this person I read the post over and over to see if I was missing the flaw - it wasn’t until I read my reply to the op of another post that I was like 😬 you are making another gender in a way that could be inferred as denying someone’s identity. My intention was to speak on the belief that bisexuality is solely a combination of male and female instead of of the aspects that go into gender and in part the deniability of the difference between the two sexualities pan and bi and how that plays in recent discussions (in the Druck fandom). Anyway - let’s get into it.

I’m going to preface this again - Yes most commonly transgender male as male - transgender female is female. I say most commonly because not all transgender people fall to this rule. I’m not trying to claim otherwise (for the majority). My case isn’t on that persay but on the association to sexuality and the differentiation in sexual concepts (bisexuality/pansexuality) as it is condensed in fandom. Like I said the flaw in my last point was already mentioned i was using gender as the umbrella term of the association and classifying trans as its own gender instead of simply stating that it has an intricate working with sexuality when broken down (but not always limited or inclusive) to expression, identifier, s-x. I don’t want to say identity as an umbrella either as I don’t think even that expresses what I was saying. I get while people thought I was saying trans is a gender if it’s own - because I was and not correlating (in the big post) why I was making that relation (intentional or unintentional). Let me back and define the sexualities I’m speaking on because this is what I’m making my argument:

Bisexuality was first consumed as being attracted sexually or romantically to both male and female gender. This was conventional fitting to concepts of the time even though there were most like genders of all kind during any and every era. Then in more modernized eras we redefined Bisexuality to mean the capable attraction to people sometimes dependent upon biological sex, gender identity, or expression - must denote to at least two gender aspects but not necessarily all. While pansexuality means the capable attracted to all people, regardless of biological s-x, gender identity, or expression. This is the big separation between the two for me. Pan means all and there’s not getting around that but bisexuality does not mean all. I know some people interchanges the two - I don’t have a problem with that - I do it if I’m speaking to someone who does it - but the issue comes in when we’re okay with erasing someone identifier because it don’t sit well with us and I find that often happens in fandom. To extend on that when it comes to fandom discussion bisexuality is seen solely as male and female and led with a perception that it’s also a 50% equality. That’s not true. You can actually be bisexual and not include on of those aspects at all - including the concepts of masculinity vs femininity and that’s not even speaking on romantic vs s-x. And yes that’s why I’m saying I get the concept of saying oh he’s just gay when you get the transgender aspect but I think that’s only is you eliminate all the other (possible because it’s not inherent) elements. I try not to say gender too much because I know people base that down to male female despite not only third genders but also the fact of association, expression, s-x, identities all playing into sexuality but not always the same way or intricately one. This is why I argue that Matteo could still fall under the bisexual label without being attracted to girls/women/feminine concepts or aspects. I’m not saying that he is - only that technically he can or if a viewer was so inclined to associate him with the sexuality (without trying to put feminine/female concepts on the line). And yes I could have made arguments for androsexual/andromantic (as they don’t replace sexuality) but the dialogue I keep seeing is specifically about the sexualities of bisexuality and pansexuality.

Basically what I’m saying is when these things overlap underlap (even for transgender people not only the aforementioned trans people that don’t fit under the simplified law of what trans means) how then can we just process them into uncomplicated labels such as gay or hetero alone as though these overlapping concepts don’t then also come in with pansexual (if you interchange) or in this case bisexual aspects?! When it comes to Matteo I say he could fall to these concepts I’m not saying he has to or that fandom has to see him in that light but when you say this is persons a identify thus you must only associate him to this sexuality when so many aspects play into sexuality (or romantics). If Matteo still says he’s gay - then yes of course he’s gay. I’m maybe half an episode behind but the last thing I hear him say on the topic was a question of the concept not a validation on his perspective on the matter. The last thing I heard fandom say about it (until today) is why didn’t the writers confirm the sexuality as gay, why didn’t they put a cap on it specifically. Once someone identifies themselves I don’t argue pass that because how we deny ourselves belongs to us.

I admit that I was wrong expressing it as I did that transgender is well a gender when I’m not claiming that it’s a gender itself but the trans in front of the gender speaks on aspects that play into sexuality that has nothing to do with cis gender concepts. I’m not saying it’s bad - I’m not saying it’s good - I’m saying it exist and that’s why the word behind it is so important. That’s why for that I do apologize - to those I did and didn’t offend - because while I believe in saying what you mean and meaning what you say, if you don’t have the vocabulary or the time to express clearly what you mean on top is such as this then it probably shouldn’t be said by you at that time. I try never to shit on other people identities because that’s never my intention. Instead of expressing my ideals that yes I agree Matteo is not bisexual in the concept of being attracted to his friend (a female) but not all bisexual attraction denote to automatically include female/feminine concepts or that just because someone is transgender it does not mean there is no overlap of aspects/concepts that might place anyone (Matteo) further down the spectrum - but instead I over simplified my claim by ‘othering’ transgender people.

Okay - so the floor is y’all. We can discuss what you disagree with, what you agree with. It’s 9:30pm -I’m tired - post took me longer than it should have 😪 but I did want to understand where people who were disagreeing was coming from instead of blurting my feelings out. It’s easy to that’s what I said and that’s how I feel thus it’s valid but that’s not always the case you can cross a boundary by sharing your feelings in a way that surpasses others and their reality. Anyway that’s my post - if I don’t reply today, I will reply tomorrow.

#druck #fandom behavior #past post

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bhadpodcast · 8 years ago

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Know Your History aka Here’s Why You’re Wrong aka Thanks, Dan!

It’s amusing to me when people who are new to the fandom and don’t fully understand the festering cesspool that is Teen Wolf fandom, do the barest amount of research into the drama and THEN create elaborate defenses to validate their stanning.

I’ve accepted that Sterek fandom is still very much a threat to Teen Wolf and to their general Scott McCall / Tyler Posey stanning collective and because of that they like to make giant posts filled with lies and misconceptions to make Sterek look like we’re the villains.

The good thing is that all you have to do is click around the comments or do even the bare minimum of research and their arguments fall apart. The bad news is that so many new stans won’t do this.

I started watching the show spring of 2014, I was into the fandom by that June and I was a full fledged Sterek by July. I was a HUGE Posey fan and had loved him in Lincoln Heights and White Frog. All of my fist fics were skittles or sour!skittles.

I’m telling you this to let you know that I get it. As a woman of color, the opportunity to have a ship that consisted of a character of color was huge to me. I didn’t understand why it seemed like Stereks hated Posey/Scott. I knew vaguely about BWT, but at the time I was so much more involved with the way the show mistreated him, I shrugged it off as “crazy fans, mad because they didn’t get their ship”.

Then I started interacting with some stereks because of the podcast and I would hear them reference things from a viewpoint I’d never even considered. I went back and did the research and I found out about the true reason and fallout for BWT-gate, I found out about Jeff’s exoduc from Twitter, and the thing that tipped it for me? Cookies4Sterek. They LITERALLY ATE OUR COOKIES knowing full well they were going to screw us over royally in the coming seasons!

Anyhow, this isn’t entirely what this is about. This is about knowing your history kids. I was commenting on a post and of course a Posey stan came in talking about how Tyler Posey was sunshine and roses and blah blah blah, but then they gave their own reasons for why BWT wasn’t only not so bad, but in fact, was necessary.

justaddgigi: So that how it's works. You do gay charity work and make a few half assed apologies and that automatically erases all the homophobic shit you do.

tylerscottpupper: @justaddgigi If you honestly believe Posey is homophobic, you seriously need to open your eyes and explore him more. He wouldn't hurt a fly, much less be/do anything against the LGBT community. He had to apologize because a harmless statement was turned into a butchering knife by and to the LGBT community.

stickykeys633: Oh Scott stan, the irony of telling someone to do research on Posey. I love the idea that we wouldn't jump at the chance of someone supporting LGBT. That we just misunderstood him and it's nothing to do with his pattern of homophobic behavior

tylerscottpupper: @stickykeys633 Pattern of homophobic behavior? I think you mean "the fandom perceived pattern of homophobic behavior." Posey has done nothing remotely homophobic. It is the fandom that twists it into being homophobic, which it is not. Not once has he said something negative about the LGBT community. He has made harmless jokes, which I'll reiterate, were turned into "insults" towards the community. So, yes, you are misunderstanding him. Horribly, I might add.

stickykeys633: Bwt was not a harmless joke, fake coming out was not a harmless joke, trying to grab his friend's dicks or trying to shove their hands into his pants is not a joke. I know you think he's sweet but you honestly don't know him. And it takes more effort to excuse the things he does than to just admit he's got a lot of growing to do. He hurt people and he didn't apologize point blank. That makes him a dick and he'll be one until he changes.

tylerscottpupper: @stickykeys633 BWT was not a joke, it was a thing that needed to be said. If you watch the show for just Sterek as Posey says, you are watching the show for the wrong reasons. It wasn't directed at the shippers. His coming out joke was personally funny to me, and I don't see how it could actually hurt anyone. (Im an out Bisexual myself.) Quite honestly, I do know him, far better than you do apparently. He is not homophobic, and even so, he made a 3 part apology on Twitter after making the lamp joke. He saw that people didn't catch the joke and were getting offended, so he apologized. So yes, he did apologize after "hurting people." (I reiterate, if you get hurt by a lamp/sexuality joke, toughen up.) I don't need to excuse him because he hasn't done anything wrong. The fandom is the one who skews everything he says into a personal attack.

To conclude: Posey is not homophobic in the slightest. BWT needed to happen because Sterek was poisoning the fandom. Nothing Posey has said has hurt anyone, period. In fact, what the fandom is saying/has said to him has hurt him far more than you think he is hurting us. (A point which had been proven even by his late mother.) His behavior is a little quirky, but that's just Posey. He's different, and that's partially why I love him.

Now let’s break this down:

BWT was not a joke, it was a thing that needed to be said. If you watch the show for just Sterek as Posey says, you are watching the show for the wrong reasons. It wasn't directed at the shippers.

No. You can twist this into anything, but it’s simply not true. There are no right or wrong reasons to watch a show. Also, Posey’s statement was fueled by bitterness which automatically makes it suspect. You think Posey cares about the lore? He can’t get half of the fantasy elements right now, you think he actually cares about werewolf mythology? Nope, he cares about the fact that people are watching a show with him in it and not for him. So even if he’s right, he’s still wrong.

Also, shippers are viewers and they’re the ones he deemed not watching for the right reasons so OF COURSE the comment was aimed at them. If not, then whom?

His coming out joke was personally funny to me, and I don't see how it could actually hurt anyone. (Im an out Bisexual myself.)

Then my guess is your white and VERY closeted.

Quite honestly, I do know him, far better than you do apparently.

Oh dear heart... you don’t. You know the part of yourself you see in him, sure, but that’s not the same thing.

he made a 3 part apology on Twitter after making the lamp joke. He saw that people didn't catch the joke and were getting offended, so he apologized.

No, he was told to apologize and only did it because he had to. And that apology skated so far on the “I’m sorry you’re offended” line, I don’t even know if it was worth it.

So yes, he did apologize after "hurting people." (I reiterate, if you get hurt by a lamp/sexuality joke, toughen up.)

Dictating the experiences and reactions of others based on nothing but your own limited view of the world? Oh you are bright white and no one knows you’re bi. I’m not even really going to touch to rest of that paragraph because that’s another post entirely on his own, but if you really think Posey is different, then you’re more sheltered than I thought. He is the definition of typical, and that’s what makes him so sad.

BWT needed to happen because Sterek was poisoning the fandom.

This is what I really want to talk about. This idea that what Posey said was a response to mistreatment by stereks is WRONG WRONG WRONG. Stereks poisoned the fandom? Stereks BUILT THE TEEN WOLF FANDOM. How many viewers do you know who saw OUR photosets, OUR fics, OUR gifsets, OUR drabbles, OUR meta and decided to watch the show? Stereks literally brought them hundreds of thousands of new viewers and the show LOVED IT.

Y’all love to forget that the very first fanfic competition hosted by the show had a sterek fic as the winner. You forget the endless articles that mentioned us from Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, Backlot, Logo, The Advocate and so many more that brought more and more viewers into this show. You forget the conversations between Greg Berlanti and Jeff Davis about how great Sterek was and how Greg was gonna steal it from Jeff (and god I wish he had).

You forget that RIGHT BEFORE poseygate, Stereks created the Sterek Campaign which raised over $7000 in Posey’s name. That helped save actual wolves in California and purchased Posey a lifetime membership. You forget the creation of Team Lionheart aka McHaleinski aka sour!skittles was a creation and effort of Stereks to show that even though we were stereks, we still love and respected Scott.

And it was never enough. Posey was feeling pressure from the network and losing control of his show so rather than fight tptb and risk losing his show, he decided to punch down. He punched down, completely and shellshocked an entire base of shippers who were suddenly being told we were part of the problem. We were told to leave and when we did, we still got blamed for everything else wrong with the show. Posey never apologized and the show even gave us that award as a way to apologize without having to involve Posey, but as with anything messy, what goes around comes around and he couldn’t even do right for that. Passing the trophy off not only to a fan, but to one of the most notorious SDCC anti Sterek fans out there.

So while I understand that as a young bisexual you feel no one got hurt, I invite you to tell that to the thousands of people who did and the amount of people that STILL feel the effects of Poseygate and the shunning of the show. Get out of your bubble and actually see this mess for what it is, or mind your business and shut up. Either way, just do better.

And encourage your boy to do the same.

#posey problems #twfp #Posey has been bitter from the beginning #but it's never been about the show #it's been about him #stop excusing dickishness sk17

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skullcd-blog · 7 years ago

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Why do you think it is that male characters are more popular than females?

Edit: I originally began writing this during my Algebra I class on mobile, so I decided to wait to respond until I got home from college, so sorry for the delay!

Misogyny, my dude. I’ll elaborate, but that’s what it is at its core.

Male characters get preferential treatment, which makes shipping or wanting to ship or explore that aspect of writing difficult without being slut shamed when writing female characters. This is especially true for original characters and WOC.

I’ve written both male and female characters, white and POC, canon and original characters, and I’ve noticed the difference in the varying popularity of my blogs and that of friends. I would say that the blogs I have now are all doing relatively well, so I can’t complain in that regard, but there’s still this stigma that all the muns of female characters want are ships or smut, and really there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. That’s right, I said it. There’s nothing wrong with it. Fuck you, I like ships as much as I like writing smut. There is, however, a problem when people go about it in such a way that it feels forced.

It’s when people are unable to discern IC and OOC, blurring the two in such a way that they take it personally, especially self-inserts under the guise of “original” characters.

To clarify, I think self-inserts can be fun, so long as the mun knows not to take what happens in a fictional setting as a personal attack on them. As it stands, however, I’ve seen blogs in this community that do just that, so naturally the the majority assumes that 99.999% of original characters are that, especially those of the feminine persuasion. But that’s just one example of a bad roleplayer, and I don’t mean bad as in it pertains to their writing skill, but in some scenarios that can also be applicable.

That being said, I’ve fallen in love with many an OC. The majority of muses I have are OCs, and female. I’ll be honest, I used to self-insert all the time, but it was never in a roleplay setting. In high school, I wrote self-insert Hellsing fanfiction with a friend, and we had a fucking amazing time doing it and I miss those days. My writing back then was really… not so great, but it was only because I was still learning.

My very first OC started off as a self-insert that gradually became her own character to the point where, yeah, we may have had one or two things in common that were simple preferences (and if you sit there and tell me you’ve never given your characters certain attributes based off yourself, be they OC or canon, you, my guy, are a lying liar) but she had become so drastically different from my original idea that I had of her, from her backstory to her name, that she was very much her own entity.

She was powerful, she was intelligent, flawed to be sure, but knew who and what she wanted. She ended up changing the mind of a former partner on their stances regarding OCs, and because of that partner I learned so much about writing.

Did you know that Elizabeth actually now has that character’s old first name? Liz started off as a self-insert named Ebi back when I first came up with her concept a year and a half ago. She was a punk with crazy purple hair that ran away from home at 16 (sound familiar?), and she was mostly for private roleplays between a friend and I.

I’ve never run away from home, but at age 16 I was dealing with a lot of shit, namely my relationship with my mother, and Liz’s relationship with her mother and grandmother is an exaggerated version of what mine was like. But a lot of characters in fiction are made because an author needs an outlet, and while their characters aren’t them, they’ve put a lot of themselves into their character while that character still maintains their originality.

Hell, I also struggle with cultural displacement, being half white and half Mexican with white passing privilege despite my daddy being darker than anything. My dad hates his people, because he wasn’t Mexican enough for them, and he became very resentful because of this. Liz’s father is very proud of his heritage, but Liz still struggles with feeling like she doesn’t know where she belongs in that regard, but more so from a mental and emotional standpoint. I’m very empathetic, and Liz is very apathetic at times, which impacts how she interacts with others. She’s logical, whereas I’m emotional. She thinks with her head, and I think with my heart. There’s similarities, but we aren’t the same person. That’s the difference between using a character as a coping mechanism, and living vicariously through roleplay.

Shit, it’s why I picked Guzma as a muse. My anger doesn’t manifest itself physically like it does for him, but I suffer the emotional side of it. There’s a difference between being your character, and relating to them is the point that I’m trying to make. That’s the other side of the “are they a self-insert or are they an original character”? Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes it isn’t, and people (in general) can make rather rude assumptions.

And god forbid a female muse on this website express themselves sexually. A male canon character does it, and y’all lose your fucking minds because hot. A female character does it, and it’s “she doesn’t need a man” or “oh my god, she’s so thirsty! How embarrassing!”

Fuck you, person. Fuck all of you who feel like female OCs need to prove they aren’t “thirsty” before you decide you’re going to interact with them. I was honest to God terrified of doing anything remotely risque on my blog because I wanted my character to be liked, and not associated with a shitty stereotype.

I wish I could elaborate more on characters that are transgender or non-binary. I’ve had one transgender character, who was canonically CIS, and I never received and any hate for that, but I fucking know it happens. I know characters in the Pokemon community who identify as such, and it disgusts me how a mun’s ignorance can influence the shit their muses do that are just blatantly transphobic, or erase the existence of non-binary or agender muses altogether. This applies to both muns of said muses, or muns who interact with said muses. Pouring one out for myself for all the shitty “genderbends” (I hate that term, by the way) I’ve been forced to witness with my own two eyes, based on the idea that there exists only two genders.

Gender is a fucking social construct, fight me, but I respect trans people who identify as either female or male, because I’m not a transphobic fuckhead, and dysphoria sucks.

I don’t want to leave anyone out of this, and if you have had experiences where your muse is trans, non-binary, agender, and you have gotten shit for it:

You are valid as fuck, and please shove your muses my way, because I will love them.

Anyway, I answered this question to death by now, even adding personal experiences and comparisons.

TDLR I just don’t feel as though male muses experience the same amount of backlash and hate that female muses get, ya dig?

#OUTOFCOCOA ( ᵒᵒᶜ ).#anon tag #misogyny cw #racism cw #transphobia cw #anyway #this got long

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megapotatosaurus · 7 years ago

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hey guys, rebelbaze responded!! once again in the comments of my last post rather than a reblog so if you want to see their full comments just go to that link.

“Your argument is largely based on not understanding wht the LGBT community is for, what its activism looks like, and what LGBT specific resources could do. Please edcuate yourself further.” -rebelbaze

Sure, I’m always looking to educate myself further on LGBT+ matters. But I know perfectly well what the LGBT+ community is for. It’s for people like me, and @ghiraheeheeheem and everyone else with a sexuality or gender identity that has been oppressed and erased for centuries.

“Nah, my request for “better sources” was sources not from tumblr, not with studies that are a. old enough to be obsolete and b. have been debunked, and c. did not directly contradict the point they were trying to make that aces face “similar” discrimination to LGBT folk. Which, again, none of his sources proved AND neither do any of your sources. The discrimination you are talking about most closely resembles MISOGYNY not homophobia or transphobia“ -rebelbaze

So, I went to the trouble of providing you with actual published research from scientific journals specifically concerned with human sexuality and that’s not the kind of evidence you want or consider valid. Aaaaaalrighty then. Also, neither of the papers I cited were directly trying to prove that aces face similar discrimination to other LGBT+, they were analysing the experience of ace people using interview techniques and questionnaires and in the case of Brotto et al., some evaluation scales. They neither contradicted nor supported the point, I merely drew the connection in support myself as there was discussion of asexuals facing the kind of discrimination LGBT+ people do face.

However, I did go and find another article which I think you will like and find helpful to your understanding of the topic :] It’s called “Making Sense in and of the Asexual Community: Navigating Relationships and Identities in a Context of Resistance“ by CJ Chasin, 2015. The original article is here and once again I would be happy to provide you with the full text for free by email or some other means if you cannot access it, just message or /ask me. It actually makes a point of discussing and positively comparing the experience of the asexual and homosexual struggle - that is say, an actual qualified researcher and social psychologist who has reviewed all of the literature on the topic (because that’s what this paper is, a review and discussion of the available literature on the topic) agrees that the experience of homophobia and aphobia is “parallel” (Chasin, 2015) in society.

So. Want any more sources?

Moving on:

“And, like, cishet aces ARE invading the community using the EXACT same rhetoric kinky cishets, polyamorous cishets, and even pedophile cishets have used in the past (and present!) to attempt to say that they are oppressed and part of the LGBT community. Our oppressors trying to get into our spaces and say we owe them support can be codified as nothing other than invaders.” -rebelbaze

Oh boy, I love it when asexuals get compared to pedophiles and other sexual deviants! (Not to suggest that kinks and polyamory are deviant, though that’s certainly what @rebelbaze is suggesting by thoughtlessly lumping them all in with pedophiles.) Kind of reminds me exactly of how homosexuals get compared to pedophiles! Not to mention the way trans people get compared to pedophiles! Hmmm! Aphobia and homophobia and transphobia are so not equivalent! Nobody’s pulling the exact same shit on absolutely everybody who has some kind of ‘abnormal’ sexuality or gender identity!! Especially not people within the very LGBT+ community which is supposed to be promoting and supporting the rights of these people to exist!!!!

Come on. Can you really not hear yourself? I mean, in all honesty, you seem very concerned about the oppression of our people and that could be an admirable trait if used properly. But if you use the same weapons against others in our group that our oppressors do, can’t you see you’re no better than them? There’s no shame in coming to realise that you’ve been misinformed about an issue. In fact, it’s more admirable to admit that you were wrong than to continue arguing yourself into a corner based upon a lie, and a vicious and destructive lie at that.

I’ll address one more point on that topic:

“Because, again, the LGBT community isn’t about anyone who is marginalized (otherwise FURRIES can make a better case than cishet aces, as furries have had their conventions literally GASSED), it is about those SPECIFICALLY oppressed by homophobia and transphobia. Like, can you name a single major LGBT Issue that wasn’t based around homophobia and transphobia?” -rebelbaze

How about biphobia? Because that’s a very real and distinct thing from homophobia, more similar to aphobia in many ways. Bi people are routinely erased, told they’re “going through a phase”, that they’re not welcome in the community because they can potentially fit in with the heteronormative ideal (oh look it’s what we’re discussing right here right now but for ace people) or that they’re actually just straight but horny or actually secretly gay, just the same way asexuals are told that they’re repressed or just victims of abuse, just the way that gay men are often theorised to have been victims of abuse. I could keep looping around and linking up all of the different x-phobic arguments: they have more that binds than separates them. And asexuals, as noted in each of my papers, also have the unique challenge of not being understood by ANYONE who experiences sexual attraction. They’re doubly cursed and doubly vulnerable to people such as yourself telling them they don’t belong. Which is why I am of the opinion that we should be extra welcoming to all kinds of asexual people, cishet or lesbian or gay or genderqueer or trans or whatever else, because there are even less people who understand them than the sexualities with a much larger and well-established movement and publicity.

And one more LGBT+ issue not based around homophobia/transphobia - how about the experience of LGBT+ POC? As you’re arguing that misogyny/rape culture issues have no place in this debate, you could also argue that race issues should be kept out of the LGBT+ space, but once again, in my opinion those who face extra marginalisation in society should be invited in and allowed to celebrate and express themselves using the context of their own experience. Like I said in my last post, just because they might not fit your image of who belongs in your group doesn’t mean they don’t belong. It’s a very broad spectrum and so we need a broad gaze.

Our struggles are all different, but equivalent, and each legitimate. In the face of so much institutionalised hatred, we must support one another, not weaken the movement with in-fighting and cruelty using the very weapons used to oppress us.

#rebelbaze #gatekeeping #ghiraheeheeheem #aphobia #transphobia #lgbt #asexual #asexuality

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aeroknot · 8 years ago

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some thoughts on the latest wynonna plot twist

i’ve been working on this for a little while.

i just want to explain a large part of my resistance to the wearp development of season 2. it is very personal (perhaps tmi) and reveals a deep bias infiltrating my ability to whole-heartedly accept or celebrate the plot line. I still think it’s worth expressing, though.

ok so like… i’ve felt a range of emotions regarding this pregnancy plotline, most of them negative and just varying in the degrees of pissy pessimism i can shift between, and at first i was really self-interrogating and just being like “are you being an insufferable asshole about this because of wyndolls?” and i thought about it and y’know, probably, like, I’ll be transparent bc who the fuck else am I gonna be real with about this show other than strangers on the internet? and yeah, 10% of it’s wyndolls-related dread, sure, but honestly??

the root of it is that I don’t like kids right now, especially infants, and this intensely combines with the fact that, as a 27 year old with shared qualities with her, I was projecting onto wynonna hard. a big specific fear we shared was where I constantly wonder about whether I truly have choices in my “fate” (mostly, re: am I doomed to repeat my parents’ mistakes? and also am I doomed by my depression? a deep and real limitation that really honestly does feel like its own kind of curse. and, would I pass this onto a child and doom them?) I was ecstatic to be connecting with her and key tenants of her personality, as well as her past traumas (such as but not limited to: child abuse from an alcoholic father, being institutionalized, and acting things out sexually with guys) that I found so relatable. a smaller part, but most relevant to this discussion, is that liked to think of her as a woman who, also, at this point in her life, was wholly uninterested in motherhood, for a whole shitton of reasons; many of which I could relate to, but particularly based in her family trauma/this curse/complicated relationships with men, and also her general attitude of prioritizing her needs above everyone else’s except maybe waverly’s and her partner(s)’. working on herself. and i loved that. it resonated with me.

a baby has really thrown a wrench in this experience, and this is largely because a not-so-insignficant emotional dufflebag that’s been chained to my ankle since my ex left is all the times he told me I’d be a terrible mother, and how i’ve been processing that and moving on from letting that hold any more weight in my life completely opposes being excited about a plot development like this.

after I finally picked myself up off the floor of my shame spiral into his evaluation of me, I rebuilt myself by asking: what right did he have to evaluate my worth based on an abstract, idealized, and hypothetical version of motherhood he imagined – specifically myself as a mother, when, might I add, neither of us were even close to being stable enough even as individuals to be ready for parenthood – (answer: no real fucking right). so: would it be liberating and healing to discover that I can be a woman without procreating? could I still find my worth in myself if it never happened for me? could I erase some of that disdain for my character away by moving the goalpost and allowing myself to say: I don’t need this to be a woman worth admiring and loving-- and I could remain someone a person would desire in a long-term romantic relationship? and did I even fucking want children? was it a good idea for me to have them? I don’t completely have a definitive answer and even if I did decide I didn’t want some, maybe if I met the right partner and i decided -- regardless of what my partner wanted -- that I wanted a baby more than I was afraid of a baby, it’d change, maybe. or I’ve thought about adoption later in life. but for now, and what’s feeding into my disappointment and discomfort with wynonna’s arc, is the fact that I have been experimenting with expressing disinterest in children, publicly and privately, and testing out how that makes me feel, and lately, I’ve felt pretty damn good thinking about a childless future, and after the pain I felt with ‘being inept at motherhood’ lorded over my head as a deep insult to my character, it’s very healing and empowering for me to be able to say “I could live without kids” or “having children is perhaps not in my path” and even go so far as to admit “I don’t think I even like children right now.”

I don’t dislike children, per se (though I do resent I even feel the pressure to have to put that as a disclaimer!!). I’m nice to them. I love my young cousins. I think children are often hilarious and inquisitive and generally good-natured. but they’re…. they’re like how men are to me right now. the idealized ones are really neat; the fictional ones and the ones over there and the ones other people really love are really cool and I’m happy they make others happy and sometimes I get to spend some time with them too, but as a general practice I’d like to just not prioritize them in my life right now, and women are asked to prioritize both all the damn time or else believe there’s something wrong with them, and I’d like to create space and consume some more media where maybe we just… don’t allow that as much? I promise I’m not going around kicking kids nor am I telling other people to kick them. but I am letting myself feel what it’s like to admit that maybe I don’t think they’re the greatest thing on earth, which is what I feel pressured to say (oh god damn, especially in my Christian work environment, dear lort). I’m experimenting with allowing myself to say to someone who invasively inquires about the status of my reproductivity, “y’know, I don’t really like the idea of being responsible for a very sensitive, innocent, impressionable, and defenseless young soul who deserves a lot of time, energy, and self-sacrifice in order to care for and raise; emotional and physical and mental labor that I don’t feel like designating to anyone but myself right now.” basically, I just don’t find them as enthralling as I used to (I once worked at a daycare and wanted to be a teacher), and I’m even questioning now how much of my enchantment back then was authentic and how much of it was indoctrinated.

and a large part of what I’m realizing is the fact I’m made deeply uncomfortable and displeased by the idea of carving out parts of my identity and my life in order to create the large, large space a child deserves in order to fit one into my story. I don’t like the permanence of adding a child; I don’t like the irrevocable nature of such a huge undertaking that will impact every single facet of a person’s life from that point forward. maybe I’m selfish. maybe I’m just not ready. call me what you want, I’m still walking this path for now, though, and I’ll assert I deserve respect even if I don’t want kids.

so to watch this story that I was feeling so connected to for reasons really opposite of this whole storyline so quickly suddenly make room for a baby while I am resisting motherhood as a measure of a woman’s worth and also very freaked out by the permanence and weight of being responsible for your offspring? yeah. it’s a little disheartening to me. like dolls said, it changes everything. and it’s like…… any way they shake the story out, I think I’ll be upset, because I’m... not personally invested in the baby even sticking around, even though I know that sounds sort of horrible.

I admire the way they’ve done it so far in the aftermath of this reveal. I admire the dialogue. and I think admiring and respecting how they’re doing it while still not liking it is valid, and is also a testament to how well-executed it can be. but I’m still hesitant, skeptical, and resistant.

and this is all hard for me too because like… I think I WOULD think it’s awesome if post-broken-curse, older, perhaps in-a-loving-relationship-wynonna and forgiven-herself wynonna kicks down a door while pregnant, and asserts she can still be a hero while pregnant, and she’s still this or still that and not an invalid fragile incompetent person at her job, etc, etc….. demon-hunting mom who pisses off the PTA moms because all their kids think she’s so cool. but it... it’s sudden. it’s “too early” in my head. and of course I understand why that is. but I’m still grumbly about it.

i’ve also realized that I was a child who was somewhat unwanted. conceived between two people with an unhealthy relationship who did not want to be tethered together for the rest of their lives. and as a child in the middle of that stress, as an unplanned baby who MY MOM GOT PREGNANT WITH WHILE ON BIRTH CONTROL, I know what the downsides are to have that origin story. with this context, it makes sense this is a big hang up for me, something I’m recoiling from. and my mother made me her impetus for change and growth and when she failed at healing herself through me, it made me feel like the failure and a waste of space and “not worth it.” (it’s similar with my dad, but fatherhood’s not really the point here.) to be entirely both the source and motivation for your mother’s (and sometimes father’s) personal healing is a lot of pressure. and it feels suffocating. to be the only reason your mother works on herself when you live with her, but then devolves when you’re not with her-- it serves up some real emotional erosion. we can’t say for certain this is what wynonna would do, but even a whiff of this makes me want to run the other direction.

I’m also upset about the issue of consent in the pregnancy. her opportunity to choose was taken from her by the time demon, and that makes me uncomfortable. she’s doing amazing now, she’s so fucking strong, but I’m still upset. it was clever, but if you really look at it, it was another way she had no choice. &... I appreciate her anger about it! i really do! that is one of the things I do really respect: I appreciate her sadness being allowed time onscreen, and Melanie’s acting is uh-mazing regarding this.

see, I have a lot of conflicting emotions about this. I’m trying to articulate it as best I can.

so then I’m even further flabbergasted by all the ways my brain is trying to cope and trying to make the story cool, trying to patch it, trying to adapt it, trying to twist it, and trying to sneak in lighter and happier moments, and trying to find optimism in things like “oh well I love Jane the Virgin and that’s baby-heavy from the get-go.” .... though therein sorta lies the fundamental difference. you knew a baby was coming from the very first episode, the baby is literally the impetus for everything, and so even though there were consent issues even in Jane the Virgin, there was no real transition from Main Plot to Suddenly A Baby Gets To Be The Center of Everything..... but.... making this comparison also helps me to maybe trust a bit more. I love Jane the Virgin (but.... even still, I’ll be honest that I’ve kind of lost interest since Mateo was born and I haven’t been keeping up as regularly as I used to. I need to stop with that, but I feel it’s another example of just how much I’ve been disinterested in kids these days.)

anyway...

i’m trying to…. well…. respond to the prospect of this fictional baby the exact opposite of how I’ve been trying to react to real babies lately. and it’s just… it’s all a perfect storm, I guess.

BUT: it’s my own personal shit. and maybe I just need to set it aside.

and maybe, even.... this take on motherhood onscreen, seeing wynonna, who I relate to so much, be a mother... perhaps it may even heal some of the wounds I’ve felt regarding the subject since the shame was first implanted by my ex, and reinforced by my own childhood and genetics and immaturity as an “adult.”

maybe.

we will see.

#aero talks A LOT #this is about the pregnancy plot in wynonna earp #wynonna earp #wearp discussion #wynonna earp discussion #aero opinion time #relating to media in deeply personal ways #personal bias #somewhat negative #trying to be more objective but still warning you: somewhat negative ahead #personal shit #under a read more but sorry mobile users

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actuallyasexual · 8 years ago

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Re: “Cut Riverdale Some Slack”

I found a Riverdale defense post written by unsungunbridled in the asexuality tag. I want to address the post, but the defense post is quite long. Therefore, I hope to address some of the issues I have with it here.

Whatever the case, I feel that it is critical to address some of the attitudes and assumptions made about asexuality and how within fandom spaces people need to listen to asexual voices when it involves our representation.

Before I begin, I want to make a few things clear: I am an aromantic asexual person. I am speaking about this as such. I am making no assumptions about the OP’s identity, merely I am discussing how their argument effects me.

I invite them to engage in discussion with me if they wish, though they are not required to respond to this post. I understand if they feel uncomfortable in doing so, though this post is not meant to be hostile.

Normally I would not respond separately like this. In my defense, I considered the fact that they posted their defense in our community tags as well as screenshot someone expressing discontent over erasure on twitter.

Therefore, I believe that it’s fair and justifiable to address this here in a space where I am most comfortable and able of addressing at length the issues concerning us without adding to the notes of said defense post.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s begin:

The post is called “Cut Riverdale some slack. There is no asexuality erasure going on in that show.” They screenshot a tweet stating “oh my god and you support asexual erasure too. Colour me surprised.” in order to challenge it.

They follow with:

[Caption: “Since I’ve had it with Riverdale and Bughead getting hate due to accusations of asexuality erasure, I’ve crafted a wall of argument to try and shut it down. Colour me pumped.”]

Two major implications of such a statement concern me. One, that the show (Riverdale) and the ship (“Bughead;” referring to Jughead x Betty) “getting hate” is qualitatively worse than asexual erasure. Two, that they have the power to “craft a wall” and “shut down” our concerns.

Furthermore, these two implications tell me two things. One, that our erasure doesn’t matter. Two, that it’s okay to speak over a-spec people voicing their issues with something and to create barriers that make it that much more difficult for us to fight for fair representation.

Let’s continue:

They assume two things must happen in order for asexual erasure to be valid. Those two things are: 1) Jughead is asexual and 2) Riverdale represents him as someone who is not asexual. They state:

[Caption: On the surface, the above seem to concur, and Jughead’s asexuality is indeed being erased. But when we contextualize the matter within the history of Jughead’s character over the years of the Archie franchise, we’ll see that the accusation being thrown around recently is actually just a statement made out of a set of nitpicked facts put together to present faslehood.]

Here, I have highlighted some of the more alarming statements. “On the surface” implies that we’re simply not looking at the issue deep enough. This ignores the fact that many asexuals are discontent with their asexuality constantly being shoved into the background or ignored entirely. An “on the surface” lack of representation is still a serious issue!

In addition, our dissatisfaction is being blamed on “nitpicking facts” to present a “falsehood.” As asexual people, we’re seeing a critical part of a character’s identity being ignored. That’s not “nitpicking.” Our asexuality is important to us, and defending that importance by adding nuance to past interpretations of his character is not “presenting a falsehood.” It’s an interpretation.

This is a very length post, as the defense post is also lengthy and I have a lot to address. So, I’ll be putting the rest under a read more.

They go on to list earlier interpretations of Jughead, to show the range of interpretations that have impacted his grown and reincarnation over the years. The problem with this is that it ignores how past interpretations of asexuality surfaced in popular media, how comics frequently suffer continuity issues, and how none of his past interpretations change the fact that he’s asexual now.

I’ll talk about the interpretations they’ve listed:

First, let’s talk about the first one. It isn’t just that Jughead “could be” viewed as asexual in 2016. He is. They decided to make it explicitly clear that Jughead was asexual, and they coded him as aromantic with the possibility of being demiromantic in the future. [x] It’s reasonable to argue that a modern TV version of him should be based on a modern interpretation of Jughead.

In a 1969 interpretation, Jughead's aversion to women and obsession with food is chalked up to his "fear of women." This doesn’t conflict with an asexual interpretation. It’s merely a means for writers who are not asexual to rationalize why someone would enjoy food more than romantic or sexual relationships. Even in this version, Jughead’s behavior isn’t foreign to asexual people.

It’s common for people who are not asexual or aromantic to rationalize why people like us don’t experience sexual or romantic attraction. Sometimes, that is rationalized in a somewhat comedic fashion while other times it’s personal tragedy that makes use “who we are.” Either way, there have always been people trying to figure us out. These old interpretations are rationalizations.

Yet, as asexual and aromantic people we understand that someone can come to the realization that they’re asexual and/or aromantic in a wide variety of circumstances. It can be related to “heartbreak.” My own traumatic experiences have influenced my aromanticism. It doesn’t invalidate it, and interpreting Jughead as asexual for 75 years isn’t a false statement:

[Caption: Meaning, there are more than one canon explanations for Jughead’s general aversion to women, romance, and physical intimacy. So very absolute statements like this...

[pictured here: a tweet stating “hes been asexual for 75 years. just because they announced it this past year doesnt mean it hasn’t existed for decades]

...are false.]

...because everything mentioned before falls within the realm of asexual and/or aromantic experience, with the exception of continuities that were created to explore “what if” situations (e.g. “What if Jughead liked girls?” “What if Jughead fell in love?” and so on) That’s where having an understanding of comics comes into play -- comic book writers past and present love playing with “what ifs”...

This can be a fun approach to take with fan favorites once in a while, but it can also be the bane of dedicated comic book fan’s existence. Also, favoring a continuity where writers thought it would be fun to position a character who is odd or different or even marginalized in a way that downplays or alters that experience can be pretty harmful to who that character represents.

Also, you are dealing with an older comic. Asexual people have always existed, but the language we use for our community is fairly recent (within the past twenty years.) How people viewed us in the past, impacted how they represented us in fiction. You’re not (easily) going to find someone saying they’re asexual in a comic that occurred 75 years ago.

So, while Jughead’s “recurring aversion to women, romance, and physical intimacy” could have been rationalized in different ways over 75 years. It doesn’t change the fact that his experiences have been common to asexual people for 75 years, and that the rationalizations given for his aversion to all of this don’t invalidate the possibility of him being asexual for that entire time.

This is all a very manipulative way of working around the issue, because the two issues presented do concur. Jughead is canonically confirmed as asexual in the most recent incarnation of the character. Riverdale takes inspiration from the recent incarnation of Archie comic book characters. Riverdale showrunners have expressed no intention in making Jughead’s asexuality canon for TV. [x] [x]

So, the whole “there is no asexual erasure in Riverdale” tone taken in the defense post is frankly absurd to me. Yeah, okay, there’s no erasure happening and there’s no war in Ba Sing Se, either. Hundreds of asexual people, especially aromantic asexual people, are up in arms for no reason. We’re just here to hate on a show and a ship for no apparent reason.

Now, let’s talk about critical reactions to this and the defense against these critical reactions. I’m not sure how up to date the OP is in asexual representation in popular fiction, but the fact of the matter is that our representation is practically non-existent in popular fiction. This isn’t about “sexuality politics” as much as it’s about asexual people needing representation.

We matter more than your show. We matter more than your ship. Our feelings in regards to the show are more important and should be prioritized when it comes to discussing asexual representation. It doesn’t matter if writers can “play” with identity, because we are well aware of that. It matters that they feel like they need to in order to make their stories interesting.

It’s a problem when changing or omitting Jughead’s sexual identity reinforces tropes that harm asexual people. It’s a problem when they’re responsible for how a larger audience views us and interprets our existence as living breathing asexuals and aromantics. I’m frankly not concerned with the impact my voice has on the show’s success when the show can impact my life.

So, again, to state something like the following:

[Caption: So your false accusation of sexuality erasure can do some serious damage to the show you are lambasting. Your accusation can pick up bad press. Your accusation can have outsiders -- potential fans, additional viewers -- turning down Riverdale before they even give the show a chance; hell, before the show even gets its chance. (a jughead arc where he explores his asexuality, anyone?)

...prioritizes the show over asexual and aromantic people, with the added bonus of villianizing and guilt-tripping asexual and aromantic people voicing their issues with the show. Finally, it baits asexuals suggesting that if we just behave ourselves then maybe they’ll respect our identity. OP, you’re preferencing a show over our existence and that’s not okay.

This entire defense post derails from reasons why asexual and aromantic people are fighting so hard for our representation, and undermines our value. We as a people will always be more important than the success of a TV show, and we shouldn’t have to grovel or be nice about the erasure or misrepresentation of our experiences.

It was really bold of you to step into our community to defend a TV show like this. Really. You put a lot of effort into explaining yourself, but not much of it was considerate of asexual and aromantic people. Ultimately, this really wasn’t your place, OP, and in the process you’ve presented us as nitpicking liars who need to learn how to play nice in order to avoid erasure and gain respect.

#actually asexual #jughead #riverdale #bughead #ace representation #unsungunbridled

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andro-boi · 5 years ago

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I still don’t understand the difference between being bisexual and Pansexual?? I feel like the definitions described on your Instagram defined the same thing? I’m still very confused

Look I don’t blame you, it can be v confusing but also because we have all been taught to believe a certain stereotypes so accepting a whole new different system of knowledge can be just down right fucking confusing. However I really do applaud you for tryna get to the bottom of this confusion for your own education rather than brush it off like most people <3

Okay so what the fuck does it mean to be BISEXUAL

“Bisexual means you’re attracted to people of both genders yeah?”

Not Exactly my friend,

Gender isn’t a binary, meaning that people don’t fall into the categories of “Men” or “Woman” that we were all taught growing up.

Look the oldies got some shit right but they got a lotta things wrong. There is new information being discovered every day. Like they thought homosexuality was a mental illness 50 years ago.

#NonBinary is a word that describes people who don’t exclusively identify as either a woman or a man. #NonBinary people could also identify as Bigender, Genderfluid, or Agender, just to name a few terms. So, in saying that when people say “Both Genders” its a misnomer.

Misnomer: a wrong or inaccurate use of a name or term.

“Yeah well how come men and women always existed but #NonBinary people only existing now huh dad!“

Ha thats where you wrong family. #NonBinary people have been acknoledged by the LGBTQIA Community for many decades. In fact in a 1990 Bisexual Manifesto (Yes I know, A BISEXUAL MANIFESTO in the 1990s) acknoledged that Non Binary people Exist. Also if you look into a lot of cultures of the world you will realise that Non Binary and Trans People have always existed.

“Aight then, are bisexual people only attracted to men and women, and not nonbinary people?”

Nope, not necessarily.

Bisexuality means different things to different people.

To some people, it means attraction to two or more genders, or multiple genders.

To others, it means attraction to people of the same gender and people who are another gender.

Some bisexual people might only be attracted to men and women and not nonbinary people, but that’s not every bisexual person’s experience.

“Okay then what does PANSEXUAL mean?”

The prefix “pan-” means “all.” Similarly, pansexuality means that you’re attracted to people of all genders.

This includes people who don’t identify with any gender (agender).

Many pansexual people describe themselves as being attracted to people based on personality, not gender.

Important Note: pansexual doesn’t mean you’re attracted to all people.

For example, heterosexual men aren’t attracted to all women, and vice versa.

It simply means that they find themselves attracted to people of all sorts of gender categories.

“Lol it sounds like you just said the same thing twice dad - whats the fucking difference tho?“

Bisexual means attracted to multiple genders, and pansexual means attracted to all genders.

These are different because “multiple” isn’t the same thing as “all.”

Let’s say you ask your friends what their favorite colors are.

One friend might say, “Actually, I like more than one color!” Another friend might say, “I like all colors.”

Now, the first friend might like all colors, but they might not. They might not like khaki or beige. Perhaps they like pastels but not dark colors.

This is because “all colors” is, by definition, more than one.

However, “more than one” isn’t technically all.

Some people feel that pansexual falls into the category of bisexual because bisexual is a broad term that means more than one — but it isn’t the same thing, because “all” isn’t the same as “multiple.”

“Why is the Bisexual VS Pansexual Distinction so controversial? “

The controversy around this distinction often stems from a place of misunderstanding and lack of education.

Some people assume that bisexual people are erasing nonbinary people. They assume the word bisexual implies that there are only two genders.

Other people assume that pansexual is a word invented solely because bisexual people are misunderstood and assumed to exclude nonbinary people.

The truth is that both orientations are valid in their own right.

Many bisexual communities do acknowledge nonbinary people — in fact, many nonbinary people identify as bisexual. Additionally, many pansexual people know that the definition of bisexual can include nonbinary people.

Again, bisexuality and pansexuality don’t mean exactly the same thing, and it’s completely valid to identify as either (or both!).

“What if you’re attracted to one gender way more than another? am i still bi or pansexual?“

Yes! You can still be bisexual or pansexual if you find yourself more attracted to one gender than others.

In fact, surveys and studies show that many bisexual and pansexual people have a preference. This doesn’t make your orientation any less valid.

“Can you be attracted to different genders in different ways...“

Yes. You might find yourself sexually attracted to one gender and romantically attracted to another gender. This is called “mixed orientation” or “cross orientation.”

For example, you could be bisexual but homoromantic — meaning you’re sexually attracted to people of multiple genders, but you’re only romantically attracted to people who are the same gender as you.

We been talking about bisexuality and pansexuality — that is, sexual orientations.

However, there are different romantic orientations, including:

Aromantic. You experience little to no romantic attraction to anyone, regardless of gender.

Biromantic. You’re romantically attracted to people of two or more genders.

Panromantic. You’re romantically attracted to people of all genders.

Greyromantic. You experience romantic attraction infrequently.

Demiromantic. You experience romantic attraction infrequently, and when you do it’s only after developing a strong emotional connection to someone.

Heteroromantic. You’re only romantically attracted to people of a different gender to you.

Homoromantic. You’re only romantically attracted to people who are the same gender as you.

Polyromantic. You’re romantically attracted to people of many — not all — genders.

“Does dating someone of a particular gender mean you’re straight?“

Hell to the fucking No. Let’s say a bisexual woman is in a relationship with a man. This doesn’t make her straight. Similarly, if she dates a woman, she doesn’t become a lesbian.

Unfortunately, many people think that bisexual and pansexual people need to “pick a side” — gay or straight. And when bisexual and pansexual people date someone publicly, it’s often assumed that they’re picking a side.

You aren’t defined by your partner’s gender.

The labels we choose to describe our orientation are only determined by ourselves and our experiences with attraction.

“Okay where the does the term #Queer come in?“

“Queer” is a sort of blanket term used to include all people who don’t identify as straight.

While it was previously used as a slur, it has been reclaimed by the LGBTQIA+ community. ( Funny little story, I had a friend of mine call me “Queer Fuck” during high school and ya guessed it, she hella gay now. )

However, some people still feel uncomfortable with the word “queer” because it’s been used as a form of oppression.

It’s totally OK to use it instead of, or in addition to, another term.

Many people use “queer” because they aren’t sure how to describe their orientation, or because their orientation feels fluid and changes over time.

“How do I know which term fits me?“

There’s no test to determine whether you’re bisexual or pansexual (or another orientation entirely).

You can identify as whatever orientation fits you. Of course, figuring out what fits you might be tough.

To help you figure out your sexual orientation, you may ask yourself:

Is there any gender that I don’t ever feel attracted to?

Is there any gender — or group of genders — that I’m not sure if I’m attracted to?

What word feels best?

What community do I feel comfortable with?

Am I romantically attracted to the same people I’m sexually attracted to?

Remember, there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s about getting to know yourself better and figuring out what you like and prefer.

It’s also important to remember that it’s OK to identify with multiple terms — as well as change the way you describe your sexual orientation later on.

“Can you identify with one term then switch to another later on“

Yes! Identifying with a particular sexual orientation isn’t a lifelong binding contract. Like we don’t sell your soul to the devil for a membership lmao

You might find that your sexual orientation and your capacity for attraction changes over time, or you might learn of another word that better describes your sexual orientation. Why? Because we’re human and we grow and change with time and just life.

No matter the reason, you’re allowed to change the way you describe your orientation.

“What if neither of these terms feel right for me anymore?..“

That’s OK. Sexual orientation can change over time. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.

For example, it’s totally fine to identify as bisexual at one point in time and then as heterosexual later on.

A lot of people assume bisexuality is a “stepping-stone” to homosexuality, but this isn’t true.

Many people identify as bisexual their whole lives. If you do find that your sexuality shifts, don’t feel ashamed because it “fits” into someone else’s misconception of what bisexuality is.

You aren’t perpetuating a myth by being who you are; another person’s misinformed opinion isn’t your burden to carry.

“Okay.. but what if,. neither of these terms have ever felt right for me?“

Oh my sweet angel, There are many ways to identify. Beyond bisexual and pansexual, there are other words to describe your orientation, including:

Asexual. You experience little to no sexual attraction to anyone, regardless of gender.

Greysexual. You experience sexual attraction infrequently.

Demisexual. You experience sexual attraction infrequently, and when you do it’s only after developing a strong emotional connection to someone.

Heterosexual. You’re only sexually attracted to people of a different gender to you.

Homosexual. You’re only sexually attracted to people who are the same gender as you.

Polysexual. You’re sexually attracted to people of many — not all — genders.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of sexual orientations — more and more words are being coined to describe people’s unique experiences of sexual orientation.

Remember, you don’t have to use any word or label to describe your orientation that you don’t want to use.

How you choose to identify is entirely up to you!

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