#that you're just as bad as cishet people who generalize the entire community

[raviosprovidence]

"you don't use queer because you're so desperate to be normal!!!" if you had to partake in one conversation with me irl your bones would melt from how weird and cringe I am

[certified-bi]

Couple Things

Yes there are issues with vote counting, notably the fires which were all reported to happen before Nov. 5th, and issues with mail in ballots. Please check your status if you mailed in your vote and remind those around you to do the same.

That being said now is not the time for full blown conspiracies. If you add up all the legitimate cases of mail in ballots on hold, or going out late(Which the resistance to counting these is not a great sign), you wouldn't have 20 million ballots.

Please fact check everything that you see on your dash, which is a good practice in general. There are always people willing to feed on despair or anger to recruit the desperate. It'll become harder to separate these people from random blogs that are giving into the fearmongering the more people share unchecked rumors. Being vigilant is always important

I'm not saying a recount after all the votes are in(which they aren't so we don't have for sure totals rn) is a bad idea. I am saying that it is entirely realistic that voters who were willing to turn out for a middle of the road white man not showing up for a slightly more left black woman is unfortunately not a surprise and has everything to do with the Christianity backed racism and misogyny in this country as well as the cesspit most media orgs are.

Unfortunately this is only going to push democrats further right because yet again voters don't show up to support candidates like Harris despite the fact that she ran on a platform that did address the economy(despite people pretending she didn't) and was as progressive as a presidential candidate for a main party would be in current times. With that in mind we have to keep focusing on voting and supporting the candidate that aligns most with our values, who also has a chance of winning in future elections. This means voting down your ballot in every election and making realistic choices.

There's been a lot of finger pointing in the left which is just not helpful at best and destructive at worst. Mainly this seems to be online which isn't shocking so this is your reminder that unless someone proudly supports trump or was proud to not vote for Harris, to not start throwing stones at individuals in groups that veered right, because every group veered right. I'm already seeing so many "Men are all bad," and "X racial minority turned on us" and like let's be so real it was mostly cishet white people and young cishet men in online echo chambers.

What doesn't help things is equating trends and large groups with individuals and getting caught up in group think. Yes men who are followers of Andrew Tate are not your friend. At the same time queer men who will be hurt by this decision are not your enemy. Straight men who supported Harris are not your enemy. Men of color who have always been at risk of America's brand of racism are not your enemy. The women who supported Trump are not your friends. Bioessentialism isn't progressive and is just wrapping paper over conservative(transphobic and unscientific) values. When you hear statements that are intended to make you turn on your community, I'm begging y'all to take a second to actually unpack the implications.

If you could get pregnant and don't wish to be it's in your best interest to be careful with sex that could get you pregnant by using multiple forms of protection and having ideas of where to go and what to do if the worst happens in advance. The same to anyone who does want to have a child but worries about a risky pregnancy. If you're trans please be careful with any advice you find online about healthcare especially hormones. Make sure the advice is legal because the last thing we need is for you to get charged for following bogus advice or worse risking your health and safety with unsafe alternatives. Planned Parenthood can be a good place to start for both, A4TE and WPATH have pages on jumping off to find trans healthcare and WPATH has a search directory if you know the exact services you're looking for.

Things are going to be rough. Social Media including Tumblr feed off negativity and division. Be mindful and be safe. Create or join in person communities when possible and remember that at least 70 million people voted for Harris, given the west coast hasn't been fully counted, and that he's not going to have an easy go of things. Do what you need to survive. Support local charities and volunteer orgs and donate when you can. The only way out is through and we need you to make it through.

[thorne1435]

People criticize the online left for not having any farmers but like...as someone from a small rural community that's still being held up almost entirely by agricultural careers, I can't help but feel like they're being a little unreasonable.

You don't farm because you just feel the call, or anything, or at least that's not often how it goes out here. What happens is, when you're born into a family that has been farming for generations, they enlist your help in taking care of animals and crops, you learn how to farm effectively from them almost entirely, but additionally since most of the community that you're in is old farming families, all of the curriculum in the area has an "agri" substitute. Like, upperclassmen at my high school could take Financial Literacy, or if they were on the ag career pathway (which a lot of them were), they could take "Agribusiness" for that math credit.

So, like, what I'm saying here is, based on my experience in the rural United States, if you want farmers in the commune, you have to start appealing to the relatively uneducated rural townsfolk who are farmers by lineage. All you can really do there is...get lucky. These are small towns. If you aren't a cishet white man, they probably won't trust you fully, no matter what you do. It's not as bad as people say it is, mind you, but that doesn't change the fact that a straight man (and certainly a white man) with a general progressive leaning would have an easier time getting a bunch of rural farmers to "see the light," as it were.

[theprideful]

I've been trying to ask this for some time actually, so here I go:

Is The Good Doctor good autistic representation? I'm afraid I might have used it when talking to my neurotypical parents about the different ''degrees'' of autism using dr. Shawn as an example when in reality he's a bad example. You're one of the only actually autistic people I can ask this to, even if it might seem a stupid question, but like... Is he good autistic representation?

Thanks for the attention anyways <3

(since this is about neurodivergence and a bit long, I'm going to bold and highlight some phrases here and there, because it makes it a little easier to read.)

so, is The Good Doctor good autism rep: in my opinion, no. are there autistic people like him in real life? absolutely. but is he a good, true reflection of what autism actually is? not really.

my problem with The Good Doctor is that it employs a lot of stereotypes, and whether or not they're "good" doesn't really change the fact that it enforces this really narrow idea of what autism is to allistics; white, cishet, nerdy male who is a genius savant and lacks social skills. autism is incredibly diverse and multifaceted, and anyone and everyone will experience it differently. so the fact that only stories like Shawn's are shown really limits our progress on combatting misinformation.

but it's not just that the show very heavily leans on stereotypes and lacks general creativity in portraying the neurotype, it's that it was really obvious how few- if any- actually autistic people were consulted. it feels like a production made for capitalizing on us without actually putting in the work to show us for who and what we really are. it honestly seems like they read a few articles online and watched "rain man" (which also has many of these same issues) and based their story off of that. it's hard to tell from a glance, but the more you look into it, the more you can see that it's just regurgitating the same narrative under a shinier lens and the guise of modernity and "wokeness." this specific story they decided to tell is quite unoriginal and reflects a very small percentage of us. that's not to say that none of us can relate or see ourselves in Shawn, but the most us can't - at least, not very often or consistently. (also, there is shown to be a strong link between autism and queerness, so it's strange that even in a time where psycho/neurological research and information is rising, the white cishet protagonist remains at the front and center of autism media.)

furthermore, some of the stereotypes and "traits" they used are not supported or even really experienced by the autistic community. for instance, his visualization of anatomical systems and functions in a hyper-realistic manner is not an autistic trait. sure, there are people on the spectrum with eidetic memories and incredibly vivid "inner-eyes", but again, only a small percentage of us have that, and it's not inherently an autistic trait. (Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds is another good example of this exact scenario.) this could, in theory, tie in with the trait of "detail-orientedness" that many of us experience. but it is likely a characteristic of an entirely different disorder or neurodivergency, which only furthers the idea that it was not researched in depth and the autism aspect was only meant to serve as a plot device to make him "interesting." i don't know about you, but i personally don't like the idea of only being allowed to exist as an autistic person if neurotypicals find me interesting or "plot-relevant."

as with the last statement, the same thing also applies to the "genius savant" stereotype. believe it or not, not many autistic people are actually savants in the quirky, brilliant way that hollywood likes to portray. we have our own skills, just like allistics. sometimes our autism "enhances" them or acts as an asset. but it's kind of a roll of the dice. the way i see it is, you can have red hair and be left-handed, but neither is an automatic, promised precursor for the other. you can be autistic and a good doctor or genius scientist, but one does not necessarily cause or even influence the other. again, in this story, it's not inherently an issue. but this narrative is pushed so much, all the time, that it's really starting to feel like it's the only way we'll be accepted. but also, it solidifies this concept of "two types of autistic people at 'opposite' ends of the spectrum," where Shawn is the "high-functioning genius" type. it's a really narrow definition and caricature of a really diverse group, and it limits the way we are perceived by allistics and neurotypicals.

sorry for the long response, but in conclusion, no, it's not really good representation because it only shows one very small fraction of autism and is not entirely accurate.

one good thing i will say, though, is that I do appreciate the writers revealing his traumatic past. many autistic people experience trauma and develop PTSD, depression, and anxiety (and possibly obsessive compulsions) because of lack of understanding, so it was refreshing to see some actual multidimensional backstory that is realistic to autistic people. anyway, overall it could've been better rendered and I think if the writers weren't afraid of losing the cherished white cis-het male protagonist trope and dramatization of neurodivergence in a way that they actually stopped describing that disorder*, it could've been a lot more realistic and actually relatable/applicable to real life.

*"disorder" does not apply to all autistic people. it is a label that individuals can use to describe themselves.

if any other autistic people have any thoughts, feel free to share! i'd love to hear your opinions as well

[eulangelo]

callout for @genderfluidlucifer

google docs

tw for transmisogyny + TERFs + emotional manipulation

Transmisogyny

Lucifer is a huge transmisogynist who will complain 24/7 about how TERFs hurt the ace community, but the moment @randomclustermissile , a trans girl (who is not an exclusionist at all) tries to point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles (in the most vague and general way possible, without pointing fingers nor calling anyone names) Lucifer will immediatly jump to block her and so they did with me (another inclusionist) and i have to suppose to everyone else who agreed with that post, even arriving to vagueing about us in private group chats to suggest that we were “sympathizing with exclusionists”. all because we dared point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles. lucifer is TME but apparently they think they’re the authority on TERFs and their talking points but actual trans women are not, according to them, since this is the stuff that they would go and spew to other people. (screenshots from @enbyoctoling​)

here’s more examples of Lucifer (again, a transmasc person) going deep in detail about how according to them, TERFs/SWERFs hate aro/ace people and are an active threat to us

1. link

[Image ID: Three screenshots of a post by Genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot is of a paragraph that reads, "Hey. So I can actually answer this. Anon your commentary about how you thought terfs would approve of sex repulsed aces is sort of it. Except...not. Basically terfs hate ace people for not wanting sex in the approved by terfs way. Terfs are actually extremely interested in [forcing] amatonormativity onto everyone. Because for as sex negative as terfs are...they don't want to actually acknowledge or change the fact that amatonormativity is at the root cause of rape culture and misogyny."

The second screenshot is a zoomed in section of the post that reads, "So yeah no I have NO idea where exclus allies are getting this idea from that terfs would even remotely care about the sexual rights of ace people. Terfs generally hate any sexualities in the LGBTQ+ acronym that aren't LGB because they can't force a gender binary onto those sexualities. At least, not as easily. That's why it's actually a massive sign of someone who doesn't call themselves a terf being a crypto terf if they use the term LGB in a positive manner. Along with the term SGA, as it is deliberately exclusive of nonbinary and not inherently SGA centric queer-aligned sexualities. /END ID]

link to the full post, these are just excerpts but the whole thing is just a very long rant about how TERFs hate ace people and so on (i think it’s worth noticing that although the actual post is kinda long, trans women are never once brought op in a conversation about TERFs issues and the only time transmisogyny is mentioned is not relevant to the conversation)

2. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is nothorses. It reads, "Because apparently I have to say it: Testosterone is not a 'violent' hormone. It doesn't make you 'more aggressive' or a worse person, it doesn't make you 'dangerous,' or 'toxic.' Transmascs do not need to be 'warned of the dangers of T.' We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we're going to become a danger to those around us - that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.

Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn't make you a bad person.

Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you're already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you're going to be fine. It's normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, then apologize and work to do better. It doesn't make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.

Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster."

The post then has a reblog by captainlordauditor that reads, "The big danger of T is that needle ouchy." /END ID]

here’s them reblogging from known transmisogynist user @nothorses (once again, the irony that a post about how testosterone is seen as the "aggressive hormone" does not mention transfem at all which are literally the main victims of this rethoric in the first place)

3. link (1), link (2)

[Image ID: Two screenshots of posts by genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot reads, "Queer exclus: We're not repackaging terf rhetoric! Saying that is transmisogynistic! Also queer exclus: Remove the plus from LGBT!" and has tags that say, "I will pay these people to grow some god damn self awareness. Imagine being this dense. Queer discourse." The post has 15 notes.

The second screenshot reads, "Honestly it is so stupid and frustrating to see ace exclus continue to deny that the ace discourse was started by terfs. Proof was given countless times. And a big name terf like galesofnovember even admitted to starting it. Those of you who demand proof but ignore all of this never wanted proof to begin with." and is tagged with, "ace discourse. The post has 38 notes. /END ID]

heres another two post of theirs conflating TERFs with ace exclusionism

4. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblogged post by furbearingbrick. The original poster is boxlizard, Lucifer's old account. The original post reads, "By the way for people still in denial about it, here's galesofnovember, a terf, admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement. She's taking credit for it. Normally if the victims of this behavior weren't ace/aro or other queer identities y'all be ready to rightfully lynch her. But since it's us, y'all just still wanna stamp your feet and go, 'Nuh uh!' instead of acknowledging facts." The part that says, "admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement" is a link to a galesofnovember post.

There is then a reblogged addition from furbearing brick that reads, "archived versions of the receipts" and has two links to the webarchive. The tags read, "Bringing this back since it's apparently still relevant. Terfism mention. Aphobia mention. Queerphobia mention. Blocklist." and has 1,455 notes. /END ID]

this is their post that ive already talked about but basically they found a 52 notes post made by a TERF in 2012 and this one person said "i dont know why i dont get to be the princess of the anti-ace-brigade" and apparently they are convinced that this means TERFs started the ace exclusionism movement and that this is one of their goals. which is insane when TERFs in real life only care about making life miserable for transfem people first and foremost.

5.link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is yu-gay-fudo. It reads, “Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

- Ace/aro exclusionism

- Bi exclusionism or claims that bi people are “less queer” bc of “straight passive privilege”

- Saying you have to be dysphoric to identify as transInvalidating nonbinary people

- Calling queer a slur regardless of context, saying people can’t identify as queer, and saying that it can’t be reclaimed

- “Mogai hell”, “kweer”, or otherwise mocking less common labels and claiming they are “just cishets who want to feel special”

- Excluding sex workers from feminist discussions or claiming that sex work is inherently evil

- Basically anyone who thinks they can determine what other people identify as”. The tags read, "queerphobia tw. twerfs tw. no id." and has 70,727 notes. It was reblogged on March 22nd, 2021 /END ID]

another example of conflating radfems to things that, while wrong, have little to nothing to do with them because being a radfem, again, is something very specific that has all to do with transfem oppression.

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer has done nothing but block, break boundaries, spread lies and vague about people, some of which were even mutuals with them knowing they would see the posts. when confronted about it Lucifer's only answer was "just say you hate me and block me" but they actually ended up blocking everyone first, making it impossible for anyone to set some boundaries with them or even just to calmly confront them about anything.

[proof: Io(popncourse) and Lucifer had a disagreement in a shared discord server, which prompted Lucifer to vague Io in a vent post. Io confronted them, as being vagued is one of buns triggers, to which Lucifer initially agreed to delete the vent post, but then proceeded to victimize themself and immediatly blocked Io. later on, Jude(malewifedeckard) was confronted by Lucifer, then after Jude told them “I’m worried that you’ll vague me just like you did with Io” they proceeded to block Jude and vagued about him too. when Io made a post (which was not a callout, it was just bun setting buns boundaries) explaining what Lucifer did, Lucifer immediatly jumped to victimize themself, acting like they were being called out and straight-up lying, even going so far as to say that no one tried to hear them out, which is a blatant lie if you consider the aforementioned Io and Jude’s attempts at doing so, with Lucifer immediatly blocking and cutting ties with the both of them. ] 

(screenshots taken by @popncourse and @malewifedeckard)

as seen in the proof above Lucifer’s behaviour is not ok because they don’t accept any kind of confrontation and immediatly jump to blocking, and after blocking, they'd immediatly go and vague about the people who confronted them pacificly, spreading more lies and painting themself as the victim and even arriving to say “no one hears me out at all” which is simply not something you can say when you block people who are trying to hear you out in the first place.

this is by no means an invitation to go and harass them, send them hate or anything like that. i absolutely don’t want anything even remotely hateful or negative to be sent their way after this post. 

this post was only made because:

1. as an ace person who fully supports the inclusion of aspec identities in the lgbt+ community i don’t want to support an enviroment that costantly downplays transmisogynistic oppression in order to be taken seriously. there are hundreds of ways to make aspec activism without acting like we(as in TME aspecs)are the victims of a system that seeks for the annihilation of transfemenine people in real life everyday. i especially don’t want to support TME individuals who act transfem-friendly but then block any transfem who tries to speak on transmisogyny without a second thought.

2. Lucifer’s behaviour has hurt two friends of mine and i don’t want to associate with someone who actively breaks people’s boundaries without taking accountability when messing up.

3. i cannot associate with someone who spreads lies about me accusing me of sympathizing with exclusionists all while having me blocked so that i can’t see it nor defend me. they complain about people not hearing them out but they’re the very first person who does not try to hear people out, and instead jumps to spread baseless rumors. this is not someone i can nor want to associate with. 

(image descriptions provided by @malewifedeckard)

[bipirate]

About you not being able to stand WY fans: yes, i agree, and it's been bothering me so much lately.

Like, some people are obsessed with making him some kind of "queer icon" because he *check notes*... wears chanel blazers and played lwj and*checks more notes*... is not openly homophobic...? (Not to say he is, but you now, no one does know the personal convictions of a celebrity)

Like, i remember when sdoc3 happened and he danced with Xiao Bao and everyone was like "well NO STRAIGHT MAN under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES would do it!!!". And there's all the "number theories" that are like "OMG he posted this selfie at 12:34, which is the exact date of *insert other male celebrity here, i refuse to do it myself*'s birthday! Baby boy is so whipped <3". And the "body language analysis" posts, "accessories meaning analysis" posts, the fucking "who's this finger?" posts (that is about people trying to prove that a finger that appears on a selfie is not his own), all which take themselves way to seriously, even the ones that have the "this is not serious guys 🤣" at the beginning.

And like, i think it's kinda fascinating, cause I study science of information and these posts are a perfect example of "misleading research" and bad research approaches in general, so i DO think it is fascinating but I'm also kinda furious on a personal level cause, and that's the reason I'm writing this rant letter and sending it to you as if you're some kind of priest:

People be out there having internet fights about a celebrity's sexuality, taking the smallest of the details and making it seem like some kind of "secret message", like "Oh he's clearly gay but he have to stay in the closet because of his job, so he wore this watch once that have this teeny-tiny rainbow detail to PROVE TO US that he's gay." You know, like if all queer people do is seek approval from cishets. And i would put it all in the "fetishization of queer identity" box, but there's also a lot of people who make these kinds of posts that self identify as queer, which makes me really sad.

And on top of that, which makes me feel even worse, is that queer celebrities who are open about their identities are CONSTANTLY under the scrutiny of literally everyone. They have their identities questioned and judged constantly by both people inside and outside of the lgbt+ community, they have their work judged on impossible standards because people expect them to make "the best representation of queer experience ever", they are put on dehumanizing moral standards and when they inevitably fail to be perfect in every way they are persecuted and bullied. Its inhumane the treatment they receive, even on the most liberal of places, and yet, a lot of openly queer celebrities try to use their platforms to help the community.

And then we have wy, who is like chilling in a corner just going on with his life, but at the same time he's like in this limbo where he is put under this scrutiny where fans try to analyze his every move to try to prove that his identity is X or Z, which i think is terrible cause it makes me feel like no one can really escape from this constant policy and judgment of their own identities, something that should be personal and intimate and only shared by personal choice.

And just as a side note, i do see a lot of people criticizing this kind of behavior, but most of what I see is like "oh these 16yo girls fetishizing asian men" and im not saying that's not what happens, but i think that it is more like a side effect of something bigger. What i mean is that, like, 16yo girls didn't come up with it out of thin air, if anything, i believe that it's a side effect of most societies using the personal lifes of celebrities as a way to profit, tabloid scandals for example (remember the brangelina thing?)... so yeah, 16yo fetishizing asian men is definitely a problem, but i think the roots of this problem is the way entire industries exist with the sole purpose of profiting of the exploitation, abuse and exposure of celebrities personal and intimate lifes.

(Anyway, that's it. Im really sorry if i crossed your boundaries with this message, i don't have any intention of forcing you into a discussion, feel free to not answer this ask if it makes you uncomfortable or if you just don't want to. Also, English is not my first language and i kinda wrote it all in a furious rush, so this text is A Mess and All Over The Place and not very well elaborated. Please have a nice day.)

anon your brain is huge

listen like. i wont say that i've never thought about it myself but when i did it was just me and my lesbian friends joking around like 'oh what if this male celebrity we all like is gay' without making it into this big thing with conspiracy theories and blatant invasions of privacy and real person shipping, ya know?

going off what you say, i think it's definitely possible for lgbt people to fetishize other lgbt people, especially when it concerns white lgbt people and their favourite asian idols. on top of that, most of the people saying weird things about wyb like 'omg he's so limp wristed' and speculating wildly about his sexuality and relationships with his male colleagues are older than him. there is definitely a race element connected to this as well and i've definitely read posts by asian people discussing this issue, but i don't feel like i have the authority to comment in depth on that here.

also not the timestamp theory...... i want to erase that from my mind y*zhaners are SO stupid. no closeted chinese celebrity is gonna drop little cryptic hints for yall to follow like a bread trail. they would be closeted for a reason because even the slightest rumour could seriously harm their career. i feel like all of this also demonstrates an enormous lack of empathy towards actual lgbt people in china as a whole. they only care about lgbt issues in china when it concerns their fave (such as the recent ban on 'effeminate' actors).

[metamelonisle]

(keep in mind this post is not planned out and i am largely speaking from my thoughts)

i know people like to clown on white cishet men who explain that they're right-wing because they were told they were inherently evil or cruel or only capable of destruction or manipulation by everyone around them, and people mostly interpret that as "i learned white people did bad stuff in the past and this made me hate the WOKE left" when the truth is genuinely so much more harrowing.

being told you're inherently, irredeemably evil for reasons you didn't pick and can't change by the people around you that otherwise claim to champion "justice" and "humanity" for practically your entire life is genuinely traumatizing. being treated like an irredeemable boogeyman by people who don't even know you simply for how you were born is traumatizing. it doesn't matter if you have some sort of societal advantage or safety net. pain and trauma is subjective and shaped by perspective and experience, and i can guarantee that that this sort of experience hurts and it hurts bad.

like. i know there are lots of queer people who are former right-wingers, and i am willing to bet that a lot of them were right-wingers because until they realized they were queer, they were actively barred from even looking into queer spaces and demonized until they wanted nothing to do with it at all. and then they, like any normal person would do, simply joined up with people that accepted them. and then they changed, and those friends weren't so accepting anymore, and then suddenly the old community that scorned them for was accepting them with open arms.

and the reason why i know this pain so clearly is because. well. I'VE been dehumanized for things i can't control my entire life! I KNOW what that shit is like and it's horrific! I don't care if it's satisfying to give "them" "a taste of their own medicine", stop giving that pain to people! You're only making things worse!

i dont know how to say this but even if your dehumanization isn't systemically supported it can and will still traumatize people and fuck up their sense of self and there are people who absolutely will pounce on that opportunity that you have created and you will have no control over who those people are.

i dunno how to close this but i guess the message i want you, the audience, to take away from this is to stop generalizing people as evil just because of their body or blood. you don't know these people. you don't know their lives. their stories. you don't know their values, and you cannot make that judgement based on appearance alone.

i get that you're scared. i get that we're all scared. but i swear to god, you cannot fucking do this to anyone. from a humanist stance, it's unethical to prematurely judge someone as an enemy for something they cannot change about themselves, like their lineage or face. from a pragmatic stance, you are ensuring an enemy that could have otherwise become an ally. but by all means, leave that white boy alone.

i dunno if this is controversial but im gonna say this as a brown trans woman. i think now is absolutely 100% not the time (not like it ever WAS the time but ESPECIALLY not now) to be generalizing men (especially white cishet men) as inherently evil or right-wing and isolating all of them on principle. i cannot possibly further emphasize how vulnerable all of us are and i understand that when people are scared we will naturally want to shift into us vs. them to try and keep ourselves protected. but in so many ways that mentality only enforces a shallow illusion of safety and all it ultimately does is push out people who otherwise would have gladly stood by you because you were too afraid of them to treat them with respect

[fungisteri]

I wanna develop a bit more from my previous post

My journey with gender & sexuality was mostly online because, even if I'm lucky that I don't live in a ragingly homophobic place, it was still a pretty fucking taboo topic ngl. And being online and coming from teachings based on gender roles and the gender binary, and I grew up in Instagram, which has absolutely godawful discourse presented in pretty images and infographics.

I fell head first into exclusionism because it was easier to understand. It felt reasonable: these are the normal sexualities, and these are the weird ones. These are the normal genders, non-binary is technically valid, but if you have specific non-binary labels you're just a fucking weirdo. The right way to be trans is to do so in a way in which cishet people can understand, which is by being as gender conforming as possible. However, being gay makes you inherently smarter than cishets because we know so many things they don't. But if you act in a way that's not palatable to cishets, you're making the entire community look bad and stealing resources. Aspecs are their own separate thing from the standard acronym (LGBT) so they're a constant topic of debate. Actually, every popular label that's not on the acronym is a popular topic of debate. These were pretty common talking points: us vs them. And, looking back, it feels painfully obvious how many exclusionists were very likely cisgender, or gender-conforming binary trans people.

I think that the main selling point of exclusionism is that it's easy. It's that you make universal rules about what's "valid" and what isn't.

I was lucky that my lgbt elders (who honestly were and still are open minded 20 year olds, lgbt adults are unheard of in my offline environment, and every informative talk on the lgbt community is given by cishets that inevitably spread misinformation) insisted on how silly exclusionism is, at the end of the day. Like, alright, they're an exclusionist. They're a gatekeeper. People still are who they say they are though. You genuinely cannot stop them with hateful speech, if anything, you just make them feel unsafe and keep quiet. But at the end of the day, they're still the same person, regardless of whether you understand them or not, regardless of whether you think their personal labels are valid or not. It took me years to understand this. But, thanks to their help, I was able to figure out I'm not only non-binary, but that being a non-binary lesbian is a thing, and that nobody can take it away from me. Which was a HUGE relief because exclusionists made me hate nb lesbians and nb folk in general, which unknowingly made me continue to repress my already extremely repressed transness. Not only that, being able to be open minded about my own identity made it so that I could be open minded about other people's identities as well. I went on to understand my aspec peers, my genderfluid peers, my genderless peers, my bisexual peers, my transmasc and transfem peers, my gay peers, my poly peers, and probably more.

Make no mistake, there's still types of identities I don't understand and actually refuse to approach, but at least I've learned that the way to interact with those people is to just stay away, and not to go up to their face to tell them they're existing wrong.

Speaking of which, there's another concept I came to understand that I think goes pretty unspoken of in online communities: personal definitions. Inevitably, everyone has personal definitions. I see this is mostly observed with the bisexual label, making it a topic of debate, and honestly... I feel like we'd save each other a lot of grief if we just agreed to disagree. After all, it's a mistake to debate on labels in a vacuum: identity labels have a lot of emotional load, and it's just... Unfair to act like there's none and treat it as a debate. This happens with every label, too.

It's rough. Labels are actually really personal most of the time, even if they're not yours- it's all a matter of personal perspective, which is based on personal experiences. And these label debates very often fall into using these personal experiences as arguments, as proof, when they're just that: personal experiences. All these debates, regardless of being presented as founded in logic and reasoning, are all emotionally loaded. And for what- to define who belongs and who doesn't in a community of people so large that it's practically impossible to truly agree in anything? What's the point?

So, not only do I stray from exclusionism, I no longer bother with lgbt discourse. I obviously respect those who do, because I will always do my best to show respect to other people, but if I were to give them advice... Don't bother, man. It is what it is. There's better things to do than proving someone online wrong. As soon as you stop talking to them, they may very well stop talking to you too, and who knows- maybe you'll live better off that way.

[ming-sik]

@xenodogz ok replying is getting unwieldy im gonna go by your arguments point by point:

we do fundamentally disagree, i think that if someone sees something about "discourse" it is in fact their responsibility to find out what the discourse actually is before posting a long wildly incorrect theory about it being unprompted prejudice. personally if i hear that someone's mad at me i do usually try to find out why before i form my opinion on the situation and i don't think that's too much to ask! if someone can't be bothered to form an informed opinion why bother forming an opinion at all?

you've continued to not respond to the original point of the original discussion: it was literally framed as a test. the reason the screenshot was provided on its own was to test whether or not the reader can recognize this specific red flag by picking up on context clues, which are available in the original post. people don't always have signs on their head that say "i'm going to emotionally exploit you" so it's important to at least be able to recognize that something is suspicious and question a potential partner to make sure you're not putting yourself in a vulnerable position and they're being honest with you. you and a lot of other people failed the test, which doesn't mean you're stupid, but doubling down and blaming the tester for not giving you the answer kinda is. also can you decide if people were just saying The Guy was maybe aromantic OR if nobody was defending him OR if he wasn't relevant at all OR if the situation seemed fine without the context. it kind of seems like whether The Guy was defensible/relevant or not hinges entirely on which option bolsters your individual points. also what do you MEAN the origin of the discourse wasn't relevant. what? of course it's relevant that people originally misinterpreted the situation to use cishet aro dudes as a shield for a misogynist!

"nobody was saying it was arophobic to be upset at the guy" yes they were that was, again, the origin of the discourse. like defending him by saying "well maybe he's just aro and wants to be exclusive fwb for STD safety" w/o mentioning the presenting romantic relationships are more serious and feeling entitled to exclusivity when hes not taking it seriously, and doubling down when the people who recognized the red flags were proven right, is using cishet aro guys as a shield for misogyny which is my sticking point.

how is it not hurting cishet aro guys to, again, be used as a gotcha for people complaining about misogynists? that was the original problem. cishet aro men were not originally being attacked, so by responding to criticism of misogyny with "leave cishet aro guys alone" anyone who came into the discussion without a strong familiarity with the differences between cishet aro guys and misogynists who use 'relationship' as code for 'respect' would get the impression that if That Guy "might be aromantic" that this is standard behavior for cishet aro guys, which i would say is much more damaging than people complaining about that first thing.

yeah i saw the other poll i mentioned it in my first post. as someone who was following the original discussion i maintain that it's extremely bad faith to characterize things as them attacking cishet aro men without the context "after people defended a misogynist because he might be cishet aro".

in general i'm concerned about the current state of discussion in the aro & ace communities due to the same things you're presenting as counterarguments. i dislike seeing the only things in the aro tag being banal positivity or people weighing in on conversations through a game of endless telephone. this climate makes us extremely vulnerable to bad actors who can frame harmful things as an attack on aro people under the knowledge that most people won't challenge that, and forms a loop where people are incentivized not to get better at theory, ultimately making the community a worse place to be in. if the aro community had a healthy discussion scene the original people misinterpreting the situation either would've passed the test because they'd be educated about this type of abuse from the aro position of people who have to deal with potential partners who think no relationship =/= no respect, or would've been in a mindset to re-evaluate when they turned out to have failed to pick up on the signs being discussed. instead a bunch of people willfully misinterpreted an unrelated thing and then the entire aro tag for a week was people furthering the game of telephone. there's a third option beyond "nuclear wasteland of unproductive arguments" and "uncritical refusal to engage with anything except positivity".

in conclusion,

honestly it's just frustrating. you have people finding misogynistic cishet dudes and defending their emotional neglect of their sexual partners because it superficially resembles aromanticism even when the men themselves do not identify as aromantic and are often neglecting their sexual partners specifically because they view a girlfriend as the only type of woman who deserves any type of effort and so if the chick they're fucking isn't their girlfriend they can treat her like dirt. and then when people are rightly like "hey fuck you for defending a misogynist" the same people who claimed the cishet guy who never at any point claimed to be aromantic was aromantic and therefore criticizing his misogyny is arophobia go into the aro tags to despair at how many people HATE aromantics so they can whip a bunch of bystanders into a frenzy because they've heard that people are discrediting aromanticism, and therefore are encouraged to read the original unrelated posts or people getting pissed at someone defending emotional abuse by calling it aromanticism in bad faith or not at all, and so you get a mountain of people theorizing that the attack on cishet aro men was manufactured by TERFs instead of people who think that girls who date guys deserve dudes who don't see them as a freelance contractor they can expect sex from without having to treat them with the bare minimum respect they feel a girlfriend is owed.