Your pronouns are not a burden!! Your preferred name is not a burden!! The people who truly care about you should care that what they refer to you as makes you comfortable and happy! If they refuse to use it, it’s on them, not you!! Don’t live your life afraid of being yourself because you don’t want to be a burden to others!!

So, this is going to be a little meandering and all over the place. But I'm trying to express this...web of thoughts I've been having lately around this issue of queer, and labels, and the way we talk about our history and the way the community conceptualized itself in this very digital age. And it's still kind of half formed, so...let's see.

So. OK.

One thing I see a lot online, especially with people who are just now coming out, is a sort of...overfixation on increasingly niche labels. Im not saying that having a very specific or newer label is bad, to be clear. Labels are rhetorical tools, use what is useful. They help with visibility and discussing specific issues. No issues there.

But watching people quibble over bi vs pan vs omni vs abro or non-binary vs genderqueer vs demigender vs genderfluid vs agender vs xenogender vs bigender vs gnc. Asexual or gray ace or demisexual or queerplatonic. And whether they are a biromantic lesbian demigirl or bisexual greyaromantic genderuid. And it's always just a little exhausting, ya know? Again, if those labels are meaningful and useful, that's great, but I see people *agonizing* over which they "really" are. Like if they pick the wrong word to describe themselves, they are coming out the wrong way, like they are wrong about themselves if they can't find the exact correct word on an FAQ list of lgbt vocabulary.

And how I think that relates to the way people talk about our CURRENT labels as though these labels have always been there and like the people described by these labels now have no common experiences with other labels. Like lesbians and bisexual women have absolutely nothing in common. Like butches and trans men have no shared history. As though trans women and drag queens have always been completely separate and unconnected groups. As though ace folks and nonbinary folks are somehow new to the scene, and not community members who were always here and just didn't have a separate label until more recently.

I *remember* watching the community make the switch from transvestite and transsexual, to differentiating between transsexuals and transgender, to basically just using transgender/trans. Those labels are not stagnant. None of our labels are some ingrained biological unchanging objective truth. Labels are rhetorical shortcuts to summarize this facet of our identity and lives and experiences- but they are just words.

And maybe this connects to the way people get really...weird about historical figures too. Like whether Sappho was a lesbian or bisexual, as though either of those words would have had any meaning to her. About whether Shakespeare was gay or bi, like he would have conceptualized his own identity that way. About what modern label Dr. James Barry would have used for himself if anyone could travel back in time and ask him.

And then I think about why queer feels so much more affirming, so much more a place of strength, than LGBT+. Not that LGBT as a label is bad, and I honestly probably prefer it for allies and outsiders to use. But as a community label- Queer, to me, says that all our experiences are queer experiences. Queer can be many things, but they are all queer. Regardless of how many genders or which specific genders you like, whether you have a romantic and or sexual attraction to whatever collection of genders, whatever thing your gender is doing today- all of it, ALL of it, once you step outside that cis, straight mainstream sexuality and gender norm- is queer. Equally queer.

Lgbt+ feels like we are still keeping all those labels separate, little boxes all lined up next to each other- different but a coalition. And while that isn't bad, I also think it isn't totally true.

[A caveat here, that there are times when more specific labels are very helpful. We don't want any specific kind of queer experience to be overshadowed or erased, and having more specific labels facilitates those discussions. Again, I'm not saying that we should eliminate or erase our more specific labels.]

But I think imagining our community as a collection of wholly separate groups that are just allied together, instead of one group that we are all equally in, can make it far too easy for exclusionists to sneak up and say "well ___ isn't REALLY lgbt. THEY aren't REALLY one of us. ___ dont belong."

If we take all the labels off all the crayons- red and pink and purple and blue and teal and green are not hard and fast divisions. They are artificial distinctions we have made- all of them are light, all of them the rainbow.

Anyway. I just think that, while everyone should use whatever labels bring them joy and are useful for them, we might be better off if more folks were ok with ALSO accepting the vast ambiguity of being queer.

Me when my gender fluctuates: it's okay! Gender is fluid, it's only natural that I sometimes don't feel completely masculine.

Me when my sexuality fluctuates: jail for Milo. Jail for ten thousand years.

"We can't have kink at pride because there are kids there!"

Pride isn't for kids. Full stop. Pride is for queer people to celebrate themselves and make it clear that we're not going back in the fucking closet. There are kid friendly events at pride, and by all means bring your kids there, but pride isn't for kids.

So many people seem to have forgotten that pride was a protest and frequently a riot, and all prides today carry the implicit threat that if you try and force us back into the closet they will be riots again. The corporate sanitized version of pride is just a fucking smoke screen to allow companies to use the event for marketing and to pay for permitting and shit.

Back in the day, being queer was itself considered kink by broader society. Hence why it's so frequently mislabeled as a choice or a life style, and not an indelible part of someone's being. You can't choose to stop loving who you love, or being who you are, but to the cishets, it was seen that way, and if some groups had their way it would be considered that again.

If you accept the premise that we need to sanitize pride to make it acceptable to those who previously rejected us (and we fucking don't) then you accept the possibility of our identities being erase from public life again the moment they stop being "respectable". Nobody ever won their liberty by politely asking the boot to get off their neck now please, it's won through blood, sweat, and direct action.

An entire fucking generation of queer people died of AIDS to get us where we are today, and by playing into respectability politics you spit on their graves. None of them were afforded dignity while they lay dying in hospital beds, their chosen family forbidden from seeing them while their birth families refused to acknowledge their existence. It didn't matter how 'respectable' they were before they contracted HIV and it advanced to AIDS, they were refuse from that point. Marked as disposable and left to die by the Reagan administration.

Respectability won't save you. Assimilating won't save you. The people who want us gone do not care how much you conform to the white picket fence and life in the burbs with 1.5 kids and a dog. They want you eradicated no matter how respectable you are. They want you to go back into the closet. They want queer people to stop existing in public life. They want to kill those of us who refuse to suffer in silence.

The only way we survive and thrive is by being loud, being proud, and refusing to apologize for who we are.

Happy fucking pride everyone.

Her tits look so good fuuuuck, wanna kiss them n roll my tongue over her nipples to feel them harden in my mouth, wanna have her bend over on her knees until her ass is brushing against my cunt- feel her grinding her tight little pussy against my thighs when she sinks into my lap,

Wanna grab her tits while I sit behind her, her pretty ass grinding into my crotch so she can feel how wet I get, her legs spread in front of her while I kiss her back n murmur about how "you're such a good girl for daddy . . .", gonna keep a hand underneath her thighs so I can finger her sopping pussy faster n deeper like the whore she is

My gender is Greedy. I want all of the genders. All at once but also separately. Like a dog with too many balls it can’t fit them all in its mouth but it keeps trying.

Are we being bros or is this flirting?

Ace/Aro Identities in Media and Fandom

Alrighty I am jumping on the choo choo train of discussing this topic because OH BOY do I have little big thoughts. As someone who identifies as both asexual and aromanitic I would like to say that that is the perspective I am speaking from. I experience no sexual or romantic attraction and while being open to being in a queer platonic relationship sex would never be a part of it and neither would many aspects of romance. All the words after the cut!

Now to the fun and funky part!! OH MY GOD laddies, lassies, lairds please when something is canonized respect that. You know the joy you felt when your identity was seen on screen for the first time and you felt seen and heard? It's the same for me and for many who identify similarly. Those are big steps in inclusion and allow a lot of people to understand themselves sooner and with less stress and fear. Representation is IMPORTANT regardless of if it's something you identify with or not. Because when it comes to be your turn to see yourself in something I would hope everyone affords you the same courtesy to allow you that joy. Now on to talking about wronguns. As much as I wish to give everyone the benefit of the doubt I have seen aspec people pushed down the metaphorical stairs more times than I can count. This isn't to compare to other identities this is not the oppression olympics and nor will it ever be frankly we're all in this together to create a better world for all of us. If you are comfortable with ignoring ace/aro identities when it comes to shipping and speaking about their character but WOULD NOT do so for other identities that is something that you should deeply think about. In addition to this every person is allowed to experience their identity differently. Some asexual people have sex, some aromantic people date etc. etc. but that doesn't mean that can be taken and applied to every person to make them more palpable for the masses. Some people DON'T want to have sex or be in relationships and that is something that should also be respected. People need to understand that using the "oh well some people are ok with those things!!" is not the win you think it is. Because also some people ARE NOT and that is a core part of who they are and is not something that can be changed. Do better to understand both sides of this coin and if the creators and character in the media has stated that they are ace/aro work to understand that. To the Ace/Aro people and the people who got this far congratulations! I wrote lots of words in a fit of thoughts to place on my little blog and sometimes that is hard to read so thank you! To the aspec crew particularly you are all so incredibly wonderful where ever you fall and you deserve to see yourself in media without it being ignored and pushed aside! I genuinely am so happy to be able to be a part of the community and hope to be able to see so much more of us in the future.

screams into the mic

YES!!!!!! BISEXUAL LEON!!!! TRANS ALLY LEON!!!!!!! GENDER FUCKERY!!!!!!!!!!! i ENCOURAGE u to write so much everything. we need more trans reader x leon content its not even funny. i am absolutely here in support!!!

im just gonna be full cringe on main here but!! i literally think ab being w (re2) leon when i was still an egg, and him being supportive of me when im questioning it and when i come out and being so protective and supportive and <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3 i love thinking ab him helping me w starting hrt w both researching who to go to to start it and actually doing it <3<3 (im obsessed w leon and i know hes literally the biggest ally ever. me n him are literally perfect bi4bi :3333) i want him to proudly show me off to his friends and coworkers!!! get weird looks cause we queer as fuck!!! and proud!!!

ok im done HAHSBAHDSBNS 🐕

Screaming back at you!

BISEXUAL LEON IS SUCH A TRANS ALLY. HE WOULD RESEARCH ALL UR DOCTORS APPOINTMENTS WITH YOU. HE WOULD LITERALLY OFFER TO ADMINISTER YOUR DOSE.

I'm so happy re2 Leon brought you peace in those moments <3 Gender is so fucked. Yeah being trans is great, but everything else that comes with it HURTS. Sometimes you just want to sit next to Leon on a big comfy couch talking about your gender, yanno?

I think Leon would be so thrilled to finally have someone take him up on his dinner offer, he would want to show them off. He'd want to know if you were comfortable with it, and whether you were comfortable with going by your correct name/pronouns among his coworkers. He'd be more than happy to show you off to those around him, and would love the fact that you're trans- because it's you.

Thank you for your support and your message! I definitely want to write a leon queerfic. Actually I want to write many. I want one where they're feeling dysphoric, and a history of his bisexuality! I definitely headcanon Leon as bisexual/pansexual, he's just such a friend of Dorothy. That man/nonbinary entity is queer your honor

Sometimes I deny myself the validity of forget that nonbinary folks are under the transgender umbrella and thus I'm not invading trans spaces when I desire a t4t relationship where I don't have to explain any of this gender shit.

I have been told that I am invading spaces by both cis and trans folks before and it just poisons the mind

Too loyal, too available, too vulnerable— I gave you too much before you could prove that you could handle all of me.

Want to paint with a pretty boy oh my godsss

Like a on canvas? Our walls together in all funky colours?? Each others faces for pride events???

Just creativity flowing together <3

sometimes I have a good day, but then I remember that Davina isn’t real and I will never suck her dick

what a cruel and unjust world, the only constant is suffering😔

nonhumanity affects my life here in this realm every day, in my spirituality and my ability to navigate this body, as well as how that affects being trans

body dysmorphia and disphoria are suffocating some days

there is a contradiction between feeling euphoria at the changes the testosterone is causing to this body and how this skin i am living in feels fundamentally wrong

like an itch you can scratch, and it feels so good, yet the more you scratch the deeper the nails dig into the rawness of the wound

that is not to say that i do not celebrate finally having a connection to this body and seeing the human experience through a different perspective

everyone experiences this place differently, whether you are nonhuman, or queer

any way that you can find to make it bearable - whatever that may be, no matter how small or insignificant - you are allowed to celebrate.

you are loved, and you have value. do not give up.

I am very glad a post I made about social contagion and Steam Powered Giraffe is finding its audience.

BUT.

Even though this was intended as a joke, I have thought about it since and did see some things in tags that made me want to clarify what I mean by “social contagion” versus what I called “the station” in my tags. Someone used “gateway drug,” which is also apropos. Because there is a very crucial difference between the two, I think, and I want to make sure nothing I said gets misconstrued by the wrong people.

When cishet people say being queer is due to social contagion, what they’re saying is that were it not for exposure to queerness, or deviance, in media or in public life, people would default to Straight. That’s why they’re working so hard to scrub queerness, or any hint of queerness, from the public sphere.

But the thing is, they wouldn’t be so afraid of queer exposure if cishetness was that ingrained, right? It’s not that people are being exposed to lgbtq+ people or content and suddenly becoming queer, they already were or it was through that exposure that they realized they were. Those are completely different things.

It’s like going through your life being told you only have to be options A or B. There’s no other options, you’re A or B. But then one day you see option C and you’re like “woah, nobody told me about C, that looks way more comfortable/authentic” or “woah, I’m totally C, why did nobody tell me about that? If I don’t have to try so hard to be A or B anymore, I won’t.”

The humor for me is just how, to me, blatantly obvious, like it is a verifiable, Googleable fact that gender, sex, and sexuality are complex and largely social constructs and that binary gender is a pretty recent Western phenomenon, and yet conservatives (and centrists, even some Dems I hate to say!) are acting like social media is creating queerness, and it’s like no, more people are just more likely to see option C, D, and Etc. these days.

And it’s the type of things they’re trying to ban. Like, if the cisheterosexual institution can’t hold its own against a short haircut, certain colors, people kissing, or, in the case of my post, 2-4 singing robot mimes, perhaps the institution was not that strong to begin with!!! That’s just how people found their option C, and that’s a good thing!! More of that!! That they can’t see how obvious this is, that’s what’s absurd to me.

The thing is, before social media, people found ways before. They found their stations in other people, people whose genders they felt more aligned with their own, in spiritual centering, in nature, in everything. They wrote secret notes, experimented in private, tried new clothes on, and gave each other secret names. Queer people, trans people, nonbinary people, everyone else, have always been here.

Even if they ban queer lit from every public school (I hope they don’t, and they most definitely shouldn’t, but this is a catastrophic example), we will continue to find our ways out of this sour little cage of cisheteronormativity. Whether they like it or not.

Wanna dress her up in those micro pleated skirts and fishnets just to bend her over so her throbbing cunt's on full display as I finger her, tearing holes through the netting as my digits grow slick with cum and spit