#people. existing. aging. being queer

[batwynn]

Listen. The moment you get an older than 45 queer romance going in media I’m thrilled and I just don’t gaf if it’s sad, ‘Bad Rep’, light and happy, plot B, not ‘serious enough’, ‘too serious’, Can’t Happen Because One of Them Only is in Love With the Other Inside a Mind Split Work Place, Not Safe For Work, etc. I don’t care. I want it to exist and I will thoroughly enjoy it.

I grew up hearing about all the friends my mom lost in the queer community. I grew up knowing that those people would never have a romance that aged with their bodies. That they’d never have these kinds of stories. That the people who did survive still face hatred and violence just for holding hands in public even after living through this shit for so many years. So, yeah. I want to see the older queer couples in love, ok? I don’t care if it’s not the Young People Aesthetic or ‘Good Representation’ or wtfever. I just don’t care. They deserve to age, and love, and be messy, and be real people, and have stories told about it.

[mycological-mariner]

First day of Pride and I just want to shine a light on all the trans people who are unable to transition, especially those who aren’t fresh faced university grads. Those who don’t live in a supportive or even just accepting home or community. Those who aren’t well off, those who aren’t good at or popular enough to crowd fund. Those who can’t afford transitioning. Those who can’t even transition socially or need to stay in the closet for your safety. Those who rely on benefits or unforgiving jobs to just pay the bills. Having to hear day in and day out you’re just GNC, that your pre-transition body is “ugly” and the ways you can express your gender are “cringe.” Every trans person who’s been told they aren’t “trying hard enough”. Those trans people who won’t even get to imagine transitioning for years.

I see you. I love you. You’re so undervalued and under appreciated in a world where being a white, well off 20 year old on HRT and getting surgery is more common to see than people who work full time and just don’t have that privilege. It sucks, so much. But you are loved and you are seen.

Happy Pride Month to trans people who aren’t where they want to be. The world is better with you in it. We all need each other.

[asexualtuckerfoley]

The (tiktok) kids aren't alright they're so fucking stupid.

I saw a video speculating on Eddie's sexuality because of the Family Feud thing, and I posted a comment as part of a discussion saying Eddie's commitment issues are queercoded, and multiple baby queers got pissed at me saying queer people shouldn't be part of entertainment and that queercoding is a "personal choice."

So many of these kids think queercoding is a real life woman driving a subaru or a real life man with his nails painted, not a long history of using certain traits and behaviors in commercialized media to indicate that a character is queer when other forces (laws, executives, etc. or in more modern times, the progression of the story) prohibit them from saying it out loud.

Eddie is unable to commit to women, but he can commit to plenty of other things- he even said his marriage to Shannon was a commitment to the church and their child, not to her, which is part of why the marriage failed. He had a panic attack when things started getting serious with another woman, and a third moving in with him revived his religious trauma. It's all part of a larger narrative that screams "THIS MAN IS GAY."

Baby queers on tiktok are only seeing a hyper-sanitized version of queerness and think that and some discourse buzzwords make up the queer experience, and now they're trying so hard to force that view of queerness onto others that they've circled back to the Hays Code.

We didn't fight for our voices to be heard and our stories to be told, especially in complex and respectful ways, just to have some kid who can't even comfortably say Dick van Dyke's full name tell us we shouldn't exist in media.

[hecksupremechips]

Really into the episode of Ouran where this girl confesses her love to Mori but he doesn’t feel the same because he’s into Honey and the girl’s reaction is just like YIPPEE I LOVE YAOI THATS SO COOL FOR YOU YAY 🥰

[queerstudiesnatural]

seeing teenage gays out and about, holding hands and laughing and everything is SO healing. each new sighting puts a new bandaid on my inner queer child

[ofpd]

it's very funny whenever i see ppl talk about les mis as an old fixation from years ago when they were younger bc like this just happened to me in 2023 when i was 20 years old. in some ways being into les mis as a kid/younger teenager is such a specific fun vibe but i cant imagine what it would've been like... like i wouldve been crazier in both correct and incorrect ways

[wild-at-mind]

Had a really stupid conversation via minor emotional breakdown with a queer friend about what makes an LGBTQ person 'assimilist'. From what she said I'm kind of forced to draw the conclusion 'if you say you're not assimilist, then you're not'.

[dashiellqvverty]

having an actual copy of the newsies script in my hands is gonna make me insaneeee btw

[crazypossumman]

There is something incredibly charming about the bitchy-older-man-who-hates-kids-develops-a-meaningful-healthy-relationship-with-a-parentless-child trope. Especially in a world where nearly every movie/novel/whatever has to have a romantic plot/subplot when there are a plethora of other options. It’s a trope that carries great weights of love, caring, and understanding without being romantic; it expresses a different kind of love that is equally important in this world. To open your heart to a child and become the friend or parental figure they not only need but deserve is such a beautiful thing, and to watch a child help an adult learn something new about the world and the way they see it is a constant reminder that people will always have room to grow and change. To see an adult learn as much from a child as the child learns from them, sometimes even more so, is the reminder that so many people need that wisdom often comes in the form of a fresh perspective.

[lavendorii]

like. the problem is cognitive dissonance. young queer folk can say they think reclaiming slurs is fine all they want but more often than not they lose it when people identify as a fag or a dyke or literally whatever. I just think activism and community shouldn't be conditional

[xylophone888]

OH MY GOOD LORD YES

This might be a very controversial take but Sybil being fat with no hair and Adora being weird about golems and Granny being old and a virgin and Magrat being ugly and Agnes being fat and Nanny being Nanny and Cheery existing does more for feminism than 90% of intentionally "feminist" media produced in the past 5-10 years actually

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

oh cool APPARENTLY I aged out of queer dating events

[ur-friendly-nbhd-cardassian]

Is it just my bi ass, or does anyone else think every aggressively straight person is secretly just closeted?

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[melody-magic]

so as a third world transfem there's a bit of a parallel that ive noticed and it goes kinda like this:

if you live in the Imperial Core (or maybe even first world countries in general tbh), you never have to consider the third world in your worldview. what i mean is, you can be born, have a long, rich, fulfilling life and then die of old age, never having thought of any of us beyond the 5 minutes after you get shown some sort of news piece. there's vast, vast swathes of people that think of mexico, or nicaragua, or argentina, or or or or - as basically just names on a map, if that much. we're not people to them, not really. and when we stand up and say "no actually, we are human beings, people worth just as much as any citizen of the Imperial Core", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

and there's not necessarily any malice involved! like, obviously some people that feel like this are malicious, but their personal feelings are irrelevant. the point is that their position insulates them both from knowing us and from any consequences of not knowing us, while we most assuredly are not protected from either of those things in response.

if you are not transfem, even if you are also queer in some way, a similar concept applies. you can have a full, rich, fulfilling queer existence while never having to take us into account! you can go to queer and inclusive events, watch queer and inclusive creators and shows, read queer and inclusive books, and so on and so forth, where we don't feature at all, or if we do, we are a throwaway! and so, when we stand up and say "hey actually we deserve as much space and respect as anyone else", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

im not saying they're related but ultimately both of these worldviews stem from a position of privilege, and can only be eliminated by destroying that privilege. i dont really know how we do that but this is mostly meant as an observation rather than a solutions post.

[genericpuff]

I've been griping about the normalization of identity outing via social media for a while now. To put it simply, it's become almost some weird societal requirement that if you don't have every detail listed about yourself in your Twitter/FB/etc. bio, then it means you have "something to hide" or that you're not as "verifiable" because your account looks indistinct from that of a bot.

But that societal norm has really only benefited the people who profit off of that information in some way, whether it's through selling user data or through weaponizing details about a person against them.

I know that a lot of us love to use the fun little labels and acronyms in our bio that help others like us identify us as a 'safe person' or as someone who's in the same social/racial/identity groups as them. We're humans, we love to categorize things, it's in our nature (and it's fun!)

But if there's any time to start regulating that habit and challenging the norm that you're obligated to include all your personal info online - it's now.

There was a time when sock puppet accounts were expected and typical, not "suspicious".

There was a time when even age-sex-location was considered "too much information", but once it became the norm, we only EVER gave our personal information beyond generic ASL to people who we knew both online and in real life, or at the very least, people who we had known online for a significant enough amount of time that they had proved to be trustworthy (and even then, we didn't owe that information to anyone, ever; there are forum friends who I made online 10+ years ago and still talk to who do not know my personal information beyond broad strokes).

There was a time when simply being an avatar with a funny username was enough. And it still is enough, but massive platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been brainwashing us for years to believe that's not the case, under the guise of, "You wouldn't want to be dishonest, would you?" Through these same norms, we were led to believe that anime profile pictures are cringe, that having a fake online name is stupid, that the photos of you having fun at social events have to be taken JUST right otherwise you might imply to others that you're not actually having fun.

And considering how long these platforms have been around now, we have entire generations of children now who have been born and raised on that version of the ZuckMusk web, who have been taught that it "protects them" to express to everyone publicly their age, their school, their workplace, their family members, everything about themselves, because to not do so would be disingenuous.

None of this is to imply that the Internet was "safer" back in the day. I definitely should not have been on the Internet as much as I was when I was 13 in the late 2000's, it definitely did not benefit my brain development or my social skills. But the version of the Internet we currently exist in now is one that's been predicated on the false sense of security - the belief that if you're honest, everyone else has to be, too.

We've always had ways of identifying our safe people - by participating in the communities that we know are designed around our hobbies, our interests, our people. They might be small, they might not be as "cool" as the idea of netting yourself a big following of thousands of people, but they're also a lot safer and more genuine than that idealized following ever could be.

Don't feel pressured to include every bit of information about yourself in your bio. Even on Facebook, there's no rule that says you have to list your workplace, your school, your family members. There's no rule that says you have to list your personality type, queer labels, and neurodivergent disorders in your Twitter bio. There's no rule that you have to "prove" your life is real and fulfilled through the verification of photos, location tagging, and open-book sharing. If you share those photos, it should be because you genuinely want to share them, not because you feel some societal pressure to live up to others' expectations.

And I guarantee you, even your local mutuals on Facebook - your former classmates, family friends, distant relatives, coworkers, etc. - do not actually give that much of a damn about your personal life that they should be owed that much of a look into it on a daily basis. They've got their own shit going on, they literally do not need to know every detail about you.

I know it sounds scary. It also sounds kind of boring, when we've been used to a certain "way" of browsing and participating for years, that if we don't do so, it feels like being in the "out group" and that we're "breaking the rules". But I promise you, after spending over half my life online, those rules do not exist or benefit anyone who wouldn't profit off that information.

If you're wanting to learn how to branch off from major platforms like Facebook and Twitter and/or become more self-sufficient online, here are some guides to navigating the Internet like an old schooler that may help you!

FREE SITE BUILDER:

DIGITAL PIRACY 101:

(also in addition to everything mentioned here ^^^ they neglect to also mention Tor Browser which is a light and free-to-use browser software that allows you to browse anonymously; note that it's similar to a VPN in that it helps hide your identity online, HOWEVER it won't mask you from your ISP quite as effectively as a VPN, and if you sign into personal accounts with Tor, that's still going to obviously out you online lmao but I love using Tor for the odd time when I need to make a sock puppet for something and don't want it linked to my IP! and unlike a VPN, it's free to use!)

LEARN HOW TO USE RSS FEEDS:

People still use these! They're especially helpful for getting updates from your favorite pages and sites directly to your browser WITHOUT having to worry about stupid algorithm bullshit picking and choosing what you see. And many sites DO have RSS support once you know how to find it! (like adding in /rss at the end of a URL! Like this!)

FAKE EMAIL SERVICES:

LEARN HOW TO CODE IN HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT (AND MORE!):

DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS:

I hope this helps arm you with some new knowledge in how to navigate the Internet like a Certified Old Person™️(like meeee!) Make your secret alt blogs for besties! Make your formal Facebook accounts that are clean of personal information and present the most neutral, safe-for-work version of yourself and keep the fun stuff to the secret profiles and chat groups that are just for you and friends/family/etc!! It might be "inconvenient" to have multiple accounts for the same purpose, but it's also INCREDIBLY freeing and can make your online experience both safer and more enjoyable.

Being "less" of yourself online does not make you any less you. It is your identity - you do not owe any amount of it to anyone beyond yourself. And in times like these, your identity is your greatest asset. Protect it.