#so let’s not ignore their queerness simply because they cannot always say it out loud

[chuchulovelymunimuni]

I think the mindset that a queer relationship is not “canon” just because they don’t end up together in the sources end is so stupid and I see it on here all the time. Gay characters will call each other ‘my love/dear/sweet,’ profess their love for one another, and perform song and dance numbers about loving each other their whole life long but if they don’t kiss on stage then it’s not real enough for you? The same people who preach about media literacy skills are begging for tell don’t show love stories come onnnnnn

[hellomynameisbisexual]

“QUEER”

First of all, let’s clear up a common misconception. Queer does not just mean gay. It’s an umbrella term for an identity which deviates from society’s perceived norm: heterosexual, or straight. Queer can refer to sexualities — gay, bisexual, pansexual, — or it can refer to being gender-queer; i.e, any label that deviates from the perceived gender norm: the binaries, male and female.

“Queer” is a reclaimed slur.

If you do not fall under the umbrella of queerness, it is safe to assume that you cannot use it. At all.

I am bisexual.

This means I experience attraction to plural genders. Pansexual also works fine. For the difference between bisexual and pansexual — see here:

Being bisexual isn’t easy. I went through similar hardships to gay women: I experienced attraction to women and was scared of what this meant for me, in such an oppressively homophobic society.

I am not saying being bisexual is harder than being gay, nor the inverse. But my experiences are distinctly bisexual, not gay.

Without further ado, here are the 3 things I’ve found to be the hardest about being queer, but not gay (enough).

#1: Finding My Place

Or, not being queer enough

I always knew I wasn’t straight, but I didn’t know what I was. Up until recently, I was still questioning. This didn’t feel enough to join groups or conversations with LGBT+ folk, let alone go to pride. Was I even LGBT if I was never L, G, B, or T?

I am still yet to attend a pride, even though I identify (fairly confidently) as bisexual. I am in a relationship with a man. This is (problematically) known as a “straight-passing relationship” and makes me feel even more undeserving of a place at pride.

This has been upsetting to me at times. But for others, it can be outright devastating. Growing up and needing support, but feeling like you’re ‘not gay enough’ to ask for it? So many young people are being left alone and afraid. Finding others like you is vital to figuring out who you are. Likewise, finding spaces which are safe and inclusive is vital for anyone, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. A friend of mine happens to be a transgender man, and he summed up the issue perfectly:

“One thing that I keep noticing is how all hangout spots are “gay bars”, or (far less common) “lesbian bars”. I’m a straight man, so I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be there, but hanging out at regular bars is still too much of a gamble, so I don’t really have anywhere to go.”

It goes without saying that gay folk aren’t always safe in these spaces, as seen by the homophobic attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in 2016. Bigotry hurts the entire LGBT+ community. Bigotry doesn’t stop to ask whether you identify as gay or otherwise queer before it pulls the trigger.

But the LGBT+ community itself is much more welcoming to those who “pick a side” and just come out as gay, already. The infighting is inexplicable when one looks to attacks such as that in Orlando: bigots don’t care which letter you are in the acronym. So why does gatekeeping exist when we need to be strong in the face of intolerance when fragmentation only makes us weaker? Who are we helping by continuing to exclude identities from the discussion?

#2: Myths and Misconceptions

Well, it stands to reason that if bisexuals are what they seem in TV and movies, why would anyone want to make them feel included? They’re “greedy” and inauthentic. They’re attention-seeking, not to mention their propensity for threesomes. Now, I haven’t been in a wild orgy yet, but it seems like it will only be a matter of time before I follow my natural path.

Straight men, in particular, need to own up to their assumption that bisexual women are down for a threesome. The thing is, we are. But not with you, you big ASSUMER.

Infidelity

All jokes aside, the stereotyping of bisexuals is not only hurtful, but leads to difficulties finding and maintaining relationships.

As I came to terms with my bisexuality, I also had to accept that I might never be fully trusted by my partner, regardless of their gender or sexuality. I was shocked when my partner reacted to my coming out with the equivalent of a shrug — so much so, that I burst into tears of gratitude that my soul-bearing moment hadn’t been met with slut-shaming or assumptions of disloyalty. Nothing has changed. If anything, our bond is even stronger for me having been more authentic after coming out.

But cruelty came from elsewhere: when I came out, I was told that my partner was to be pitied, either because I’m gay and in denial, or bound to cheat on him. The main consequence of such attitudes has been the crippling fear of coming out to my partner. It saddens me that I felt so relieved when he accepted me for being who I am, and loving him just the same as I always have.

This outcome is not the case for many couples, with straight folk worried that their bisexual partner will realise they’re gay and just leave them. This fear of abandonment comes from a place of ignorance. When the media presents bisexuality as a steppingstone on the way to “picking a team”, it’s no wonder that people struggle to trust their queer partners.

Other Queer Myths

The myth that all trans folk medically transition invalidates those who choose not to do so, and let’s not forget the ignorant jeers that it's all just a mental illness. Asexual folk battle the stereotype that they can never have a relationship and shall forever remain a virgin (because what an awful thing that would be, right?) And pansexuals… well, at the lighter end, they’re asked if they have sex with cooking utensils. But often, they’re erased as irrelevant because “we already have the label bisexual”.

This brings us onto the third and final difficulty that comes with queer folk who aren’t easily categorizable as gay: erasure.

#3: Erasure

Erasure refers to the denial of an identity’s existence or its validity as a label.

Non-binary folk face ongoing and loud claims that they simply do not exist. This is despite the historical and scientific evidence to the contrary. Plus, the most important evidence — them, existing. Asexual folk are told they simply have not found the right person yet, or that they are just afraid of sex. Demi-sexual folk are told “everyone feels like that, unless they’re just sleeping around!”. And bisexuals are dismissed as simply being in denial that they’re gay.

Monosexuality & The Gender Binary

Our culture is so built on monosexuality (being solely attracted to one gender — for instance, gay or straight). Monosexuality is reinforced through everything from marriage to dating apps, the media to what we teach in schools. People cannot fathom that someone might want to experience more than one gender in their lifetime.

The binary models of sex and gender are also deeply ingrained. These rigid belief systems combined are to blame for our inability to accept that bisexuals do not need to “pick a side”. I was paralysed by fear for 17 years because I found girls attractive and that might mean I’m gay, because bisexuals are just gays who haven’t realised they’re gay yet.

Bierasure

Bierasure is dangerous, firstly because it leads a child to have to internalise both biphobia and homophobia. For instance, I had to work through being taught to hate gayness, whilst being taught that any attraction to non-male genders made me gay.

Women were cute, and so I was gay, and this meant I was disgusting.

My own mother told me this. She also told me that something has “gone wrong in the womb” for a child to be gay. (Well, Mum, I’ve got some bad news about your womb!)And she, like any bigot, extended this theory to anyone who experiences same-sex attractions — anyone queer. This is another reason why bi-erasure is perilous. Whether you’re a gay, cis-male or a demi-bisexual, trans woman… if your parents will kick you out for being gay, they will likely kick you out for being any sort of queer.

If we deny the bigotry that bisexuals undergo, we will continue to suffer. It won’t just go away. It will fester, with bisexuals having no one they can go to who believes them. And thus:

Erasure Kills

Bullying and suicide rates of queer-but-not-gay people continue to sky-rocket. We must direct funding, support and compassion to every queer individual, as they are all vulnerable to discrimination and bullying. The problem is being left to fester. This is in part because bigots treat all queer labels as just ‘gay’, deeming them equally unworthy. This is how far erasure can go.

Conclusion

Earlier on, I stated that my experiences are distinctly bisexual. The same applies to any queer identity.

Emphasising our differing paths and struggles is important to avoid the aforementioned erasure of already less visible groups. But this does not mean that the LGBT+ community should be fragmented by these differences.

If we can unite in our hope to live authentically and love freely, we will be stronger against bigotry. We are fighting enough intolerance from without: there is no need to create more from within.

So out of everything, what’s the hardest part about being bisexual?

It’s the fact that nobody knows it’s this hard.

[2ndblogg]

Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)  

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

[apersnicketylemon]

The History of Queer (on Tumblr)

So a while ago I had someone ask “what is the whole history of queer then? Because I looked at it and decided it was a terrible bad word” and well, the history of it does kinda suck. But a lot of that history is not including the specific history of ‘Queer’ on tumblr. Before tumblr... Queer was everywhere! But this got pretty long and so it’s going under a read more now:

Essentially what’s happening is a bunch of TERF’s decided that they did not like how all-encompassing the word ‘queer’ was now. How it included EVERYONE in the community and excluded NO ONE. Well, this just would not do, they are gatekeepers at heart, after all, so you can’t have a word that so easily and efficiently includes EVERYONE in it! So on tumblr they began to remind everyone ‘queer is a slur uwu!!’

The problem with this is, of course, at one time it was indeed a slur. They point us to the early 1900′s-1970′s, but conveniently ignore the reclamation movement of the 80′s and 90′s, where we fully reclaim the word ‘queer’.

Enough terfs are able to infiltrate different spaces that messages like that still spread. They did not seem to be bigoted, they seemed like all the other “gentle reminders” that floated around a few years ago. It’s super important to note too, at this point? Queer had been so fully reclaimed that it was used as the topic name for literature and study (queer theory, queer literature, queer film, queer history etc.).

People do not use slurs for Acadamia in that way (i.e. you see African American History/Film/Literature/etc. etc. etc., not N***** History. Because the latter would be HUGELY inappropriate.) The specific use of the word queer indicates that no one is viewing it as a slur anymore.

Now enter the newest gatekeeping and exclusionary movement: The Aspec-Exclusion movement! It’s very easy to run exclusionism nowadays, because all you have to do is take all of the arguments from the last exclusionary movement, and apply it to your own. Swap the groups out. The previous exclusion movement (and still on going today) was the bi-exclusion movement and the one before that was the trans-exclusion movement.

This means they reached back to the original TERF movements to exclude aspecs (and even straight back into plain old homophobia!), and of course, a LOT of TERF’s are also exclusionists (because that is what they’ve been doing, and all the arguments were borrowed from them and therefore extremely familiar to them already). In fact, they were the foundation for each of the Exclusionary movements we’ve seen, at least specifically on tumblr.

With the Terf’s “gently reminding” everyone that “queer is a slur and u should never use it” it began to leak into that movement as well, and quickly flooded all through exclusionist ranks  Now they begin to attack anyone who does not censor out the word ‘slur’ and ‘gently remind’ people as well. Despite stealing all their arguments from terfs, having an inordinate number in their ranks, and repeatedly expressing they hoped violence would befall aspec people and being full rape apologists, a lot of people on tumblr don’t... really care if the person they reblogged from is an aphobe and decided they must know what they’re talking about despite being teenagers mostly, and therefore very easily manipulated.

Also with the ‘always listen to the person in the oppressed group, but only if they agree with me, specifically’ mentality they seem to have. Numerous actual queer people have said ‘the resurgence of ‘queer is a slur’ is directly from terfs and our identity is not a slur, also every word we will ever have or use is a slur or was a slur, or was taken from a slur at some point’, but because what we said was different from what they already had been told... well. Many people on this site suck at ‘grey area’, and have a massively black and white view of the world (not uncommon with teens though), and if the previous information was from someone they cared about and trusted... well it’s pretty likely they’re going to assume their friend was right over this person, or the fifty other people saying it.

Now we’ve got this new movement on our hands then. A whole lot of teenagers, many of whom have been called queer 0 times in their lives (but probably saw the ‘everything bad is gay’ thing the straights did a while back) are screaming about how it’s a slur to everyone and anyone who will listen. It’s no longer a “gentle reminder uwu”, it’s “What, you id as queer? How embaressing LMAO you’re an adult, don’t you know that’s a SLUR”, or coming on to posts by queer people that say “I love using queer because it simplifies things for me!” and saying “UH JUST REMEMBER: IT’S A FUCKING SLUR!”.

Queer positivity cannot exist any more on the site without someone inevitably reminding you that your identity is a slur and that you should never, ever use it for others, and in many cases, you should never use it for yourself.

What is happening is called ‘Re-weaponization”. Weaponization is the conversion of something into a weapon. Well Queer was a weapon up until the mid 80′s, but it wasn’t any more, no one used it as a weapon now, or at least VERY few people did because it no longer held the same power or weight. We used it as our armour now. It’s not as insulting to yell ‘Queer!’ at someone when they simply yell back ‘Yeah? And?’.

Well, now we have a movement on tumblr -the anti-Queer movement- that wants to take that armour, reforge it into a weapon, and put it back into the hands of straight people. If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that using the word they hurl at you as your armour makes that word hurt less. If someone said ‘hey queer!’ at me I would not be that upset by it because. Yeah? I am queer? What’s your point? And no, not everyone HAS to reclaim it. But you do have to stop criticizing the people who DO use it, and you can leave it with ‘I’m not comfortable reclaiming the word for myself’. You never have to go into detail. But you DO have to accept that a lot of us LOVE queer, and that we have EVERY DAMN RIGHT to love and to use that word for ourselves as our armour against the word. Straight people can’t hurt me with it if I make it a part of me.

To even so much as demand we censor the word for you (when you can easily download a NUMBER of internet and browser extensions that will do that FOR you), is to attempt to reweaponize the word. To demand we censor ourselves instead of letting us live out loud and proud is to attempt to reweaponize the word. To demand WE not use it for OURSELVES, to insist you will ‘never use that word’ when someone tells you ‘this is my identity’? Yup! You’re reweaponizing it!

And you especially have no business doing this if you were never actually called queer. You have no business doing this if queer was never even a slur in your country. And yeah, I have seen that. One of my abusive former friends did this quite a lot, he was not from a country where queer was a slur, it had NEVER been a slur there, but he INSISTED no one be allowed to use the word EVER and said ‘I’m not using a slur to refer to people’. He also simultaniously called himself a gay f*g, both words of which ALSO began as slurs, but interestingly enough no one is telling people not to reclaim or use THOSE words, and it is 100% because terfs want to use those words themselves, and it was terfs who began the anti-queer push on tumblr.

[girlonarock]

Charlottesville

To say that this weekend was a tangled mass of emotions for me would be an understatement.

I don’t even remember what I did with my life on Friday. I know I went to work despite getting to bed super late the night before, my summer vacation being pushed back each day as some other something had to be dealt with or managed or taken care of -- and I did the thing, because why not do the thing and make some extra money? Saturday I spent with friends -- one friend I’ve known for twenty years (twenty years!) but had never actually met, three I hadn’t seen in far too long, and made a new one.

I know how to leave my phone alone, mostly. I know how to not fixate on news when I’m in the company of friends, when I’m socializing, when I’m having fun. It was a fine day, a fun day, with a lot of laughing and really really super intelligent conversation.But as it progressed, news started trickling in, and it started to become apparent that something really fucked up was afoot.

It didn’t hit me until I got home, and even then, not really -- it wasn’t until the next day that it started to sink in.

The anger is real -- the anger is profound, bone-deep. But it’s the kind of anger that masks other things, because it’s so blinding and it shakes me, like I feel like my body will start trembling if I don’t clench my fists or tense my muscles. I broke a filling grinding my teeth. My body has felt contorted all week, my back, my shoulders, my neck, my chest struck with sharp pain, knots on top of knots, as my body tries to take on what my mind keeps dancing around processing, because I honestly have a lot of other shit to do.

But I keep coming back. I keep wanting to spit and curse and hiss and plunge darts into the heart of everyone who is any way associated with this, anyone who wants to look at anyone, any PoC, any Muslim, any Jew, any queer, anybody, sideways, and especially anyone who tries to tell me I should try to give peace a chance.

Fuck giving peace a chance. Fuck peace.

Fuck sparing feelings and kindness and unity and patience and explaining and calling in and making room and not getting on my high horse and kumbaya and fuck that and fuck this and fuck everybody because I am fucking

angry.

And it comes in waves because sometimes I take a breath and I feel ashamed, because I have so many truly close, dear friends who are white women and white men and I love them, I’m not angry at them, they’re good allies, they’re good people, they would never in a million years, they want to help, they want to fix this, they want a better world, they know a better world is one in which no one need live in fear, one in which everyone has the same opportunities, one in which white nationalists and Nazis have no fucking place. But then I read something or someone says something or I start writing a blog that was supposed to be conciliatory, that was supposed to say something like I know I was wrong, because when I reflect I feel wrong for not calling in, not remembering everyone’s humanity, for painting people with broad strokes and letting my anger and fear (because yes, there’s fear, there’s so much fear, and hurt, and some anguish, even though that word is dramatic, but it’s there and it’s real and that’s the word for it so I’ll use it) get the better of me.

But then someone tells me, someone tells me, or tells other people which I take personally and read as them telling me, how to feel, what to say, how we need to be and it’s implicit that I’m the problem or that I’m posturing or that it’s not that bad or that I shouldn’t lash out or that I shouldn’t I shouldn’t I shouldn’t and I am like

Fuck. You.

Fuck. You!

Don’t tell me, don’t tell me! Don’t dare tell me that in 2017 the KKK and Nazis and white nationalists armed with shields and hate and poles and guns can agitate in the streets, can beat innocent 20-year-olds, can menace and threaten and murder and that I need to be conciliatory and watch my words and police my tone and say the right things

because fuck. that. Fuck it!

Do not. Do NOT presume to tell me how to feel, or how I should express it, or whether I should express it. I don’t care if you’re black, white, Asian, Inuit, or goddamn motherfucking King of Wokeness and Righteousness, now is not the time to come at me.

I will not. Have it.

I have swallowed a lot of shit. Less so in the past few years (because I’ve been more inclined to spit it in the faces of whomever’s trying to make me swallow it), but even still -- I have swallowed a lot of shit. Everything from the way people talk about Muslim women when they don’t know my last name or have forgotten it to the way people treat their Latino servers or bussers or cleaning ladies or custodial staff like they’re invisible, like they’re fucking little brown Roombas that exist as incorporeal spirits only to clean up their messes. Everything from the fact that the President of the United Motherfucking States of America has tried over and over and over and over and over to ban Muslims from being able to enter this country, that he keeps pushing to build a fucking wall to keep people like my family out, that ICE has become a code word for the new American Gestapo and many of my students live every day in fear and agitation and anger and helplessness, attendance in New York City public schools suffers, and the DoE had to write a letter reassuring them that we would protect them because this country doesn’t want them, doesn’t want us here.

I have swallowed the fact that the vast majority of PoC I know are more intelligent, more educated, more insightful, more charismatic, and all around more exceptional than millions of people who think they are better than we are because an accident of birth has had the whole world telling them so their entire lives!

I have swallowed the fact that I have loved this country and believed in this country, that I was born and raised here, that this is my home, that this is everything I know, for good and for bad, and I am not enough, am not authentic, am not as American as, despite the fact that my very existence literally embodies everything this fucking country is supposed to be about.

I have swallowed the fact that I am expected to perform my gender in a way that has been molded by a culture that is not my own.

I have swallowed bartenders telling me “Don’t make it about race.” I have swallowed respectability politics and fragility and presumption and assumption and condescension and ignorance. I have held hands and explained and considered and gently pointed things out and listened thoughtfully and dedicated intense thought and consideration and energy to diplomacy and bridge building and embracing and education and calling in and calling in and calling in and calling in. In person.

Which is at once a fuck of a lot harder and a fuck of a lot less aggravating than it is on the internet.

I want to believe in love. I want to believe in unity. I want to hold and be held by anyone and everyone regardless of race or orientation or gender or ethnicity or religion or whatever. But not really, because I am afraid of white strangers. And I am guarded and tense around white people in general, whether strangers or people I know who haven’t been properly vetted. I am tired of explaining, I am tired of people who demand explanations without realizing how many times I’ve had these conversations, what it costs me to be genuinely empathetic and patient and understanding and generous and assumptive of the best when I am hurting. I am hurting. I am hurting, not just on behalf of my black friends -- I am hurting for my neighbors, my students, my parents, my siblings, my baby niece, for myself. For me, female and Cuban and Algerian and Muslim-adjacent and deeply sensitive and highly intelligent and tough as a motherfucker, too. And for us, for my city, for my country, for my people, for my many tribes. I am hurting and I am unspeakably devastated, truly -- the profundity of my grief and sadness at all the events of  the past seven months is something I sometimes feel like I can’t bear for even one more moment. Not even one. I have always believed in a better world, that we can be better, and it’s made me strident and passionate and loud, and it’s made people around me uncomfortable sometimes, but it comes from a genuine and wholehearted optimism, an idealism about the beauty of humanity and what we can be if we push harder, fight tirelessly, if we keep going and learning and doing and making and creating and loving and doing the right thing. I have always believed that the good of this world outweighs the bad, and that is not naivete born of a lack of experience with the bad, I assure you.

But my god, I am aching, physically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually. Everything, everything, everything hurts, and it’s inescapable. Grieving this country and how far we’re backsliding has been draining something in me, or maybe disintegrating something in me, I don’t know, for a long time, and Charlottesville seems to have been a breaking point where I simply cannot give any more fucks -- I have no more fucks to give. I told my stepsister to go fuck herself because I lost patience with her, and I am losing patience with dear friends who seem to want to dictate how people (how I) should be responding to this.

I simply cannot.

I’m losing steam because I think that I really needed to write these things down, to get them out of my body, and I hope, I really hope, that in some small way, it helps. I hope you all are taking care of each other, that you’re being kind to yourselves and surrounding yourself with love and things you enjoy and getting good rest. I’m trying really hard. Hopefully over the next few weeks, I can continue to reflect and decompress, execute some self-care and articulate my feelings so they manifest in more productive ways.

But if I can’t, fuck it. LOLOLOLOL

[fear-is-contagious]

A Letter to the Sherlock Fandom

You may think that this is a lot of text and too long to read but I implore you to try so that you can better understand these points of view.

I apologise if this isn't as eloquent or measured as I intended it to be but I am honestly so angry at the Sherlock fandom right now. Not all, obviously, many are conducting themselves amazingly no matter their opinion on the episode. However, there are a large (and loud) number who are not and not only are these people making the rest of us look bad and acting as if they speak for the fandom as a whole, I fear that they are doing (and may have already succeeded in doing) irreparable damage to what could have been a great community.

There are several points I wish to address in this post so I will try to dissect each one individually to the best of the ability.

Harassment

No matter what you thought of the episode it is NOT okay, or even productive, to harass members of the cast or crew in any way (whether it be through social media, through official complaints (which can actually have further effects on their professional lives also which are definitely not yours to mess with) etc.). It started with Amanda back when season 3 was announced and that was just downright cruel and now it seems the lesson has not been learnt. They have worked hard on this show and even if it did not turn out as you personally expected it or wanted it to you cannot hate them for having a different view of where things should go than you. I have seen many people on Tumblr saying things along the line of 'it our show anyway we can do what we want and it can be what we want it to be'. No. It is their show, we merely enjoy it - they created it and they have final say on what happens. I for one would not wish to see a world where the fans get to decide what happens as that would only ever cause further divide in communities and result in one section of a fandom having superiority over the others which is already happening in the Sherlock fandom with some Johnlockers/TJLCers.This harassment also extends to the harassment of other member of the fandom - labelling someone as homophobic because they don't ship a same-sex ship is not only detrimental to the LGBT+ cause it puts up further barriers for the normalisation of non-traditional relationships.

On a similar topic, complaining to the BBC because you didn't like the episode is not only petty but also counterproductive - these people are not asking for change in doing so they are calling for an end to the show and a witch-hunt in which those who created it are to be mocked in a public sphere. I have seen many people proudly posting images of their complaints and encouraging others to do the same and even petitions to a similar effect and it saddens me that people have become so arrogant in believing that the show is theirs and they were owed more that they would stoop to such levels. You were not owed anything. You didn't like it, deal with it, move on.

Queerbaiting

I cannot express how much I dislike this term. Sometimes, yes, the teasing of fans with a potentially queer couple is done in an interpretably malicious way. With Sherlock, this is not the case. The cast and crew have said from the start that Johnlock (the main ship brought up in such discussions) was not going to happen. If you missed that and were not aware - fine; but if you knew this and then continued to be upset that it wasn't happening - that is on you.  It is not queerbaiting if there was never any potential for the relationship in the first place - especially when neither character has been canonically stated to be queer.

Fetishisation of Gay Relationships and the Anti-Straight Trend in the Progressive Community

Wow, that was a long title. I have seen many of the aforementioned complaints to the BBC, petitions and Tumblr posts claiming that by not making a ship such as Johnlock canon they have let down a large portion of the community who are LGBT+ and have not given them the representation they deserve. Whilst representation is good and everyone does deserve to be able to see someone like them on television, as I said before, we have known from the stat that this was not going to happen with these characters. If you didn't understand that clear message - again, it is on you, not the creators who have always been honest about the future of such a ship. You can be upset that they did not become canon in the same way that you would for any other ship but you cannot claim that you have been robbed of representation, misled in any way or owed better because you were never promised it in the first place.

As for the title of this section, I have seen a common trend in fandom communities towards making canonically straight characters gay, which whilst harmless if not taken to the extreme (as I feel some members of the Johnlock community have) actually highlights a double standard and serious problem that must be addressed. If one were to take a canonically gay character, strip them of their identity and make them straight they would be called homophobic in an instant. However, when it is the other way around, no one complains. Heterosexual is an identity too and to keep classifying it as separate from the others, in a class of its own, is only going to slow down progress and make it harder for true unity to occur. By stating that two characters, one of whom has categorically stated that they are not gay (and of course only one would be enough) have to be gay because of they way they interact (via your personal interpretation - often though tinted lenses) you are not only arguing that two men cannot be simply very good friends without harbouring romantic feelings for each other, you are also denying John of his own self-proclaimed identity.

The Bad Side of TJLC

(The previous paragraph is also relevant to this section and thus again I must state that whilst shipping two characters is fine, outright ignoring their identity and labelling them yourself is not.)

On paper, TJLC (The JohnLock Conspiracy) is not too harmful, you can speculate as much as you want. Where it becomes harmful is where people delve into the realm of delusion. There are many TJLCers who wholeheartedly believe that Johnlock is already canon or has to be canon and it is these people who appear to harbour the strongest negative beliefs about the recent episode and who are doing the most damage to this community.

I have seen countless posts recently along the lines of the following: 'clearly we know more than Moftiss', 'how could they not see it was so obvious', etc. Such arrogance as to your own beliefs is extremely harmful to the wider community. You do not know more than the creators of the show, the show is as they intended it to be - anything that you find within the show (with your TJLC-tinted glasses) that supports your predetermined theory is simply you putting two and two together and making five. It was not intended and therefore not symbolic of your beliefs and so your interpretation is no more than that - an interpretation not fact.

Believe it or not, for those of us not in the TJLC community, JohnLock was not obvious - for someone like me, when I first heard of this ship and TJLC I was incredibly surprised because I saw no romantic connection whatsoever - just two friends; and that was all that they were intended by the creators to be. If you were aware of the cast and crews comment of the subject and still deluded yourself into believing that TJLC was true - that was on you. No one else is to blame for your beliefs not lining up with the facts of the show.

Your ship does not rule this fandom and you do not speak for the whole fandom so those of you saying they didn't give the fandom what they wanted - you are wrong. They didn't give you what you wanted. You don't speak for me and you don't speak for the countless others like me who actually enjoyed the episode and/or are not in any way JohnLock shippers.

Sherlock Holmes and the Delusion of the Fake Episode

For those of you who still believe in some way that the episode was a fake one, that a  new episode will come out and say that it was all a dream etc. Again, you are deluding yourself and this is not healthy and will only lead to disappointment. It is what it is. Failure to accept reality for what it is and move on from there, living in a constant state of denial is a serious problem.

 I have so much more to say and honestly not the words to say it without going off onto too much of a tangent right now. I may add continuations (in fact I most likely will once I can formulate sentences again) to this if I think of anything.

I know that one post on Tumblr isn't going to make a whole lot of difference and the fractures in this community may never heal but I honestly could not hold this in any longer.

You are welcome to ask questions or for clarification on any point made or any point you wish me to address.