#queer maternity

[sjscoyote]

Logically, I understand that there is no need for maternity pants to have belt loops.

HOWEVER, my chaotic neurodivergent queer ass needs a place to clip my keys!

[talaricula]

a rly underrated thing about crazy ex girlfriend imo is that it's one of the rare shows i know of that really spends time on exploring what the process of having children is like for queer ppl/for those who go about it "non-normatively". it's not even rly a main storyline but i still find it rly well-handled and touching.

[min-pathologica]

i love my dad so i’m never telling him i also have a fictional father figure named yakou furio

[couplagoofs]

Hi Sweetpeas! Should we be on Tumblr?

We’re a queer, married couple. We’re obsessed with each other. We make content about that. Oh, and we’re 37 weeks pregnant which has been a crazy journey. Anyway here’s our newest vlog.

[bamidala]

"HUETE", is an original zine about letting go. I made it while I was trying to stop breastfeeding my baby. It was hard but going through the process and drawing this little zine, helped me a lot.

I also took the opportunity to have fun with it. I played with colors and shapes. The narrative is a bit messy and it's not lineal. But I love the fact that reflects what I went through in a dreamy way <3

These are some pages from it, the whole printed comic is available in my shop, here.

[colombinna]

I love to say this. My maternal grandparents have five grandchildren. Four of us are queer. We quite literally have the single straight cousin and I can't wait until my sister comes out to our family so we can laugh about it

Do you have any known queer relatives?

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[sjscoyote]

Any tips from enby or trans parents for combating gender dysphoria while breastfeeding?

Asking in advance to feel more prepared.

[psycrowsis]

bridgerton might be the TV show equivalent of a romance novel and it's really not my thing but they had a threesome in it and it made watching through worth it

[nevermind-i-forgot-whats-that]

Sometimes, as much as I love internet communities and spaces, I really think a lot of people have spent so much time in sanitized, morally pure echo chambers that they lose sight of realism and life outside the internet.

I live in Alabama. My fiancée and I cannot hold hands down the street without fear of homophobic assholes. We have an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. We are one of the poorest states in the US with some of the lowest scores on metrics related to quality of life, including maternal mortality, healthcare, education, and violence. It’s not a coincidence that we are also one of the most red, one of the most Republican states in the Union. In 2017 the UN said the conditions in Alabama are similar to those in a third-world country.

Trump gave a voice to the most violently racist, sexist, xenophobic groups of people who, unfortunately for most of us in the Southern U.S., run our states and have only grown more powerful since his rise to power. The Deep South powers MAGA, and we all suffer for it.

We have no protections if they don’t come from the federal government.

I know people are suffering internationally and my heart is with them. However, this election is not just about foreign policy - we have millions of Americans right here at home living in danger, living in areas where they have been completely abandoned by their local leaders. We need this win.

No candidate is perfect, but for the first time in my voting lifetime I’m excited to vote. I’m excited for the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket because they are addressing the issues close to home. They’re advocating for education as the ticket to a better life, but without the crippling student debt. They’re advocating for the right to love who you love without fear and with pride. Kamala has always been pro-LGBT+ and so has Tim. Again, if you’re queer in the South, we don’t have support unless it comes from the federal government, and we absolutely will not have support if the Republicans regain the White House.

Kamala speaks in length about re-entry programs to reduce recidivism and help people who have been arrested and imprisoned regain their lives. Tim Walz supported restoring voting rights to felons. In the South, you know who comprise the majority of felons? Members of minorities. It’s one of the major tools of systemic racism and mass disenfranchisement, and arguably the modern face of slavery (there are some fantastic documentaries and books that explain the connection between the post-Reconstruction South and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment for BIPOC). Having candidates who recognize this and want to restore the freedom and rights to people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system? And keep them from having to go to prison in the first place? That’s refreshing. That’s exciting.

I would *love* to live in a country where women’s rights are respected, where LGBT+ rights and protections are a given, where we treat former criminals and individuals experiencing mental health crises with respect and dignity. I would *love* to live in a country where education is free of religious interference and each and every citizen is entitled to a fair start and equal opportunities.

But I don’t live in that country. Millions and millions of Americans find their rights and freedoms up for debate and on the ballot.

Project 2025 poses the largest threat to the future of our democracy as we know it. We are being called to fight for the future of our country.

We have to put on our oxygen masks first before we can help others.

You don’t have moral purity when you wash your hands of the millions of us who are still fighting for own freedoms right here.

The reality is that a presidential candidate is a best fit, and not a perfect fit. But comparatively speaking? Kamala is pretty damn close.

[sassmill]

My salad being a hit with the board of trustees just unlocked a whole new spectrum of secret housewife emotions

[onemaebee]

parenting kids is hard. doing your best to set them up for success and prepare them for the world and not letting it stomp them down and being forced to slowly but surely just LET THEM GO is the fucking hardest part so far. and my oldest is only 10.

Kid2 has been insistent on growing out his hair, despite his great-grandmother’s grumbling (”gma,” we tell her, “it’s not your head.”). Ponytails, shaggy and loose, and he keeps bringing up that he wants to do pigtails once it’s just a wee bit longer. He loves wearing leggings (i got a bunch of d/sney mommy-and-me sets in a lot and practically live in leggings myself, and it’s a Good Day when we coordinate to be Matchy Matchy). he’s been begging me for black tights but we are pretty firm on waiting until it gets cooler because bro you’re gonna MELT. he’s said exactly once so far that he wants to get a skirt to swish around-- in blue, his favorite color.

i’m so fucking scared for him.

we’ve always encouraged to like what you like, hell yeah mommy’s huge mlp collection is fun toys, Kid3 adores pink and unicorns and cute and fluffy things. all of us have some kind of toy collection (husband has wow legos and dbz stars figures mostly, and i have... so many otl). yolo.

respect pronouns, i’ve tried to teach-- my younger sibling is coming back from a few years in japan at the start of next month, and this is the first time they’ll be back since coming out as nb. i’ve had multiple casual talks explaining this to the kids and to use their proper pronouns and ask if they want to be called aunt or uncle. heavens knows our parents+grandparents+most of my siblings won’t do the proper thing.

“love who you wanna love, be who you wanna be, we’ll love you anyway,” i’ve stressed again and again and again.

i was homeschooled and thrown into college and it took me until i was years-married to realize i was bi, and if i hadn’t met husband would have almost definitely gotten with a lady. but i got my gorgeous wonderful husband and don’t regret a single moment. point is, i was never subjected to The Horrors and bullying that i KNOW (and everyone confirms) happens if you are Different.

kid2 is autistic (as is possibly kid4 but he’s still a toddler so it’s still questionable), and already we have had talks when other kids try to get him in trouble because he trusts so easily but these other kids do NOT have your best interests at heart, my love! i know he’s already starting to experience what happens if you’re visibly Different and it makes my heart hurt.

i try to listen when my kids tell me things that are important to them, because it’s ALL Big Important Things and i want them to feel comfortable telling me things i agree are big important things even years later. i hope to god my kids are okay, that we are preparing them and loving them and that they’ll get through life and be happy.

if he’s experimenting, gnc, trans, or something (someone) else, we’ll love him no matter what. i’ll make sure he KNOWS that.

i wish the world wasn’t so hard on kids. i wish i could protect them forever.

[reorientation]

As much as I'd enjoy knocking up a bunch of fakeboys and dykes during Pride month, I think it'd be even better to do it in, say, September.

Because that means all my little babymakers would be full term during Pride season. No marching in a parade when you can barely waddle. No pretending that what's between your legs doesn't matter, when you're swollen up with the consequences of spreading them.

It would be awfully cute to have a bunch of "FtM"s staying home in maternity dresses instead of going out to celebrate, with their hips slowly getting wider as they got ready to push out a straight man's babies. The "lesbians" might still be able to go out and wave little rainbow flags from the sidelines - lots of lesbians have biological children! - as long as no one asked them what sperm bank they used. And as long as their water didn't break while they were there.

But it would all be okay. They wouldn't need to take part in the queer community celebrations. Not when there was a new community for them - a sisterhood of brand new mommies.

[retromochi]

lovingly still drawing mlp redesigns in the year of our lord 2024 these are kind of for a very casual next gen au of mine, but honestly i just like imagining ponies in different ways :-) (more info + headcanons under the cut!)

fluttershy: - trans (she/her), sapphic, autistic - she's a deerpony mix, with her maternal grandmother being a deer and her maternal grandfather a pegasus. - has sensory issues with cutting her hair, so she's content to just let it be long. - has large wings, but not a lot of strength. she's better at gliding, and can't really get herself into the air very well. - tallest of the mane six. twilight: - nonbinary (they/she), bisexual, autistic - all ponies have magic in them that can give their bodies physical changes, with twilight being an extreme example. the star patterns on her chest appeared after wielding the elements of harmony for the first time, the stars on her hooves appeared after becoming an alicorn, and the yellow streak in her hair appeared after defeating tirek. - has fairly bad eyesight, but prefers using her glasses rather than using magic to fix her vision. - can't fly as fast as most pegasi, but has good endurance. - shortest of the mane six, although she's only barely shorter than rainbow. pinkie pie: - gnc (any pronouns, but loves being called sister), pansexual - her full name is rose quartz pie, in line with the rock and gemstone theme in her family, but pinkie was a nickname that just stuck. - chiffon swirl/mrs. cake is her maternal aunt, they have more in common than pinkie does with her mom, but pinkie loves them both equally. - her strength nearly rivals applejack, she has super strong legs from bouncing and jumping everywhere. applejack: - bigender (he/she), sapphic - inherited her father's hat and her mother's hairbands - all of the apple siblings have accessories left to them by their parents. - prefers going by AJ or jackie, only granny smith usually calls her by her full name. - ties up her hair when working, and keeps the fetlocks on her back hooves trimmed short.

rainbow dash: - nonbinary (he/she/they), queer, ADHD - like twilight, rainbow has extreme examples of her body changing with magic. her cutie mark got longer after performing each sonic rainboom, and the colors in her hair appeared after she got her cutie mark to begin with. - originally named bluejay dash, changed her name to match her new look. her parents still call her "jay" from time to time. - never quite shook the rainbow crash nickname, she's a great flier but not so great at landings. has a fair share of scrapes and bruises, but they dont bother her. rarity: - cis (she/her), omnisexual - part crystal pony on her dad's side, her mane and coat have a slight crystaline look to them in the right light. - changes her hairstyle a lot, but has it tied up when working in her studio. - crafts beautiful jewelry, in addition to her clothes and accessories.

[oroniel]

RoP gave us a kiss that was full of emotion but entirely devoid of romantic subtext, and next episode we're going to get a sword fight so charged with romantic and sexual tension that people are going to actually lose their minds.

Adar is simultaneously praising the beauty of a woman (Melian) and a man (Elrond), while also simultaneously praising the beauty of a Maia and a half-elf. While also caring for his enormous family of uruk children. He is a person who literally changed his state of being from his birth-form in order to obtain the life, and children, he wanted.

Sauron's talking about some messed up masochistic relationship with Morgoth, and crying when Adar recalls how beautiful he used to be. He's doing all kinds of fascinating line-crossing when it comes to gender, like he's just decided to conjure up your worst evil non-binary nightmare as he flirts with Mirdania, minces around in his pretty dress and hair-bow, acts like a clique-y mean girl when Celebrimbor calls him out in front of the other smiths, and then slaughters guards with expert swordsmanship and sorcery.

Meanwhile Galadriel is effortlessly switching from armor to fairytale princess dresses, expressing unbridled rage and endless compassion, being maternal to Theo and a mentor to the Numenorean guard as she tutors them in swordplay, and generally projecting a female character who is, per Morfydd, not raised to feel ashamed the way women are in our society.

This is queer Tolkien. It's messing with our culturally encoded understandings of the signs and signals of relationships, gender, family, and friendships. It's messing with our understanding of how we define the potential of individuals and relationships.

Am I confident that they're doing all of this consciously? No.

But am I any less delighted by it?

Also no.

It is so fun and I love it.

[hedge-rambles]

As tropes go, I've always got a soft spot for the stuff and nonsense old guy who you expect to be wildly homophobic, but it turns out he can't really grasp why people would be homophobic, after all, he knew many homosexuals from work and they were fine.

This scene from Unseen Academicals is why I fully believe that the student body of the Unseen University has to be like 90% Not Straight™.

I mean... 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈