…. 2015 was in fact not five years ago

Is Loki genderfluid? “It's always been there,” Tom Hiddleston says

“This is something we felt responsible for.”

— Tom Hiddleston

When it comes to Easter eggs, Loki’s Twitter is a whole basket. A glimpse at a Time Variance Authority file for the trickster god was released as a Twitter video on Sunday, and fans were quick to point out all the juicy tidbits involved, including one that confirmed one of the oldest Marvel theories around.

The most exciting of these reveals is what’s written after “Sex.” Instead of a standard “Male” or “Female,” Loki’s file reads “Fluid.” This confirms a fan theory that goes back to the Norse mythology where Loki originated: he’s canonically genderfluid.

For Loki head writer Michael Waldron, this reveal was a long time coming.

“I know how many people identify with Loki in particular and are eager for that representation, especially with this character,” Waldron tells Inverse. “We worked really hard.”

But even Waldron may be putting it lightly. Loki’s fluidity isn’t just some corporate attempt at corporate wokeness from Disney, it’s a direct reference to both comic book lore and mythological history. Here’s how it happened and why it matters, according to both Waldron and Loki himself — Tom Hiddleston.

“It's always been there in the comics for some time and in the history of the character for hundreds, if not thousands of years,” Hiddleston tells Inverse.

Loki before the Marvel Cinematic Universe

To find the source of this seemingly confirmed MCU theory, you have to go all the way back to Loki, the trickster god of Norse mythology. While the mischievous nature and chaotic personality of Loki carried through from the start, one of the most important aspects of his mythologic persona was his shapeshifting ability. This meant Loki can be a fly, a fish, or even an old woman. His appearance — and his gender — are constantly in flux.

In Marvel Comics, Loki also possesses the power to shapeshift. But when he does, it always seems to be in terms of a disguise, not as a gender expression. It wasn’t until 2014’s Original Sin Vol 1 #2 that Loki’s gender identity was clarified. In this comic, Thor and Loki find themselves in a female-run society. When Thor assures his brother “These are fair maidens,” Loki responds with “So am I, sometimes. It doesn’t mean I’m safe to talk to.”

When Loki later takes on a female form to blend in with the society, she’s only referred to with she/her pronouns. This isn’t a disguise, it’s just another form of Loki. This fluidity is later confirmed in the same arc when Odin reflects on his children. “My son, my daughter, and my child who is both,” he says.

At that point, Loki was no longer a male comics character who dressed up with shapeshifting as necessary, but those elements were considered additional parts of what makes up “Loki.”

Loki comes out

This brings us up to date with Loki, and while fans may be excited for Tom Hiddleston’s character to catch up with the comics, Michael Waldron is quick to say Loki’s genderfluid identity isn’t something he’s qualified to speak on.

“I think that is best experienced in the show, as opposed to me, a cis straight white guy giving clunky answers about it,” Waldron says.

He’s still proud of bringing that representation to the MCU, especially crediting it to Loki director Kate Herron. “That was so important to Kate, that we did that justice. Everyone will have to watch and see.”

Loki has apparently been representing genderfluidity for nearly a decade.

The person most intimately familiar with Loki is Tom Hiddleston, who has embodied the character for just under a decade. For the Marvel actor, genderfluidity was a logical conclusion to his character.

“Breadth and range of identity contained in the character has been emphasized and is something I was always aware of when I was first cast 10 years ago,” Hiddleston says. “I know it was important to Kate Herron and Michael Waldron and to the whole team. And we were very aware, this is something we felt responsible for.”

Whether or not it’s explored in depth in the series remains to be seen, but just this Twitter confirmation retroactively adds a whole new layer of representation to the MCU. After years of the only confirmed LGBTQ+ character being a director cameo in Avengers: Endgame, this moment has retroactively made one of the most iconic Marvel villains canonically, if technically, transgender.

Will Loki actually expand on this new canonical trait?

The Inverse analysis — Marvel’s Loki reveal isn’t perfect. Tom Hiddleston is a cisgender man, and casting cis actors in trans roles is frowned upon, though Loki’s shapeshifting abilities may help sidestep that issue. There’s also some criticism that this canonical reveal is paired to a Disney+ streaming series, instead of a blockbuster film.

Still, when it comes to genderfluid and gender non-conforming representation in any sort of popular media, some is better than nothing at all. For someone who is genderfluid like me, a massively iconic character like Loki sharing this trait makes it easier for my identity to be explained.

Just like Loki, I can shift into a boy or a girl or somewhere in between, but I’m still me. No matter how this trait is explored in the MCU’s future, that’s a huge win.

We Are Who We Are Overall Thoughts *spoilers*

This review will be discussing briefly some of the episodes so far, so SPOILERS

So I started watching the HBO original series, We Are Who We Are, and I am conflicted. When I initially watched it, the dialogue made it hard for me to enjoy it so I stopped. Then after a couple of weeks after its airing, I thought, what the hell? And this time, I was pleasantly surprised. I always maintain the belief that pilot episodes are either boring, messy, or just bad so I try to push past it in order to get to the good shit. The pilot for We Are Who We Are was...I’m not sure how to explain...different? It certainly wasn’t bad and it made an impression on me, but this show as a whole is hard to limit by just a few words. It’s really something that you should watch and experience yourself.

It was only after the first 3 episodes that I began to understand the tone and mood that Luca Guadagnino was trying to convey. A lot of the time, the dialogue is abrupt and choppy and can make no sense. It can be frustrating, especially when you have two characters that aren’t communicating effectively. But I think that was the point. Guadagnino is a very realistic director, he captures the most realistic elements in a film. A lot of the conversations between characters is meant to emulate real life. Like, what the hell do you say when a conversation becomes awkward? Well, nothing sometimes.

While Guadagnino’s typical cinematography may suggest whimsy, in WAWWA’s case the small structured and synthetic model of the military base is juxtaposed to the very concrete characters. When I started to view the show less as simply a televised airing of fictional characters and problems, and instead looked at them as people, I began to really enjoy it. 

Take the main character of Fraser, played by Jack Dylan Grazer. Fraser is meant to be seen as an extremely complex and troubled kid, but the difference between him and every other teen in a coming-of-age drama is that he isn’t polished. His drinking and drug habit isn’t framed as romantic or beautiful, in fact most of the time it’s portrayed as his weakness of sorts. In the first episode, Fraser has one of his mothers drive him home after getting pretty wasted and Luca graces us with a direct shot of him throwing up. And before that, Fraser is stumbling on a bridge when he drunkenly falls and cuts his face. Everything the character does is messy, uncoordinated, yet extremely real and relatable. Hell, in one shot you can clearly see him do a Naruto run!

Caitlin/Harper is a character that I enjoyed watching, as well. Jordan Seamon did a fantastic job and I really connected with their character. Initially we see Caitlin as this mysterious girl, and in the pilot we are meant to assume that their relationship with Fraser is supposed to develop into a romantic one. This is not the case as it seems that Caitlin is trying to come to terms with who they are. The biggest shift in Caitlin’s character isn’t their friendship with Fraser but probably when they get their period. 

This was a moment that even I related to, even though I am cis when I first got my period I didn’t tell my mom until the day after. The possible confusion and shift in their reality that Caitlin felt was only heightened with the conflict of their boyfriend wanting to be more physically intimate, and Fraser’s eventual discover of Harper. I would have like to see exactly why Fraser seemed drawn to Caitlin. I’m assuming viewers were supposed to think that Fraser is attracted to her, or something. But both Caitlin/Harper and Fraser are queer coded and their respective sexualities are alluded to not being straight. It would’ve made their standing as platonic friends more clear if this had been established stronger. 

I definitely think the writer could have devoted more time to giving certain characters proper conversations. It would’ve given more development to certain characters and better context for things. However even without that, there is a lot that the audience is showed that can’t be told through dialogue. The power struggle between Sarah and Richard being one. So far, there hasn’t been any explanation as to why they have a such a volatile relationship other than Richard being a homophobe. 

Through deeper inspection, I was able to interpret it as: Richard may heavily resent the fact the Sarah was promoted to Colonel and not him. It is never made clear who has the better credentials, Sarah or Richard, but assuming that she was the one promoted it is a safe guess. This may be highlighted by the fact that Sarah is a women, and also gay. Even before episode 7, it was clear that Richard did not respect her authority. I also interpreted it as Richard being upset that and openly gay women was promoted instead of him, a black man. 

Of course this is just based on my own personal knowledge of how the U.S. military can be towards people of color and LGBTQ+. Regardless, the competitive tension between two parents is palpable without needing dialogue to explain.  

When conflict happens, I can kind of figure out which characters are going to react and which one’s will stay silent. I think the show is trying to accomplish a drastically realistic and raw series. It took me while to adjust to it, but by maybe the 2nd or 3rd episode, it starts to grow on you. Despite not liking a good majority of the characters, I was very surprised by how invested I was in them. 

Like, Danny is my least favorite character because he displays very abusive and explosive tendencies, and doesn’t seem to care about the world around him. However, getting glimpses into his character and seeing how Richard ignores him for Caitlin/Harper, his suicidal thoughts, and how he is trying to reclaim his cultural and religious background makes me empathize with him. 

Even though I hate his character, I can see that he is struggling. I appreciate the way that this show freely shows dark skinned black boys dealing with mental health issues, and personal development. Rarely are issues like suicide talked about in the black community, so seeing Danny talk about it and Craig offering(admittedly poor)comfort was touching. This is a general vibe that I get from nearly all the characters on WAWWA. I also appreciated the how Danny is actively trying to convert to Islam. In shows, rarely is Islam ever portrayed in a positive manner. Especially when female characters are shown to be struggling with their religion, Islam is shown as this barrier that prevents them from living life. Hopefully it goes without saying that the “taking off the hijab” as a way to show that a female character is “liberated” is overplayed and does not offer any respect to the countless Muslim women who choose to wear hijabs. 

Now I think the pacing of some of the storylines could have been handled a bit more gracefully. Like how we jump from Fraser and Harper being kind of enemies(not really but you know what I mean), to just them hanging out in Richard’s boat was jarring. I would have at least liked to see the scene of them talking on the rocks at the beach. It would’ve given more insight on Caitlin/Harper’s character and also on Fraser too. Also how quickly Maggie and Lu(Jennifer but I love the name Lubaba, it’s my aunt’s name)jump into a physical affair. I just would have liked to see a build up of tension between all these characters but I don’t think this entirely ruins the plot. 

I was very iffy when I learned that the show would be focusing on trans identity and gender and sexuality, but not actually hire a trans male actor. I was afraid that the show would completely botch the experiences of being transgender, and honestly I don’t have the authority to speak on whether or not this affects the quality of the show. I am cisgender, and only can empathize with this particular situation as much as I can. But I would like to hear to the opinion of someone who is trans and elaborate on the ways that they did/didn’t like Jordan Kristine Seamón’s portrayal. 

Now at the time I’m writing this, the season finale has yet to come out. But I’d also like to briefly discuss the most recent episode and how it developed Jonathan and Fraser’s relationship. I was VERY worried that Guadagnino was going to take their relationship in the direction of inappropriate. While nearly all the depictions of Jonathan and his actions have been trough Fraser’s pov, it didn’t stop me from side-eyeing some of the interactions they shared. Of course after it was mentioned that Jonathan was supposed to be in his late 20s, nearing 30 I was immediately uncomfortable with the very flirty behavior he exhibited. 

So when the scene of Fraser going up to his apartment after Craig’s death, I was very on edge. If Guadagnino had gone the extra mile to show an even larger age gap then I would’ve been pissed. While I enjoyed Call Me By Your Name, the implication that sexual relationships between barely legal teenagers and adults well into their 20s was sensual is something that I see as very weird now that I’m older. So seeing Jonathan as the object of Fraser’s affections made me extremely warry. 

And honestly, I’m still surprised that the scene even happened in its entirety. I’m sure that Jack was not in any danger of being exploited but there were definitely points while watching I thought, what the fuck is going on? I was very worried that it would escalate, but I was happy to see that Fraser was the one who stopped it from going further.  It made sense to me that this scene took so many liberties to be as graphic as possible without being too graphic, in order to show why a situation like that would be scary and confusing for Fraser. It wasn’t lost to me that Marta and Jonathan were the one’s initiating all the sexual advances. They held all the power in that scenario, even more so because Fraser is younger and has the tendencies to not make the best decisions. Though it seemed that Fraser was trying, he knew that the situation was fucked up.

I’d like to hear what JDG felt and thought doing this scene. What was his character’s thought process?

I’ve seen a lot of people compare the show heavily to CMBYN, which is fine. Besides certain cinematic parallels that people pointed out, I don’t see the clear comparison. CMBYN is more of a love story and it’s more polished than WAWWA. Now when I say tat, I don’t mean it as a negative. Rather, We Are Who We is obviously more devoted to realism and its characters. I appreciate the inclusion of more LGBTQ+ people and black main characters with development, something that CMBYN lacked. And for some people who didn’t like the show based solely on the fact that it wasn’t a CMBYN tv show, I suggest just going into it with no expectations and enjoy the mess. 

And I’d also like to take a moment to commend Jack Dylan Grazer for his job in We Are Who We Are. All of the main cast are amazing actors and actresses and did a really good job bringing their characters to life. Though, I had always associated JDG with supporting roles that, while highlighted his acting talent, only put him in a one-dimensional light. As good as It 2017 was, JDG’s role of Eddie is only meant to be seen as a comic relief. In WAWWA, I was able to forget that he was teen actor, Jack Dylan Grazer, and really see him as Fraser. It’s worth mentioning that in a GQ interview, Grazer also mentioned how this role made him reevaluate is approach to acting. 

And after reading an interview he did with a Interview Germany, with him saying he spent months in Italy reading the script and trying to perfectly craft this character, I was immensely impressed. I hope that he knows that all his hard work payed off and made a really dynamic and interesting character. I really hope that in the future JDG continues with more mature or multi-dimensional roles because he displayed that he has the talent to do so. Him being so young makes me optimistic in knowing that he is definitely going places in his career. I also hope that there will be a season 2 of WAWWA because despite having hour long episodes, the show still felt way too short. There is a lot about Fraser’s character, and all the others’ characters, that I want more information and analysis on.

I’ve identified as straight, I’ve identified as gay, and I’ve identified—and still identify—as bi. My sexual identity is something of a shapeshifting mass that I can never quite firmly grasp. In the minds of many, I’m confused. But I don’t see it that way. I’ve always been confident in my sexual orientation; it’s just changed over time. For the majority of my life, I was solely romantically and sexually linked to women. But in my late 20s, I started to experiment with men (something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time) and really liked it. Now, I’m far more attracted to men than women, but who’s to say my sexual preference won’t sway again?

“It’s not uncommon for people’s sexual identities to change,” sex educator Erica Smith, M.Ed, tells NewNowNext. “I know this as a sexuality educator and because I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve identified as bisexual, lesbian, queer, and straight (when I was very young). It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that I relaxed into the knowledge that my sexual attractions are probably going to keep changing and shifting my whole life.”

According to Alisa Swindell, Ph.D. candidate and bisexual activist, it is not always our sexuality that changes. Usually, it’s our understanding of our sexuality that evolves when we explore what feels right to us. “Our understanding of gender and how it is expressed has been evolving at a rate that has not previously been known (or studied) and that is changing how we understand our own desires and responses to others,” she says.

Many outside factors can influence our sexuality. For instance, Swindell thinks many bisexuals are playing against a numbers game. “There are more people with other gender attractions than same-gender, so more often bisexual people end up in relationships with people of another gender and find it easier to pursue those relationships,” she says.

In her opinion, this sentiment is especially true for women, as there is still a lot of stigma toward bi women within lesbian communities. Men, however, experience a different set of challenges.

“Once [men] start dating [other] men, they often find themselves in social situations that are almost exclusively male and so meeting women becomes harder,” she adds, effectively summarizing my lived experience as a sexually active bisexual man. “Also, those men, like all of us, were socialized to respond to heterosexual norms. So many men who enjoy the queerness of the male spaces are still often attracted to heteronormative women who do not always respond to male bisexuality due to continuing stigma.”

The continuing stigma often pressures bisexuals to adopt a monosexual identity. Take Leslie, a “not super out” bisexual, as an example. Leslie dated a woman from her late teens to early 20s, keeping her sexual orientation a secret because her parents were conservative and she didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. As she revisits her past same-sex relationship with me, she has a realization: “In reflecting on all of that, I think deep down I thought that being with a man would just be easier.”

Now married to a man, Leslie feels like she’s lost her bi identity, though she’s still attracted to different genders. “When I see people I follow online and find out they are bisexual I usually reach out and say, ‘I am, too!’ so I can collect sisters and brothers where I can,” she adds. “Otherwise, as I am cisgender-presenting I often feel like I don’t really have a say but I offer my support.”

This loss of identity is all too common. “Maintaining a recognized bisexual identity can be difficult as monosexuality is still the assumed norm,” Swindell says, noting that showing support—whether that looks like keeping up with issues that affect bisexuals, correcting people who mistakenly call bisexuals gay or straight, or encouraging our partners to not let that slide when it comes up with friends and family are all important for maintaining an identity—as Leslie has, is important to maintaining a bi identity. Smith adds this loss of identity may be attributed to a person’s own internalized biphobia, too.

“When it comes to sexuality in particular, there is rightfully a lot of autonomy given to people to self-identify. If someone self-identifies as queer or bisexual, none of their sexual or relational behavior, in of itself, alters that,” psychotherapist Daniel Olavarria, LCSW, tells NewNowNext. “Of course, there is also a recognition that by marrying someone of the opposite sex, for example, that this queer person is exercising a level of privilege that may alter their external experience in the world. As a result, this may have implications for how that person is perceived among queer and non-queer communities.”

Jodi’s experience as a bisexual person is more reflective of my own: She shares that she’s gone through stages where she only dates men, and others where she only dates women. Available studies suggest that only a minority of bisexuals maintain simultaneous relationships with both genders. In one report, self-identified bisexuals were asked if they had been sexually involved with both men and women in the past 12 months. Two-thirds said yes, and only one-third has been simultaneously involved with both genders.

As for a possible explanation? “It can be really difficult for us to find partners who are comfortable with us dating other genders at the same time,” Smith offers up as a theory.

“If I’m in a situation where I have to be exhibiting a lot of ‘masculine’ energy (running projects, being very in charge of things at work, etc.), then I tend to want to be able to be in more ‘feminine’ energy at home,” Jodi adds, clarifying that people of any gender identity can boast masculine and feminine energy. “Likewise, if my work life looks quieter and focused on more ‘feminine’ aspects such as nurturing and caregiving, I tend to want to exhibit a stronger more masculine presence while at home.”

Bisexuality is, in many ways, a label that can accommodate one’s experience on a sexuality spectrum. This allows for shifts based on a person’s needs or interests at any given point in their life. Perhaps “The Bisexual Manifesto,” published in 1990 from the Bay Area Bisexual Network, says it best:

Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have “two” sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders.

Sexuality is complicated, and how we experience it throughout our lives is informed by a multitude of different factors—the exploration of power dynamics, craving certain types of sexual experiences, and social expectations can all influence our gender preferences at any given time, to name just a few. Much like our own bodies, our understanding of our sexual orientation will continue to grow.

I’ve come to accept this ongoing evolution as a wonderful and inevitable thing. Imagine having a completely static sexual orientation your entire life? Boring! Being able to explore your sexuality with wonderful people of all genders is intensely satisfying and uniquely insightful, no matter how many others try to denounce what you feel in your heart or your loins.

I didn’t choose the bi life; the bi life chose me. And I am grateful.

“BUTCH” HAS LONG been the name we’ve given a certain kind — that kind — of lesbian. The old adage applies: You know her when you see her. She wears men’s clothing, short hair, no makeup. Butch is an aesthetic, but it also conveys an attitude and energy. Both a gender and a sexuality, butchness is about the body but also transcends it: “We exist in this realm of masculinity that has nothing to do with cis men — that’s the part only we [butches] know how to talk about,” says the 42-year-old writer, former Olympic swimmer and men’s wear model Casey Legler. “Many people don’t even know how to ask questions about who we are, or about what it means to be us.”

Many of us wear the butch label with a certain self-consciousness, fearing the term doesn’t quite fit — like a new pair of jeans, it’s either too loose or too tight. The graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, 59, doesn’t refer to herself as butch but understands why others do. “It’s a lovely word, ‘butch’: I’ll take it, if you give it to me,” she says. “But I’m afraid I’m not butch enough to really claim it. Because part of being butch is owning it, the whole aura around it.”

What does owning it look like? Decades before genderless fashion became its own style, butches were wearing denim and white tees, leather jackets and work boots, wallet chains and gold necklaces. It isn’t just about what you’re wearing, though, but how: Butchness embodies a certain swagger, a 1950s-inspired “Rebel Without a Cause” confidence. In doing so, these women — and butches who don’t identify as women — created something new and distinct, an identity you could recognize even if you didn’t know what to call it.

By refuting conventionally gendered aesthetics, butchness expands the possibilities for women of all sizes, races, ethnicities and abilities. “I always think of the first butch lesbian I ever saw,” says the 33-year-old actor Roberta Colindrez. “This beautiful butch came into the grocery store and she was built like a brick house. Short hair, polo shirt, cargo pants and that ring of keys … It was the first time I saw the possibility of who I was.” And yet, to many people, “butch style” remains an oxymoron: There’s a prevalent assumption that we’re all fat, frumpy fashion disasters — our baseball caps and baggy pants suggest to others that we don’t care about self-presentation. But it’s not that we’re careless; it’s that unlike, say, the gay white men who have been given all too much credit for influencing contemporary visual culture, we’re simply not out to appease the male gaze. We disregard and reject the confines of a sexualized and commodified femininity.

ETYMOLOGICALLY, “butch” is believed to be an abbreviation of “butcher,” American slang for “tough kid” in the early 20th century and likely inspired by the outlaw Butch Cassidy. By the early 1940s, the word was used as a pejorative to describe “aggressive” or “macho” women, but lesbians reclaimed it almost immediately, using it with pride at 1950s-era bars such as Manhattan’s Pony Stable Inn and Peg’s Place in San Francisco. At these spots, where cocktails cost 10 cents and police raids were a regular occurrence, identifying yourself as either butch or femme was a prerequisite for participating in the scene.

These butches were, in part, inspired by 19th-century cross-dressers — then called male impersonators or transvestites — who presented and lived fully as men in an era when passing was a crucial survival tactic. We can also trace butchness back to the androgynous female artists of early 20th-century Paris, including the writer Gertrude Stein and the painter Romaine Brooks. But it wasn’t until the 1960s and early 1970s that butches, themselves at the intersection of the burgeoning civil, gay and women’s rights movements, became a more visible and viable community.

From their earliest incarnations, butches faced brutal discrimination and oppression, not only from outside their community but also from within. A certain brand of (mostly white) lesbian feminism dominant in the late ’70s and early ’80s marginalized certain sorts of “otherness” — working-class lesbians, lesbians of color and masculine-of-center women. They pilloried butchness as inextricably misogynist and butch-femme relationships as dangerous replications of heteronormative roles. (Such rhetoric has resurfaced, as trans men are regularly accused of being anti-feminist in their desire to become the so-called enemy.) Challenged yet again to defend their existence and further define themselves, butches emerged from this debate emboldened, thriving in the late ’80s and early ’90s as women’s studies programs — and, later, gender and queer studies departments — gained traction on North American and European college campuses.

The ’90s were in fact a transformative decade for the butch community. In 1990, the American philosopher Judith Butler published her groundbreaking “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,” and her theories about gender were soon translated and popularized for the masses. In her academic work, Butler argues that gender and sexuality are both constructed and performative; butch identity, as female masculinity, subverts the notion that masculinity is the natural and exclusive purview of the male body. Soon after, butch imagery infiltrated the culture at large. The August 1993 issue of Vanity Fair featured the straight supermodel Cindy Crawford, in a black maillot, straddling and shaving the butch icon K.D. Lang. That same year, the writer Leslie Feinberg published “Stone Butch Blues,” a now classic novel about butch life in 1970s-era New York. In Manhattan, comedians such as Lea DeLaria and drag kings such as Murray Hill took to the stage; it was also the heyday of Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For,” the serialized comic strip she started in 1983. In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres, still the most famous of butches, came out. Two years later, Judith “Jack” Halberstam and Del LaGrace Volcano published “The Drag King Book” and the director Kimberly Peirce released her breakthrough film, “Boys Don’t Cry”; its straight cisgender star, Hilary Swank, went on to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, a role that still incites contentious debates about the nebulous boundaries between butch and trans identity. These artists and their legacies are the cornerstones of our community. As Legler says, “This is where we’ve come from, and the folks we look back to. If you identify with that lineage, then we’d love to have you.”

LIKE ANY QUEER subculture, butchness is vastly different now than it was three decades ago — though the codes have been tweaked and refined over the years, younger butches continue to take them in new and varied directions: They may experiment with their personas from day to day, switching fluidly between masculine and feminine presentation. There are “stone butches,” a label that doesn’t refer to coldness, as is often assumed, but to a desire to touch rather than to be touched — to give rather than receive — and is considered slightly more masculine than “soft butch” on the Futch Scale, a meme born in 2018 that attempted to parse the gradations from “high femme” to “stone butch.” (“Futch,” for “femme/butch,” is square in the middle.) And while there remains some truth to butch stereotypes — give us a plaid flannel shirt any day of the week — that once-static portrait falls apart under scrutiny and reflection. Not every butch has short hair, can change a tire, desires a femme. Some butches are bottoms. Some butches are bi. Some butches are boys.

Different bodies own their butchness differently, but even a singular body might do or be butch differently over time. We move between poles as our feelings about — and language for — ourselves change. “In my early 20s, I identified as a stone butch,” says the 45-year-old writer Roxane Gay. “In adulthood, I’ve come back to butch in terms of how I see myself in the world and in my relationship, so I think of myself as soft butch now.” Peirce, 52, adds that this continuum is as much an internal as an external sliding scale: “I’ve never aspired to a binary,” she says. “From day one, the idea of being a boy or a girl never made sense. The ever-shifting signifiers of neither or both are what create meaning and complexity.”

Indeed, butch fluidity is especially resonant in our era of widespread transphobia. Legler, who uses they/them pronouns, is a “trans-butch identified person — no surgery, no hormones.” Today, the interconnected spectrums of gender and queerness are as vibrant and diverse in language as they are in expression — genderqueer, transmasc, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming. Yet butches have always called themselves and been called by many names: bull dyke, diesel dyke, bulldagger, boi, daddy and so on. Language evolves, “flowing in time and changing constantly as new generations come along and social structures shift,” Bechdel says.

If it’s necessary to think historically, it’s also imperative to think contextually. Compounding the usual homophobia and misogyny, black and brown butches must contend with racist assumptions: “Black women often get read as butch whether they are butch or not,” Gay says. “Black women in general are not seen, so black butchness tends to be doubly invisible. Except for studs: They’re very visible,” she adds, referring to a separate but related term used predominantly by black or Latinx butches (though, unsurprisingly, white butches have appropriated it) who are seen as “harder” in their heightened masculinity and attitude. Gay notes that “people tend to assume if you’re a black butch, you’re a stud and that’s it,” which is ultimately untrue. Still, butch legibility remains a paradox: As the most identifiable of lesbians — femmes often “pass” as straight, whether they want to or not — we are nonetheless maligned and erased for our failure of femininity, our refusal to be the right kind of woman.

ANOTHER LINGERING stereotype, one born from “Stone Butch Blues” and its more coded literary forebears, particularly Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness” (1928), is the butch as a tragic and isolated figure. She is either cast out by a dominant society that does not — will not — ever see her or accept her, or she self-isolates as a protective response to a world that continually and unrelentingly disparages her.

When a butch woman does appear in mainstream culture, it’s usually alongside her other: the femme lesbian. Without the femme and the contrast she underscores, the butch is “inherently uncommodifiable,” Bechdel says, since two butches together is just a step “too queer.” We rarely see butches depicted in or as community, an especially sobering observation given the closure of so many lesbian bars over the past two decades. But when you talk to butches, a more nuanced story emerges, one of deep and abiding camaraderie and connection. Despite the dearth of representation, butch love thrives — in the anonymous, knowing glances across the subway platform when we recognize someone like us, and in the bedroom, too. “Many of my longest friendships are with people who register somewhere on the butch scale,” Peirce says. “We’re like married couples who fell in love with each other as friends.”

Legler, for their part, recognizes a “lone wolf” effect, one in which some young queers initially love “being the only butch in the room.” In organizing the group portrait that accompanies this essay over the past months, Legler was curious “what it would be like for butches to just show up together and to be able to display all of their power, all of their sexiness, all of their charisma, without having it be mitigated in some way.” And not only for butches of an older generation, but for those still figuring things out, transforming the scene in ways that both defy and inspire their elders. “It’s been centuries in the making, the fact that we are all O.K.,” Legler adds. “That our bodies get to exist: We have to celebrate that. You can do more than just survive. You can contribute.”

Bi mad about it

Name: Riley Age: 26 Location: Ashfield Occupation: Legal sector, policy and campaigns Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Gender: Non-Binary/Genderfluid

I think I like some (cisgendered, heterosexual) men for validation because men are easy, and having sexy with men is easy, so if I need to feel validated and pretty, that’s a way to feel better about myself. Once I realised that I began to reevaluate myself and my reasons for being with men, and I feel that while I’m asking myself those questions, I shouldn’t be dating men, because it may be for the wrong reasons.

My presentation and aesthetic has shifted a lot over the last couple of years – shifting out of teenager-ness and young adulthood – and as I’ve gotten more involved in queer spaces and more secure in other areas of my life, particularly around work and study, I’ve felt more secure to present in a way that feels good to me rather than what I perceive to be conventionally attractive. A few years ago, my aesthetic was very feminine – long blonde hair, cutesy dresses, and skirts, and crop tops and glitter – That was definitely a vibe of mine for a long time, but probably starting from cutting all of my hair off in 2017/18, I started pushing to dress and present much more androgynous. I no longer often present particularly feminine. Not because of any particular political statement, or because it disgusts me, but because it doesn’t fit me for who I am. Makeup is very much a sometimes thing now, whereas I used to find that I couldn’t feel attractive unless I was wearing enough makeup.

I genuinely don’t remember ever thinking that I was straight. Not in a “I am queer way” just that there was no point at which I ever went “ah yes, I am a gay now.” I think that a big part of that was having lesbian parents who had no expectations about my being straight. It was funny when I had my first partner at fourteen and my mum said “I’m disappointed that I have such a heterosexual daughter.” very much as a joke, but it did make me wonder if I was heterosexual or not. I knew that I liked kissing that boy, but I wasn’t able to properly think about my sexuality. Then when my mum found out that I’d been hooking up with my best female friend a year or two later, she started yelling out “oohhh the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree now does it?” also very much as a joke, but I was very much aware at that point that I was probably not straight. My mum eventually just settled into accepting that I’d be dating someone at some point and that gender wasn’t relevant to my dating choices.

There are people who feel like a man or a woman, but when I ask myself what it is that makes me feel like a woman I realise that I feel no connection at all to femininity, but I definitely don’t vibe with being a man. Being non-binary for me is a lack of attachment to the idea of any particular gender, and pleasant feelings at fluidity, androgyny, and the ability to be and present myself as I feel. I do still dress femininely sometimes, but it feels more like drag now. I very much vibe with comfy dude clothes and snapbacks now, I will wear a snapback whenever and wherever I can get away with it.

There are different areas of queer community and I feel connected to some more than others. I’m obviously not keen on the conserva-gays, that’s not my vibe at all, and I’m no longer really vibing with the clubbing/partying queer network. Queer activism can be great, but also incredibly toxic and can have a lot of drama that can take an incredible toll, so it’s nice to have queer community connections that aren’t necessarily contingent on organising spaces. It’s refreshing to have friends who are queer, and on board with my radical leftist politics, but also aren’t involved with all of those spaces.

To me queer means fucking with the gender binary, and fucking with capitalist ideas of the nuclear family. You can be homosexual and not be queer, and conserva-gays can die made about it, but having sex with someone of the same gender, or being transgender does not inherently make you queer, to be queer, I believe that you need to have some level of political analysis and awareness. It’s fine for someone to be a dude who likes dudes and live your life that way, those sorts of people are perfectly valid, but I don’t think that simply existing as an LGBT person entitles you to call yourself queer, I think queerness comes in when you have some analysis of Identity, the structures that we are within, and trying to make them better for the broader community. Like you can be gay and queer, but you can also be gay or queer.

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When it comes to #BlackLivesMatter, believe it or not, YOU may be the problem!

From a BLM ACTIVIST:

Ok white friends, I’m about to lay some hardcore truth on you right now, and many of you are not going to like it. Some of you are going to get immediately defensive. But before you comment from an emotional place, I encourage you to stop, re-read this post, do a little bit of research about casual racism and white privilege and then come back and re-read the post again. After that, if you still want to comment, please feel free.Ok, here we go....

Many of you are the problem. 

Yes, you read that right. Many of you are the reason why these riots are happening. Many of you are the reason why it’s come to this. This is especially true if you’ve ever (but especially in the last week) said any of the following;

1. “It’s awful but...” - No. No buts. In the English language, the word “But” is often used to deflect or to justify behaviour. Police murdering black people in the street is awful. Period. End of discussion.

2. “I support the movement but not these disruptive protests...” - No, you don’t. Right now, the movement is taking the form of disruptive protests. They’re the same thing. You either want police to stop murdering black people in the street, or you don’t. If you do, then support the protests — even if you find them disruptive and frustrating — because that’s black people fighting for their lives.

3. “All lives/White lives matter too..” - no one said they didn’t. The conversation is specifically about black lives right now because police are murdering them in the street. Until police stop doing that, and White people stop dismissing it, it’s not “All lives matter,” it’s “MOST lives matter.” It’s not “ALL Lives” until Black Lives Matter too. Stay focused.

4. “There are good cops...” - No one said there weren’t. There are three categories of cops; Good cops, bad cops and complacent cops. Good cops are marching with the protesters. They’re sharing the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. They’re trying to change the system from within the system. There are many levels of Bad cops. The most obvious one is those officers that are murdering black people in the street. Bad cops are also sharing the hashtags “blue lives matter.” Bad cops are trying to shift the focus. Bad cops don’t stop their colleagues when they murder black people in the streets. Complacent cops just show up, follow orders and try not to take sides. Complacent cops are bad cops.

5. “I don’t support the looting and destruction...” - no one says you have to, but please stop acting like looting nullifies the entire protest. And definitely stop acting like looting is “just as bad.” That’s like comparing someone stealing your car to someone murdering your child. They’re not equally bad. Stop pretending they are. Police murdering black people in the street is definitely worse than robbing a Target.

6. “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean my life has been easy...” Of course not. Everyone struggles. But being white has never been one of those struggles. Being poor has been a struggle. Being a woman has been a struggle. Being gay has been a struggle. But being white has never been a struggle. The same can’t be said for people of colour. I could go on and on about white privilege, but it would be so much easier if you educated yourself instead. This isn’t about how you, a white, cisgender, straight man has suffered in your life. This is about police murdering black people in the street. Stop trying to make it about you.

7. “I really wish they would protest peacefully...” - of course you do. They’re easier to ignore that way. People of colour have been peacefully protesting for hundreds of years. It hasn’t been all that successful. The reason riots and violent demonstrations work is because it makes people — especially white people — uncomfortable. We can’t ignore them when they’re waving torches in our faces. It scares us. It puts us on edge, which is precisely where we need to be. People only pay attention to the extreme. If you have trouble recalling a single one of the hundreds of peaceful protests that BLM held across North America last year, but you can still recall, with crystal clarity, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, then you’ve just proved my point.

8. “I don’t see colour...” — Congratulations , you’re lying to yourself. Of course, you see colour. And that’s good! Black people want you to see their colour. Their colours are beautiful and the very foundation of who they are. If you don’t see their colour, then you also don’t see their culture. If you don’t see colour, then you erase their very identity. If you don’t see their colour, then you also can’t see the pattern of violence they’re confronted with every day. If you don’t see colour, then you’re blind to more than just racial injustice. You’re blind to the world.

9. “They shouldn’t have committed a crime...” - This one is a big one for me. Consider me triggered. A boy who steals a can of pop from a 711 does not deserve to be shot in the back three times. A man illegally selling CD’s on a street corner doesn’t deserve to be shot to death in front of a record store. A man who runs a red light does not deserve to be shot while reaching for his registration. This isn’t about their crimes; this is about bad policing. Stay on topic.

10. “Black people kill white people too...” yes, murderers exist in every race and walk of life. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking police brutality, and the reality is, black officers are not murdering unarmed white men in the street. That seems to be almost exclusively white officer behaviour. Stop gaslighting.*Additions based on comments to this post;

11. “Black people kill other black people...” - Yes, they do, just like white people kill other white people and Latinos kill other latinos etc. Crime related violence does not adhere to any imaginary racial boundaries or allegiances. But, we’re not talking about criminal violence right now. We’re not discussing drug violence or gang violence or sexual violence or domestic violence or bar brawls or whatever random type of violence you’d like to bring up. The conversation is specifically about POLICE BRUTALITY. Say it with me. Police. Brutality. Any other form of violence you bring up is entirely irrelevant. Please stay on topic.

12. “I support black people, but I can’t support the violence...” — In other words, you would prefer people of colour continue to be murdered by police, rather than have them rise up violently against their oppressors. Got it. That’s not support.

13. “It’s not about race. We are all human beings...” yes, except people of colour often aren’t treated like human beings. For instance, they’re being murdered in the streets like animals. On video. While people watch. While people do nothing.

14. “The looting and arson distract from their message. It’s their fault for not controlling it...” If you’d like to lay blame, how about we start by blaming the police who frequently murder unarmed people of colour. If they didn’t frequently murder unarmed people of colour, the protest wouldn’t be necessary. The protest wouldn’t have turned into a riot, the riot wouldn’t have turned violent, and looting wouldn’t have happened. Blaming the oppressed for not better “controlling” their social unrest is asinine.

15. “More white people are killed by cops than black people. Here are the statistics...” - I love when people do research! Thank you for that! But those stats that you’re proudly flashing around aren’t an accurate reflection of the issue. According to data, there are approx. 234,370,202 white people In the United States. Comparatively, that same data states that there are 40,610,815 “Black” Americans. So, when your stats show 1,398 white people have been killed by officers since 2017 and only 543 Black people, what those statistics really show is .0005% of white people were killed by police in those 3.5 years, while .0011% of black people were killed by police. That means black people were killed at a higher rate. 220% higher, to be exact. Math has no racial bias. Those aren’t great stats. Stop using them to defend your position.

16. “Black people commit more crime...” - Do they really, though? According to data released in 2017, there were 475,900 black prisoners in state and federal prisons and 436,500 white prisoners. That’s a difference of about 9%. So for argument's sake, let’s say those numbers are an accurate reflection of the amount of crime committed. If people of colour commit only 9% more crime, why are they killed by police at a rate of 220% higher?

17. “Well, the same stats you mentioned shows that even though they’re only 12% of the population, they commit 54% of the crime.” - Good Catch! You’re right. But those numbers don’t actually reflect the amount of crime committed. That’s why I said to assume they’re correct. Those numbers only reveal how many people are incarcerated. The reality is, while those numbers are all we have to go on, they don’t tell the complete story either. In the United States specifically, socioeconomic racism, which was designed to keep POC in poverty through district red-lining, lower quality of education and other systemic obstacles, is a huge component. Thanks to redlining (look it up) and other zoning and banking practices, the quality of education in “black” neighbourhoods are significantly lower, which means the average income for POC in those neighbours is lower and the unemployment much higher. Also, thanks to redlining, the unemployment rate, and lower-income rates, crime in those neighbourhoods tends to be higher. That means those neighbourhoods are patrolled by police more often. Thanks to racial bias, POC are followed, stopped, harassed and arrested more frequently than the white people who live in those same neighbourhoods. What all of this means is that, when POC are arrested more frequently, they often can’t afford fancy lawyers to help them. They usually end up with Public Defenders, who are often overworked, and they often encourage POC to plead guilty in exchange for less time. Then there’s the fact that, because white people make up 73% of the population, they also tend to make up a bigger percentage of Jurors. There’s lots of factors to consider. So don’t assume that just because they make up 54% of the people in jail, that they make up 54% of the crime. The entire system is broken. That’s part of the problem.

18. “You’re promoting violence and destruction, shame on you...” - I don’t remember encouraging anyone to riot. I also don’t remember encouraging anyone to loot or commit arson. The truth is, looting and arson is certainly not my preferred form of protest. But it’s important to remember that protesters haven’t committed most of the violent behaviour. Civil unrest tends to cause chaos and confusion. That chaos provides the perfect opportunity for poor-intentioned people to do poor-intentioned things. That doesn’t mean the civil unrest should stop. I don’t condone the violence. I just don’t think it should dominate the conversation. If you want to focus on the violence, try focusing on those officers who’ve killed POC in the street. You’re focusing on the wrong violence.

If any of you are guilty of saying any of the above, then I have unsettling news for you. 

YOU are the reason it’s come to this.

YOU are the reason peaceful protests haven’t worked.They haven’t worked because 

YOU haven’t been listening.

YOU haven’t been learning.

These violent riots are happening because YOU have left people of colour, no other choice.

These riots are happening because no matter how people of colour have said it, taking a knee, marching the streets, bumper stickers, banners, signs, or chants, YOU still don’t get it.

That doesn’t mean you’re bad people.

That doesn’t mean you’re racist. 

It only means you’re white. And that’s not a crime, any more than being black is.The difference is, police aren’t going to shoot you in the street for it!

Copied and pasted. Feel free to do the same. 

Beauty Brands Want to Sell Queer Expression, But It Shouldn’t Be for Sale

Writer Riley R.L. on the risks that come with cosmetics brands capitalizing on queer narratives.

Riley R.L

In this op-ed, nonbinary writer Riley R.L. shares the impact of makeup on their identity, and the risks that come with cosmetic brands capitalizing on queer narratives.

October 21, 2019

“They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Lady Gaga declares in the launch video for her new makeup line. “But at Haus Laboratories, we say beauty’s how you see yourself.” The video features Gaga surrounded by a racially diverse, gender nonconforming group of models showing off glittery eye makeup and bold lip colors. Its message is about freedom, specifically the freedom to express your identity however you want to. “We want you to love yourself,” Gaga concludes, and she’s got just the thing to help us do it: For $49, you can get a trio of lip products in a variety of color combos, which the brand’s website calls “tools of self-expression and reinvention.”

The Haus Laboratories launch is just one of many examples of how the cosmetics industry has been using identity narratives to market their ads with LGBTQ consumers in mind. Through pride campaigns and inclusive marketing, brands like Morphe, Milk Makeup, and M.A.C are trying to push the cultural conversation around makeup forward by bringing queer, trans, and gender nonconforming faces to the forefront, apparently as a way to help normalize the varying expressions of our community.

This mirrors a larger shift in the beauty space. LGBTQ creators like Gigi Gorgeous, Jeffree Star, and Nikita Dragun have gained huge audiences online and created successful product collaborations, while major beauty publications like Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Allure have covered the rise of queer beauty influencers and gender-neutral cosmetics brands. It’s clear that the world of cosmetics is trying to move away from the conventional standards it was previously associated with to promote an aesthetic of freedom, however ambiguously defined that may be.

For many LGBTQIA people, makeup can play a valuable, if not complicated, role in exploring gender, something that rings true in my own story. The first time I wore eye shadow out of the house, I still largely identified with the gender I had been assigned at birth; I spent most of that night worrying about what wearing makeup while presenting as male might open me up to. I feared ridicule, harassment, even violence — things that, fortunately, had not been an average part of my day-to-day life. Wearing makeup that first time was the most aware I’d ever been of the grip that gendered expectations had on the way I lived, and that realization made me feel weak and unfulfilled; all my life, I could suddenly see, I’d been under the control of beliefs about gender that I didn’t agree with, and that I had internalized without ever choosing to.

Thankfully, nothing out of the ordinary happened that night. As a kind of resistance to those feelings of weakness, I made an effort to start wearing makeup more often, and became increasingly comfortable with choosing to present and express myself in a way that was more unconventional. Ultimately, makeup was one of many things that helped me come to terms with the fact that I felt more at home outside of traditional gender roles than I did within them, and that my identity fit better under the umbrella of nonbinary than it did under male.

For me, that revelation came with a reduced emphasis on how I presented. Nowadays, I rarely wear much makeup (neither do most of my trans and nonbinary friends). But as queer identity seems to become more and more intertwined with the cosmetics industry, I find myself shying away from sharing the role that wearing makeup—a purely aesthetic part of a deeply internal process—played in that time of self-discovery. When I watch someone sell makeup under the auspices of queer self-love, regardless of how well intentioned they might be, I can’t help but feel as if a story like mine is being packaged and sold to young queer people desperate to find confidence in their own identity.

“Sometimes beauty doesn’t come naturally from within,” Gaga muses on the Haus Laboratories website. “But I’m so grateful that makeup inspired a bravery in me I didn’t know I had.” The narrative is clearer than ever: If conventional aesthetic “beauty” is no longer a marketing team’s focus, then something like “bravery” must be; rather than encouraging consumers to fit in, it’s now about using makeup to help reveal “who you are.” These brands are leveraging LGBTQIA narratives to maintain relevance in a competitive market, thanks to the very real and very complicated relationship that trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people like me have with cosmetics.

An example like Sephora’s “Identify As We” campaign, full of ethereal imagery and moving ideas about freedom and identity, is certainly a progressive alternative to the kinds of advertising I was exposed to growing up. It’s easy to recall the history of hypermasculine marketing for products like Axe, whose goal was to play on conventional gender roles to make sales. Today, some brands would like us to believe that they can do better, and that by focusing on the expansive understanding of gender the LGBTQ community provides, companies can push progress forward rather than reinforce tired stereotypes.

Recently, Jonathan Van Ness, one of Queer Eye’s fab five, revealed that he’s nonbinary to Out. “[Gender is] this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to,” Van Ness shared. Couched in this personal revelation was Van Ness’s sponsorship with nail polish brand Essie, something he hopes will help inspire young people: “I always used to think, Oh, I’m like a gay man, but I think any way I can let little boys and little girls know that they can express themselves, and they can, like, be... making iconic partnerships with brands like Essie no matter how they present is really important and exciting.”

Van Ness and Essie, like many of the brands mentioned, seem to operate under the assumption that visibility alone can bring much needed change in how our culture regards gender nonconformance. And maybe they’re right; but as a nonbinary person, I can’t help but question: Would my self-perception really have been different had I seen someone like Van Ness wearing nail polish on a billboard while growing up? Would I have come to understand my identity sooner had I seen a gender nonconforming person on a cosmetics display?

Many queer people grow up with a longing to be seen and validated by popular culture in the way our straight and cisgender peers are. When we come to adulthood, I worry that lingering desire may leave us with an inability to protect younger generations from the potential risks that putting value in “visibility” can conceal. If we place our trust in advertising to advance our cause rather than sharing our stories on our own terms, we’re passing them over to those whose primary goal is to profit from them. These sanitized, corporate narratives run the risk of leading young queer people to believe that embodying their identity is as simple as buying the right lipstick or wearing the right nail polish, instead of expressing themselves in whatever way feels true to them.

By creating a narrative of self-actualization based on a product, it’s easy to erase the pain that can come too. For many queer and trans people, embodying your gender is not always fun, freeing, and transformative; it can also make you a target of discrimination and violence. Every time I choose to walk out the door with makeup on, I’m choosing to do so in spite of the world I’m walking into. At its best makeup was often a grounding ritual that helped me come to terms with my own experience of gender. At its worst the reactions it caused — condescending compliments, strange looks, yells of “faggot” from passing cars — could make it feel like a way of inscribing the dissonance between my body and identity on my skin. Those experiences, like those endured by many in my community, are the ones you aren’t so likely to hear about in a beauty ad or the next big pride campaign, because they don’t fit the right narrative. We can’t ignore that these brands are more invested in their own survival than they are in ours, and we owe it to ourselves — and to those who’ll come after us — to be careful with how we allow others to use our stories.

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Source: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/beauty-brands-queer-expression-makeup

Blog Post #3

I am really not all that familiar with the subject but from what I watched from these five movies I wouldn’t say the visual style was distinctively “Queer” in my opinion. Admittedly I’m not all that familiar with what makes something “Queer” besides someone’s sexuality. According to Planned Parenthood “Queer is a word that describes sexual and gender identities other than straight and cisgender. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people may all identify with the word queer”(parenthood). If the visual style was the exact same and the only thing that was different was that the characters were straight instead of Queer, I would not be able to tell the style was “Queer”. As for what it might look like, I don’t even want to speculate what it might look like because I might end up generalizing. The only thing I really can say is just being very open with sexuality, which I saw in pretty much all of the movies like in the apricot scene in Call Me by Your Name (1hr:39m:0s-1hr:40m:0s) and the beach scene in Moonlight (54m:30s-55m), as well as pretty much the entirety of  Mysterious Skin. I kind of feel like I am copping out with this question but I really don’t think there is a “Queer” style, at least not one that I‘m familiar with. There’s just characters and ideas in a movie that just happen to be queer.

Race, gender, and other sexualities intersect in terms of relating. The way some sexualities are portrayed is very similar to the way some races are portrayed in society. For example in brokeback mountain (45m:30s-46m:30s) when Jack is getting denied the job it felt strikingly similar to how someone would be denied for their race. I was reminded of the movie 42, which is about Jackie Robinson, and some of these people are heckled in a way that is very similar to Jackie Robinson. A scene like (5m:30s-6m) of Boys Don't Cry where Brandon is being chased down and called slurs reminds me a lot of 42 or Remember the Titans or some other movie that is heavily involved with race. The movies draw a comparison to how all minority groups in society are viewed and treated.

 I also think there’s different acceptance levels for different groups of people and that can boil down to race. In Chiron’s community they are not accepting at all (1hr:1m:30s-1hr:2m:30s) while in Call Me By Your Name and Mysterious Skin people are much more accepting and open. Although I think this could just be more of the overall mindset of the community and not have to do with race. In Mysterious Skin the main character still gets called a F*g at one point (32m:30s-33m) and its not like the white people of Brokeback Mountain are accepting, they end up killing Jack (1hr:53m-1hr:54m).

Movies definitely have the power to shape perceptions and emotions no matter what the subject. As for “queer an audience”, I’m gonna say its plausable. Maybe somebody is inspired by Elio’s courage to explore his feelings at (48m:30s-50m) and they might do the same. I obviously don’t think a straight person walks into a movie theatre to see Call Me By Your Name and they suddenly become gay but I think someone who has suppresed their feelings might have the courage to explore them after seeing one of these movies. Either way I one hundred percent think it can help shift perceptions. One thing it can do is help build empathy. I think this is done by showing just how normal these people are. They are all exploring the same feelings a straight person would have just not in a straight way obviously. With more and more “queer” films hopefully it can help get rid of the irregular stigma a community in the minority has. I’m sure a queer person feels like everything is “straight washed” when they go see a movie because there’s so many straight relationships portrayed compared to queer ones. The continuing inclusion of queer relationships and problems can help the community feel not abnormal in a society that is mostly not queer. I think the films are essential to help the community feel more integrated in society. It also serves as a window into the problems and lives of queer people to straight people. This could be a good learning experience into something they might not be exposed to on a regular basis.

Imagination +Pain= Dreams by Anarchy Munroe

Imagine walking into the world a fresh being; no knowledge of right, wrong, color, gender, physical sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or what it means to be anything other than you. As you form you see others; many skin tones, shapes, sizes, and languages. Than life- like a mirror shows you what you look like.  You realize that the image of self isn’t quite matching the mental picture you’ve perceived. You see that you are comfortable in your skin, presentation, but slowly people point out that because of genitals that you have to be something contrary to your nature. You’re slowly but surely perplexed and ask why? Why do I look different than I feel?  On top of that people around you are pointing out that the skin, that youre wearing comfortably is no longer acceptable. Because of your skin tone somehow you were less than the others… People start to question your character, your identity, and your attributes because you stand out. You feel vulnerable. You feel unearthed. You feel alone. Like a teenage girl with anxiety about her weight, her acne, and her image, you start clawing at your skin. You rip, scratch, claw, beat at your flesh hoping that parts will change and shift. Maybe, if you scratch hard enough it’ll lighten up.. Maybe, if I cut at it, it’ll shift people’s perceptions,  Maybe if I change my hair color, wear color contacts, or dress more like those whom I see in a place of power in this world, it’ll work for my benefit; maybe just maybe if I change the way I talk, walk, and behave they’ll accept me… But still I am called a nigger/spic from my peers and sellout from those of my hue and community. No matter what I do- I am wrong.

Staring in the mirror I see my body and my image, isn’t what I believed it to be. I’ve seen others like me but their form isn’t the same. I have a penis where a vagina is supposed to be. I no longer have the perception of self that I once believed mattered. My life doesn’t matter. My love doesn’t matter. My heart doesn’t matter. No matter what I see I have found my identity to be unworthy, unacceptable, and torn down. Walking down the halls of school, living in my apartment complex, listening to the news, songs on the radio, messages of the church and many other religious institutions telling me that my identity is wrong- deserving of death; I am called a faggot,  abomination, sinner, and that I deserve to die. Could it be true? Could it be true that I am unworthy to be loved; could it be true that the nature of the world, the foundations that I was created from, and the womb that birth me is wrong? OR did somewhere along the way did I go wrong.. I feel hopeless.

After hate, after bulling,  after shaming, after slut shaming,  after neglect, and after rejection I am confronted with microaggression after microaggression… This is the journey of women of color. Being a woman is pain, lies, shame, and hurt. People want to exotify your identity you and abuse your being. If you aren’t white all of a sudden you’re the other. They think you’ll be their fantasy, their toy, their whore, and that you’ll fulfill their kinky sexual desires. You are not a person but an image of their imagination; a creation birthed in their mind to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and however they want. They want you to do whatever they say and whenever they want say because you don’t have a private life and you don’t deserve to be loved. Countless times, I am told what I am “supposed” to look like, talk like, and how I am not good enough. When we say no, we are told that are whores, sluts, disease ridden, and disgusting; a slew of microaggressive phrases, lies, and exaggerations thrown at  you but when you fight back youre in the wrong.

Intersex or TransWomen of Color are here to objectified, marginalized, subjugated into a box so demenished of love and life that we end up in sex work as a form of survival. In school we are taught that are bodies are here to the pleasure of the video vixen. I am supposed to be hyper sexual, twerk, and be all the things that “Whyte women aren’t”.. these are all Microagressions. I am supposed to have long nails, hair straight, always dolled up, and I am supposed to not exist until I am told too. I am not supposed to infringe on any males life because I should be just happy with the emotional leftovers that come from their dick. I am taught that I am too be smart but not too smart that I challenge any males manhood, ego, self esteem, self respect, or self perception. Unless he enjoys that than I should be that and all the above things his caregiver as well. Before I get too far ahead of myself I have to stop to remind everyone that I am supposed to be stealth at all points in time as well except when a man tells me it’s okay. Stealth means that intersex and transwomen (people born with either chromosomal, sexual, or reproductive organs that that don’t identify necessarily with the traits that a doctor says one is supposed to be at birth (intersex) or may have been born with a penis but identify with cisgender women or gender non gender conforming individuals (trans)) should do their best to be as close to the what “regular woman” look, act, behave, and live like Cisgender women. Cisgender is a person born one gender and identify with the gender they were born as. So just as I have stated above, I am supposed to as stealth as possible, passable (aka socially acceptable), hyper sexual, open, available, nurturing, motherly, invisible, have perfect vocal pitch/tone, pure, and yet, virginal. Everyday. Single. Day. I am supposed to be all these things to every male I meet: while being closeted about what I am, I’m still supposed to tell everyone I meet so no feels like they are being deceived/tricked. So please tell me how we supposed to live? How are we supposed to survive but be all these things to everyone?

It’s like socially conditioning, gas lighting, and abuse all the time. Literally in this world of constantly being the other you have to be strong or you won’t make it. According to the Washington Times,” More than 41 percent of those identifying as “transgender” or gender nonconforming who have attempted suicide, compared with 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt. It is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide. These data come from a study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and UCLA’s Williams Institute, which analyzed results from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. More than a dozen other studies since 2001 have found similar results for alarmingly high rates of suicide for transgender individuals like Chelsea Manning.” This doesn’t count those who weren’t interviewed. This isn’t adding those who ended their lives, were killed, or lost in the mix of life.

Before Laverne Cox can anyone name a Woman of Color who was trans in main stream America in the last 20 years? Can you name any woman of color that is trans or intersex that has made it mainstream without being a sex worker first? Almost all of them have been through it because the incredible amount of discrimination that we face trying to get jobs, look well, be mentally healthy, date, and just be ourselves. It’s so hard that we can’t ourselves. We’re constantly fighting, surviving, and trying to live. It’s difficult when over 60%  to 90% of the trans or intersex people I’ve known have no biological family to go or turn to for help. That means, when life falls apart we’ve either got to depend of the system or the people around us for help. It’s impossible to make it without help. Medication, education, awareness, and learning to survive, live, and POSSIBLY survive all comes with a price. Hormones, surgery, medication, and mental help all come with a hefty price tag and we are constantly trying to take care of it all while warring with the expectations that are laid upon us. Here’s been a snippet of the population that is constantly being oversexed, overstretched, and constantly being violated but we fight to survive.

Ive known the struggle of trying to be socially conscience, be a woman that I am proud of while, still trying to make people around me happy. My struggle isn’t alone; my struggle is than forced on others around me because they are near me. They become stigmatized, shamed, hated, and discriminated against. My life, our lives, can be and often are hell.  We fight for crumbs but often give up when the pain, weight, and hurt of the world becomes too much. People like to stigmatize us, limit us to our genitals, and socially condition us to be all that they want us to be but when we fight against that to become our own; own our sexuality, own our identity, fight against conformity, and demand to stand our ground we are often forced into a corner. This is why so many us end up dead, simply existing is a threat to power structure that tells us we shouldn’t exist.

As a bisexual, my sexuality was often erased. Here's why that's dangerous

Now I understand that finding the right terms is important to form a more accurate sense of self.

Rory Gory Opinion contributor

I came out as bisexual in 2004. At the time, it was the only way to explain my sexual attraction to people regardless of their gender, rather than specifically men or women. Then and today, bisexuals are often exposed to stigma from both the majority population, for not being heterosexual, and by the gay and lesbian communities for not having exclusive same-gender relationships and attractions.

Negative myths about bisexuals persist, such as the assumption that bisexuals are promiscuous, in the closet, or are unable to commit within a relationship. These biases have a damaging effect on the mental health of bisexuals, especially young people who are just beginning to form their identity and sense of self-worth.

According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, bisexuals make up the largest share of LGBT Americans.

Among Americans ages 18–44, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, 5.5% of women and 2% of men self-identify as bisexual.

Bisexual visibility means that we will be recognized in LGBTQ spaces and in seemingly straight spaces, where bisexuals are routinely erased. It's time for us to stop looking at the LGBTQ community as a silo, and begin to see LGBTQ people as an integrated part of society as a whole.

I came out as a lesbian in high school, was told to kill myself. I would do it all over again.

Polyamory isn't just about sex or lack of commitment. People should be free to explore their options.

Growing up, it felt like whatever small affirmations existed for being LGBTQ, the overarching message was that being queer was both shameful yet simultaneously sexualized. Among bisexual youth, 21% reported having been forced to have sexual intercourse, compared with 5% of heterosexual peers and 16% gay and lesbian youth.

Gender plays a statistically significant role in the sexual assault of bisexuals, with 24% female and 8% male bisexual youth reporting having been forced to have sexual intercourse.

After coming out as bisexual, I ran away to Chicago, where the words I used to define who I was began to shift with the genders of my partners and my own gender expression. While dating a trans woman, I embraced sexual and gender fluidity, but I couldn’t really find community in gay spaces in 2006. There was freedom in letting labels go and just being myself. At 18 years old, I figured if there was no word to describe who I was, why try?

Now I understand that finding the right terms is important to form a more accurate sense of self — something our cisgender, heterosexual counterparts don't have to experience.

For many of us, sexuality may be a fluid experience, but the outcomes for different sexualities are distinct. The Trevor Project's analysis of national data from the 2015–17 CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey revealed that nearly 2 in 3 of bisexual youth felt sad and hopeless for two or more weeks in a row in the past 12 months, compared with 49% gay and lesbian youth and 27% heterosexually identified youth.

I'm still bisexual, regardless of who I date at the time

Returning back to Boston in 2010, my sexuality remained fluid, but I began a relationship that was perceived as heterosexual. My sexuality was no longer visible now that I had access to all the privileges of being read as a straight woman, even when I outed myself as bisexual. But the word bisexual didn't always convey my fluid gender identity. Without any other words, I buried myself with my trauma and quietly let others define my identity for me. I internalized my lack of visibility and became invisible.

Overall, lesbian, gay and bisexual youth report to suffering from higher rates of discrimination, victimization, negative mental health outcomes and suicidal tendencies than their heterosexual peers, according to the CDC. While we are suffering as a whole, our different sexualities and genders also impact our outcomes for mental health and sexual assault. If we hope to address these issues in our community, we need to be accounted for.

Our words to define our identities do matter when we collect data to understand the needs of our communities. My experiences with erasure, lack of belonging, sexual assault and suicidal tendencies might seem severe, but when you take into account that I am nonbinary and bisexual, I am statistically common. I may embrace the word queer as an easy catch-all descriptor for a fluid gender and sexuality in conversation, but the experience of being bisexual puts me at a much higher risk for both suicide and sexual assault.

To say that labels don't matter at all is to say that those statistical differences don't matter.

Rory Gory is the digital marketing manager for The Trevor Project, a suicide-prevention organization for LGBTQ youth. You can follow them on Twitter: @rorygory.

The Gift My Character Gave Me: Knowing Myself

Roleplaying can create empathy for others and provide the opportunity for self discovery.

Today’s post is a very personal one addressing self exploration through role playing. This is about a positive life change discovered through roleplay that I’d like to share.

One of the golden rules of great game groups is to encourage each person to bring their personality and unique ideas to the game. As a dominant player (who basically thought my ideas were the best) this was a hard lesson to learn but infinitely valuable to enhancing my enjoyment of games. Additionally, when I bring more of myself to my role I am more fulfilled by the experience. Through play, each person gets to highlight what is important to them and their character. In many ways, role playing can be a window to the soul.

Sometimes the things explored through roleplay and the lessons learned have ramifications that reach far out into a person’s life. Roleplaying, and my character Harrison in particular, helped me reach a literally life changing revelation.

Recognizing the Gift.

There are numerous skills I have refined through roleplay: speaking up, long term planning, problem solving, thinking outside the box. All of those are great, but that’s not why I’m writing this post. It’s self-discovery time.

At the beginning of 2018 I played in a Tales from the Loop game as Harrison, a 14 year old trouble maker, who I played only a half dozen times. He was a boy becoming a man who was struggling to find his place in the world. I wrote more than 100 pages of fiction and backstory about him. That amount of devotion to a character had never happened before and I realized I had to understand what was going on. Why did I *need* Harrison so much? Harrison was the tipping point in a major self-revelation that literally changed my life.

In role playing games I play as a fictionalized version of myself, sometimes my idealized best self, sometimes leaning deeply into my flaws and touching on the mixture of hope and tragedy that is the human condition. My characters have been tall, short, caucasian, people of color, human, daemon hosts, fat, thin, straight, gay, bisexual, happy, lonely, rich, starving, religious, agnostic, and many other things. But my favorite characters have shared one trait since I started playing at 6 years old, they’ve been male.

What I’m here to say is: it wasn’t just my characters who were always male. It was me. Hi, I’m Wen and I am a transgender man.

Why Tell the Gnome Stew Audience?

Role playing has been the place I have been my fullest self for the last three decades. I can walk up to any game table, introduce my character and have them accepted for who they are without question. I was accepted as *who I was* without question. That is powerful beyond my ability to express. It vented steam I didn’t know was otherwise building up in my head. Roleplaying kept me safe and gave me the outlet I needed until I was ready to face myself.

For a long time I’ve said that the highest function of role playing is the ability to create empathy through game play. What I missed was that role playing can foster deep self-exploration, the ability to not just understand or empathize with others, but to know yourself. As such, role playing as a hobby and my characters, including Harrison, have always been extremely important to me. In some ways my characters were more “me” than I was allowing myself to be.

Many players don’t need roleplaying in the way I have. Not every role player will have a revelation like mine. However some of us do. I think this it is important to highlight because it is one of the reasons that a player’s agency in their character can be so extremely important. When you play, keep in mind that you never know how close a person’s character may be to their sense of self. Removing agency in the character may feel violating to the player in ways you don’t understand. Regardless of the circumstances, to keep your players trust, don’t compromise anyone’s agency in their character without their enthusiastic prior consent.

What Can We Do Next?

For readers wondering if there is anything you can do to make life better and easier for transgender people like me, the answer is an emphatic: Yes! I’m writing this section of the article with our cisgender audience in mind, but everyone is invited to read on. These are my personal opinions and learnings but I think they are a good starting place for being an informed friend and ally.

I’m still me. While your perception may have shifted, at my core I am still the same person, and that is true of all transgender people. If you were acquaintances or friends before, there is no reason that should change. As a gamer, if your friend brought a character of a different gender to the table, I imagine you’d say okay and move on with the game. Follow that same model in real life. There isn’t any reason people should act differently (read: uncomfortably) around one another. Focus on what you have in common, just like always, and you’ll be fine.

Honest communication and education demystifies being transgender. If you don’t know what I mean when I say “transgender” or “trans” read this (for a quick refresher on terms look here). Start by doing some reading and branch out from there. Ask questions in good faith and clearly express the desire to listen, learn, and understand individual people’s perspective.

Transitioning 101. There are several kinds of transition, not every transgender person transitions in every way. A transgender person’s identity is valid regardless of a person’s ability or desire to do any of these steps. Safety comes first and each kind of transition has its own risks and costs. Internalize this fact, accept it, and please don’t judge one another about it.

Social transition can involve several possible steps like coming out to friends, family, and coworkers; using a different name, pronouns, or titles; and updating gender expression through clothing, hairstyle, make up, etc.

Legal transition can include a name change and/or updating gender markers on legal paperwork like identification cards and passports. Rules typically require some form of “proof” which may take an extended period of time to obtain.

Medical transition can include hormone therapy, voice therapy, hair removal treatments, and surgeries. Rules require varying degrees of “proof” before medically transitioning, which may take months or years to obtain. If you aren’t in a relationship with someone where you already discuss deeply personal medical matters or each other’s genitals it isn’t appropriate to ask about medical transition. If someone wants to talk to you about it let them bring it up. That’s just common courtesy.

Pronouns: He/Him/His, She/Her/Hers, They/Them/Theirs, Name Only. Together we can normalize offering and asking for each other’s pronouns. If cisgender (non-transgender) people normalize this practice people who are trans (or non-binary or genderfluid) won’t effectively have to “out” ourselves every time we meet someone new.

Start by offering your own pronouns and then asking other people’s pronouns when you meet. Opening that door for people to walk through who may not identify exactly as they appear on the surface is one of the best gifts you can give.

Offering your pronouns in online spaces like on your social media pages, dating profiles, or email signatures, also normalizes the practice and makes written communication easier. If you can take 5 minutes to do that now, that would be awesome! (Ex. He/Him/His, She/Her/Hers, They/Them/Theirs)

When asking for someone’s pronouns you can leave out the word “preferred” as in “What are your preferred pronouns?” It’s extraneous. To me saying “preferred” implies that you are humoring me instead of simply respecting me. That’s not everyone’s take, but if someone wants to let you know that their pronouns are preferred, their response can simply be “My preferred pronouns are…”

Respect a person’s name and pronouns. If a person uses a new name, use that and don’t refer to them by their birth name (often called a “dead name”). When someone calls me “ma’am” I respond with “It’s sir, thank you.” Typically people take that in stride and carry on, you can do the same. If you slip up, correct yourself and move on. If you make a big deal about apologizing it is going to make everyone uncomfortable. If you are trying to get it right no harm, no foul, I forgive you, the end.

Help others to get it right. Be clear and be consistent, but don’t make a scene. I’m okay with folks correcting other people on my behalf, that takes some of the weight off my shoulders and spreads it around. It helps me to maintain my dignity and self-respect. Ask your friends if it is alright if you do this for them too and respect their decision.

Some people do not use pronouns. In that case specifically use their name or other descriptors, honoured guest, my friend, the author.

They/Them/Theirs can feel awkward in the singular form. The Associated Press Stylebook adopted it in 2017, we are living in the future, so this is your opportunity to be a strong ally and accept change. If needed, you can read more about it here.

Be a Visible Ally and Back it Up with Your Actions. Your words matter. Your actions matter. Your votes matter. Visibility matters (that’s why I wrote this post). It is important to nurture and embrace diversity in all spaces, including gaming spaces. Wear your rainbow colored shirts, pronoun pins, and Ally ribbons at conventions and game stores. I can’t tell you how happy I was that I could always pick at least one person in the crowd wherever I was at Gen Con 2018 with a rainbow shirt on. Listen and act in good faith. If you made it this far, you’ve already taken the first step, cheers! If someone tells you their experience and you aren’t transgender, listen, believe, and value their experience. Finally, human rights need to be inclusive of people of all genders and sexual identities. However those rights are called into question and potentially being eroded even as you read this. This is the time to unite, stand up for each other, and keep each other safe by working together as allies and friends.

Final Thoughts.

I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to share my experience, and I appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this article. I cherish games and game players. I believe role playing as our common bond is a powerful force to unite people, I’ve always found my best friends through the hobby. I’ll always love and adore my characters, but now that I am myself all the time my characters have less of a burden on their imaginary shoulders. Roleplaying did its job shielding me for a long time, but it is a relief to be myself full time now.

It’s good to know you as myself beyond the game table. Wen

******* Special thanks to: Deanna, Chelsea, Ang, Senda, Rob, John, and Camdon for their advance feedback; to my game group Quincy, Derek, Jake, Senda, Camdon, and Brett; and to the creators of Tales from the Loop for unexpectedly laying the groundwork for my exploration.

The Gift My Character Gave Me: Knowing Myself published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

The Gift My Character Gave Me: Knowing Myself

Roleplaying can create empathy for others and provide the opportunity for self discovery.

Today’s post is a very personal one addressing self exploration through role playing. This is about a positive life change discovered through roleplay that I’d like to share.

One of the golden rules of great game groups is to encourage each person to bring their personality and unique ideas to the game. As a dominant player (who basically thought my ideas were the best) this was a hard lesson to learn but infinitely valuable to enhancing my enjoyment of games. Additionally, when I bring more of myself to my role I am more fulfilled by the experience. Through play, each person gets to highlight what is important to them and their character. In many ways, role playing can be a window to the soul.

Sometimes the things explored through roleplay and the lessons learned have ramifications that reach far out into a person’s life. Roleplaying, and my character Harrison in particular, helped me reach a literally life changing revelation.

Recognizing the Gift.

There are numerous skills I have refined through roleplay: speaking up, long term planning, problem solving, thinking outside the box. All of those are great, but that’s not why I’m writing this post. It’s self-discovery time.

At the beginning of 2018 I played in a Tales from the Loop game as Harrison, a 14 year old trouble maker, who I played only a half dozen times. He was a boy becoming a man who was struggling to find his place in the world. I wrote more than 100 pages of fiction and backstory about him. That amount of devotion to a character had never happened before and I realized I had to understand what was going on. Why did I *need* Harrison so much? Harrison was the tipping point in a major self-revelation that literally changed my life.

In role playing games I play as a fictionalized version of myself, sometimes my idealized best self, sometimes leaning deeply into my flaws and touching on the mixture of hope and tragedy that is the human condition. My characters have been tall, short, caucasian, people of color, human, daemon hosts, fat, thin, straight, gay, bisexual, happy, lonely, rich, starving, religious, agnostic, and many other things. But my favorite characters have shared one trait since I started playing at 6 years old, they’ve been male.

What I’m here to say is: it wasn’t just my characters who were always male. It was me. Hi, I’m Wen and I am a transgender man.

Why Tell the Gnome Stew Audience?

Role playing has been the place I have been my fullest self for the last three decades. I can walk up to any game table, introduce my character and have them accepted for who they are without question. I was accepted as *who I was* without question. That is powerful beyond my ability to express. It vented steam I didn’t know was otherwise building up in my head. Roleplaying kept me safe and gave me the outlet I needed until I was ready to face myself.

For a long time I’ve said that the highest function of role playing is the ability to create empathy through game play. What I missed was that role playing can foster deep self-exploration, the ability to not just understand or empathize with others, but to know yourself. As such, role playing as a hobby and my characters, including Harrison, have always been extremely important to me. In some ways my characters were more “me” than I was allowing myself to be.

Many players don’t need roleplaying in the way I have. Not every role player will have a revelation like mine. However some of us do. I think this it is important to highlight because it is one of the reasons that a player’s agency in their character can be so extremely important. When you play, keep in mind that you never know how close a person’s character may be to their sense of self. Removing agency in the character may feel violating to the player in ways you don’t understand. Regardless of the circumstances, to keep your players trust, don’t compromise anyone’s agency in their character without their enthusiastic prior consent.

What Can We Do Next?

For readers wondering if there is anything you can do to make life better and easier for transgender people like me, the answer is an emphatic: Yes! I’m writing this section of the article with our cisgender audience in mind, but everyone is invited to read on. These are my personal opinions and learnings but I think they are a good starting place for being an informed friend and ally.

I’m still me. While your perception may have shifted, at my core I am still the same person, and that is true of all transgender people. If you were acquaintances or friends before, there is no reason that should change. As a gamer, if your friend brought a character of a different gender to the table, I imagine you’d say okay and move on with the game. Follow that same model in real life. There isn’t any reason people should act differently (read: uncomfortably) around one another. Focus on what you have in common, just like always, and you’ll be fine.

Honest communication and education demystifies being transgender. If you don’t know what I mean when I say “transgender” or “trans” read this (for a quick refresher on terms look here). Start by doing some reading and branch out from there. Ask questions in good faith and clearly express the desire to listen, learn, and understand individual people’s perspective.

Transitioning 101. There are several kinds of transition, not every transgender person transitions in every way. A transgender person’s identity is valid regardless of a person’s ability or desire to do any of these steps. Safety comes first and each kind of transition has its own risks and costs. Internalize this fact, accept it, and please don’t judge one another about it.

Social transition can involve several possible steps like coming out to friends, family, and coworkers; using a different name, pronouns, or titles; and updating gender expression through clothing, hairstyle, make up, etc.

Legal transition can include a name change and/or updating gender markers on legal paperwork like identification cards and passports. Rules typically require some form of “proof” which may take an extended period of time to obtain.

Medical transition can include hormone therapy, voice therapy, hair removal treatments, and surgeries. Rules require varying degrees of “proof” before medically transitioning, which may take months or years to obtain. If you aren’t in a relationship with someone where you already discuss deeply personal medical matters or each other’s genitals it isn’t appropriate to ask about medical transition. If someone wants to talk to you about it let them bring it up. That’s just common courtesy.

Pronouns: He/Him/His, She/Her/Hers, They/Them/Theirs, Name Only. Together we can normalize offering and asking for each other’s pronouns. If cisgender (non-transgender) people normalize this practice people who are trans (or non-binary or genderfluid) won’t effectively have to “out” ourselves every time we meet someone new.

Start by offering your own pronouns and then asking other people’s pronouns when you meet. Opening that door for people to walk through who may not identify exactly as they appear on the surface is one of the best gifts you can give.

Offering your pronouns in online spaces like on your social media pages, dating profiles, or email signatures, also normalizes the practice and makes written communication easier. If you can take 5 minutes to do that now, that would be awesome! (Ex. He/Him/His, She/Her/Hers, They/Them/Theirs)

When asking for someone’s pronouns you can leave out the word “preferred” as in “What are your preferred pronouns?” It’s extraneous. To me saying “preferred” implies that you are humoring me instead of simply respecting me. That’s not everyone’s take, but if someone wants to let you know that their pronouns are preferred, their response can simply be “My preferred pronouns are…”

Respect a person’s name and pronouns. If a person uses a new name, use that and don’t refer to them by their birth name (often called a “dead name”). When someone calls me “ma’am” I respond with “It’s sir, thank you.” Typically people take that in stride and carry on, you can do the same. If you slip up, correct yourself and move on. If you make a big deal about apologizing it is going to make everyone uncomfortable. If you are trying to get it right no harm, no foul, I forgive you, the end.

Help others to get it right. Be clear and be consistent, but don’t make a scene. I’m okay with folks correcting other people on my behalf, that takes some of the weight off my shoulders and spreads it around. It helps me to maintain my dignity and self-respect. Ask your friends if it is alright if you do this for them too and respect their decision.

Some people do not use pronouns. In that case specifically use their name or other descriptors, honoured guest, my friend, the author.

They/Them/Theirs can feel awkward in the singular form. The Associated Press Stylebook adopted it in 2017, we are living in the future, so this is your opportunity to be a strong ally and accept change. If needed, you can read more about it here.

Be a Visible Ally and Back it Up with Your Actions. Your words matter. Your actions matter. Your votes matter. Visibility matters (that’s why I wrote this post). It is important to nurture and embrace diversity in all spaces, including gaming spaces. Wear your rainbow colored shirts, pronoun pins, and Ally ribbons at conventions and game stores. I can’t tell you how happy I was that I could always pick at least one person in the crowd wherever I was at Gen Con 2018 with a rainbow shirt on. Listen and act in good faith. If you made it this far, you’ve already taken the first step, cheers! If someone tells you their experience and you aren’t transgender, listen, believe, and value their experience. Finally, human rights need to be inclusive of people of all genders and sexual identities. However those rights are called into question and potentially being eroded even as you read this. This is the time to unite, stand up for each other, and keep each other safe by working together as allies and friends.

Final Thoughts.

I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to share my experience, and I appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this article. I cherish games and game players. I believe role playing as our common bond is a powerful force to unite people, I’ve always found my best friends through the hobby. I’ll always love and adore my characters, but now that I am myself all the time my characters have less of a burden on their imaginary shoulders. Roleplaying did its job shielding me for a long time, but it is a relief to be myself full time now.

It’s good to know you as myself beyond the game table. Wen

******* Special thanks to: Deanna, Chelsea, Ang, Senda, Rob, John, and Camdon for their advance feedback; to my game group Quincy, Derek, Jake, Senda, Camdon, and Brett; and to the creators of Tales from the Loop for unexpectedly laying the groundwork for my exploration.

The Gift My Character Gave Me: Knowing Myself published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

Heres what it was like being ‘the gay kid’ from ‘School of Rock.’ (Spoiler: not fun.)

If you watched Jack Black’s 2003 comedy “School of Rock,” you probably remember Billy.

In a pivotal scene where Black’s character, substitute teacher Mr. Finn, is urging students to “fight the man” by insulting him, Billy’s response became one of the film’s standout one-liners: “You’re tacky and I hate you.”

The sassy comment was quoted off-camera. A lot. The line became a well-traveled GIF and meme with impressive shelf life. 15 years after the film premiered, Google pretty much knows that if you’re searching “you’re tacky,” you’re likely digging for the comedic gem in some form or another.

While Billy became an on-screen favorite, the young actor who brought him to life, however, grappled with a sobering reality unfolding behind the scenes: the pitfalls of being labeled the “gay kid” from “School of Rock” before he even really understood what being gay actually meant.

At 11 years old, all actor Brian Falduto knew about the word “gay” was that it was often meant to be an insult.

And many people — and media outlets — were directing the label at him.

Falduto (left) with a friend. Photo courtesy of Brian Falduto.

While he continued acting throughout middle school, Falduto returned to a relatively normal life in New Jersey after shooting the film. But the stereotypes associated with his character followed him there.

“For you to not even hit puberty and have people start labeling you [as gay] is interesting,” Falduto explains, his tone suggesting there’s another word for it.

“I was very quickly labeled ‘the gay kid’ from ‘School of Rock’ once the movie came out, both among peers and strangers. I was in fifth grade, and the world was informing me of who I was or how they saw me. My identity wasn’t mine to claim.”

Falduto (front row, third from the left) and his young “School of Rock” co-stars. Photo courtesy of Brian Falduto.

Falduto’s label as “the gay kid” in the film contributed to the bullying he faced in school.

He says he was picked on for hanging out with girls instead of boys. A couple of classmates created a “I Hate Brian Club” — something Falduto laughs off now as being ridiculous and juvenile, but at the time, he says it felt ostracizing. “It was rough to deal with,” the actor explains of feeling different. “But a lot of the time, I would pretend I didn’t hear these things.”

Falduto (middle) with loved ones. Photo courtesy of Brian Falduto.

“People have gone through much worse than I have,” Falduto makes sure to point out, noting he had a good group of friends and was even elected prom king. But the love and support he felt couldn’t stomp out all the homophobia.

In high school, another student spread a video of Falduto dancing with friends and included a gay slur and threatening message in the post’s caption. “That was a rough day, for sure,” he says.

Falduto’s story may be unique because of his ties to Hollywood, but his battle with bullying is relatable for too many LGBTQ kids.

Queer youth remain at significantly higher risk of bullying at the hands of their classmates. One study published last year by research firm RTI International found LGBTQ kids are harassed or threatened at rates two to three times higher than their straight, cisgender peers.

What’s more, RTI’s research — analyzing data from the previous two decades — discovered a startling shift.

“We want to think that things are getting better,” Tasseli McKay, a social science researcher at RTI’s Center for Justice, told The Daily Beast. “In regards to the victimization that young people are experiencing, the trend is toward victimization worsening, not getting better.”

But Falduto’s story shows why every LGBTQ kid should hold out hope.

Photo courtesy of Sub/Urban Photography.

“I’m finally OK being ‘the gay kid’ from ‘School of Rock,'” Falduto explains of his journey toward self-acceptance. “I’m happy with who I am.”

Today, the 26-year-old lives in Los Angeles and continues auditioning for new roles. He dove into the music world more recently, releasing his debut EP, “Love One Another,” last summer and launched a live performance series on YouTube as well.

Falduto plans to be certified as an LGBTQ life coach, hoping his own story can help queer kids come out and feel confident in their own skin. “I almost appreciate my struggles more,” Falduto says, “because people who may not have struggled as much may not have asked the same questions I’ve asked myself that have made me a better person.”

Photo courtesy of Sub/Urban Photography.

“The freedom that comes with accepting who you are is so liberating,” Falduto says.

“It sounds like the scariest thing you could ever do, but it’s actually the most liberating thing you could ever do.”

Watch Falduto performing “Turn That Song Back On” in his live performance series below:

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/here-s-what-it-was-like-being-the-gay-kid-from-school-of-rock-spoiler-not-fun

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