howdy! a very very dear friend is in a really tight spot and needs assistance.

the gofundme link explains in much further depth her needs and situation, but

Jade is a disabled trans woman who had to check herself into the psych hospital a few days ago due to her quality of life deteriorating and now needs emergency aid.

currently, there is just no way for her to afford cost of living, especially on top of an insane psych hospital bill. Jade also needs funds to go through her legal transition, something that i personally want to stress is incredibly important and time-sensitive, given the current political climate where we reside in North Carolina that is actively passing anti-trans bills as quick as they can overturn vetoes.

in addition to financial aid, she is going to be in search of online/work-from-home jobs soon, so if anyone has any valuable leads on that front, please pass that along even if you can’t donate any money!

Jade is one of the most incredible people i have ever met, and she has endless compassion and justice in her heart. she deserves to have a quality of life worth living and to see the same compassion she has for others, shown to her.

please consider reblogging even if you can’t support financially, any share is an opportunity for her to get the help and support she direly needs and deserves <33

there's this really funny thing cishet women used to do to me when i was a bi man where, upon learning I'm bi, suddenly pull out their phone to start looking up all their favorite men to see how i feel about them.

and like. I'm bi. i have all the choices in the world and there's all these beautiful queers with cool genders and ways of expressing themselves, and even some cishet ppl who are really just having fun with themselves - and you choose to show me the most boring chiselled men in suits??

by the time we hit somewhere from the 6th to 10th man feelings get HURT before I'm finally asked “well who do YOU think is cute!!?” and I blow their mind with my choices every time because i have good taste.

I'm sorry.. I don't know how to tell you you're picking from the bottom of the barrel here.. have you seen queer people?? the average woman??

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Trans women aren't going to go away by being opressed, they never have. You can ban and harass as many trans blogs as you want but you can never erase them from our society. Trans people are here, they're valid, and they're here to stay. Don't be on the wrong side of history.

Everyone, stand with our trans allies.

❤🧡💛💚💙💜 🤝 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

headcanoning monogamous characters as polyamorous is free, fun, and easy to do! additionally, it is always both cool and sexy 😎

my college essay i wrote about queer religious trauma

- @/finchmoment on tiktok

Growing up religious, the realization of your own queerness is also the realization of a betrayal. It will be argued two ways- either you are betraying God, or He is betraying you. Either way, you lose. When you are both the Betrayer of God and the Betrayed by God, you will, inevitably, become the Exiled too.  Is it my fault? When Judas only played the cards he was dealt, is he really to blame? Is there something we could have done, something to change the course of time, to write ourselves out of condemnation? And would we have done it, if there was? I was young when I was eviscerated. Foolish, too.  To this day, I still don't know why I expected things to be any different. I was raised this way, after all. I was raised knowing queer was a synonym for wrong, knowing gay was a synonym for sin. And still, when I realized that I was a synonym for all those things too, my entire world fell away from me. Daughter turned disappointment. Classmate turned outcast. Friend turned disgrace. Human turned abomination. I found myself alone, not for the first time, but for the longest time. Nothing would ever be the same, and I have spent my life since reeling with it. The church will argue that I betrayed God and I won't disagree with them. It's true- that I was His once. That I made promises to Him I couldn't keep. That I swore my life to someone I would later abandon. But it is also true that I am human, and I am small, and by saying I betrayed God you are either handing me supernatural power or shrinking God down and admitting to His weakness, admitting to His fallibility. Maybe those are the same thing.  If at the end of my life I am wrong about my beliefs, I hope He is as merciful and forgiving as they say. Because I tried. Because I spent my childhood trying. Because I need those years to matter. God, I am sorry for growing weary and giving up. I am sorry for pulling away and choosing myself, my little life. Call that betrayal if you will. In The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Judas asks, "Why... didn't you make me good enough... so that you could've loved me?" I see myself in him, then.  I've never understood how it was fair. Being born this way, having no say in the matter, doomed from the start. If God truly is omniscient, if He truly cares about his creation, then why were my pleas for redemption met with a deafening silence? Why did God make me so unrighteous that He could not bear to be in my presence? Isn't that betrayal? Promising everything, ripping it away? Why did He choose Judas for the role of the traitor? Why did he choose me for the role of the pariah? Why weren’t we good enough? I have been reborn since. Not in the way of a baptism, but in the way of a phoenix. Deconstructing your religion will turn your anger biblical. It will send everyone running and leave you standing alone, spark turned flame, burning yourself and everything familiar to the ground. You will be alone, smoking, until your body returns to the dust from which humanity was made. It will be up to you to recreate yourself, then. To craft your bones from the wreckage. To make a clay to smooth on like skin. In the church, a burning is a death. But wasn't hellfire always my fate? Here's the Truth— the fiery furnace is the ultimate act of faith. Faith not in Him, but in me. I am reborn in these flames. Belonging to no one, owing Him nothing. Yes, I was His once. But I am Mine now.

the she/theys vs he/theys and wlw vs mlm posts are symptoms of a larger problem within the queer community 👍

What’s the difference to you between bi and pan sexual? I’ve never really been able to understand the difference since there’s not really like two genders anyway?

Thanks for all these pride artworks!!! 🏳️‍🌈

yessss of course I'm so glad you like them!!!!

ok I'm going to preface this by saying I'm bi / pan and over the age of 25. Pan is a (relatively) new term and it means different things to different people. People who identify as pan feel free to chime in, but as best I understand it it's like a venn diagram <3 bisexual people might say "I am attracted to people of my gender and at least one other gender" whereas pan people might say "I am attracted to all genders, or regardless of gender". There's a history of people saying bisexuality is trans and enby exclusionary and wanting to throw the label out in favor of pan, but as a bi person that's just not true?? So that felt more like biphobia to me lol. Bisexuality has always been a trans and enby inclusive community. We literally live in the in-between gray areas and rejected a binary??!?!?

But I digress asldghasdlkgh sorry-- yeah they're like a venn diagram and they're both underrepped/misunderstood and get the "you're confused" or "it's a phase" treatment. And again, they mean different things to different people especially depending on how old you are. Some of us older folks didn't have access to pan as a label and have an emotional attachment to bi (hiii) and have it as their "knee-jerk-response" identity (what you say when people ask you!) but may experience attraction on a more pan-esque spectrum (I just think people are hot!) - so some older queers like me are more likely to refer to themselves as bi / pan than see the two as being fundamentally different labels. It's nuanced. So much of it is tied to personal preference and your own history with labels and the queer community, I think. Language evolves.

Anyway that's a very longwinded way to say: IMO it comes down to whether or not gender impacts your attraction to someone (and if so, how much).

I dunno if I'm making any sense <3 But I straddle the two labels in my own life so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ take it with a grain of salt. People who strongly feel tied to either label might have a different explanation for you!

From left to right Toni Ebel, Charlotte Charlaque, and Dora Richter.

I like thinking about Chlamydia’s character genderwise… I usually phrase her gender as “if she ever stops being angry, she’ll stop being a woman.” Because she isn’t really a girl, she’s just horribly traumatized by the misogyny and abuse she’s been through and hasn’t learned to live outside of victimhood yet (which she associates with womanhood)… plus the idea of being able to opt out of womanhood feels like a spit in the face to her. It’s like Her Biggest character flaw that her mentality seriously borders on T*RFdom. She takes out her anger on Ezekiel partially because she sees him as a betrayer who “abandoned” her to the “horrible woes of womanhood” by transitioning.

In-text of my WIP, I don’t know that I’ll get as far as writing her at a time in her life where she could re-examine her gender but Yknow… after time and reflection she’d eventually realize that she isn’t sure what “womanhood” means at all. Eventually she could develop a healthy sense of “woman” and a self identity around that but she’d need a break from “being a girl” first. Sort of a detox.

In this way, she runs a nice parallel to Pascal. She’s a “woman” out of anger but Pascal is a “woman” as a joke. Every performative social act is humor to him meant to cover up (what he views as) the traumatizing act of childbirth and raising a family. /As soon as/ he realizes transgenderism is an option, he takes it. It’s still a bit of a joke, but there’s freedom to it now. It isn’t gallows humor, it’s just fun.

In the same way I’m not sure I’d include writing Chlamydia’s non-gender in-text, I’m not sure I’d fit the full breadth of Pascal’s gender in either. Probably wherever I leave things off, he’ll be presenting as trans male. But, given more time and self reflection, he’d lean more toward genderfluidity. He wouldn’t really have these labels but he’d be able to describe it.

i feel the need to state that this is not about kickin it lmfaoo but i desperately think we need to have conversations and perhaps do some readings about how media can be extremely queer even if its not technically 'canonically' gay... it's getting dire out here and some of u are boring as hell and wrong and im tired of seeing it

hey. i am not usually someone for pride posts, but as this month draws to an end i have one thing to remind everyone of. transness is a gift. it's a gift once you get to a point where it starts going well, and you will get there. keep fighting for our brothers and sisters and boygirls and nothings. because it is beautiful to see yourself become who deserve to be. my testosterone levels went 13 to 348 in 3 months. my voice dropped and my face started slimming and i gained 20 pounds and my clothes fit me now. whether or not you pursue these options you will get to a point where it is better. i am lucky enough that what used to be normal for me is now a bad day, and you will get there too. i will fight with you all until the day i die.

i dont think ive ever gotten a "she uses he him pronouns" but i have actively twice now in the exact same circumstance just a different year gotten "they use he it pronouns"

I love pride month 🫶🏼

heartstopper and first kill both scratch different parts of me and we shouldn't pit them against each other <333

So I’m in a deeply red incredibly conservative state.  I ran a pride month 5k awhile back. The usual group of 3 protestors with an incredibly loud bullhorn showed up to yell at us about how trans people are mutilating themselves and AIDS is God’s judgement and we’re a menace to children etc. etc. etc. But they were vastly outnumbered by runners and volunteers. One of the first race announcements was that they hadn’t ordered enough T-shirts for the amount of people who ended up running, and would have to reorder, so anyone who wanted another race T-shirt should sign up now.

We’re all used to the protestors by now, they show up everywhere. We just ignore them. Interacting with them just encourages them.

I hadn’t realized how early the race date was this year compared to previous years and hadn’t prepared as much, and there were a lot of hills; not to mention there was some confusion as to the race route which resulted in the announcer referring to it post-run as a “4-mile 5k” (they are supposed to be about 3.5 miles. One guy ended up in an entirely different district of the city from where the race route was and still finished first.) I ended up walking a lot of the race, but I finished it, and did do a fair bit of running.

I had top surgery a few years ago but I’ve only gotten comfortable running shirtless this year as body fat redistribution happened. I had been trying to decide if I wanted to run shirtless or not before the protestors showed up and started yelling, then I was like ah. I will run past the transphobes shirtless like a human middle finger. And that is what I did. was wearing delightfully garish rainbow shorts I found at a thrift store and my pink triangle necklace.

Some Americorps volunteers were directing runners at one of the more confusing junctions, I high fived one and panted that I had just joined Conservation Corps. The sound of angry bullhorn shouting faded almost immediately behind us, and there were rainbow flags hanging in several of the yards we ran past throughout the route.

As in previous years, a lot of tough incredibly fit beautiful older people, mostly women, breezed past me during the race. One jogged up even with me with an encouraging “what would you do for a klondike bar!” I wasn’t sure how to reply to this and didn’t have the breath to express that I did not want anything thick or creamy at that moment, but what did come out was “you did remind me that there’s beer at the finish line.” Another lady who walked and jogged near me for awhile near the middle-latter half of the race talked a bit and complained that one of the volunteers organizing the race hadn’t set up the “water” table with fireball shots that she did for some other races and we just got a regular water and gatorade station!

Coming back to the finish line I was handed a flag and ran past long rows of cheering people. Around the corner the protestors were still lurking, but were mostly silent now. Apparently they had gotten worn out by just standing there and not running. As I passed the bullhorn guy shook himself out of his torpor enough to give a halfhearted “is it a man? is it a woman? who knows anymore?” I passed him and the sound of cheering, and then the 80s music (I remember Blondie and ABBA) they were blasting closer to the finish line.

Once most of the runners were back there was a fun run for the kids. A couple of the older ones had also run the 5k (I just know the protestors were awful to the poor guys ughh) but all of them made a lap around the parking lot and got handed medals. All of the adult volunteers and participants spread out around the middle of the parking lot so that there was someone cheering and waving flags for the kids along every step of the route.

There were free snacks, water and beer courtesy of our sponsor [brand redacted]. There was also non-alcoholic “beer”, which I thought was nice to see, I’d been thinking there was a heavily alcoholic element to a lot of local queer events. I drank a lot of water and ate some food before getting a free beer, which still hit me pretty hard after the run. While I was hovering around the refreshment table a big handsome butch came up next to me and I noticed a faded tattoo on her arm of a chain, each link a different color of the rainbow.

I went to put something down in my car just as the protestors were starting to leave, and realized that they were moving on a course that overlapped with mine as I walked to my car. I decided I wasn’t going to stop or veer out of their way and just see what they did. As I got closer they seemed to be talking about how we had definitely totally noticed that they were leaving (no one had.) They noticed me coming towards them and suddenly got quiet, avoided eye contact and skittered out of my way. Ha.

I stumbled into the nearby fundraiser to cool down and sober up in the air conditioning before I left. They were playing girl in red, rupaul, that girls/girls/boys song by Panic! at the disco, and that Taylor Swift song “You need to calm down” that some people on this site complained was cringe. The lady next to me sang along to “shade never made anybody less gay.” I bought a baseball hat.

It’s easy, I think especially if you’re very online and not very active in your local community, to start feeling like there’s no queer community in your area and we’re outnumbered by people who hate us. Unless you live in the middle of Westoboro Baptist territory that’s generally not true. I cannot stress enough how incredibly conservative and red my area is. We’ve got like 3 very loud people with nothing better to do who bother us at every event, and large amounts of people across all demographics who show up in support. I’ve been thinking about this post by @headspace-hotel about not being able to find stuff online and this is a slightly different thing but yeah. If you don’t know what there is in your area, you don’t know what you’re looking for or where to find it when searching online. If you search “is there queer stuff happening near me” google is going to shrug and recommend you Products And Services that it can Sell You. When I moved back home after spending some time in a much more blue state (but which had much less of a sense of community--I think it’s the way we band together down here when we know just what the stakes are) I felt like I was going to be the only trans person in the state, then someone mentioned to me that there was a local private facebook group for trans people to share personal posts and resources with many hundreds of members. There are more of us that aren’t on facebook. The Facebook group, though, introduced me to many more resources I hadn't known were in my area.

Get outside. Find some sort of local queer event and ask around. There will be other queer people. There is very likely something you’re interested in already happening or people who would love to work with you to start it if not. Even if you’re in a very red very rural state, you’re not alone, and chill or neutrally polite people vastly outnumber the few assholes, it’s just that the assholes are very loud and especially if you’ve been marinating in overwhelmingly toxic online environments it can feel like they’re everywhere. They’re not. Don’t give them that power.

The current legal landscape is terrifying and needs a lot of work but it doesn't reflect lived experiences. Get outside, find your local community, show up to in-person events if at all possible, it’s so encouraging.

something is so incredibly endearing, emotional, and beautiful in percy/walker’s final narration of saying “if you feel like you don’t belong in this world, then you might be [a demigod] too” which highlights so perfectly the thesis of the books in the first place! which is love and home for people who feel different!

it’s especially important to consider the origins of the book being rick’s son’s adhd and dyslexia, and rick wanting to create a world which gave meaning to these facets of his son that society has deemed hindrances. so when other kids out there who feel different— whether because they’re queer or have learning disabilities or they look different— are drawn to that world, to have the material explicitly include you and welcome you into the world instead of spinning that concept on its head and bragging about how widespread its fame is and how it’s for “everyone” is so important and life changing. like, things don’t have to be for everyone! this media so specially dedicated to outcasts and outsiders and that’s what I love <3