#<- reminder that nonbinary is an umbrella term as well as an identity and some people use it as both

[sid-posts]

I’m afab, and I present really feminine, so I think it really confuses people when I say I don’t entirely identify as a girl

and, bear with me, because I’m really word-vomiting here, but I think I kind of get it.

My relationship with gender is obscenely complicated. Ridiculously confusing, even. Like, it’s confusing and unknowable to me, and it’s my gender, so I can’t imagine how much more confusing it would be from the outside looking in.

Normally when people ask I just kind of say that I “don’t really do gender” because that’s about as close as I can get in a short amount of time, but it’s not really entirely accurate.

Okay, here’s the nerdy part:

I’m an English major. The more you learn about this language, the less words actually mean. It’s a bullshit language cobbled together and then destroyed and cobbled back together with some of the original bits and some bits from other languages time and time again over centuries. Words mean nothing and, by extension, pronouns mean nothing.

I also am studying Spanish, and in Spanish, everything is gendered. An orange is a girl the same way I am a girl, which is to say that neither of us are really a girl, because that’s ridiculous. It’s just how other people describe us. Once again, words mean nothing so pronouns mean nothing.

Yes, I was raised with she/her pronouns and as such I, to some extent, identify myself with them, but I also would feel the same if I was raised with he/him pronouns, so I feel like that doesn’t really mean anything.

I like they/them pronouns because I relate to the idea of not really being feminine or masculine, and also because I’m a nerd and it’s new English functions that are cool as fuck.

But sometimes I like being girly and calling myself a girl, and sometimes I like being masculine and get something akin to an adrenaline rush when my friends call me “King” instead of “Queen.”

So, about as close as I can get to explaining my gender with a label would probably be “genderfluid,” and I’m okay with that, but it still doesn’t feel quite right because gender doesn’t really mean anything to me, and no matter how I’m gendered, it won’t really bother me.

I dunno. It’s complicated and confusing and I just kind of exist as me, and not really as a gender that I can explain with words in a way that will resonate with most people.

I’m just me. And I think that confuses a lot of people, because most people would never leave out gender in their description of themselves, and, to be fair, I wouldn’t either if it didn’t take me this long to try to explain it, so, you know, it’s kind of valid?

Anyways, my name is Sid and my gender is IDK™️, and that confuses a lot of people, which, like, fair enough, lol.

#aka sid deep dives into their gender and what it means to them in hopes that someone out there feels a little bit more valid because of it #genderfluid #gender stuff #genderqueer #lgbtq #nonbinary #<- reminder that nonbinary is an umbrella term as well as an identity and some people use it as both #lgbtqia

[sirdeeziii]

I don't really have any followers but here goes.

College is hard. Because of how much it costs, as a society we put extreme pressure on kids to make a single final decision quickly. Oftentimes before they even know what they want to do for a living. College is a competition, where you have to prove to them why you're a worthy investment. For scholarships, too. All within only a few months. It's a lot of pressure. Making the adjustment to leaving home (as is usually the case) is jarring, and you no longer find yourself surrounded by the people you went to school with for most of your life. For trans people, however, it gets a lot more complicated. More under the cut.

Most college dorms are split by gender. When you're trans, where do you go? Will they let you into the opposite "gender" dorms? Are you comfortable with a cisgender roommate knowing you're trans? If you're a trans man, are you comfortable being with cisgender men? There's undoubtedly an underlying fear of being taken advantage of or exposed. If you're a trans woman, are you comfortable being with cisgender women? There's undoubtedly an underlying fear of being wrongly perceived as a predator. Will people be disgusted? Will they hurt you? Will they misgender you? Will they harass you?

Living in your affirming dorm means you are surrounded by cisgender people. Most trans college students are pre-op, meaning there is an incredible likelihood of feeling dysphoric because you don't feel as "real" as everyone around you. In the event that you have no choice and must stay in the dorms of your agab, you would be battered everyday by the dysphoria of invalidation. And this isn't even including the pain nonbinary people face. There is no gender neutral housing option. You're forced to pick. It's an even bigger losing situation because you will experience dysphoria no matter where you stay. (These examples are mainly considering trans people who experience dysphoria, because not all do) (Also I know not all nonbinary people strictly identify as agender, but I'm trying to make a point).

Some colleges offer coed or single person dorms, but these options are not universally available (as far as I know) and often more expensive. Trans people already deal with having to pay extra for basic comfort, so going into thousands of dollars in debt is not ideal (or always possible).

Although there is a clear effort, most spaces are still not trans safe or accessible, and until they are, students like me will continue to struggle and suffer--not just in college, but out in the world as well.

Some terminology for the 5 people on Tumblr who aren't queer:

Transgender - an umbrella term for someone who identifies as something other than the sex they were born as

Trans - shortened form of transgender

Cisgender - someone who identifies with the sex they were born as

Nonbinary - an umbrella term for someone who does not strictly identify as a man or a woman

Trans man - someone who was born with female sex characteristics but identifies as a man

Trans woman - someone who was born with male sex characteristics but identifies as a woman

Agender - the complete lack of a gender identity; not identifying as a man, woman, or anything else along the spectrum

AGAB - stands for "assigned gender at birth", referring to the social gender identity automatically associated with an individual's sex when born

Dysphoria - the extreme mental discomfort and pain experienced by trans people when they are reminded of how they are perceived by others, how they perceive themselves, and/or the disconnect between their gender identity and their physical body (e.g. when a trans person is misgendered, when a trans person remembers that their body does not align with their identity, etc)

Pre-op - shortened form of pre-operation, meaning a trans person who has yet to receive gender-affirming surgery or hormones

A big thank you to TransgenderFirst for this scholarship opportunity. Hopefully they accept Tumblr and also ignore my blog name and username.

#trans #transgender #trans struggles #trans students #college #transgenderfirst #TransgenderFirst #dorm life #queer #lgbtq #lgbtqia

[a-rabbit-obsessed-queer]

Well, it's that time of year again! I'm here to remind everyone that ace-spec men are valid and important members of the aspec community. Gender identity has absolutely no baring on sexuality. Men are stereotyped as these overly hypersexual people who always have sex on the brain. Which leads to people thinking that men can't be ace, even some members of the community itself.

So, as I do every April 15, I'm reminding everyone that there are men on the Asexual spectrum and they are just as valid as any other ace person. And that means cis men, trans men, and anyone under the nonbinary umbrella who identifies with the term 'man'. They're all valid.

#asexual #asexuality #ace stuff #actually ace #asexual spectrum #actually asexual #asexual stuff #ace culture #ace positivity #asexual positivity

[nonbinarycomet]

New m-spec/multi flag

(This is a mirror from my Pillowfort post here, that can also be boosted on the Fediverse here.)

[Image description: A flag divided in four quadrants of the same size. The upper left quadrant is pink, the upper right quadrant is white, the bottom left quadrant is yellow and the bottom right quadrant is purple. End of image description.]

M-spec is short for "multi spectrum". The spectrum thing is just for emphasis, since both multi and m-spec are umbrella terms for people who are attracted to more than one gender/multiple genders.

The labels multi and m-spec have existed for a while. Their purpose is to decenter bi or bi+ as umbrella terms, because even if bi ranges from "weak attraction to one gender and strong attraction to another gender" to "attraction to all genders", a lot of pan, ply (polysexual/polyromantic/etc.), toren, trixen, penulti, omni and other people don't feel represented by bi. Even so, there are experiences and struggles common to all multiply-attracted people, so having an umbrella term is useful.

This term and flag includes m-spec people who are a-spec, who don't want to use labels, who use labels that don't specify which/how many genders one's attracted to, who use -flexible labels or who otherwise feel more attraction towards certain genders than others, whose attraction is fluid, who use many labels, who only use bi or pan as labels, who use labels that are typically seen as not m-spec and so on, as long as they are able to be attracted to more than one gender.

This flag is for all multi/m-spec people, not just multisexual/multiromantic. Multiqueerplatonic, multialterous, etc. are included.

There are already other flags for this, but most of them are not widely recognized or liked, and the most popular one is the combination of bi, ply and pan flags, which helps people recognize it for what it is, but doesn't help people who feel alienated by those labels.

The design of this flag is meant to be different from most pride flags so it's easier to recognize for colorblind people among other common pride flags, while still being easy to reproduce with fabric or while drawing, since there are no complicated symbols or shapes.

Color meanings:

Pink: Represents attraction in general, as well as passion. It's about m-spec people being united because of their attraction to more than one gender. Can also represent people who feel like they are just "attracted by (some) people" or who don't specify how their attraction works.

Pink is, after all, a color widely used for sexuality and love.

White: Represents the possibility of being able to be attracted to all genders. Also the possibility of having an attraction to multiple genders that isn't fluid; for instance, just because someone dates a nonbinary person and later a woman doesn't mean that their attraction changed.

White is the combination of all colors of light (so, all genders), and is also achromatic; you can't change the hue of pure white.

Light orange: Represents the diversity of m-spec people. For instance: a lot of trans people, especially nonbinary people, are m-spec; a lot of a-spec people are m-spec; a lot of non-monogamous people are m-spec; there are lots of different possibilities of labels when you are m-spec; but you don't need to be those things or use other labels to be m-spec.

Yellow and certain shades of orange remind me of the Sun. The Sun is strong and basically impossible to ignore; diversity makes a community strong, and the diversity of the m-spec community is hard to ignore.

Purple: Represents the possibility of not being able to be attracted to all genders (while still being attracted to more than one), and the possibility of having fluid attraction.

Purple is the color of change. It's also used in flags such as toren and trixen (both m-spec orientations that don't include attraction to all genders), and its meaning in other flags is sometimes both binary genders/a combination of them (so: more than one gender, but just a few) or nonbinary people (so: a large group of genders, but not all).

I know that maybe not all nuances of m-spec identity are represented here, and they don't all have their own color, but I wanted to have something broader and more meaningful than "attraction to X, to Y and to Z", while still easy to memorize/draw/produce.

This flag was made by me (Aster), with input from other m-spec people at a Discord server.

A full version of this flag is here, and a more saturated version of it (for physical flags/merchandise, for instance) can be found here.

Feel free to spread it around!

#multi flag #pluralian #multi #mspec #m-spec

[q-u-a-c-k]

im just gonna talk. I apologize for feed spam so I'll just talk under the cut

----------------

also I'm sorry for the complete spam I hope you can ignore me well enough, but I just wanted to say that I feel content for the first time in a while. I've been doing shitty lately but too scared to really say anything about it. my brain is constantly urging me to relapse or do something stupidly insanely harmful to myself. but right now the voice is quiet and I'm allowed to think and I like thinking happy things like this. I wish there was a way to have the voices this quiet without doing it this way (unintentionally high, I think there was something in my drink that I didn't put in there). like if anyone actually reads this and knows a way to quiet the voices in my head so I can think, please let me know. I know things like taking time to take care of myself or positivity things, but when the voices are back they dont really let me do that stuff. so if anyone has a quick and effective way of getting them to be quiet please tell me.

anyways I think I already told you two, but I have the potential to be quadruple gay and I think that's pretty cool. So identity crisis time trying to explain it. Although I'm still confused about how two of the parts work together but I'm gonna try to explain it while I can think. So I'm definitely gay and I think probably pan because I honestly have no preference, a pretty person is a pretty person. I believe I'm ace or at least under that umbrella term because ew. I think I might be nonbinary but I've never really outright said I use that label. because I honestly dont know yet but I'm not comfortable with male or female and I just am who I am but dont know what that is. so I'm hoping it's okay to use at least until I figure it out? and now the confusing part, possiblity of aro???? I'm not really sure because I could have just not really found the right (or any) person yet and I dont really want to use a label just because I'm not really sure. but like thinking about romantic stuff like... it's okay?? but that doesnt really sound like my thing. like I'd like to hang out with people and know them better and do things like dates but not with a romantic intention? just to vibe with the person? idk. but it's confusing because I also said I was pan but idk what about me is oen if in possibly under aroace. like I know they're both umbrella terms, but I dont know where under them I am. or where pan fits? idk identy crisis, yay!!

I wanna do a platonic date with someone. Like we can go to the movies or something and go to a park and just get to know each other better but like platonically. I think that just sounds fun. I need to get a job so I can have money to platonically take someone on a date. I've been meaning to look for places or put in applications but I keep forgetting. Which also reminds me, I want a fuckung sword. Imagine how cool that would be!! I have the money for this nice one that I've been looking at for a while, it's a pretty white longsword with a blue gem in the hilt. I want it so bad. but my parents wont let me get it which i think is stupid. like I'm gay and have themoney, let me get my sword >:(

I want an axe, too. it doesnt necessarily have to be a pretty one because I wanna get strong and chop wood with it. I want to be a lumberjack. like not cut down trees that dont need to be cut down, but anything that has fallen already I wanna chop up with an axe then make things out of it!! I like wood working stuff. it sounds like fun. but I would need the right stuff to do that that I dont have right now. like skills.

that is making me think about another life crisis but I dont wanna think about that so I'm gonna try to think of something else like how I cant wait to move out. because they have stuff planned out for me and what they want me to do but I realized I dont wanna do that. and now I'm thinking and vaguely talking about the crisis I dont wanna think about so I'm gonna think about what I actually want to do. I wanna do the plan thing you came up with where you're gonna have your cottage in a small town and we're gonna live hopefully somewhat close to you and we can visit each other a lot and vibe. you're gonna do what you want to do and work in a museum and talk about the things you enjoy.I dont really know what I want yet but I know I wanna live near you so we can hang out and be a lot closer because you're my family and my best friend. I think I wanna have lots of plants. I want to take better care of them than I do now and. have a lot and spend time with them and make sure they're doing well and growing. I like most plants vibes. they're mostly simple but very pretty and calming and looks like what home should feel like. you feel like what home should. like sometimes when the three of us are playing games like minecraft or something and it's getting all competitive and laughing it feels like home and makes me really happy. I'm excited to leave this place and have a real home.

I wanna leave as much of this as I can behind. and since I don't plan on coming out to them soon or possibly even at all, it might actually be easier to leave. because once I do I can go by Ash everywhere and not the name they gave me. I wont have to feel sad when I have to introduce myself as the name they gave me. and as far as people would know this is my name and the only one. they wouldn't even know what the other one is and cant call me it.

I still dont know what I want, but I know just being there I'll already be happier than here. they upset me a lot here. they say rude and insensitive things and insult me whether they know they are or not. and I think one day when I leave, if they try to justify themselves instead of fixing it, I have the freedom to leave them behind. they're not as bad as a lot of other people's family, especially since I thought compared to other people my family was nice. but still I think unlike the voice says I dont deserve to feel bad about who I am, especially when they're the ones who impacted me that way and made me a lot of who I am. or caused it.

I also cant wait until I move out because I'll have a lot more control of what I can and cant do, how I can be myself, and what kinds if things I'm eating. because right now, my parents dont really buy things that are good for you because it's cheaper to get processed foods. and when they do get better things, they get things I dont like. or I never get any because my siblings have it. bht I guess in some weird way it is good that they make me feel horrible about food stuff because then that's less of the bad stuff that I eat. I don't really like eating at all and I thought that was a good thing becuas ei vcd ont have access to the things I'm supposed to be having. so to me it's better to have nothing than things that are bad. and I've been kinda proud of myself for having less because it's not good stuff. like last night's I had a slice of cheese, half of minimal dinner, then only a little bit of chocolate. but then my siblings got taco bell and now I feel like shit. because I felt bad because they got it specifically for me but I didnt want it but I had it anyways. but I'm proud of how I did today before that!!!!

I want it ti rain. I wanna go outside when there thunder and lightning and pouring rain and just walk around. I want to stand in the rain. the rain makes me happy and calm. I feel safer in the rain. and it's just an overall pleasant thing. of course i don't want it to flood or cause harm to anyone else, but I want it to rain. good thing rain season is coming up soon. it might be cold but I dont care. I've waited too long for it.

[pantasticpans]

You don't have to answer but I've trying to find an opinion from fellow pans. So I'm a pansexual gal and uh, I tend to say the phrase 'I'm so gay for him' a lot when I'm fangirling over a guy actor/character/etc. I get a lot of weird stares from people whenever I say it cuz, well I'm a girl saying I'm gay for a guy. But saying somehow just kinda reminds me of the comfort I feel free in my attraction regardless of gender- Is it wrong to say this? Am I being offensive? I'm so confused and scared-

Hello! This got long so here’s a TL;DR:

I don’t identify as gay (umbrella term) myself, so I’m not the best person to ask. I believe this is grey area and you should continue to seek advice from others. However, I do relate to having your ‘opposite’ binary gender attraction feel non-straight, and I personally use queer to describe all of my attraction (but it’s okay if you don’t want to do this yourself). I wish you luck finding a satisfactory answer to this!

Long answer:

To start off, I want to say that I don’t identify as gay (umbrella term) or call my attraction gay for personal reasons, so I’m not the best person to ask. However, I will post some thoughts!

I’m a man and my attraction to women doesn’t feel straight, so I understand the grey areas of attraction that can come from being lgbtq+. However, I’m also trans, so this plays a role. Admittedly, I’m not sure why a cis person (assuming you’re cis, anon. I’m sorry if this is untrue) would consider their ‘opposite’ binary gender attraction to be gay.

Although I can see it from a lens of fun community jargon? Online lgbtq+ communities have done- and I really mean this- an excellent job of making gay something fun and awesome to be. And I’m proud of that!! In a heteronormative culture that still demonizes being gay, having fun phrases such as “wow I’m gay” and “I’m so gay for x” be good things is a solid victory.

There really isn’t a straight equivalent to this. Saying “I’m so straight for x” just doesn’t have the same charm. When you’re lgbtq+ and your attraction already feels strange, I can see it being easy to generalize those fun feelings and phrases out.

However, I can absolutely see the discomfort/controversy that arises from describing ‘opposite’ binary gender attraction as such. I’m not going to lie, my gut reaction was to suggest that you should look for other wording.

That being said, I’m reluctant to police anyone’s language, and mspec people have a long history of using gay (umbrella term) as an identity. I’ll never tell a fellow mspec person that they can’t identify as gay. But this is about attraction towards your ‘opposite’ binary gender and not an identity, so I’m unsure of how to advise.

As mentioned above, I have my own strangeness with ‘opposite’ binary gender attraction. I tend to use queer for my attraction to fellow men, women, and nonbinary people, which, given the word’s inherent vagueness and inclusiveness, gets around the uncomfortable grey area that comes with gay and ‘opposite’ binary gender attraction. That being said, I understand not everyone wants to ID with queer and that’s okay too!

My best advice is to tread carefully and continue to seek out other opinions from fellow pan people, other mspec people, and gay people.

I hope you find an answer that’s satisfactory! I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give a complete one.

I welcome any comments or suggestions from followers on this topic!

#Anonymous

[chocoblook-comic]

Hi! Can you tell me about gender Frisk's and Chara's (Choco's)? I know that you did it, but I really need it. Sorry for inconvenience(

Well, it’s mentioned in the FAQ, which should be easy to get to for anyone with access to a desktop or mobile browser. They’re both agender. Normally I’d leave it at that and just tell you to google it, but it hasn’t come up in a while and I’m feeling patient so sure! (I should note— this isn’t solely directed at you the asker. I’m just taking the opportunity to inform/remind anyone who sees this post.)

Frisk and Choco/Chara are agender. This means that they don’t have a gender. This does not mean that you can decide what gender you want them to be, it means that their gender is the lack of a gender. That’s what the “a-” prefix means, like in asexual or aromantic, which are all identities centered around the lack of something. What exactly this lack of a gender means varies from person to person, but in this case it means you should use they/them pronouns and avoid any gendered terms.

Agender is a specific gender identity under the nonbinary umbrella. Nonbinary refers to folks who feel that their gender doesn’t fit into the standard Male/Female dichotomy. Some nonbinary people (or “enbies”) are somewhere in between male and female, some are completely divorced from that spectrum, some are genderfluid (their gender changes), and so on. Nonbinary is also a subset of the transgender umbrella, though some individual enbies choose not to identify as trans for one reason or another. It’s a personal choice.

If you want to know more about any of the terms I’ve brought up here, look it up online. There’s a ton of resources out there for people who want to learn all about this kinda stuff. This is not one of them; it’s an Undertale fancomic.

Also, I will block anyone who tries to fight me on this subject. It’s my comic and I can do what I want. If you really can’t stand to see nonbinary characters, leave. You won’t change my mind.

#annymaslova #ask #noncomics #chocoblook au #chocogender #maybe i'll link to this post in the faq actually #it seems like a pretty solid primer

[nonbinaryproblems]

technobaboo said:

Can you talk about your experiences with your sexuality related to being non-binary? I'm agender and attracted to non-binary people and so technically gay i guess?

IM SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO WRITE THIS SCHOOL HAS BEEN KICKING MY ASS

And this ask is actually kind of funny because it's one of the things I tried to write about a while ago and failed but I'm more inspired now because it's been weeks since I actually wrote something. 

So here we go. 

For as long as I can remember I've liked boys. In first grade, I had a crush on my best friend and he was so cute. The perfect man for 6 year old me. Needless to say, nothing happened but that's beside the point. The point is that I always assumed I was straight. I had no reason to assume otherwise. Until I realized that I was nonbinary. 

That changed my whole perspective on obviously my gender but also on my sexuality. I was aware of all these new genders and identities that I didn't know existed before. Which initially confused the hell out of me. 

I knew I still liked boys but I also knew that I wouldn't be opposed to dating a nonbinary person. And the reason I didn't think bisexual was a good fit was because there are so many nonbinary genders. It's an umbrella term as well as an identity which made things very complicated for me because once again I had no clue what the fuck I was. It was very frustrating. 

For a while, I liked polysexual which means attraction to more than 2 genders but not all. It technically fit what I was feeling but it still didn't feel quite right. Just like many of the gender identities that I looked at before discovering nonbinary. I was going through the same process with my sexuality that I went through with my gender and I couldn't help but feel I was just back at square one. Confused, annoyed, and without a name for what I was. 

I have this one friend who kept reminding me that I didn't need to figure it out right now. That it was okay to not know what I was. That I was still me no matter what I called myself. And I love her for that because her words helped relieve some of the stress I felt. It was definitely easier this time around because I was able to talk to someone about what I was feeling. I didn't go through it alone and that was really great. 

It's been almost a whole year since I talked to my friend about my sexuality and I can now comfortably say that I am queer. Queer is a word that has a different meaning to almost everyone. Probably because not only was it a derogatory slur but it's also really freaking vague. It's an umbrella term for all sexualities aside from straight. To me, that's pretty much what it means: not straight. I don't want to have to put a very strict label on myself so this word is perfect for me. 

I feel like as a nonbinary person sexuality is slightly more confusing than it would be if I was cis or binary-trans because sexuality can be so binary focused. There's all this talk of "opposite gender" and "same gender" but those lines are slightly blurred as a nonbinary or genderqueer person. That's because some find their gender can be difficult to explain or define let alone figure out what the "opposite" of it is. 

And that's where personal preference comes into play. So back to the original question. I can't tell you what your sexuality is because it's up to you. It all depends on how you feel, and if you feel like gay is the right word for you then that's that. 

Thank you for the suggestion I'm sorry it took me like a week to actually write it I have been swamped with not only writer's block but also math homework. 

I probably won't be posting as much as I have in the past because school has to take priority but you can expect a post (hopefully) at least 2-3 times a month. 

#nonbinaryproblems #nonbinary #gender #trans #sexuality #queer #technobaboo #sorry ive been so mia #well at least with og writing that is #my math teacher is trying to drown us in hmwrk #and bio is hard #woo #September 23 2017 #216 pm

[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

Sexuality in Color: Forward Together

After some much-needed rest and self care, I'm back this week and ready to talk about some of the amazing work that is being done out there to protect, support, and empower queer and trans people of color.

Today I want to focus on a few very important projects: Strong Families, Echoing Ida, Trans Day of Resilience (TDOR), and Mamas Day, which all fall under the umbrella of their parent organization, Forward Together. Forward Together aims to fight for the "rights, recognition, and resources that all families need to live" through research, analysis, and community-building around sociopolitical issues of gender, family, immigration, violence, and reproductive justice. I could spend all day writing about just one of these projects and the work that they do, but I also have to get out of my house and do some gender justice work of my own!.

Strong Families was the first of these resources that I really became familiar with - they're a group dedicated to addressing the 4/5 in the U.S. that aren't nuclear/behind the picket fence, which is to say, that they are comprised of a father who works, a mother who stays at home, and traditionally conceived children. They're most known for the beautiful Mama's Day e-cards that they put out every year around Mother's Day, in which artists of color reimagine the traditional U.S. Mother's Day narrative to include the experiences of people across all sorts of identities (gender, sexuality, race, ability, immigration status, incarceration, and so many more). According to them, a mama can be anyone that helps provide a sense of family, love, community, or support, regardless of how they self-identify. Not only is this project aesthetically beautiful and soul-affirming, but it provides representation and connection for so many folks that might otherwise feel excluded on family-focused holidays (even for those that don't have a mama at all). To the left are two of my favorite mermaids, who remind me that there are infinite ways of being, and that in my own right, I am a star.

Another art-centered representative resource that Strong Families coordinates is Trans Day of Resilience (TDOR), which, again, is near and dear to my heart. Through these visual works, many of the same QPTOC artists offer a companion to Trans Day of Remembrance, a holiday on November 20th in which we honor and raise awareness about the trans and gender non-conforming folks (especially trans women of color) whose lives are lost every year due to aggressive transphobia, incarceration, police brutality, and gendered violence. This is not to detract in any way from the important work that is done by Trans Day of Remembrance, but instead complements it by acknowledging the injustices of those we have lost while also reimagining positive futures.

It can be all to easy to look at news feeds and social media and be overwhelmed by the constant coverage of incidents of violence, racism, and bigotry that queer and trans people of color face every day, and being able to look at beautiful artwork that celebrates our collective beauty, resilience, and tireless efforts to obtain justice is a beautiful thing.

Echoing Ida is another project of Forward Together, dedicated to uplifting the voices of black women and nonbinary people whose writing focuses on the intersections of their gendered and racialized experiences. It's named after Ida B. Wells, a political writer, feminist, and activist who voiced her opinions and organized fiercely about issues like the women's right to vote and the bigoted violence (especially lynchings) that constituted an everyday reality for post-slavery black communities in the U.S. She was one of the people who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to address the issues of systemic racism and brutality towards people of color during their time. And unfortunately, these issues are still relevant today, and addressing them is exactly what the folks at Echoing Ida are doing - together they've published over 275 pieces across various online outlets, expanding topics to include the experiences of people of color such as incarceration and immigration, reproductive justice/injustice, widespread health disparities and income gaps, and intersectional identity politics.

This week I'm freaking out in the best possible way about a resource created via Forward Together in 2009 to specifically address discussions of sex and reproductive justice in the Asian/American/Pacific Islander community, called Transforming API Communities: Tools for Sexuality Education. This is a comprehensive toolkit of educators and members of the API to address cultural beliefs, values, and stigma surrounding sex and sexuality, written for and by API folks. It's rare to see resources like this in which folks have successfully come together to address barriers to reproductive justice and healthy sexuality within their own community. Not only does it discuss things like cutural traditions, communication within families, and the complexity of navigating a first-generation immigrant experience, but also provides tools and techniques for addressing these issues as they come up, in order to foster a community that supports healthy, individually-defined sexuality from within.

I'm so grateful -- can you tell? -- for the work like this that the folks at Forward Together are doing to help (and help me) make the world a better place for everyone.

Know of a blog, organization, or resource that belongs here? Send it to our curator, Al (that's me!), at al AT scarleteen DOT com.

Interested in contributing as a guest writer for our Sexuality in Color series, or any other part of Scarleteen? Check out our information for writers and then take it from there! Experienced queer and trans writers of color of varied abilities and experiences are always strongly encouraged to apply.

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When Queerness Is Cultural Capital, Lesbians Go Broke. June 27, 2017 There’s a video going around social media this Pride month: the ABCs of the LGBTQA. It says “those six letters will never be enough…” while smoke in every color of the rainbow swirls around a multicultural dance troupe. The video, produced by an expensive gym franchise, is further proof that Pride has been fully co-opted by identity capitalism. A is for ally, aka a straight person who identifies as woke. E is for exhibitionist. H is for heteroflexible. K is for kink. What I learned from this abecedarian of narcissism is that LGBT didn’t include enough people, so we added literally everyone else. We are witnessing an interesting cultural trend of inclusion so radical that it demands a catchall (I know I don’t have time to list out those 26-to-infinity letters): queer. What this viral Pride season commercial illustrates is that queer identity is about more than who you love or fuck. There’s no requirement to be homosexual, just to be open-minded. This whole thing is less about “labels” and more about the lifestyle attached to sticking a “Love is love” sign in your front yard. How did we get here? How did queer go from a slur, to a political slogan, to an identity, to this purposefully impossible to define denotation of the in-crowd? This marketing campaign? And where do lesbians fit? Do we get to sit at the cool kids table? Or should we return to our camper vans where we won’t inconvenience anybody with our folk music and our boring monosexuality? Cara, the former etymologist at Autostraddle, writes that queer comes to us from Old Scots, and its first recorded use was in an insult competition. Before 1508, its Old High German antecedents referred to strangeness or eccentricity. She writes, “According to the OED, “queer” first showed up on paper in 1508, in a transcription of “The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie.” Flyting, very popular in early 16th-century Scotland, was a public entertainment in which bards “would engage in verbal contests of provocative, often sexual and scatological but highly poetic abuse.” Whether as an insult or a synonym for not-normal, queer was only ever used to cast out those people deemed freaks, to bully anyone gender non-conforming, to rally the mob for a game of smear the queer. When the queer reclamation project began in the bullhorns and on the picket signs of gay liberationists, the purpose was to strike back against heteronormativity. “We’re here, we’re not like you, and we don’t want to be.” Or how about, “We’re here, we are what we are, and you don’t get to define normal anymore.” Judging by the mainstreaming of the term, queer is hardly considered derogatory to many in the LGBT family. Reclamation projects are not always so swiftly accepted. Women who’ve tried to reclaim “slut” (eg Slut Walk, slutshaming) have not successfully ended rape culture or the virgin/whore dichotomy. The difference between unsuccessful reclamation projects like “slut,” and wildly popular projects like “queer” is the degree to which not only the word can be normalized, but also the people who it is used to describe. It reminds me of that Weezer song, “everyone’s a little queer…” See “queer” as a term has become an umbrella that accommodates not only the type of sex you have and with whom, but also how you identify the sex you have, how you identify your personality, your aura, the ineffable je ne sais queer that may or may not be related in any way to your sexuality, or even the way you present yourself to the world, but simply some deeply held, internal feeling. You don’t actually need to share a common oppression or a common romantic or sexual behavior. You don’t need to share the common experience of gay bashing, having your Christian parents disown you, or any kind of homophobia. You also don’t need to share the experience of getting sweaty palms and weak knees when Rachel Maddow is on TV, or when K. Stew shows up in your Instagram feed. You don’t need to weep all through Carol because it’s the first time anyone made a mainstream movie about lesbians where nobody died in the end. That’s cool; I mean there is no homogenous experience of being gay, and not every lesbian shares with me those experiences I just described, so why should I mind that I have literally nothing in common with the genderfluid individual marching next to me at Dyke March, other than we both have short hair and only wear eyeliner when the mood strikes? The reason I mind is because queer, in functioning as a catchall, serves to obscure what it is about my life, my community, my partners, that I needed to learn to be proud of in the first place. Because for me and all the other lesbians I know, figuring out your sexuality is hard enough, but the real work is in accepting yourself, demanding acceptance from others, being willing to walk away when that acceptance is denied. Lesbians are women, and women are taught that we’re supposed to be sexually available objects of public consumption. So we spend a lot of time saying “No.” No, we won’t fuck or partner with men; no, we won’t change our minds about this; no, this body is a no-man’s land. Lesbian, straight or bi, women are punished whenever we try to assert a boundary. Queer as a catchall term makes it really hard for lesbians to assert and maintain this boundary, because it makes it impossible to name this boundary. The inherent boundary-less nature of queer as its meaning has morphed from an insult to an identity has not necessarily made more spaces for gay and lesbian people so much as moved the furniture around. I’ll give you an example. I recently moved to a new city and was hoping to start a group house to save on rent. I joined a Facebook group called Queer Housing. I made an ad looking for queer roommates, and what I got was a whole lot of messages like “I’m a cis guy and my nonbinary femme girlfriend and I are looking for a house where we can enjoy watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race with other queers.” OK. I was kind of hoping for a house that looks more like the group house in Dykes to Watch Out For than the episodes of the Real World where the token bisexual makes out with a heteroflexible girl while the guys egg them on. One where we have a common culture, common interests, and common cause politically. Meanwhile, lesbians (people who are, legal or not, discriminated against in housing, suffer with fewer job prospects and tend to make less money than straight men, will have one less cheap housing option because the str8s are in here taking up space. Oh but A is for Ally in Queer Land, right?). Yet again, space created by and for people marginalized by their sexuality is colonized by people who enjoy all of the benefits of heterosexual privilege. It’s really hard to talk about privilege — who has it and who doesn’t — in the paradigm of queer theory, because one’s self-perception is the basis of one’s standpoint, rather than one’s membership in a broader social class like man, woman, gay or straight. I witnessed a woman in a heated Facebook argument weaponizing her queer identity as the standpoint for why her word on queerness and queer rights should be the last. A gay man asked “does your queer identity include sleeping with someone of the same sex?” She responded angrily that her queerness was spiritual and deeply personal, and that she didn’t need to share the many ways in which she was queer. That’s fine, although no one asked you for a play by play of how you reach orgasm. While my lesbianism is also deeply personal and spiritual, it’s impossible for me to hide behind “well I don’t need to tell you in what ways I’m a lesbian.” I can’t walk down the street without some man telling me that I look unfuckable. I can’t hold my sweetie’s hand in public without some man yelling “Why don’t you let a real man try? I could fuck you straight, girl.” It was a choice to come out, but I come out again every day. I could pass for straight if I would let my hair grow a little longer and stop wearing such practical shoes, but as soon as people see the way I interact with the women in my life, they know. I don’t want to indulge in “binary thinking,” in setting up a dichotomy between homos and heteros. Of course I know for some people, sexuality is fluid, and for others, it is very fixed throughout their lives. Many straight people have confusing crushes or days of experimentation, just like gay people do. Lots of people find themselves all sorts of places on the Kinsey scale. Goddess knows I was all over the place before pitching my tent in Dykesville. Yet, queer is not exact enough for me. Maybe there have been parts of me that dabbled in polyamory and BDSM, but those parts are subcategories of my specifically lesbian experience. So who cares if every letter of the alphabet is celebrated during Pride? What do I lose when lesbian is lumped in with queer? Well, for starters, political cogency. Last I checked it wasn’t the kink bars or the swingers parties that the cops raided in the 1950s, it was the gay bars, and anyone caught there could be roughed up, thrown in jail, raped or molested by cops and guards with total impunity. When Mike Pence advocated for conversion therapy as a Congressman, he wasn’t targeting those people who like to be ball-gagged or beaten during sex. He and his cronies are coming for those of us who want to live that gay lifestyle (with and without ball gags). Theresa Butz didn’t get to explain the infinitesimal nuance of her identity to the man who raped and murdered her for having the audacity to live with her girlfriend. The violence that lesbians experience is specific to being lesbian, and the culture that lesbians enjoy is specific to being lesbian. Both ends of this, the good and the bad, are the stuff a movement is based on. Queer identity and queer culture both stop short of speaking to this lesbian experience. These days when I hear someone call themselves queer, I just assume that their sexuality is too complicated to understand without a liberal arts degree. Honestly, I don’t care. I only need to know what labels you use if we’ve both swiped right, or when I’m sending out the invites to the potluck where we plot the overthrow of the heteropatriarchy. It does annoy me though, that everyone who has ever watched “lesbian” porn, or had an asymmetrical haircut, or read The Ethical Slut is demanding a rainbow participation badge. It means the market for selling not-normal, edgy, cool-ness is bigger and more profitable to lifestyle brands. It means anyone who is not-normal, edgy or cool has something to sell. It’s actually OK to let your freak flag fly without calling yourself queer or joining our parade. You can be proud of the fact that you’re not the kind of person who would slur a homo in public, the kind of person who wouldn’t bat an eyelash when you see Abby Wambach kiss her girlfriend in the stands. Ally, exhibitionist, heteroflexible, kinkster, and so on, your pride is not the same as my pride. It’s OK that I’m different from you. It’s OK that you have more in common with straight people than with LGBT people. Then again, I probably just don’t understand the personal and spiritual aura of queerness you carry deep down."

#social justice culture #queer theory #tumblr culture #lgbt