#2slgbtqiaplus

[grymoria]

I honestly feel like cis people trying to enforce words like girlie, dude, bro, sis to be gender neutral is giving the same energy as straight people trying to enforce a same sex couple as one being the man and the other being the woman in the relationship.

They'll only accept us if they can enforce their roles and words on to us.

#LGBT #lgbt+ #lgbtplus #lgbt plus #LGBTQ #LGBTQ+ #lgbtqplus #lgbtq plus #lgbtqia #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqiaplus #lgbtqia plus #2slgbtqia+ #2slgbtqia plus #2slgbtqiaplus #lgbtqia2s+ #lgbtqia2s plus #lgbtqia2SPlus

[hear--me-raw]

There’s no pride in Genocide. In a country with a record number of mass shootings it is time that we ask ourselves where this behavior or this energy originates and it’s impossible to not look at the fact that this country was birthed through violence and erasure of its native people. This is something that we must fight every single day for as long as we are here because the colonizers will never stop unless the people say “No Thanks No Giving” At the end of the day we truly are one Nation. Once we know the true story of this land we can reconnect and start taking care of it. The native people are the best stewards of this land and the land needs to go back to them. Mama Gaia is screaming and filled with unnecessary bloodshed and that can end with every single one of us standing up to fight for her. Without her we are NOTHING. Next year this march better double, no it better triple in size. Don’t be scared to speak against the oppressors because spirit has always been by your side and will continue to be by your side through every hardship. The biggest hardship would be for us to stay Quiet and allow the colonizers to destroy our land and then move on to destroy other lands. Let’s show them how powerless they are without us the people. The power has always been in community and the spirit of our ancestors reside within the Mountains, the waters, the sky and of course within us and that’s how we remain eternal🙏🏾 #noprideingenocide #landback #nothanksnogiving #2slgbtqiaplus #thereddeal #plymouthrock #plymouthrockwhatacrock #2spirit #taino #puertorico #nationaldayofmourning #freepeltier (at Plymouth Rock) https://www.instagram.com/p/ClY_O9jJP0M/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#noprideingenocide #landback #nothanksnogiving #2slgbtqiaplus #thereddeal #plymouthrock #plymouthrockwhatacrock #2spirit #taino #puertorico #nationaldayofmourning #freepeltier

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Why Do We Need All These Labels?

Why do we need all these labels? Why do we need all these flags? Why do we need all these words, these markers of difference, these hyper-specific sub-communities?

To be honest? I don’t think that we will always need them. I think someday it won’t matter what kind of queer you are, or even if you’re queer at all. I think that someday we won’t need any of this language, any of these symbols, any of these sub-groups.

But right now, it matters a lot. Right now, we really do need them.

Because, right now, there is a word for what is “normal,” and everything that is not that word must therefore be wrong/broken/unhealthy/fake.

The day that we no longer think that “straight” is “normal” is the day that we will no longer need a queer community. The day that all of us, across the world, finally accept that every kind of attraction, every kind of relationship, every kind of gender presentation, every kind of sexual identity is just as normal as any other option, that “straight” is just a single option for how we can be - that will be the day where we no longer need these labels.

And the day that everyone - EVERYONE - finally understands that the options go beyond “gay or straight,” that there is more to the queer community than just LGBT, that it’s all spectrums and fluctuation and individual experiences, and that everyone and everything is okay - then, perhaps, we won’t need all these labels, and all these flags, and all these sub-communities.

But for now, it is VITAL that we have the language to explain ourselves as specifically and accurately as we want to and need to. It is vital that I can speak up and say, “I am grey-romantic and demisexual, and I am not the only one, and it is normal.”

I am hopeful for the day where I will not need to defend myself. I don’t know if I will live to see that day, though I plan to live a good long life. Until that day, I will need these words.

#thursday thoughts #pride #pride month #pride month 2022 #queer pride #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia+ #lgbtqia+ #lgbt+ #ace pride #aro pride #microlabels #queer #queer community

[kitthomasart]

The term Two-Spirit initially emerged into contemporary vernacular in the 1990s when Indigenous people began actively resisting colonial values and processes and are working towards the reclamation of Two-Spirit identities. Indigenous LGBTT2QQIA groups rejected the Western anthropological definitions of Indigenous homosexual and transgender people and determined that the mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities did not include their Indigenous cultural understandings of gender and sexuality.3 Two-Spirit is a self-descriptor used by all gender and sexual variant Indigenous people in Canada and the United States that honours our ancestral past and reclaims our Indigenous identity. * * * * #twospirit #nativeart #2slgbtqiaplus #genderidentity #genderexpression #tomboy #androgynous #lesbian #genderfluid #reclaimyourpower #strongresilientindigenous #lgbtqia #lgbtqia2s #indigenous #indigenousart #haudenosaunee #drag #itsthelgbt #genderfluid #indigenousqueer #gendernonconforming #genderqueer #lgbtqyouth #indigiqueer #queeraf #nonbinarygender #enby (at Akwesasne Mohawk Territory) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjTL-LGLPxt/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#twospirit #nativeart #2slgbtqiaplus #genderidentity #genderexpression #tomboy #androgynous #lesbian #genderfluid #reclaimyourpower #strongresilientindigenous #lgbtqia #lgbtqia2s #indigenous #indigenousart #haudenosaunee #drag #itsthelgbt #indigenousqueer #gendernonconforming #genderqueer #lgbtqyouth #indigiqueer #queeraf #nonbinarygender #enby

[bloomdigital]

Coming Summer 2024! (PC & mobile) 🌞 Back us on Kickstarter 🎮 Wishlist & Play the Demo on Steam on February 5th 💌 Sign up for the newsletter

"Explore your identity in this cute dating sim! LongStory 2 is a continuation of the charming and LGBTQ+ friendly visual novel where you can be and date who you want. Strap in for a wacky ride as you juggle romance, friendship and life. Throw a big mystery in the mix and you’re in for an adventure!"

#longstorygame #datingsim #visualnovel #lgbtq #cozy games #kickstarter

[sempervirens117]

Mr. Bradley has a nice right to it. Mr. President wouldn’t be bad either. Except I’m 2S, so … the whole gendered pronoun thing is kinda an issue. Thoughts, @potus @flotus ? #2slgbtqiaplus (at White House, Washington DC) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcnmBP8rahl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#2slgbtqiaplus

[pocketquiche]

Got back to sorting sea glass today, finished off the wonderful jar of treasures. Check out my TikTok for more seaglass sorting, art, and other shenanigans 💛 - Pocket the Artist ————————— If you like what I do and want to help me live my dream to continue creating art, hit me up at: https://ko-fi.com/pockettheartist https://buymeacoffee.com/pockettheartist PayPal - [email protected] I appreciate any kindness thrown my way as I push through the creative process and bring you more weird, beautiful, funny and creative stuff! ————————— #seaglassart #seaglasssorting #stimmingpositivity #neurodivergentartist #queerartist #nonbinary #trans #2slgbtqiaplus #shinythings #likeacrow (at Prince Edward Island) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTqci03go7d/?utm_medium=tumblr

#seaglassart #seaglasssorting #stimmingpositivity #neurodivergentartist #queerartist #nonbinary #trans #2slgbtqiaplus #shinythings #likeacrow

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Queer Self-Accountability

Something I’d like to focus on this pride month, personally, are the ways that the pride community and sub-communities can hurt the very people they ostensibly exist to support.

Now, June is a joyful month, so if this isn’t the kind of thing you want to think about right now, by all means bookmark this blog post and come back to it later. I’m not here to “ruin” anyone’s fun. I’m here to say that queer joy is just as important as queer self-accountability.

The more ace and aro people I meet, in person and online – and I keep meeting more of them, revealing just how big our community truly is – the more stories I hear about aces and aros feeling like they don’t belong. It’s common for them to phrase it as, they’ve been told they’re not “enough.” Not queer enough to be queer. Not LGBT enough to be LGBT. Not oppressed enough, not visible enough, not representative enough to belong. And sometimes it’s not about belonging in the broader queer community. It’s about being told by other aces and aros that they’re not ace enough or aro enough to belong.

An unfortunate truth of the world is that in every group of people, there are those who are only happy if they are excluding someone else. These people look at the world we have, where the powerful and those in the “in-group” take every opportunity to hurt the disempowered “out-group,” and decide that the only way to attain power is to become someone who hurts and excludes those with even less power.

This is sometimes a conscious decision, but not always. Sometimes we really do believe that excluding others is the only way to protect ourselves from insidious infiltrators.

But speaking as someone at a cross-section of identities that often gets me labeled an insidious infiltrator by people who have never even met me, this is a fallacious belief.

The person with a different queer identity to yours is not your enemy. The person with a microlabel or neopronoun you’ve never heard of before is not your enemy. The person who experiences the world differently from cisgender straight white Christian men, and who also experiences the world differently from you, is not your enemy. You will gain nothing from treating them like dirt.

I look at the world we have, where the powerful and those in the “in-group” take every opportunity to hurt the disempowered “out-group,” and I say, we do not need to remain this way. I say, I will gain nothing from perpetuating the cruelty that has been directed towards me. I say, I reject the cycle of violence and exclusion.

I say, it is high time we held ourselves accountable.

#thursday thoughts #pride #pride month #ace #aro #queer #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia #2slgbtq #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtqiaplus #lgbt

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Being Representative

This is a continuation of my thoughts from last week, so, again, if you’d rather spend this pride month focusing on joy, please bookmark this blog post and come back to it later.

When I hear someone say that they don’t think they belong as an ace or aro person – both in the context of whether they belong in the broader queer community, or specifically in aro and ace communities – it’s often accompanied by the idea that they are not “representative” enough of all ace or aro people. There’s an anxiety around seeming like the perfect asexual or aromantic person, around needing to perfectly fit the label in every way and every minute of your life, or else you won’t “count.”

Often this anxiety comes from a place of concern for others. I’ve heard demisexual people worry that someone might look at them and think, “Well, you eventually became sexually attracted to someone, therefore this must be true of ALL ace people!” I’ve heard aromantic people worry that if they decide to date or get married, someone might look at them and think, “Since you decided to enter a romantic relationship, that must mean that ALL aro people should just suck it up and do it too!”

What bothers me most about this whole thing is the real impact it has on individual queer people’s journeys of self-discovery. I knew about the aromatic spectrum for years before I realized it applied to me. I knew, objectively, that aro people experienced “little or no romantic attraction,” and that microlabels like grey-aromantic existed. Heck, I already knew that I was demisexual – that I didn’t need to be the same as all ace people in order to be ace!

But I flat-out could not think of myself as aro for the longest time, because I knew that my experience was not the same as all aro people. I was judging myself as harshly as I was afraid alloromantic people would judge me, and misunderstanding myself just as much as I was afraid alloromantic people would misunderstand me.

It wasn’t until I started listening to the podcast A OK, and heard the stories of many different aro people, that I realized I did not need to be representative of all aro people in order to consider myself aro. I knew then that if someone tried to say to me, “Since x is true of you, then x must be true of all aro people,” I could just send them a link to the podcast. It’s a cliché, I know, but it really did feel like a great weight had been taken off my shoulders. I realized that it wasn’t my job to represent the entire community, and I had no obligation to comply with other people’s expectations that I be representative.

Whoever you are, and however you experience attraction, you are NOT responsible for other people deciding that you are representative of anyone or anything. That is on them. Someone looking at you and thinking, “If x is true for you, then x is true for all aro/ace/queer people” is not your fault. It will never be your fault.

And anyone who tries to tell you that it is your fault – anyone who claims that your identity is “too confusing” and will “make the queer community look bad” – is dead wrong. It will never be your job to make sense to the people who don’t want you to exist.

#thursday thoughts #pride #pride month #queer #queer community #pride community #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia #2slgbtq #lgbtqiaplus #lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbt #aphobia #acephobia #arophobia #aro #ace #aromantic #asexual

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: A Hope for The Future of Queerness

I hope that in the future, we will stop demanding that progress and self-discovery be a simple road.

I hope that we will encourage questioning and trying things out – pronouns, genders, identity labels, clothing and makeup styles, relationship types, relationship roles, hobbies.

I hope that we will not be afraid of change – that when someone comes to us and says, “This is my truth now,” we will want to say, “Thank you for sharing your journey with me.”

I hope that when someone says, “This is my truth now,” but they said something different before, we will not feel the need to accuse them of lying, or faking, or just trying to get attention.

I hope that when someone says, “This is my truth now,” but their truth is something we do not understand, we will not feel the need to accuse them of lying, or faking, or being sick, or being confused, or just trying to get attention.

I hope that we will not see those who think they might be queer, but realize later that they are not queer, as a traitor. I hope that we will not see those who think they are not queer, but realize later that they are queer, as a traitor.

I hope that we will say instead, “I’m so glad you felt comfortable telling me. I’m so glad you felt safe enough to explore your identity, to belong to different communities. I’m so glad you have a better understanding of yourself now.”

I hope that when someone says, “This thing you thought was okay is actually hurting me,” but we do not feel hurt by the thing they are talking about, that we will listen.

I hope that we will understand that very little in life is linear, very little in life is one-and-done, very little in life is solid. And I hope that our response to this understanding is to make sure that our effort to be kind to each other, our effort to act with care for each other, and our effort to include each other are the most solid things in the world.

#thursday thoughts #queer #pride #pride month #queerness #2slgbtqiaplus

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Labels Are Not Stickers

I used to get really anxious about stickers. You only get to use them once! What if you make the wrong decision, put them in the wrong place, want to move them somewhere later? What if someday you don’t like that fandom or quote or color anymore? What if you end up peeling off the sticker and then have that nasty sticky stuff all over your desk/wall/computer/folder? What if it turns out using that sticker was a waste of time?

Now the truth is that I still get anxious about stickers. But I have a workaround: I put my stickers in my journals. So I will always have that sticker right there at the part of my life where I liked that thing and wanted the sticker. If I want to look back on it, I can go find it. If I decide I don’t like the sticker anymore, then I don’t need to flip back through the journal.

I think a lot of people feel the same way about identity labels. The perception of a label is that it is a sticker. You need to find the right one, and once you choose one – once you come out – you’re stuck with it forever! And if you don’t completely fit this label, then you’d better not use it!

A lot of pressure comes along with this idea. Sometimes, we put this pressure on ourselves. It’s okay to feel driven to find the right label for yourself. Sometimes, though, other people put that pressure on us. This is not okay.

Because here’s the thing – labels are not stickers. They are words. And words are the tools we use to describe ourselves and the world around us, as we experience it.

Sometimes, that experience changes, and so the words we chose before don’t apply anymore. Sometimes, the words change – we find new ones, we realize that old ones don’t work so well anymore. Sometimes, we just plain don’t have the exact right word to describe our experience, so we need to come up with a new word, or we just need to choose a word that’s close enough and comfortable enough for us. Sometimes, the journey of self-discovery is not immediate, and we need to use a word for a while and see how it feels before deciding if it applies to us. Sometimes, we change our mind, and sometimes we don’t.

If you feel that a label applies to you, then it’s yours to use. If it’s useful and comfortable for you to use this word to describe your experience, then do it! There’s no test to pass to prove that you’re worthy of using a label, and if you decide you don’t want to use a label anymore, then you can stop using it. There won’t be any sticky stuff left over. You’ll still be able to look back on that part of your life where that label was useful to you, if you want to. And if you never want to look back on it, then you don’t have to. If it was useful to you when you used it, then it wasn’t a waste of time.

This pride month, and every month, I hope we all feel comfortable to try on labels, and to see them as the tools as they are, instead of as a source of pressure.

#thursday thoughts #pride month #pride #queer #labels #identities #coming out #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia #2slgbtq #lgbtqiaplus #lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbt

[sophieakatz]

#writersofinstagram #pride #pridemonth #pride🌈 #pride2022 #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia #2slgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtqiaplus #queer #queerart #rainbow #poetryisnotdead #poetryofinstagram #poetryofig #poet #queerartist #queerpoetry #queerpoet #goodvalidimportant #gvi #love #loveislove #lovequotes https://www.instagram.com/p/CeR3wtAOMI-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#writersofinstagram #pride #pridemonth #pride🌈 #pride2022 #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #2slgbtqiaplus #2slgbtqia #2slgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtqiaplus #queer #queerart #rainbow #poetryisnotdead #poetryofinstagram #poetryofig #poet #queerartist #queerpoetry #queerpoet #goodvalidimportant #gvi #love #loveislove #lovequotes