#what about the ones who don’t want to call themselves men because they’re lesbians and know very few lesbians would date them i

[bulldog-butch]

my tumblr cancelable opinion: (as a trans masc) so many trans mascs on tumblr are afraid to call themselves men because they don’t want to admit that they can be oppressors. especially if they are white

Gonna have to suck on this one like a lozenge

[lycandrophile]

i clicked on the original tweet just to see if anyone else felt as weird about it as i did because at this point i’m just tired of seeing people going on and on about trans men dating cishet men who try to convince them not to transition as if it’s a funny joke about a trans man doing something silly and not a manipulative and generally very unhealthy relationship dynamic that can hurt the trans man involved really deeply (as forcing someone back into the closet tends to do.)

did i find anyone else feeling that way? no. there were a few people pointing out that it was weird in general, and plenty saying it’s a weird thing to say about a cis woman, but nothing expressing any sort of concern about the tired stereotype it’s perpetuating.

but you know what i did find? replies like the one in the second screenshot, using the tweet as their chance to tell the world how much they hate trans men and how repulsive they find the idea of ever being compared to us. and replies like the third one, shaming trans men in relationships like that as if the fact that they’ve found themselves in an unhealthy relationship makes them deserving of public shaming, as if their relationship is hurting anyone other than them.

stereotypes like this just feel like yet another way of indirectly calling us stupid little girls who don’t know what’s good for us, and the fact that a picture of a woman is being used (even jokingly!) as an example of what trans men “like that” look like should make the implications of rhetoric like this all the more obvious.

it’s relationships like these that keep us miserable in the closet for so long and drive up our sexual assault rates even more. they’re not funny and if anyone is going to be making jokes about them, it certainly shouldn’t be people who have never been in that situation. if you actually cared about us you’d be looking for ways to support the trans men you know who are in relationships like that instead of hopping on twitter to joke about how stupid they must be.

i don’t care if it’s a joke. if it victim blames trans men for the transphobia we face in our personal relationships, adds to the common idea that we can’t be trusted to make decisions about our own lives, and invites even more blatant transphobia against us by people who unabashedly admit they see all trans men as “disgusting and phony”, it’s not fucking funny.

(i also want to note that the people making these jokes never like to mention that this also happens to trans men in relationships with queer women. they also hate those trans men, of course, and are happy to express that when they get into fights about trans men who date lesbians, but they’ll never talk about it in the context of this particular stereotype. it’s always a man being manipulative in a relationship and pressuring trans men to not transition, as if a woman would never be capable of such a thing.

they also like to conveniently ignore the existence of older trans men who transitioned after already being in a committed relationship with a cishet man and were able to make that relationship work despite their transition, because acknowledging that would require recognizing that trans men can be in seemingly contradictory relationships and genuinely be happy with their partner. who needs nuance when you can simply choose to judge all trans men for our relationships regardless of what they’re actually like?)

do you think they also would call me “a trans man being purposefully misgendered” with this kind of vitriol because i’m still living with parents who don’t recognize my gender instead of moving out before i’m ready to be financially independent? at this point, i’m starting to feel like they might, with the way every decision a trans man ever makes is the subject of a public debate and people have decided that trans men are secretly using being misgendered as a weapon to somehow hurt other trans people.

as a general rule, i’d say the only people who should be making “X looks like a trans man” jokes about literally anyone/anything are trans men, and posts like this show exactly why those jokes being made by anyone else (even by other trans people) just isn’t a good idea.

[ingydar-phan]

I think people are misinterpreting my stance on dangender. So let me say more, I guess.

- I am not indirecting anybody. This is a wide topic with varying ideas in it. My stances aren’t about the participants, they’re about the topic itself.

- I do not think having this stance is inherently harmful, transphobic, or unethical. I think some aspects can be rooted in harmful things but believing in dangender doesn’t make someone a bad person.

- My issue isn’t about boundaries themselves or crossing lines DNP have set. I know some people agreeing with me are making it about that, but that’s not what it’s about for me. I am super icked out by people who think they’re doing some sort of holy work by “protecting” their “innocent blorbos” or whatever from other peoples opinions/speculation. I’m not trying to be like “how dare you! If he saw this his feelings would be hurt!”. In fact, I think if Dan were to see dangender posts, he’d probably giggle, tilt his head, and be like “hmm yea ok I see what you’re saying!”. Im not trying to decipher what lines DNP have laid out themselves about what’s ok and what’s too much. Nobody can do that accurately besides DNP themselves, and this is a fandom space, so that’s not what I’m worried about, even though people seem to think it is.

I think it is absolutely true that having queer people in the phandom pre-BIG discussing DNPs relationship and queerness was a huge part of empowering Dan to come out. He’s said it in BIG, he said it in TIT, he’s said it a lot. Their community being nosy gays is how he found the space to come out. I know this. I affirm and agree with this.

My issue is there’s a difference between laying ground for mind-opening, and acting like there’s a confirmed secret being hidden from us when it comes to Dans gender. So, the difference between thinking “maybe if Dan really dug into what his gender could be, knowing it’s a safe space, he may come out with an idea of something more complex than cis” and thinking “he is for a fact trans/enby and already knows this, he’s just hiding it, and trying to hint it at everyone through these secret codes.”

All the jokes about phyuri and DNP looking like lesbians, the calling Dan “she” or “wife”, wanting DNP to watch I Saw The TV Glow, transmascs seeing themselves in Dan, that IS the community opening our arms and saying to be free to feel however you want to feel and express yourself however you desire. That’s so beautiful.

Collecting evidence that you surely know better than Dan himself that he’s actually secretly trans and hiding it is just, different, and is what makes me uncomfortable.

Lest we not forget that gender and sexuality, that queerness as a whole, are intertwined. A young confused traumatized Dan feeling urges to express femininity is just queerness itself, not specifically transness. Queer men are often inherently viewed as feminine, and going outside of strict gender expectations is a part of gayness for many gay men. Feeling like you’re different from your peers, like you want to express yourself outside of the norm, is tied into all forms of queerness. Dan is gay: he knows he’s gay, he’s worked hard to call himself gay. Gayness is queerness, and queerness is unique expression. His complex feelings about non-masculine expression tie into his gayness because he is a queer man. Him having those complex feeling about expression and self image do not mean he’s trans. They mean he’s queer period. What type of queer is up to him; and clearly the expression and label of queerness that he finds most accurate to himself is gay man. You can be a cis gay person and still have your queerness attach to your gender without it making you trans.

May he one day in the future find that that complex expression of queerness goes into his gender to the extent of transness? Maybe! I don’t know! Would I support him? Of course! Would I look back regretfully? No! I’m not attempting to prevent anyone from building a welcoming space. I just don’t like this assertion of specific labels and the idea that you know better than him. That is it.

[certifiedsexed]

gen/good faith question — is it disrespectful to lesbians or queer people in general if i were to identify as a he/him lesbian?

for context: i’ve always known i was into girls, and for some of my life, i considered myself a girl as well. there was nothing about me that made me want to make that choice, other than the fact that i was perceived by everyone around me as a girl and expected to be one.

and then i started to question my gender. i don’t really feel intrinsically as though i have a gender, but at the same time, certain forms of gendered language and some forms of gender expression make me happy and comfortable. at the same time, some forms of both those things don’t.

the thing is, most gendered language (i’m only using this here for clarity — i know that really no language is gendered and people can use whatever terms, pronouns etc to refer to themselves and that doesn’t have to correspond to stereotypical gender that usually goes with that term) and most gender expression that i enjoy are both usually correspond to those used by men, and sometimes those used by nonbinary people. for example — i like being called a guy, i like referring to myself a person, i like dressing in traditionally ‘masc’ clothes, and i would love to be perceived as androgynous sometimes.

but also, on the flip side, i usually like traditionally ‘female’ gendered language and expressions applied to me. this is a bit of a nuanced thing for me, though! i love wearing dresses and looking ‘feminine’, but only really in private, because to me they’re an example of cross dressing or messing with the gender binary because i don’t consider myself a girl (i don’t consider myself ‘anything’ in regards to gender, as mentioned above — i think the term is agender?), but most people don’t see it that way since i’m usually perceived as female, which puts me off it. additionally, i like she/her pronouns, but only at certain times, and not very often. i would also consider myself genderfluid, in the sense that the pronouns i’m comfy with change… however, usually, those pronouns are he/him, and often they’re they/them, but only occasionally she/her.

so people have asked why i consider myself a lesbian if i feel this way, and that’s due to a lot of factors. it’s because i was always certain of my sexuality before i was certain of my gender (and before i out conscious effort into thinking about it), and so identifying as a lesbian has and still does influence how i see and interact with the world. also, i’m not someone who will ever be able to pass in general society as anything but female — i have d cups, a high voice, am often told i’m ‘pretty’, and am very curvy. so i also identify as a lesbian because as someone who doesn’t intend to do much in the way of medical gender affirming care, the fact that i am constantly perceived as a woman unless i say so (and that’s not always respected) does also have a bearing on how i experience the world too.

i don’t know, i’m just really confused about if i can use this term or not. i’ve spent a long long time agonising over what discovering my gender identity and what that means for me will affect my sexuality, and a lot of that agony now no longer comes from not knowing about myself, but from feeling like i’m being disrespectful. i don’t want to hurt the queer community, specifically lesbian woman, or trans guys, and i feel like i’m doing both. but on the other hand… he/him usually really fits me. lesbian usually feels right too. i took a long time to come to terms with both of those, and so they feel very hard-won — like i can finally exist knowing who i am, and so to not be able to deceive myself in the way i’ve tried really hard to find is something that makes me really sad. but i would love any advice! :)

There is no way for your pronouns to be disrespectful to someone else unless we're talking about your pronouns being slurs that do not apply to you. Your pronouns have nothing to do with anyone else [exception aside].

Your sexuality is also no one else's business but your own. You don't have to justify your pronouns or your sexuality: they are not hurting anyone. You are not hurting anyone.

None of what you're talking about is disrespectful to anyone. Its just your personal identity. That has nothing to do with anyone else.

All of this has no affect on the lesbian or trans community by large except that one more he/him lesbian becomes apart of it, which is actually a win!

If you makes you happy, go for it! If it feels right, go for it! It sounds like you've found a label and pronouns for you and that's awesome! Congratulations. <3

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. <3

[antlered-angel]

unpopular opinions about the tumblr queer community

the Tumblr Queer Community is full of white supremacy, misconceptions, misogyny, and toxic masculinity. trans beauty standards are full of skinny white people who lean heavily towards trans women being feminine and trans men being masculine. It’s okay for trans people to lean heavily towards a certain gender presentation, be skinny, and/or be white. However, for it to be a beauty standard is not only exclusionary of POC but also towards those who present in gender nonconforming ways and/or those with different body types. As a feminine trans man of color who isn’t considered skinny, this needs to stop.

Gender may be fluid, but sexuality is not. Not in the same way. You can’t make up sexualities because you don’t want to identify with labels provided. It’s okay to not be into labels, but it’s not okay to create self-contradicting identity-erasing ones because you don’t want to identify yourself with one of the many sexualities that already exist. It lowkey gives lesbophobia in a lot of cases. Speaking of which, lesbian is not an umbrella term, Saphhic is. If you’re a bi person calling yourself a lesbian, relearn what lesbian means. You’re not a lesbian because you have woman-leaning attraction but are attracted to a man every once in a while, you’re sapphic.

Ace people and lesbians are not enemies, in fact a lot of the ace people I meet ARE lesbians

Ya’ll should be nicer to femme lesbians

In general, queer women should be praised just as much for embracing femininity as queer men. The tumblr queer community doesn’t care about lesbians unless they’re masc in any way.

Stop pushing masculinity onto queer women who do not feel comfortable with it. You’re not breaking gender roles, you’re just playing into them and cishet ideals of how queer women should present themselves.

[dichromaticdyke]

🗣 – What are your own personal HCs for HF!S and HM!T?

Also, what about the other girls? Murderface feels like another butch, almost try hardy, but I also see her as not having a label at all because she's trying to give herself as much as a chance to get laid by a pretty girl. Pickles feels more fem. Not Skwisgaar fem but definitely fem. She's a "Marlboro Reds and Whiskey" kind of gal, probably doesn't know the word shame. And Nathan, I feel like she's undecided, like she found an aesthetic that works for her but she wants to venture out but is too scared of being made fun of, so she's stuck in a comfortable place, but she wants to explore what else is out there.

ohhhhh my gosh so there’s a lot because. i have my own personal dykeklok headcanons, and this lipstick lesbian skwisgaar and hey mamas toki is kind of its own separate thing. i’ll put it all under the cut because there’s a LOT.

so in the hey mamas tokiverse that @god-impeaching-dj and i have been cooking, i’ve actually been imagining skwisgaar and toki as the only lesbians in the group. the rest of the band are men and they don’t know if whatever the fuck skwistok has going on is a lesbian thing or a scandinavian thing. toki calls skwisgaar her princess and skwisgaar calls toki her daddy because OF course they would, head in hands. we’ve narrowed down their aesthetics pretty well, skwis is kind of pastel goth inspired, she wears pink and black nails, she has heart-shaped nipple piercings, everything!! toki is. basketball shorts. grey sweatpants. sports bra. snapback. she still has her mustache though!!! and kandi has been using rhea ripley as a body ref for their art of toki 😍😍. they’re the worst most annoying tiktok lesbian couple of all time, totally cringe.

as for my dykeklok headcanons, they’re COMPLETELY different. i have them all written up somewhere, but i don’t wanna find them lmfao. the long and short of it is that in my dykeklok/dragklok universe (which is the universe i wrote in for dethentine’s wheeeeee), they’re all lesbians but they perform and make public appearances in drag as drag kings. but that’s a secret to the public!!! they do it because misogyny in the metal community RIP. but also then no one will recognize them when they’re just at food libraries or whatever. and i refer to them like this:

Natalie Explosion (transmasc, she/they/he, order of preference)

Pickles the Drummer (transmasc, he/she, no preference)

Wilamina Murderface (transfem, she/her/doesn’t care)

Skwisgaar Skwigelf (transmasc, any/all)

Toki Wartooth (transfem, he/she/they, order of preference)

nat started speaking in a death growl to avoid being clocked for her voice. pickles thought she was a trans man in the snb days but detransitioned just a bit afterwards (still kept the goatee). murderface didn’t figure out she was a trans woman for a while because she didn’t know you could be trans AND gay. skwisgaar is queen of the butch who gets mistaken for a twink by gay guys. toki went on E just to get top surgery. a lot of these are inspired by lesbians i’ve known in some way or another ✨ love the lesbian experience. and yknow it’s definitely hard for me to pin them down as butch or femme. because the butch/femme experience is SO unique and SO important to a lot of people (myself included) but it’s also not the only way to be a lesbian. there’s a reason that in the hey mamas tokiverse, i refer to skwisgaar as a lipstick lesbian and pillow princess instead of high femme. i reblogged a poem about the difference between the a lipstick lesbian and a femme lesbian at some point, it’s in my femme tag (as a butch i don’t feel totally comfortable trying to explain it, i’ll let the femmes speak for themselves 🩷). i do think they could all be different flavors of butch or masc though, even skwisgaar. i’d just really have to think about it and try to nail down my designs (I DON’T DRAW BUT I’M TRYING).

oh i forgot, every version of lesbian skwisgaar has a double venus tattoo on her hip. and her favorite thing to say is “don’ts dies wonderinks”. GOD. 🥰🥰🥰

[chaos-in-one]

Do you think people who are against lesboys would just like

Explode (figuratively) if they figured out about multigender & genderfluid lesbians who use the label lol

Also a lot of butch & gnc lesbians

Like, not everyone who uses the label is a binary man, or even man-aligned. In fact I’d argue it’s not even the majority. There’s a lot who use it who don’t consider themselves aligned, or who are even woman-aligned. There are whole ass binary women who refer to themselves with masc terminology like calling themselves boys as a way of expressing their gender nonconformity and masculinity. There’s women who are also men, or are sometimes men, who use the label because they are still a woman who loves other women. They are not less women and their attraction is not less sapphic because of this, and saying they are is straight up aligned with the terf ‘oh they can’t be One Of Us because they’re TAINTED by MEN’ talking point. Gender and gender expression are not black and white, at all. And therefore, orientation isn’t either, because labels for orientation are related to gender. Trying to kick people out of a label is almost never *only* going to affect the people you actually want out of the label when you make sweeping generalizations of what labels can overlap.

[radicalkhaleesi]

how do we, as a community, stop fellow bisexual women from appropriating lesbianism? i don’t necessarily think that all of the bis-who-call-themselves-lesbians even know that they’re doing it; trauma does weird things to our brains and we all react differently. here’s a few points that i’ve been thinking about over the last couple of days, i’m so open to this conversation and discussion!

one, i saw someone ask the other day if you could hate men enough to “turn off” your attraction towards them.

personally, i know that my attraction leans heavily towards women and always has, but i also do genuinely hate men so much that i’m just not attracted to them day-to-day.

is this something other bisexual women experience, and if so (i believe it is) what does that mean for us? how do we work on accepting that we are bi and have been so traumatised by men that we’re repulsed and mentally disconnected from that part of our sexuality?

two, i think more bisexual women need to talk frankly about their attraction to women and choose not to date men. i know people are weird about separatism (i’m heavily in the pro camp personally) but if you know that you likely won’t date men again, talk about it! i’m bisexual and i won’t be dating men again - and that’s normal and fine!

three, stop talking about your bf in lgb spaces. no one cares. stop shoving your nigel down everyone else’s throats, if you’re going to choose to do that good for you but no one cares.

four, we are not oppressed for our opposite sex attraction and we need to stop acting like we are. “but my osa is part of my sexuality too” sure but no one cares. we are not in danger of public homophobic attacks when we’re with our opposite sex partner. we are incredibly likely to be abused BY our male partners and their fetishisation of us and our bisexuality, but that’s not what this post is about.

five, what are we doing wrong as a group to make lesbians angry and uncomfortable, and how do we stop? lesbians don’t hate us because we’re theoretically attracted to men, it’s the behaviour.

just because you’re bi doesn’t mean you have to be with a man. ever. repulsed by men ‘s oppression of us and their actions? don’t include them in your dating pool! why do we, as bi women, feel the need to colonise the lesbian experience in order to justify never being with a man? why isn’t it enough for us to say “yes i’m bi and i have no interest in men”?

this is a bit rambly because i’m tired and sick but the amount of discourse i’ve seen is insane and i want others’ opinions and thoughts!

[redheadbigshoes]

I saw some multigender post talking a bunch of crap just to justifying saying men are included in lesbian identity saying 'butches are basically trans men and can be lesbians' and after the 'trans women are basically femboys' thing it's really obvious that these people are transphobic lesbophobes who try and garner sympathy among ignorant people who dont understand gender or sexuality, or are easily pulled in by a guilty feeling of 'oh my gosh am i not progressive enough let me ask this person saying many queer buzzwords how this works' and arent willing to think for themselves.

Of course the fact that none of the people in the reblogs or likes section were actually lesbian (blocked em all, none of them had lesbian in the bio) makes it obvious none of them have any stake in it and are willing to just listen to a non-lesbian talk about lesbian identity because they dont care about lesbophobia, or are lesbophobic.

I'm a little miffed they @'d me then blocked me so I couldnt call them out more but posting here helps relieve my frustration!

-🌻

What’s ironic is that these are the same people calling lesbians transphobic or terf… I truly believe they love calling lesbians that because deep down they know they’re the ones who have a terf mindset so to try to hide that they think always calling other people that will be enough.

And it’s so funny how they tagged you and blocked you cause it shows they don’t want to lose an argument lol if they truly think they had enough arguments to win a discussion they wouldn’t have blocked you.

[theexodvs]

The Handy-Dandy Exo Intro and FAQ!

27. Married. PCA deacon. My pronouns are uses/bathroom/standing. I am the intersection of BLM Tumblr, Christblr, and the part of Tumblr that criticizes MRAs.

Limited atonement and human sexual dimorphism are beautiful wonderful things.

Scrupulosity, touch starvation, and adolescence are figments of the psychoanalytical imagination.

I block all porn accounts I come across and unabashedly kink-shame.

My anons have anger issues.

When and why did you reject the men’s rights movement? The explanation can be found here.

Suicide-baiting is bad, m'kay? Yes, I know that now. I have apologized for the post you’re talking about, and have removed it.

Do you really think autistic people are perpetual children or think Autism Speaks is a reputable organization? Not anymore, and I haven’t in some time. I have redacted these statements publicly. However, most of my disagreements with other statements made by Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison still stand.

Are you a feminist? Depends largely on the definition. I don’t go about self-identifying as a feminist, but the fact I recognize women are vulnerable, even in rich, western countries, causes other people to see me as one. I stopped caring what people called me a while ago.

Doesn’t your refusal to call yourself a feminist make you as bad as Mpov or SirYouAreBeingMocked refusing to call themselves MRAs? It doesn’t make them “bad,” it makes them look ridiculous. The MRM is a much newer, smaller, and ideologically homogenous movement than feminism, and thus there are still major, definitive tenets it adheres to, all of which Mpov and SirYouAreBeingMocked agree with. The tenets of feminism vary widely by school of thought. I’m not even sure any feminist school of thought would want me in their ranks, while MRAs of all stripes will reblog posts from Mpov and SirYouAreBeingMocked like they’re God-breathed. They should just admit that they’re MRAs, and get on with their lives. It’s not like non-MRAs believe them when they deny being in the movement, anyway.

Why do you police other men’s masculinity? They have a very twisted view of what it means to be a man. They think that leaving scathing reposts towards angry lesbians with stupid haircuts is a good use of their time.

What’s with you and criticizing Israel/Zionism? I find myself under a religious umbrella term that includes those people who consider even the slightest questioning of modern Israel’s place in Biblical prophecy to be an unforgivable sin. Thanks, Jerry Falwell Sr!

Do you believe in replacement theology/supersessionism? These terms are meaningless neologisms invented by Christian apocalypticists in recent centuries to describe anyone who holds a different viewpoint regarding Biblical covenants. The only thing either of these terms has ever meant is “not dispensationalism.”

Which version of the Bible do you generally read? In English, I tend to use the NASB or ESV, depending on the context, as they are both devoted to accuracy in translation. Since I was able to find a bilingual Chinese-English Bible with ESV, that’s the one I use in print, while the NASB is what I use on my phone. For Chinese, I use either the CUV or RCUV (the latter I use in print).

What is your political philosophy? I'm a theonomist.

Are you an advocate for purity culture? The main issue I have with purity culture as it is currently practiced in American evangelicalism is that it expects more from women than from men. If we shamed men who slept around (regardless of their political affiliation) and stigmatized men in revealing clothing, I believe that purity culture can be viable.

Why do you generally refuse to engage SirYouAreBeingMocked? He is not actually interested in truth. He is interested in having a debate.

Why is a doctrine that teaches there are some people who are hellbound a beautiful, wonderful thing? Because the important part of Malachi 1:2-3 is not, “Esau I have hated,” but, “I have loved Jacob.”

I’ve found your account on a different website/know your actual name! And?

[futchmemes]

im actually sick to death of people acting like anyone who doesn’t call themselves queer is like, inherently assimilationist. i understand where they’re coming from because there’s definitely a population of (particularly white) lgbt people who are like. what i’ve described to friends as “straight people who happen to be gay” (or cis people who happen to be trans, although that’s much less common) by which i mean they’re extremely gender conforming in the same way straight people are and so are their partners, and they don’t seem to have any cultural connection to being gay and tend to be ignorant about social and political issues. they ARE often assimilationist and homonationalist. i know they exist, and i understand the impulse to want to separate yourself from that because frankly if you’ve thought about cisheteropatriarchy in any amount of depth, behaving like that isn’t at all appealing or fulfilling, and neither is hanging out with people like that. but the way to do that isn’t to separate out people who call themselves queer versus those who don’t. i’ve known people who call themselves queer who have the absolute worst takes imaginable, and people who don’t use the term queer who are some of the most radical people i know. it’s just not actually a meaningful separation, it’s one of convenience. convenience is appealing, but with things like this it just isn’t super useful and does more harm than good, particularly since the people who say this stuff are usually using gay men and lesbians as a scapegoat and implying if not outright saying their identities are outdated and not inclusive enough which is just blatantly homophobic

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

real question here: why are some straight weirdos so obsessed with being "queer"? i’m trying to understand and i just don’t get it, like on one side your have the crazy autogynephiles, and on the other all those girls calling themselves non binary transmasc bs whatever, completely obsessed with everything "queer" and mlm fanfiction, pretending they’re bi pan yada yada but never done shit with a woman I’m just?? confused?? the fandom i’m part of is full of those young women! i’m a lesbian and i’m fucking lost and appalled they’re literally obsessed with every member of the band we stan being QuEeR but have no respect for gays and lesbians if they don’t fit into their tiny boxes and stereotypes. and that member wearing this means he’s QuEeR and this one has such a qUeR haircut and blah blah blah but none of those girlies are actually lgb and if i dare to speak up because i’m so fucking done with those stereotypes i’m the bad one and i should shut up like wtf is happeningggg i’m so so done with this gender bs can it freaking stop already!!

Someone’s probably already said this but its likely to be partly due to our hyper individualist culture & wanting to be different and cool (since being ‘queer’ is cool now). If you’re queer you’re the main character in an anime with the different coloured hair, not one of the background characters who all look the same. Tbh it’s not entirely dissimilar to how white women will appropriate beauty trends(and sometimes even the skin colour) of black women to be appear ‘cool’ and ‘different’ from all the other white women. Plus it gives the individual a license to lecture ‘non queer’ people on what it means to be queer, even if it is actually nothing at all irl. Using all the buzzwords and complex hard to define terms makes them appear smart, and obviously people like to feel smart. And since they’re part of an oppressed group (even if they’re not actually same sex attracted or even gnc, since as we’ve said queer can mean practically anything now) people more or less have to listen to them or be branded as bigoted. If you’re part of the mainstream you’re not worth listening to, but if you’re part of the counter culture (and as countless of them have said anything that is counter culture is ‘queer’) you are.

Also, particularly for white men, imo they’ll often identify as queer after learning how much of their class hurts the rest of the world. They don’t want to take accountability or feel guilty about being a white man so they just…don’t be one. Whereas for women, I believe it’s in an effort to escape our increasingly gendered and sexist world. For them it is easier to be a man. And ofc there’s also the fascination, obsession and fetishisation of gay people for both ‘queer’ men and women…that’s also a big factor.

[tame-a-messenger]

Also I love how people are talking about assuming people sexualities when neither of us have ever made it seem like they’re cishet. I swear people just assume Angela is lesbian or something with the amount of people I’ve seen say they can never imagine or ship her with a man. I know she’s probably not straight I mean she was in a show that was for queer comedians but I honestly think if anything she’s bisexual because I’m pretty sure she had a boyfriend a few years ago and I know she’s used he/him to reference relationships and dating but again queer show so obviously not straight. Also she could be like Damien who’s cis and straight but on the ace spectrum. Last I heard Damien was ace flux but didn’t identify as part of the lgbt community though because he is cishet outside of that and he didn’t feel oppressed or anything due to being aceflux (idk exactly the clip is on tumblr somewhere). That was like a year ago though so maybe he’s changed his mind. But regardless of if they’re lgbt or not that doesn’t change anything I’ve said and I lowkey don’t like people accusing me of assuming things when they’re assuming things themselves. Bc seriously I’ve seen so many people say they can’t imagine Angela with a guy (and I’m pretty sure I know who that anon is bc I saw someone say exactly that and then call out romantic Damangela as an example). Don’t accuse me of assuming Angela is straight (when I’ve never said that) when y’all are basically assuming she’s a lesbian even though she has definitely referenced men in terms of relationships. The hypocrisy is funny 🤷‍♀️. Ok sorry now THIS one might’ve gotten too aggressive lol. If you think this one might cause problems for any reason feel free not to post it. I don’t want to cause too much trouble or drama for you (I say as I’m feeding the drama 😅)

No I totally agree with you the Anon saying it’s “bad to assume” as they assume the same thing (and also assumed A lot of things about my askers) in the opposite direction was probably bad wording, but I understand what they were getting at with that whole thing. (even if they were doing a LOT of assuming when that’s what they were very peeved about) “shipping real people that you don't know is weird” is I think the big thing that went unsaid in that post, at least as I understood it. 

To that I’ll have to say, they both are over 30 years old. they are fully grown adults, what kids say on the internet is not really going to change their life. The only POSSIBLE way that that would be weird for them is if ENTIRE comments sections were full of shipping and people being genuinely ANGRY that they aren’t dating. (we’ve seen this happen all over the internet, even at Smosh with Ianthony etc.) Even with Ianthony they played into it.

I do try to keep it as neutral as possible here though,(at least on the shipping front) but this blog does not welcome Smosh Cast and Crew. It’s a fan blog that I’d like to stay in it’s corner of the internet.

[max--phillips]

genuine question but if being heterosexual or homosexual has nothing to do with genitals then what are those of us exclusively attracted to one sex or another supposed to do or call ourselves...

I’m going to do my best to respond to this in good faith, but you’ll have to excuse me if I get a little snippy because I am not the only person who has addressed this and trans people are, rightfully, kind of tired of having this conversation. That said, this is probably going to get long.

The short answer is: why do you feel the need to differentiate yourselves? You just keep using whatever label makes you happy.

The long answer has several parts. It has to do with division, medicalization, communication, and, of course, attraction.

First: division. This is a slightly longer version of my short answer. If you identify as a lesbian, and you truly are only interested in having sex with people with vulvas, you’re still a lesbian. There’s no need for you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the community. I’ll expand a little on that with communication.

TERFs reeeeaaaaaaaally want lesbians to be their own little island within the LGBT community, as if we don’t have a long, rich history that overlaps with bi women, trans women, trans men, and nonbinary folks. Bi women face similar discrimination. Trans women have always been a part of our community because they are women. It isn’t unheard of for a trans man to refer to themself as a butch lesbian, or vice versa, and for that to be completely valid (and there is a ton of overlap in our experiences otherwise!) Nonbinary people have always been a part of our community, too. While labels are important to many people, we need them to stay labels and not become boxes. The world is not black and white, and neither is gender and sexuality.

Second: medicalization. I realize that the terms homosexual and transsexual are being actively reclaimed by our community, but I do not know very many folks who choose to label themselves as “homosexual.” (Not that you can’t, of course, it’s a perfectly valid label to choose!) The reason they’re being reclaimed is because they came from the field of psychiatry to pathologize our lived experienced because they were seen as wrong or deviant or abnormal. But, words change meaning over time. In the context of the LGBT community, “homosexual” just means gay or lesbian. It no longer means its biological definition, which is two animals of the same sex engaging in sexual activity. Therefore, someone who uses the label homosexual is typically not implying that they are strictly attracted to someone of the same sex, but rather as someone who is attracted to the same gender.

We need to learn, as a society, that yes, gender is a construct, but so is sex. It is two arbitrary categories for people with “typical” genitalia and other secondary sex characteristics. Yet, many people fall outside of those categories, and may not even realize it their whole life; many DSDs/intersex conditions are wholly undetectable unless specific medical tests are run. Sex is just as complicated a subject as gender, and once again, folks (especially TERFs) want so desperately for everything to be black and white that they ignore this fact when having this conversation.

I’m going to mess with the order here a little bit. Third: attraction. I’m going to say something that is going to make you defensive, but I ask that you hear me out. You are not attracted to a specific sex. Let me explain. Let’s say you see someone on the street. You know absolutely nothing about this person, but you find them sexually attractive. Given the opportunity, you’d gladly have sex with them. But, you still don’t know anything about their chromosome makeup, or their genitalia, or anything other than the outward facing secondary sex characteristics you can see. This may give you an assumption as to their sex, but it does not guarantee anything either way. You don’t know anything about their biological sex until you get into their pants or ask—and even then you STILL might not know.

There are trans women with vulvas. There are trans men with penises. Yet, technically, only the orientation of their genitalia was changed, not what sex they were determined to be by their DNA—be that peri- or intersex. Yes, bottom surgery used to be referred to as a sex change, but the language has evolved to be gender affirmation surgery (which also includes other procedures, such as top surgery and FFS.) Ultimately, at the end of the day, you are not attracted to a specific sex. You are attracted to a specific gender, and you have a genital preference. Which is fine! And leads to my last point.

Finally: communication. Look, I know that there was a pretty strong camp a while back that was like “if you have a genital preference you’re transphobic” and while I will always encourage people to examine why they have a genital preference (is it trauma? Is it genuinely just preference? Or is it internalized transphobia?) I don’t think that having those preferences is inherently transphobic. That said, there is a correct way to go about communicating that preference.

Just be fucking polite. If you’re flirting with someone and think you might get busy, you just tell them, “hey, I think you’re really cool, but I just want to let you know I’m really only comfortable with this specific genital situation. Is that going to pose an issue?” And if they say like, sorry but I don’t have that situation, you say “bummer, but no worries! You’re cool though, I’d still like to hang out/be friends/whatever.” And if they say no issues here, steal me away, then y’all go do whatever you wanna do.

Key takeaways: you put the onus of the genital preference on yourself, not on the other person. No “what’s in your pants,” no “so have you had bottom surgery,” none of that. And you also don’t react negatively when and if they tell you one way or the other. This is not an invitation for you to lash out at them or be violent or anything crazy like that.

Ultimately. Stop trying to force the world into pure black and white categories and realize that everything has overlap and complexities that you cannot and will not root out. Separation only makes us easier to conquer. And they won’t stop conquering with the minority du jour. They will come for you, too.

[my-strange-attraction]

Man people really do be straw-manning you and then interpreting all of your arguments in the worst faith possible and acting like that makes them So Smart And Correct. I’m sorry you gotta deal with all these bozos with zero reading comprehension or critical thinking skills. Just wanna add because it’s been seriously bothering me and I don’t remember you ever bringing it up: one of the core tenets of the original op’s post that you responded to was basically ‘this identity is bad because I’m a lesbian and those people aren’t lesbians in the exact same way as me so they’re hurting the lesbian community because I don’t want to see them when they don’t share all of my experiences and (gasp!) talk about men and their relationship to men sometimes because *I* don’t want to hear about men’ and I just. Idk man if that’s what his argument boils down to its kind of a shitty argument. Even ignoring all of the terf rhetoric (which you correctly pointed out) I can’t even begin to understand why someone would want to be in a queer community where everyone fits into neat little boxes and everyone with your label experiences their orientation exactly like you. Aren’t they forgetting that the whole point of the queer community is that larger society attempted to put us in boxes we didn’t want to be in and categorize us into labels and lifestyles we didn’t want? Why would someone ever parrot the actions of our oppressors and do that to other queer people, when they know what it feels like? I can’t even fathom being that selfish and closed minded

>your argument is chock full of straight up lies  Love how this was said in response to your rebuttal of an argument that CONTAINED ITS OWN “STRAIGHT UP LIES”!! Like pot meet kettle lol. Specifically referring to that one bit that was like “uwu bi women tried really hard on purpose to distance themselves from the lesbian community” because that is straight up not what happened!! I haven’t said anything yet but it’s been bothering me for a while and that one ask has so much fucking Audacity that I couldn’t stop myself from Pointing It Out this time. Ahistorical bullshit and they’re accusing YOU of lying. The audacity of it all I can’t

Anyway these guys are just mad that bi lesbians get more bitches than they EVER will. I heart bi lesbians I love you bi lesbians I hope y’all stay winning mwah <3

I'm assuming these are all from the same person because of the timing? If not, sorry for not doing separate responses.

Yeah, this whole thing has been pretty frustrating to be honest. In a way it's even worse than actual terfs, because these are people who are philosophically not that different than I am, and if we met in real life we probably wouldn't even know that we disagree. I mean, I do talk sometimes about label anarchy with some of my friends, but we have to be close and you have to get me in a philosophical mood. It's really frustrating to be openly disrespected as a person for one opinion that, though it does happen to be really important to me, doesn't come up in my everyday life (or, likely, theirs either).

The whole pronoun thing really got to me too. I KNOW they were just strawmanning, and I KNOW it wasn't really a valid critique of anything I said, but the suggestion that I would even consider purposely using the wrong pronouns for someone is upsetting. I don't think he even noticed before an anon pointed it out as a way to invalidate my argument. I don't think it upset him (or the anon) as much as the anon said it did. I still apologized though because I'm not going to not apologize for using the wrong pronouns.

Also I know jack shit about history because it doesn't stay in my break but yeah actually I do remember reading about that! That's crazy, I can't believe they called me a liar when they don't know their history. I mean, I don't either, but at least I'm honest about it.

Thanks so much for sending these messages! Not gonna lie, I was going a bit crazy with all this and the only anons I was getting until now have been the hate ones that I've shared and a few hate ones that I just outright deleted. I know people agree with me because I've seen the likes on my posts, but it's nice to have someone defending me as well, so thank you <3

[xx-slug-xx]

(Aroallo anon) “you’re the one making things into rigid boxes” followed up by “tight and narrow definition”… come on… they really typed that out and didn’t think it through.

Look, what I’m about to say is said from the perspective of someone who’s never actually felt any romantic interest in anyone and is repulsed by it even if amatonormativity taught me I had to force myself to try it anyway AND from the perspective of someone who has at one point wondered if he was ace-spec and eventually concluded he wasn’t. If you wanna abandon boxes, you gotta allow people whose experiences are slightly different from your own but still closer to yours than not into your community. If someone is 30 and has only ever experienced sexual attraction to anyone twice and both were people they were close to, their experiences are going to be much closer to an asexual who’s never felt attraction in their life ever than it is to an allosexual who can go to a nightclub and find five people hot as hell to flirt with that night OR to an allosexual who thinks people are hot on a fairly regular basis but does nothing about that because they’re “saving themselves for marriage as Jesus intended uwu”. Asexuals and demisexuals have a lot more in common than demisexuals and allosexuals do. Having them in ace-spec spaces doesn’t threaten the community but enriches it. I have more in common with a demiromantic because even if that demiromantic has had like one crush ever in their life while being in their late 20s like me, they still have probably felt the crushing weight of “so when are you gonna get married” and “why won’t you give John Doe a chance” and not relating to romance media but feeling romance shoved in your face everywhere.

And it doesn’t escape me that this started over you being aegosexual. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I’m a little worried I’m gonna offend with this but not so badly I can’t just learn and move on if I do, but isn’t that basically “attracted to no one but still likes porn”? That’s just ace but with a little extra going on. Reminds me of how many lesbians will still enjoy porn of gay men. Or gay men who watch porn with women in it. Those lesbians are still lesbians. Those gay men are still gay men. No one is kicking them out of their communities. It doesn’t make sense to me to kick aces out of the ace community for this. At this point the other anon is not just policing the experiences you can have and still be ace but also policing the behavior of aces. There’s no point to this and nothing to be gained, only something valuable to lose. Eating each other is not gonna make the aphobes like us better. I just do not understand why this has to be a Thing.

Anon, you are very correct on everything you’ve said, and I’m glad you could put it into words better than I could. This argument is so dumb at this point and I’m honestly surprised that people are still going with it. I don’t even know what they are trying to gain from something like this tbh. It’s just harassment at this point and honestly, I’m just mildly annoyed about it lol. It’s so stupid.

What’s the point of policing who can say they are asexual when there’s people all over the world who are actively being killed because they aren’t cishet? Anons and such who keep arguing and gatekeeping the terms others can use seem to have forgotten that homophobes and transphobes want us to be divided amongst each other so that they can “weed out the good ones from the bad”. There are no good or bad folks in the lgbtq+ community to them, because we’re all bad to them. They do not care about stupid shit like who has the right to call themselves ace, or really, any lgbtq+ identity. People like the exclusionists anons are worrying about things that are, ultimately, counterproductive, and it’s what the people who are against us want. When we fight about stupid stuff like this, it also causes us to make no progress in society. It holds us back and causes us to be unaware of what’s going on in the world when it comes to lgbtq+ equality.

And to confirm your statement, yeah, I’m aegosexual and it basically means that I can watch porn and all that. I just have no desire to do that in real life lmao. Porn and thinking about things using my imagination are the only times I truly feel any sort of sexual attraction. My experience is so distant from that of allosexuals and I have never related to sexual attraction in the same way that they have. Might have people call me a “porn addict” for that. If they do, then I don’t think I really care because porn addiction doesn’t actually exist and I don’t care about the opinions of people who use any sort of addiction that they think is real as an insult. If porn addiction was real, then it would be just as serious as drug or alcohol addiction, and people would be treating it as such. Plus, “porn addiction” is actually nothing more than purity culture rhetoric, and I’ll laugh my ass off if the “demisexuality is purity culture” anon try’s to say that porn addiction is real and harmful lol