sometimes I so deeply miss being a teenager because there was so much more space to just talk to people the same age as you and figure out who you are. there's nothing quite like the vulnerability you were able to reach late at night during a sleepover with friends

hi, its the same anon who asked about if its possible for sexuality to change. just wanted to thank you firstly for your answer. it really got my gears turning about who i am so thank you

if i could ask another question ....(sorry if its a bother)

is it possible to experience a kind of internalised homophobia but because youre an unrealised transmasc/trans man who is attracted to men?

like, and i know this will sound really weird so i apologize in advance but, whenever i see any mlm content, whether its art or books or movies or pictures or anything that shows two young men being happy and in love, i just feel so.... like.... annoyed? by it??

idk if its an internal sense of denial making me push away thte thought of being masc presenting/transmasc/a trans man and in a happy relationship with another man who sees me as another man but... it happens all the time. and i dont feel this deterance from another other kind of queer media. just mlm.

i have a suspicion that its because im transmasc and have an unacknowledged growing attraction to and desire for men that i just subconsciously refuse to accept because im clinging to lesbianism for dear life and then theres internalised transphobia going "i cant actually be a gay if im transmasc/a trans man" but....

is this an actual thing other people deal with? or am i just strange and need help with that?

thank you (again) (and sorry)

I'm glad that I could help!

And to answer your question: once again, yep! It's extremely common. Internalized transphobia and internalized homophobia are something a LOT of us experience and have to work through bit by bit. It can manifest in different forms. For some it's seeing any representation at all, for others it's situational.

Something I always recommend when it comes to internalized transphobia (and I'd recommend the same for internalized homophobia) is to really immerse yourself in art, writing, poems. To recognize that discomfort and face it head on. But also, take care of yourself? Don't try to speedrun it or overwhelm yourself. Just do a little bit of exposure therapy at a time. And think of it less as "I'm learning to tolerate this" and more of "I want to understand more about myself and who I am as a person."

It also helps, too, to talk about things with other people. It's funny to admit, but I became a lot more comfortable with myself as a trans man after friends and I talked about trans headcanons we had about fictional characters, and we would explore scenarios about these characters and how they would interact with one another. And it wouldn't surprise me if the same process, of talking about fictional characters you like and exploring a relationship between them, might help you to feel more at ease.

Also I think you might benefit from reading these articles about Transmasc Comphet, even if you are also attracted to women, because it goes into more detail about how gender and sexuality can be intertwined and how the way we understand ourselves can change with time.

I wish you luck on your journey of figuring stuff out and I hope that you get to a place where seeing mlm stuff doesn't make you uncomfortable. If I can make a personal recommendation? Our Flag Means Death helped me a lot. It's a pirate comedy show and it also features two MLM romances and one NBLM romance, all of which I feel are handled quite well. And I will say, this show helped me recognize and feel more comfortable in my identity as a gay man.

why aces belong in the lgbt+ community a Not comprehensive post tm 

god I hate this discourse so much. it’s not a fun rousing kind of pissed off like arguing about star wars or w/e. I feel ill having to say this and I feel ill thinking people will want to inject their own ideologies into what I’m about to say, about my personal experience of identity

look. I’m neither cisgender nor heterosexual. I’ve had pre-puberty anticipatory body dysphoria, I’ve had tons of gender presentation dysphoria, I’ve had gender euphoria from people telling me they don’t see me as a woman. I felt isolated in a lot of ways when I was younger simply because I didn’t know how to engage with people in their gendered world I didn’t connect with. and obviously I’m not heterosexual because I’m ace but I’ve had strong aesthetic attractions to women and also found that I’m probably somewhat demisexual and I don’t want to get into that too much more (personal) but basically to the extent that I can be romantic or sexual it is not in a straight way.

on these grounds I would hope I would belong in the lgbt+ community

but the thing is -- neither my gender nor my multiple-gender-interest expressed themselves until I’d come to terms with how my aroasexuality shaped them both. because that always came first, and it was always really vivid in my mind. it was so vivid that I invented the word asexual to describe it quite independently of anyone else when I was a pre-teen. asexuality was always what made me different, what made me feel like I was not part of cishet society. I felt like I wasn’t fully a woman for many reasons, but I especially knew that I didn’t want to be a gender that people could be attracted to! that I wasn’t a gender that people could or should be attracted to, in the way that people can be attracted to men or women (because I had only learned the binary at that time). and so, also, my feelings towards other people were not governed by the interplay of recognizing people’s genders and sensing your own sexuality that allo people experience. 

asexuality is a huge range of experiences but a lot of those experiences are highly unique. and not in a ~fun~ way. maturing into asexuality can mean not knowing if every interaction or social connection you’ve had is sexual. again, I don’t want to get into certain things (you don’t have a right to all my personal anecdotes ok?), but it can mean feeling like any strong attachment you hold to something is sexual or romantic, and before I identified as ace, when I was around 8-9, I ended up doing a few things that I really regret because I couldn’t distinguish that emotional difference (they’re not that bad, just kinda odd neurodivergent child behaviors, don’t worry about me, but I still have these memories uneasily rattling around my brain)

what I’m getting at is that asexuality is an extremely queer experience and if you’re allo then it’s not your queer experience and you can’t measure it by your own standards, and it shouldn’t be offensive to suggest that. and it can’t be separated into its own community. I am not cisgender -- but my gender comes out of my asexuality and so if the queer community wants my queer gender, it will have to take my asexuality with it. I am not hetero-attracted -- but my non-het experience comes out of my asexuality. if I end up in a relationship with a girl, even one with sex as an element, it would still be an asexual same-gender relationship and my desire to be with them would be an asexual desire.

the ace community cannot be separate from the lgbt+ community. I cannot separately be lgbt+ and ace. my gender identity and non-het attractions clearly belong in lgbt+ spaces. but they are asexual. what do you expect me to do in your lgbt+ space, to express my gender and attraction, without my asexuality? you can’t pull these two things apart. 

so as a non-cis non-het ace, you are literally expelling my queerness from your community by making asexuality some separate thing.

the question of whether asexuals are oppressed or not is honestly BS because a) I can’t speak for the many asexuals who have in fact been stigmatized for their identity but they can damn well speak for themselves and they do but people refuse to listen and b) we’re trying to make a world where no one’s going to be oppressed. even in a world where no queer people are stigmatized or mistreated, there are still going to be experiences that are queer because they’re different. and asexuality is always going to feel different because of how formative sexuality is to individuals and society! we’re always going to be something else. why doesn’t that belong under the lgbt+ umbrella?

saying you don’t thing aces should be in the community focused on marginalized genders and sexualities that you’re in, but some other community, basically means you think you shouldn’t have to hear any of the complex ideas about gender and sexuality that we could offer. you think you deserve the right to to avoid our voices in broad conversations about these topics

allo folks? can I have your attention please? 

stop acting like you can personally comprehend the experience of being aspec and freely categorize it. and if you’re angry that we’re talking about how not wanting sex is valid (but also a complex and multifaceted way of being), because your identity has been stigmatized as hypersexual, I just have to say, is making asexuality a queer thing going to make all the other sexualities more sexual? like if you’re in proximity to us and consider yourself in a community with us, that suddenly makes your sexuality look too sexual to the cishets? 

do you think that we’re going to be treated as the good queers? is that it? I do genuinely empathize and understand this but it’s also a fucking petty and frankly selfish fear. you don’t get to kick us out because you’re afraid of what other people will think and do simply because we exist. and it also plays into the bullshit about how Oppressors(TM) and Oppressed(TM) are always clearly delineated along an axis of oppression -- allosexual people face tons of problems due to compulsory allosexuality in society! one of the longstanding problems throughout human history is people delineating the right way to be allosexual. people making the experience of having sexual attraction (not necessarily having sex) the locus of judgement on a person’s character because it’s seen as this universal part of being human, some unifying thing that all human psyches can be judged on, which lets societies justify extremely harsh judgments. looking at you, Religions Of That Book That Classifies Sexual Desire As Defining Humanity And Humanity’s Original Sin Establishing Their Capacity For Good And Evil (or just the adherents of those religions that use that interpretation, which is and always has been a lot of people)

anyway where the fuck do you get off citing how people stigmatize the lgbt+ community as hypersexual when you believe that sexuality should be mandatory for participation in the lgbt+ community but optional if you’re going to go anything else