#u also get people like me who identify as a lesbian first and a woman second

[pjharvey-moved]

it is lowkey annoying to me when ppl act like a woman being even just a little bit gender nonconforming means she's probably actually nonbinary and doesn't know it yet and the same for gender nonconforming men tbh. some women just don't vibe with femininity shrimple as

[koishikomeijiofficial]

my brother in law was ranting about how the treehouse at disneyland was changed from tarzan back to swiss family robinson because “tarzan is cancelled now because people complained that the gorillas were black people” and i just…

WHO is saying this???? WHERE do you get these insane allegations??? i googled it and literally could not find a single source for this but i was also sleep deprived and was not about to start a fight

[cowboyjen68]

Hi!!

I just wanted to ask some advice from one butch to another.

I recently got my dream job of being a warden on a nature reserve (and i love it!), while interacting with people there I get called a young man very often (i am 18 lol) and it gives me euphoria to know im masculine enough to even pass as a man. I've also had some volunteers ask if I was a man or not (despite my feminine name).

But recently I got called a "lady" outside while out with my mother. It drove me INSANE I cried alot.

Don't get me wrong I do identify as a woman but I hate being seen as a lady.

I've even thought about using he/him pronouns recently and changing my name but i'm too scared to as most people won't understand bc im still a lesbian.

Is this strange?

ps love u and ur blog lots xx

This is an easy answer because I was 18 once and looked enough like a teenage boy that I got "hey sport" and "hey young man" all the time, especially when in my work clothes. I worked for The Mayor's Youth Corp in Iowa City in the summers of my 15th and 16th year. Mom and Dad let me get a work permit AND bought me a used Datsun Pickup so I could drive myself the 20 miles there and back each day.

I was a volunteer with the Corp of Engineers youth from 14 to 16 and Dad knew I was super excited about this job. Mom was not thrilled that I wanted to cut my hair but my "grand mullet" was really hot under the hard hat in the summer heat of Iowa. (in the 1980's boys and girls had the short in front long and permed in back look) We compromised and I cut the sides really short. (photo of my me at 16 in my uniform for reference)

Using "he" would never have occurred to me because "EWWW Boys". This is not to say, however, that I hated being mistaken for a boy, on the contrary, it felt good. When someone thought I was a young man it meant they treated me as such. They didn't talk down to me, I knew they assumed I was capable and willing to get dirty. I knew unconsiously that along with the mistaken identity came many perks. This was nothing I analyzed but little girls see very early on the difference in treatment they recieve from their brothers, male cousins and neighborhood boys. This difference leads us to become negotiators to control our circumstances and not entittled to treatment based on our skills and actual personalies.

When an adult recognized me as a boy, even for a second at first glance, I knew I didn't have to prove myself. They, for an instant, assigned to me words like "strong, capable, demanding etc". No negotations required.

When someone realized I was a girl they literally had a change in their face. They smiled at me, softened their voice. When I was called "young lady" or "Miss" it always seemed to be backed my the worst assumptions (in my mind anyway). Lady is steeped in all kinds of traits I didnt want assigned to me. "quiet, weak, likes to dress pretty"OR "motherly, submissive, meek" Nothing good in my teen brain, that is for sure. Lady felt so OLD, so married to a man and reliant on him for survival, so polyster pants and ugly flats and scratchy blouses with a flower imprint. NONE of these things are inherent to being a woman or even socially forced on us but that is not how things work sometimes. Words that describe people get stereotypes and myths and traits attached to them all the time. Woman and girl are no different.

I can tell you, the best feeling in the world when I was in that job was when my supervisor, who damn well knew I was a young woman, trusted me with all the same tasks as the boys. Who valued my opinions and abilities equally to the young men. He took time to teach me what I didn't know, just like with them and didn't assume I couldn't or didn't want to learn things on the job. He didn't shame ANYONE for not being strong enough or for getting tired or needing a break.

Don't let the assumptions of others force you into another box of conformity. You don't need a boys name or to use any pronouns you don't feel connected to just to please others. In fact, none of that effort will change perceptions of those around you. I can promise that one day being called Lady will just be another word that you can hear and know it does not change your personality or your interests or control the hope you have for your future. What does waste a lot of time and energy is trying to adjust things in your life to fit incorrect or snap assumptions about you as a person. You can never control the thoughts of those around you but what you can do is stop worrying about it and enjoy YOU.

You have a job you love and are sure to thrive in. You are solid in your sexuality and love of women, you are in a unique position to possibly change the perceptions of others when they think of "young women". Your interactions with the public are sure to effect the assumpions of at least some people when they think of young women and their roles in our society.

Congratulations on your new career and I bet you rock that uniform.

[redheadbigshoes]

honestly im an aro lesbian and i tend to say (though i waver between this and going yeah everyone is - im ultimately undecided) aro heterosexual and ace heteroromantic cis people are apart of the community if they connect with that, because there is no denying that many aromantic heterosexual cishet men have never experienced an identifying queer experience that would have them connecting with other LGBT+ in any way, and many cishet aro men wont even realise they're aro in the first place because of the societal structure around sex for men (casual, flings, fwb, high body count, bachelor lifestyle, being emotionally/romantically detached from partners) all being in their favor while for aromantic straight women they're shamed for those things and are expected to settle down, love and care for their partners, be a homemaker and be a perfect wife not to sleep around as a single woman. they don't have to think about their lack of attraction to women and identify it because societally this is expected of them and gets them a pat on the back from other men u know what i mean? a man like that who is benefiting from modern patriarchal standards of what sex should be for a man and how it shouldn't be for a woman has literally nothing in common with a queer aroallo imo.

idk i know u aren't aro or ace but you often talk about men being men and misogyny + patriarchy so id love to hear your thoughts about this from that perspective even if its disagreeing with me in places because i don't think this is something people often talk about or think about when it comes to aromantic - specifically - straight cis men. asexual cishet men have a vastly differing experience because of the same structure which can cause more distress and pressure to perform. but cishet aro men can fly under the radar in their "queerness" in comparison.

it sort of reminds me (and i am also polyamorous) the idea of "polyamory being inherently queer" where-in a polyam cishet allo man has two gfs who are dating each other, has never interacted with the community aside from his bisexual gfs dating each other in his vicinity, would be considered lgbtq+ based off that statement when he quite literally could just turn around and immediately hate crime or fetishize us (which is super common with these types of guys)

i feel sometimes blanket statements being thrown like a net to cover the most ground in inclusivity can lack nuance in discussion

No but you brought up very interesting points that I hadn’t thought of. I agree with everything you said, in this case it depends on what the person feels more connected to. Not only because it’s not really my place to have an opinion about it since I’m not ace or aro, but also because of the points you brought up.

Though I see some similar things when comparing being cishet and aro or ace with polyamorous, I don’t think they’re necessarily the same (in terms of comparing) because one is about attraction while the other is a choice, you know? But I definitely get it it’s not something simple to discuss.

[freckliedan]

just u mentioned it in one of ur recent ask replies, whats a fagdyke /genq and how is it different to . a dyke (i am also a dyke LMAO)

quite earnestly i have no way of answering this for everyone who IDs as a fagdyke but i can answer for myself! for me (& many others, to my knowledge) it's a gender thing. the very short version is that my gender is both fag and dyke, the way some people's gender is dyke.

i first started both ID'ing as a nonbinary lesbian whose gender was just dyke & using they/them pronouns in 2018 (the same year i made this blog). for me the main part of my identity at that time was the lesbianism? being othered from womanhood was a result of my sexuality.

because like. a lot of cishet womanhood is shaped by being attracted to men and performing gender in a way that's attractive to men. i embodied neither of those things, which automatically disqualified me from many people's definition of womanhood. so i was nonbinary not because i identified away from my assigned gender but because the consensus definition no longer included me.

i embraced dyke as gender, it's something i did very intentionally, but being nonbinary was still a secondary part of my identity. it wasn't until 2019 that i more fully interrogated my gender and started viewing transness as a more central part of my identity?

i started doing that interrogation when i started questioning whether lesbian was the best fit for me. my then-recently-nonbinary-partner was just beginning to explore gender more and i knew that if they someday realized they were a man & felt misgendered by me being a lesbian that lesbian would stop being the right fit for me.

which. that came fully from me? i worry about phrasing this in a way that'd somehow paint my husband in a negative light but it genuinely was just a point at which i started thinking directly about my gender rather than bypassing it by focusing on my sexuality. (and yes, they're my husband now, he's since figured out they're a nonbinary trans guy).

i stopped being nonbinary as an afterthought of lesbianism and started just being nonbinary which was! quite honestly a lot to process because i'd been ignoring it for a long time. but it's been half a decade and i've done my processing?

i realized that what's true for me is that my gender is both fluid and not singular. i label myself as queer and genderqueer when talking to cishet people, maybe as genderfluid/bigender/multigender if getting into the specifics. but that's not how i label myself to me or to my community? (well. queer is).

what i've realized is that like. my attraction is always queer. in a relationship with a woman or dyke aligned nonbinary person, my gender would be more dyke than anything else. in my relationship with my husband my gender is more fag, & the same would be true in a relationship with anyone whose gender is more aligned with man/fag.

(i say more in both of those examples because like. my gender still fluctuates for other reasons. i have days where i feel very little internal sense of gender. i have days where i experience both fag as a gender and dyke as a gender at the same time. the list goes on).

my gender is contextual in a lot of ways—the way i experience gender is different in the more rural red state used to live in vs the big city in a blue state i now call home. but the context of relationships is one of the biggest ones, because it's one of the biggest impacts on how other people percieve me.

like, to strangers and aquaintences i am my husband's husband or spouse, because it's most important to me to be understood as queer. but in much more personal circles i also sometimes call myself his wife, because that's sometimes a more accurate reflection of my gender and the people who i'm comfortable calling myself that around already are familiar with how i experience gender & with the fact that our relationship is queer.

i know that a lot of people likely view fag and dyke as two mutually exclusive identities, as an extension of the binary of man and woman. but even when i was just IDing as a nonbinary dyke i had more in common with nonbinary fags than with cis women. and the fact that i am a dyke has not gone away now that i've also realized i am a fag.

in full i'd describe myself as a fairy fagdyke femme. fag goes first because it's how i more often present myself to the world.

i know i'm not the only person with seemingly contradictory identities like this, but it's not something i talk the most about? a LOT of the queer community constantly regurgitates subtly bioessentialist & transphobic ideas that make it like.. uncomfortable (at best) to be present in both lesbian and gay men's spaces as a bigender/multigender person.

so i primarily connect with other trans people, especially genderfreaks like me.

ummm my last note here is. for many other fagdykes or dykefags their definition of the label and personal experience is completely different from mine! it can be the same thing as being a dyke. some dykes are transmasc but still have dyke as their main gender and identity. i'm barely scratching the surface on this.

[mithliya]

Same Anon re: butch rep or lack thereof in queer love ultimatum:

Do you have a link/tag for your posts about the show? I didn’t see the butch rep post and I’d love read what other radfems think. I scrolled back but couldn’t find it.

And yeah I agree pretty much everyone except Xander, yoly (although she’s not 100% innocent,) and Sam suck to varying degrees, I only singled Vanessa out because the ask was about gender identities and Vanessa identifies as pansexual instead of lesbian. I felt bad for the other lesbians because they were to my knowledge, lesbians attracted to women, but technically dating self admitted non-women. Toxicity/drama wise, I pretty much agree with the general consensus on Mildred/Lexi/Rae/Aussie/tiff/Vanessa so I’m not going to add anything abt them.

My only unpopular opinion is about mal. Mal doesn’t necessarily suck per say, I think she’s a decent person and she’s super fine. but like Vanessa, her sudden reversal into wanting to propose seems motivated by wanting to “win,” instead of a genuine desire to commit to yoly. The fact that she suddenly started picking up after herself around the house shows she was capable of doing it all along but was content to let yoly pick up after her. The way she is motivated by wanting to win is a lot less obvious and less malicious than Vanessa, because she does care about yoly to some degree and she might not even consciously realize her motives. But I don’t think her intentions are genuine, I think she’s a real smooth talker towards both Lexi, yoly, and the camera/audience. I empathize with her a lot because I’m a poc lesbian (femme Indonesian though, not black butch,) and if a white woman showed up with a real chance of taking my girlfriend away I’d be feeling all types of old insecurities and might feel the overwhelming urge to win. I might be reading into it, but I just think if everyone wants to call Vanessa out for her sudden change of heart, it might be good to acknowledge that Mal is kind of doing something similar, but a lot less clumsily. I know she said she eventually wanted to get married after her finances were taken care of, but after the finance conversation w/yoly, I’m a bit suspicious about whether she was actually taking concrete steps to make that reality happen, or if she was using that as a delaying excuse. I would hate for her and her bestie to spin the narrative that yoly was some sort of gold digger who abandoned Mal to fall in love with Xander’s financial statements, because it kind of looked like they were implying that in the last episode. I had a soft spot for Mal, but I think I if the threat of xander were to go away, Mal would go back to her old, not-picking-up, marriage and kids delaying self.

this was my post about it. no one besides me rly shared their thoughts on that tho, to me i just thought it was concerning and indicative of a larger trend & commonly held idea nowadays that gnc = u must be non-binary or trans somehow. it all goes back to "cis = you identify as the gender you were born as" and gender simply being the societally & culturally ascribed roles based on ur sex... based on that logic ofc butch lesbians would not fit in and ofc many gnc people dont "feel" like theyre women (if female) or men (if male) but rather simply exist in the body that theyre in and dont conform to the gender roles pushed onto them.

i actually rly thought tiff was terrible at first but surprisingly, out of the bunch shes not the worst. definitely aussie (big disappointment. was into her at first), vanessa (also disappointment. shes rly beautiful too), mildred, and lexie are the ones i really didnt like. i loved mal, xander, & rae the most. im at a stage where im not 100% sure about yoly i mean she seems really lovely but the fact that mal expressed these insecurities holding her back from marriage & yoly basically confirmed every single one of them was like. really sad to see. and seeing mal cry so much was heartbreaking too ? like poor baby mal i want to just hug her and find a way to cheer her up.

i do agree w u tho that mal wanting to get married doesnt make much sense. i mean yoly basically confirmed every fear mal had that was keeping her from getting married to begin with!! if that were me id be like hell no im not proposing to u, if my main concerns were 1. im not financially ready and 2. my partner falls in love with everyone quickly and in the same way so why would *i* be the one, and then my partner went and proved she wants someone with more money + falls in love so fast (2 WEEKS!?!??) then id just say no way maam! we'll get married when u address my concerns! BUT that said, u made some decent points. i also was skeptical of the sudden flip to wanting to get married to yoly & the sudden meeting all of yoly's desires, like when someone is acting that way u rly dont know if theyre genuinely that way or if theyre just doing it to win. im skeptical of those things being consistent things too.

i got a similar sense to u there but also i generally just dont believe anyone is 100% genuine on the show, maybe the most genuine has been rae or even yoly bc yoly has been pretty direct & open w her feelings despite the issues it was causing. xander seems sweet but i definitely thought it was odd that she told yoly shes in love w her and then when vanessa asked she said she doesnt love yoly .. oh also sam is just amazing. i loved seeing her grow enough to stand up for herself and speak up unapologetically. i was super disappointed by aussie tbh she was like one of the women i was rly rooting for bc idk asian butches just have my heart bc they make me think of my lovely gf yanno but she rly let me down and was imo the absolutely worst of the bunch, even tho the one who would get shit on all the time is vanessa (who i think is not even as bad)

also lexie is annoying as hell and i think rae should dump her bc i was just getting some red flags from how lexie was acting ngl

[nothinginthisworldbelongstome]

1,4,30

yayayay an ask from my moot! hii thank u!!

1. how long have you known you liked girls?

well, my experience was never an 'something happened and i just *knew*' sort of thing. it was very slow, and it was harder bc i grew up with an extremely conservative christian family.

i didnt even know gay/trans people were a thing till i was like 11 or 12, bc i was homeschooled. but i started reading fanfiction at that age, beginning with straight couples, then going to mlm, and finally wlw. and it slowly seeped into my mind that my thoughts and feelings towards girls werent typical for straight girls.

i have always extremely disliked men, since i was very young, like 3 or so, and i never dreamed of my wedding. 'boy crazy' girls were unfathomable to me, i just could never understand what they saw in guys.

and ive always had extremely strong, almost worshipful 'crushes' towards other girls that i thought were just me reallyyyy wanting to be friends with them lmaooo. i was totally clueless until i realized being gay was a 'thing' that i could do. and even then, it wasnt fast. i evaluated all my current and previous relationships with girls, took SO MANY am i gay quizzes lmaooo, and even thought i was asexual for a while bc it was so hard for me to be okay with the idea of being sexually attracted to women (even tho i had accepted that i was definitely romantically attracted to them, purity culture is a hell of a thing to get over)

i also had a really big problem. see, i didnt only have to figure out my sexuality, i also had to fit it into my religion at that time and figure out what i believed. my church believes homosexuality is a sin, one u need to fight against, and if u dont ur going to hell. thats been a fact my whole life. its been ingrained in me since birth. so i had to try and root these ideas out of my mind, and that was really fucking hard. anyone who's ever had to 'unlearn' something knows just how difficult it is.

a part of accepting myself i had trouble with was also me struggling with the label 'lesbian'. i didnt like it at first, in fact i nearly hated it, even tho it was the only one i identified with besides the general 'gay' or 'queer'. i didnt like how it sounded, it felt almost dirty, sleazy even, with the prominent 'z' sound. it felt like it stuck out from all the other identities and just sounded 'bad'. i used to just say i was gay or queer instead of a lesbian. this was internalized homophobia, something i still struggle with from time to time. but luckily i was able to overcome it and now i proudly call myself a lesbian!

i also had a period of time where i thought i was bisexual bc it was hard to realize that i didnt have to be attracted to men, and i kind of thought it was 'okay' if i liked women as long as i still could like men too (spoiler alert: i couldnt).

but finally around the age of 16/17 i finally became entirely comfortable with myself and my label, and began coming out to those friends and family i knew were accepting.

4. do you have a crush at the moment?

not exactlyyyyy hehe

30. what experiences are you looking forward to having in the future (kissing a girl, going to pride, etc)?

god literally all of them. ive never been kissed (or fucked 🫣) and i want to have an (irl) girlfriend so so badly. ive never been to pride and i really want too. i want to get married eventually and have a family with the woman i love, i want to create a home with them. i want to live my life and just be who i am without having to stay closeted anymore.

thank u so so so much for the ask! and sorry its so long im very wordy lmaoo

[rollercoasterwords]

ok here's the cottagecore rant lol

i'm definitely not the first person to complain about cottagecore and like the 'cottagecorification' of lesbians but i've just been thinking about it tonight and i feel like the two main facets of what irritate me about it are like:

the way it mysticizes femininity. like...i am generally skeptical of any form of gender essentialism but especially this whole "divine feminine" sort of rhetoric that i've seen floating around the internet, which essentially acts as though a proper response to the gender roles created by patriarchy is to take the gender role of "woman" and shout really loudly about how good it is, which like...i understand the desire to take historically stigmatized aspects of femininity and reclaim them and push back against stigmatizing narratives, but mysticizing feminity does nothing but take us back to gender essentialism, which will always inevitably take us back to a gender hierarchy, so it's like....idk babe read some audre lorde. master's tools will never dismantle the master's house and all that. like there is no inherent goodness to womanhood and portraying femininity as this dainty pretty thing isn't actually really doing anyone a favor in the long-run. also -- i feel like this ties in to the ways that people will sometimes talk about lesbians and lesbian relationships like "wow women are just so beautiful and magical and amazing and lesbians are just so perfect and lesbian relationships are all just so perfect" where it's like...k. tell me u don't see lesbians as people but make it woke ig.

the way it sanitizes lesbianism. and like again i am not the first person to complain about this but anytime i see lesbianism portrayed as just like "omg uwu cute picnics and matching little fairy outfits and watching the sunset together" i'm just like...i'm not 5 years old??? like it almost feels as if in trying to avoid lesbians being oversexualized we've just decided to turn them into a children's picture book?? and it's like....idk babe u do u but if this is your impression of what being a lesbian is about then....yikes.

and the thing is like this combo of mysticizing femininty and sanitizing lesbianism i think leads to this weird anti-masculinity sentiment within queer and wlw spaces where people will be like "feminine = good and masculine = bad" and then we get all these "jokes" where people just repeat the same rhetoric about masculine lesbians being creepy ugly predators and it's like....i am literally going to rip ur spine out. i am. going to kill you. seriously the fucking "hey mamas" jokes and shit?? ohhhh i could go on and on maybe i just need to make a separate rant for that but yeah. making fun of masculine lesbians is literally only ever punching down and if you don't understand that then u have an incredibly warped understanding of like queer politics and also have probably never studied even a crumb of queer history.

ANYWAY at the end of the day all of this also just goes back to like. turning queerness into an aesthetic for the consumption of a broad audience and this is an issue throughout queer spaces i think because people don't actually want to accept queerness they just want to consume it as a form of entertainment but with lesbians specifically it just sucks that the palatable aesthetic is always going to be some kind of hyperfeminine conventionally pretty little package that is either completely devoid of sexuality or sexualized in a way that is very consumable for nonlesbians. and it sucks when people within the queer community buy so heavily into that aesthetic without seeing the ways that boiling a sexuality down to an aesthetic is harmful. like -- it's okay to enjoy or identify with certain aspects of "cottagecore" like shit man i like picnics too and if ur into cute dresses and shit u do u but if your queer identity revolves around aesthetics then there is very little that is actually queer about it and you will likely struggle to actually be in community with those who don't fit into your sanitized and palatable narratives of what it means to be queer. so. work on conceptualizing queerness beyond aesthetics maybe!

[exclamaquest]

what are ur thoughts on why radical inclusionism is harmful and/or do u have any resources on the subject? im interested in learning more about the pov

sorry for this taking so long! school has been taking a lot out of me. thank you for your patience! i've put my full response under a cut as to not clog dashes.

first off, i want to very clearly establish that i am not in any way talking about inclusion itself as a concept. being against radical inclusionism does not mean i'm for exclusionism as a blanket statement--again, i'm not against inclusionism itself, i'm against the very specific radinclus movement.

honestly, I totally understand why radinclus people think the way they do. it's a very easy rabbit hole to go down, and on a surface level, the concept of "including all good-faith identities" sounds fantastic. the problem comes when you look into what a lot of that really means.

defining it as "good-faith identities" means that if someone says they are identifying as something in good faith, you have no right to criticize them. i've seen it play out more than a few times--take people who are transabled or transrace, or identities that are inherently bigoted ("afab trans woman", for example). the very basic premise of radical inclusionism removes the suggestion of critical thought ("who is affected by this? is there harm coming from someone saying this?") and makes a person's inclusion in the community hinge on accepting everything told to them at face value.

this is not coming out of nowhere. i'm not going to block evade to get a few examples i'd like to because i'm not an asshole but the gist of it is "what right do we have to dictate anyone else's experience, just trust what people say they are". again, on the surface this sounds fine, but if you look a little deeper into some of the things that people who say this support, it becomes evident that there's a nasty correlation going on.

most evidently, it leaks into ableism. the venn diagram between radical inclusionists and people who treat mental illness like a fun game (aka endos, which is a whole other thing i'm not going to get into rn, and """transabled""" people*) is pretty much a circle, and it all connects (from what i've seen) to the single biggest problem with radinclusionism: it actively discourages critical thought. like i said above, radical inclusionism punishes those who dare to be "exclusionists" (criticize any part of any "good faith identity") with ostracization from their peers.

it also discourages looking at actual queer history or talking to people with experience to make your decisions. instead of asking for unbiased sources and talking to those around you, radical inclusionism shoves the idea of criticizing "good faith identities" being evil down your throat. if you ask for hard medical scientific sources when someone claims that they're a system without trauma so that you can review the evidence and make your own independent decision, you're discounting people's lived experiences. same goes for if you talk to someone affected outside of the group and ask how they feel about mspec lesbians or afab trans women and learn their opinion and then go back to the group and ask them to account for or respond to it.

they push the narrative that you're not using your resources and learning about science and history and figuring out your own stances through critical thought, you're perpetrating an exclusionist mindset and discounting "good faith identities".

not that you'd be able to see opinions outside the group's--it's a very, very tight echo chamber, with almost no chance of a dissuading opinion getting through in a way that isn't in the tone of a "get a load of this guy cam". who would want to interact with a nasty exclusionist, after all?

instead, i propose informed inclusionism. inclusionism that encourages critical thinking and discussion. inclusionism that advocates for talking to those around you as well as looking at historical and scientific sources as appropriate to make decisions. inclusionism that lets you take stock of the harm that some so-called "good faith identities" can cause, and that discourages you from turning a blind eye in the name of inclusionism when someone says how they are affected by said identities.

in order to become truly tolerant, you must be intolerant of intolerance. and, most importantly, you must know how to spot intolerance when it is disguised as tolerance. this requires critical thought that radinclus philosophy not only goes against, but actively punishes.

i hope this has helped you understand where i'm coming from better! again, thank you for your patience, this took a while to type out and edit and i've been very busy lately. if you have any questions, feel free to ask! i'll get to them as soon as i can.

note: this really doesn't seem to be an issue that a lot of people are talking about, which is interesting, and a reason there aren't more resources on this. i searched and searched, but couldn't really find much if anything that expressed this viewpoint. i honestly would have thought that there'd be more of a pushback against radinclus philosophy especially with how much tumblr tends to emphasize the need for critical thought, but i guess not. hopefully this can help create a space for dialogue + discussion in an area that sorely needs it! ^^ *i'm fully aware that biid is in and of itself a disability. someone being disabled in one form does not stop them from being ableist to those with another disability. if someone with biid identifies as transabled to being an amputee, that is ableist towards amputees. you cannot identify into a disability.

[calliopesburn]

So you mentioned queer film and docs in some of your tags, may I ask if you have any specific recommendations?

thank u for asking i have SO MANY!!!!!!!!!!

i haven't actually checked but im 99% sure all of these films were definitely directed and likely also written by queer people; for context this top list is all new so look for film festivals that might be screening or streaming these virtually / below i added some older films that are more easy to find

New from the past year or two:

the one i mentioned in the post is one i definitely recommend - it's called Nelly & Nadine (doc) - two women fall in love in a concentration camp, survive, and live happily together - the documentary gets made when a queer grandkid finds old stuff and is like hrmmmm

Rule 34 - one of my favorite films ever honestly - a black sex worker (in brazil) gets into criminal law school (paid for by her sex work) and witnesses her own life and identity being constantly debated in the classroom while continuing her sex work and beginning to explore BDSM at night - she becomes increasingly erratic throughout the film in a way that culminates beautifully (talk about a chaos queer) an incredibly commentary on women's agency

Before I Change My Mind - i think it takes place in the 60s - a non-binary pre-teen kid moves from america to a small canadian town and struggles to make friends for .02 seconds before they set their sights on their crush and become a member of their toxic friend group - puts a whole new spin on 'coming of age'

Compulsus - a woman starts hunting down men who sexually assault women (from the descrip it says it never shows the actual assault that leads her to start striking back, only her committing violence)

Tahara - first of all the stop motion kiss scene still has me reeling. two jewish bffs attend a funeral and things get real awkward when they kiss 'for fun'

Framing Agnes (doc) - gender case studies from a 50's UCLA clinic are re-enacted by icons like Angelica Ross - incredible history

Wildhood - a two-spirit teen falls for another indigenous boy while he journeys with his brother to find their mom

Anything's Possible - Billy Porter's directorial debut - a muslim boy falls for a trans girl and takes his shot even though he knows people will freak out (and they do) but it's really affirming and supportive and lovely and funny <3

Esther Newton Made Me Gay (doc) - ok wanna talk about queer history?? Esther Newton was the first person to ever write about drag culture from an anthropological perspective PERIOD. i think if i remember correctly she was fired from parsons, and was on very thin ice for a long time with her career - but even still she wrote and paved the way for queer academia - writing about fire island, cherry grove, the drag scene, and more!!!!! she also identifies as a butch lesbian/between genders and this film is so incredible for the lesbians - you really need to hear her talk about gender, about butchness and femmeness - ALSO you get to see her childhood growing up in the early 1900's as a queer person and it's incredible, you'll cry but like in a GOOD cathartic way

Sleep With Me (series) - a soapy sapphic thai romance between two disabled women - one in a wheelchair and another with a rare sleep disorder. this will literally give you every cute soapy sapphic moment you could ask for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Girl Picture - lesbians watch this one!!!!!!!! this is a ROMANCE!!!!!! there were scenes where i was like omg!!!!!!! when you never realize how desperately ur craving a certain style - just watch the trailer please ; also asexuals u should watch this one too :) (just to be clear though the asexual character is straight, not the sapphic romance)

Mama Bears (doc) - this doc will also make u cry but in a really fucking good way. this is a doc on christian parents who used to be conservative and homophobic before changing perspectives after their kids come out. most notable is Kai (though she also chooses the name Esther for herself <3, based on her favorite person in the Bible), a trans girl who talks about coming out to her mom as a girl as young as 3 years old, and in spite of the abuse she was put through, she kept saying it and her mom eventually realized she could either lose her "son" forever, or accept and love her daughter. im tearing up writing this - her mom gave up her entire family to literally save her daughters life - and she did.

Nana's Boys - two black men are about to get engaged when the city goes on lockdown and their relationship is put to the test - truths come out and the gorgeous twists and turns of their relationship really shows the gentleness and supportiveness of queer relationships (it's called nana's boys because they were both raised by their grandmas <3)

Unidentified Objects - a lovely film about two neighbors who take an unexpected road trip - their lives of course changing forever as a result. one of the characters is a gay little person who's mourning the death of a close friend and the other is a sex worker who is looking for the aliens who took her when she was a kid (yes that's literally the plot) it's wonderfully well written and has one of those endings that'll send you reeling

New - haven't seen but on my list:

The First Fallen - a narrative story that follows a group a friends as the first wave of the AIDS epidemic approaches in Peru <3

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (doc) - you'll likely hear about this as its Laura Poitras' new film, it's about Nan Goldin

Stupid for You - a sapphic girl musical????????????????????

Way Down - an episodic on a bunch of friends trying to be musicians - the lead is non-binary in a romance with various ladies and i think everyone else in the band is queer too

The Blue Caftan - a tailor in morocco lives happily closeted with his wife until they hire a sexy assistant

The Inspection - a gay man enters the military and finds unexpected support and family

El Houb - can only remember that it's a muslim guy who comes out to his dad but is a dark comedy (he literally runs into the closet at a point in the film)

My Emptiness and I - a newly out transfemme woman navigates life and dating and surgery

Moneyboys - two gay men in i think taiwan?

so in general i highly recommend paying attention to queer film festivals - newfest, frameline, and outfest are the major US ones (they only stream in the US but im pretty sure you can use a vpn) inside out is a canadian one; most of them stream now!!!! like 80% of their films are available to stream for a short duration so sign up for their email lists and mark their festivals on your calendars because if you pay attention to these you'll start to see actual queer stories written and directed by queer people!!!!!!!!

also consider watching shorts programs - some of the most impactful films ive been seeing have been shorts (there's one called Dress Up that has been glued into the back of my skull for like 2 months) and shorts are basically seeing into the future of queer film and a lot of them are amazing so highly recommend!!!!!!!

-

For things currently streaming or easy to find and download:

Fantasy of the Girls (2017/2018 depending where you look) thrilled to list this one as it's actually the film that made me realize im a lesbian :) full film is also on YT

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love dir Maria Maggenti (1995)

Saving Face (2000) and The Half of It - dir Alice Wu

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (late 90s i think)

Fire (1996)

Desert Hearts (1985)

The Velvet Vampire - feels like jennifer's body but in 1971 with a vampire who wants to have sex/kill both ppl in a married couple (dir. by a woman; haven't seen this yet though)

Chutney Popcorn (1999)

Paris is Burning (1990)

Brother to Brother (2004) (anthony mackie)

Pariah

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (a sad one but chloe moretz dated the girl from the film and the director is queer - incredible film)

Lingua Franca

Fire Island

Naz & Maalik

The Obituary of Tunde Johnson

Firstness

Firebird

See You Then

Ammonite

No Hard Feelings

Shiva Baby

Flee

Passing

--

so in general i highly recommend paying attention to queer film festivals - newfest, frameline, and outfest are the major US ones (they only stream in the US but im pretty sure you can use a vpn) inside out is a canadian one; most of them stream now!!!! like 80% of their films are available to stream for a short duration so sign up for their email lists and mark their festivals on your calendars because if you pay attention to these you'll start to see actual queer stories written and directed by queer people!!!!!!!!

also consider watching shorts programs - some of the most impactful films ive been seeing have been shorts (there's one that has been glued into the back of my skull for like 2 months) and shorts are basically seeing into the future of queer film and a lot of them are amazing so highly recommend!!!!!!!

[whitehairedanimeboyfriend]

trans man here who came here to block u from a terf list and have instead discovered that transandrophobia does not mean what i thought it did and i fully support having a more active transmasc movement in tandem rather than lumped in w trans women. im close friends w trans women and know that while our experiences are similar theyre also different enough to warrant different approaches so as not to speak over one another. working together is important but also recognizing diff needs is too.

also. glad to know im not the only trans guy uncomfortable with experiences i have had being lumped into lesbian activism and having lesbians (both cis and trans) make wildly uncomfortable transphobic comments.

sorry this is long i just like to read through to make sure people arent being unfairly targeted by blocklists if i have the time and i really think you (and the arguments being made around transandrophobia) have been unfairly targeted.

I have lived, worked with, protested next to, loved, and dated trans women. I have been in situations where I have been fully supported by the trans women around me, and I go on to support them.

That being said I have also been in situations where I felt left out of the conversation.

At a local trans and dyke march, we had a group of speakers. One (1) of them was a trans man. The person who spoke after him said that "Next Year, I hope we get more speaks that are trans women" (he also spent a good part of his speech apologizing for taking up space and about how privileged he is, since he's a man, and didn't talk at all about issues specific to trans men.) All despite her being one of four trans women speaking that day, and there being only one trans man.

An ex friend (who is a trans woman) asked me about my views on abortion. I said I think anyone should get an abortion if they wanted to, and that if I got pregnant, I would definitely get an abortion. She proceeded to tell me that was a very privileged for me to say that, and that I was rubbing it in her face that I could get pregnant in the first place. That not keeping the baby is transmisogynistic. Somehow. This friend was also a well known trans activist in my community, often on the news and even got on the front cover of a couple magazines.

There's a couple other stories but those get a little dark and personal and are "too soon" if you know what I mean.

Some of the good stories? When I was homeless and in another city, there was at a shelter not inclusive of trans people. They were repeatedly misgendering me. Saying I would have to go the the emergency floor (and wait until midnight to claim the bed) or the women's floor. A trans girl came and sat with me outside while I waited to be able to claim the bed. (She was allowed on the women's floor because she passed.) After that day she got me connected to a trans emergency housing group and I ended up staying with another trans woman for several weeks.

I've got more stories like this as well, but a lot of them aren't mine to tell, and have identifying information in them. There's this idea floating around that I hate trans women... I don't. I love and support trans women, and have been loved and supported by them. I am asking the queer community at large to wake up to the idea that trans men are frequently left out of the conversation. (or are ridiculed when included.)

I see trans women the same way that I see any group of people. Made up of individuals, forming loose communities, worthy of respect and love, capable of both bad and good as either individuals or in those groups.

Apparently this is a really controversial opinion though.

[nat-stimmy]

SO @keroppi-stims heres my super long explanation on the term bi lesbian if you wanted to rb it for that anon, putting it under a read more bc its LONG

so, to start lets define bi lesbian - which is not as cookie cutter as you might think! mspec lesbian + mspec gay labels are very fluid by nature,and the reasons i identify as a bi gay man may be completely different from the reasons another bi gay man connects with the same label! the bare-bones definition is: someone who identifies with both of the labels “bi” and “lesbian” now that’s not nearly enough information for a lot of people looking into this, especially because these two labels seem at first glance to be contradictory and inherently different this is untrue for a very simple reason (and bear with me here, there’s a bit of binary language used since this was back when the queer community was first finding its footing): lesbian started out to mean a woman attracted to women regardless of any other attraction she may experience as well this means that a woman who was attracted to men and women would have been considered a lesbian, just the same as a woman who was exclusively attracted to other women

you might know this to be what’s now called an Umbrella Term! just like gay is / was, lesbian used to be a broad umbrella term that anyone could identify with now. there was. a certain group of people. that did not like this. they wanted ‘lesbian’ to mean a (cis) woman who was exclusively attracted to other (cis) women. they coined the term ‘gold star lesbian’ to mean someone who only dates and sleeps with other cis women, and then eventually that escalated to them pushing out the people we now would class as mspec! thats why the term bisexual exists, to give them back the sense of community they lost it doesnt take a genius to guess who this group of people are in the modern-day, but i cannot say their names because it WILL attract them to my blog and i dont care to get swarmed by red in my notes! if u know u know anyways, so thats a very very brief and vague history of the term lesbian! i mention this because it’s crucial to understand why people say lesbian is an umbrella term, and why terms like bi lesbian exist and aren’t as Weird as they appear!

now that the history lesson is out of the way, let’s get back to the term itself. there are MANY reasons ive seen that someone might ID as a bi lesbian, and exactly NONE of them are transphobic. funnily enough, most of the mspec lesbians + mspec gays ive seen have been trans, including me!

which, is a GREAT segway into something that too many people overlook in the discourse around bi lesbian and similar terms: multigender people.

when you have multiple genders, sexuality isn’t always as cut-and-dry as it is with monogender people! and as a result, if you want specific, descriptive terms? you gotta mix and match if you’re bigender (example: both male and female) and you are attracted to male and female people, then by definition you are both bi (attracted to two or more genders) AND gay / lesbian (attracted to the same gender) therefore, you might identify strongly with both labels, and decide to ID as bi gay / bi lesbian!

not all mspec lesbians / mspec gays are multigendered, or even trans, and that doesnt make their reasons for IDing with their chosen label Bad or Wrong or anything, i simply bring this example up because not many people even think about multigender people and our resulting experiences with sexuality! note: when i say multigender i’m using it to mean anyone who is not 100% one singular gender for 100% of the time, im including genderfluid people (hi) as well as people who are always two or more genders at the same time for ease of communicating. i’ll even go one step further: all of this? could apply to the labels “straight lesbian” or “straight gay” , which are both valid sexualities!

also to end this super long ramble: every [REDACTED] i’ve come across fucking HATES the terms bi / pan / ply / omni lesbian. you know why? bc they hate anyone who isnt a cis woman attracted to only cis women using the term “lesbian”

it is most certainly NOT one of their “things” i can assure you

i also ramble a little more [HERE] though be warned- it is written in a very angry tone because i was going off on a rude anon

TL;DR: bi lesbian (and its related labels) are most certainly good-faith identities, and the reasons for IDing with it differ from person to person so much that i couldn’t possibly list every reason here

[tarantulas4davey]

Oh look. It's the obligatory request for Albert for the ask game :)

eli send two and the other was anon so you’re getting the response. as a treat. love u cam

gender headcanon

i mostly write him as he/him enby in fics. sometimes he/they as a treat

in rps w jack ( @proud-and-defiant ilysm bestie ) tho he’s ftm trans pretty often and that’s another one that brings me a lot of joy ngl

if nothing else he identifies as Himbo and i support him for that.

sexuality headcanon

bi bi bi

so. so violently bisexual

he’s really in love with his boyfriend but one time he saw a woman with a sword on twitter and promptly Collapsed

bonus hc that he’s kissed 2 people ever, 1) race, obviously and 2) sarah, who was his first kiss cause he wanted to know what it was like to kiss a girl. she came out as a lesbian like. the second they pulled away and now he jokes that he turned her gay

an otp i have with them

guess. literally guess

*sigh* ralbert, obviously

they’re in love i don’t make the rules

a notp

s,,, spralbert

i just. don’t think him and spot would Work, they’re too similar in like. the worst ways possible, and too different in the worst ways too

and we know my opinions on sprace

a brotp

albert and jack !!

albert and finch are a fun duo too

i’m also really impartial to albert, smalls and sarah being besties too cause albert needs bossy lesbian friends

favorite actor who played them

this. is pretty obvious

esp if you know me

but sky flaherty <33

favorite headcanon about them

this question is mean and cruel and awful and there’s no way i could possibly—

southern albert. (specifically georgia)

i fucking LOVE southern albert it’s the cutest thing in the entire world and it makes me SO HAPPY in every variation of it

southern mama, born and raised in the south before moving to manhattan in middle school, southern small town au. doesn’t matter, they all make me happy.

my opinion about them

my favorite man

literal pride and joy

this is my jac assigned kin and claimed favorite newsboy he’s just. yeah. yeah <3333

[genderqueerdykes]

Hello dude! I love your positivity posts, recently all social medias (especially tiktok) are spouting exclus bullshit, so seeing queer inclusionist stuff makes me so so happy beyond words! Thanks! - abrosexual he/she trans lesboy

*points* hey you're amazing first of all and second of all i am Also a lesboy so like!!!! we are the the coolest fucking people on planet earth. we are lesboy4lesboy and transfag4transfag

second, god yeah i've heard people are kinda going backwards and becoming regressive with queer politics these days which is like. if you're gonna be conservative about gender and sexuality you're in the wrong fucking community, dude, it doesn't make any sense! i don't get the focus on policing who can say what slurs. i don't get why people don't realize that gay men call their lesbian friends dykes and dykes call their gay friends fags all the time. trans people call each other trannies. it fucking happens and if it upsets u ???? why are you HERE

queer identities are supposed to be weird and confusing! they're not supposed to make sense or fit into a grid or binary or box or what the hell ever! be a lesboy! be a girlfag! be a transmasc she/her lesbian, be a transfem he/him gay, take testosterone and identify as a woman, take estrogen and identify as a man, have 400 genders, have a different gender for every day, make up your own gender for fun, combine identities- as long as you don't appropriate something from a closed culture go fucking nuts dude!!!!!!!

anyway ily lesboys rule let's go lesboys!!!!!!! keep being awesome and having unique queer identities. love yourself and be who you are. embrace the contradictory parts of yourself and enjoy the chaos! at the end of the day it's about being your damn self and LOVING YOUR DAMN SELF! love your damn self and thank you for loving my blog it really means a lot to me!

[queer-merm]

I know some folks get confused when hearing “bi Iesbian” for the first time so I decided to make this!

(Image; a bunch of knights around a table where “bilesbian” is written, their swords drawn to the table, each sword representing a potential use of the label:

-attraction to women and non-binary people

-Bisexual homoromantic (split attraction model)

-homosexual biromantic (split attraction model)

-identifying as lesbian due to trauma with men and not wanting to date them

-people with multiple headmates/ systems/ DID

-people who see their identity as fluid, or potentially prone to change as time goes on

-a lesbian discovering her partner is a trans man, and still eing attracted to him as a man, even though she isn’t attracted to men usually

-very rare attraction to men

-Choosing to go with the historical definition of lesbian (for more info click l!) OR coming from a non-US/UK/anglophone region where “lesbian” is commonly used as an umbrella term

-questionning

-And more!)

Before clowning on this post I heavily suggest you go through this!

ÉDIT: since I keep seeing people trying to “debunk” this or w/ever i want to address a few points:

1-not all non-binary people are comfortable being included in lesbianism. If you are, good for you, but not all of us are. It’s especially uncomfortable when you won’t stfu about men being never included in, but saying “all non-binary people are uwu”. What about non-binary men? Bigender folks? Etc? “Men can never be included” and “all N-bi are included” can NOT coexist as statements.

2- RE the SAM; a) if your sexual/romantic attraction is the same for you, coolio, but you cannot decide for others that it is not. b) not everyone wants to use “homo” for xyz reasons, hence why they go with bi gay/lesbian (nb people might not want to label themselves as “SGA”)

3- a lot of systems say they can 100% “fuse”, it’s not unheard of.

4- It’s an absolute insult to older queers/lesbians to tell them “WELL IT CHANGED! USE /MY/ DEFINITION!!1!”. How fucking dare you try to take their lives experiences from them, ESPECIALLY WHEN, whether you like it or not, the current definition of “no men allowed” is a direct result from political lesbianism and radical feminism [see previous link]. People have every right to reject this/refuse to uphold this history.

5- at the end of the day, people don’t owe u labels that make you comfortable. If someone vibes with lesbian, you can cope with it or keep crying. No one thinks you are secretly into men by the way; I sure am not into men myself, other queer people with funky labels doesn’t change that nor “invalidates” me because I’m not insecure. I also still think defining lesbianism as “long men” rather than “lyes I love women” is stupid.

If your labels are set in stone, if you have never had exceptions, that’s great. But the queer experience is diverse, your experiences with your gender/sexuality do not invalidate others, and vice versa. Take a chill pill, stop trying to split the community appart over the pettiest of bullshit.

Last note; remember you can’t always tell someone’s gender. Someone you may assume is a woman might be a man, someone you may assume is a man might be non-binary. Keep that in mind next time you say “men can never be included!,1!1″

HOPEFULLY THE LAST EDIT:

If this post makes you mad: I don’t give a shit. If you reply, I won’t give a shit.

This post is for people who want to know why someone might use the label in good faith. Nothing more nothing less.  If you want to start a fight go elsewhere. I’ve heard everything you could possibly say and i do not give a shit what some insecure 15 years old with 0 knowledge of queer history, who has been drinking the radf3m lite/lesbian separatism juice on Twitter.hell and tumblr.shit has to say. If you hate the post, block me and move on, don’t waste your saliva here.

This post was made by some bitch who isn’t a man and who has never been attracted to men. Somehow, still, I don’t care how people label themselves. Make of that what you fucking will.

[brawltogethernow]

a while back you said that you don’t think mj is cis, and that you have specific scenes informing that idea abt her.... do u mind if I ask what are the scenes? and what’s the gender diagnosis? 👀

I don’t have a concrete conclusion, just a vague impression and a habit of getting out my phone at five a.m. and texting my brother stuff like, “I feel like MJ would try out the label he/him lesbian but like, primarily on a personal Twitter account profile.” But yeah, she has two recurring traits that inform the bulk of this for me.

The first is her habit of inserting herself into traditionally masculine roles. I figure the writers were probably gunning for an exaggerated/comedic level of feminism. (It didn’t all age perfectly, but the other women of the cast were already written as feminist.) If you think speaking up for equal rights is cool, wait until you see...MJ try to singlehandedly destroy the gender binary? In practice you get this theme where MJ observes dubious male-coded behavior and then instead of going, “Stop doing that,” goes, “I am also going to do that.”

We see her take the reins of a date more than once on panel to literally go, “Wait, let’s do some very traditionally gendered date shit. And I am going to be the man.”

Physically taking Peter’s key to open his own door for him in ASM 136.

Playing out the ancient ritual of carrying his books for him in ASM 141. Both times she lampshades this as chauvinism and dramatizes the problematic subtext of how these are supposed to go down. In 1974 when these were published I’m pretty sure book carrying as a courting ritual was already considered a dated, cheesy trope living on only through media.

I wish guys pathologically trying to get the door had gone the same way, buuuut. Sigh. But personally, when dudes slow down our travel progress by stopping me and then making a big production of opening a door for me, I follow their lead by slowing us down even further and refusing to go through the door until after they’ve gone through, and when I’m with dudes who are not trying to do a gender at me I full stop don’t think about these behavioral habits unless a recent encounter has left me twitchy. But I don’t get a hit of gender euphoria from doing man shit, and MJ...might?

What other interpretation of this is there, really? Preemptively punishing Peter to get in ahead of it just in case he comes over weird and traditional on her, three in-universe years into their friendship? Nah, she’s literally just having fun with genderplay.

Also... Peter going along with it but very visibly not Getting it with a single bone in his body... RIP. Or not, because this read intensifies the ways MJ acts as a foil for Peter and Gwen by contrasting their traits.

Gwen’s way of addressing gender stereotypes, to have a point of contrast, were more along the lines of calling Peter a chauvinist when he tried to make decisions for her, and jabbingly cheerful reminders that she was a cute blonde girl and a science major.

The second trait is weaker evidence but still, like...noticeable? And less dismissable as a kink thing. That being MJ’s recurring tendency to parse emotionally complex situations happening to other people by zooming in on one of them and going, That one is the me of this situation and analyzing through that lens. Her pick is always a dude. If there are four women and one man, she’ll pick the man.

^literally recollecting her own sister’s divorce by her deadbeat husband, who if anything she should be comparing to their deadbeat father

SSM 96, ASM 259, ASM: Parallel Lives

This could just be the writers themselves overempathizing with men and discounting women! It’s definitely not deliberate. But also, there are lots of other women in this franchise, who don’t do this as far as I can think of. There are lots of women in these parts of MJ’s story who she is deliberately compared against, like, the Bechdel test is being passed.

And yet, most times I can recall where MJ compares herself to women are explicitly aversive, like how she’s terrified of ending up living a life like her mother’s.

Parallel Lives, incidentally, is wild, because it is simultaneously going “here’s how a man and woman met and got married👫” and dishing a condensed Mary Jane backstory that has every single “the one queer relative” marker. Young Mary Jane, inexplicably different from her family members in an ostracizing but decidedly stylish way, finds her mother and sister’s insistence she follow a normal path through life re: romance and relationships “suffocating” and generally existentially abhorrent. The only one willing to humor MJ is her unmarried aunt, though Anna's support is in the form of optimism about MJ’s potential within the expected romantic paradigm. Simultaneously MJ’s sister, whose trauma as a child of a bad marriage is identical to MJ’s, does hit all the life path checkmarks people expect to see from MJ. Okay. MJ’s main emotional conflict is literally: “A man: Is that my father, or is that me? (These are the only choices.)” ...Okay.

Bonus points granted for self-identifying by the gender-neutral nickname “MJ” over other nickname options that were available if she just wanted to ditch her uncool two-part first name. (Dubious for obvious reasons but we know her father calls her “Janey”, for example.)

Off in some other area of the great gender blob, MJ performs femininity with deliberate, studied exaggeration, and has clearly sampled what she likes from the chocolate box of womanhood and thrown out the rest. Citations: Literally every scene she is in from her introduction up until at least the 90′s Clone Saga.

What does any of this mean!? I dunno. Smells genderqueer tho.