#apparently despite how ~liberated i am i still absolutely internalized fucked up things about what i’m supposed to be to other people

[incarnateirony]

as an emerging lgbtq+ (i'm 'BT') guy i am so glad you're making the point you made in your last post. I've always gravitated towards Dean because he is so 'imperfect' in his queerness, like me. but he's not a uwu soft queer so apparently that bothers a lot of ppl on here? Especially younger queer women, I've noticed. But a lot of guys, cis and trans, struggle with being attracted to men so much in a way that is simply different (not better or worse) than (1/2)

being wlw, especially depending on one’s generation and region, etc. basically what i’m saying is a lot of the few queer men that there are in the fandom stay quieter as it is almost completely queer women dictating what is and what isnt, and not quite empathizing with the unique struggle many queer men have with internalized homophobia/being Unmanly for being attracted to men. hope this wasn’t too all over the place, ive had this on my mind for a Long time and i’m glad you brought it up. (2/2)

ps: I’m not trying to put down queer women for being a significant part of the fandom. I just really wish the environment of the fandom felt more like somewhere queer men’s voices can be heard better, considering the largest pairing is, needless to say, mlm

Well, first of all, welcome Nonnie. I take it you’re addressing this untitled post addressing intersectionality, representation vs tokenization, represented demographics and just general motivations of those in discussion, yes? (x)

You’ll find this is a longstanding topic of my blog, be it excavating creator commentary people have buried for their own motivations and talked down and around, or dual faceted issues. 

(If you haven’t read the crosslinks on the post you’re addressing, you may want to read The Problem With Dreamhunter (x) It discusses exactly this issue, even if it was written over a year ago at that point, showing just how cyclic this issue is. It talks about MLM/WLW intersectional issues, migrating goalposts, a bunch of show stuff and some of Bobo’s sociopolitical commentary from 2003 about advancing LGBT representation through moderate incremental methods being proven effective at expanding the media presence/platform exponentially above liberal, or more severe/extreme styles)

But when it comes down to it, basically: Yeah, you right.

I didn’t just arbitrarily develop this opinion. I didn’t… just magically tune in to what the LGBT men that literally dodge fandom, for exactly the reasons you say, and know it’s because of the reasons you say – like that didn’t manifest. It came from leaving fandom (un)”safe” spaces. It came from engaging a great variety of LGBT males in real life, many of which engage the content. From observing how they spoke of the content in multifandom servers, or even *why* they chose to avoid speaking up.

And no, I personally didn’t get a read of you, like, insulting LGBT women for their part in fandom. Women engage social media for primetime TV fandoms at an exponential rate above men, so it’s almost unavoidable and it’s nobody’s fault really, but that says nothing for the perpetual habit of drowning out their voices to the fact that– well, they literally abandon engaging.

I’ve seen it enough times it *hurts* me. I shouldn’t *have* to pull my gay writing buddy out of holes to face this, and him still hide silently. I shouldn’t *have* to be the vein of news and information on the show to the bi male friend I have that refuses to touch this fandom. I shouldn’t *have* to even speak up about this. I really do want *you all* to speak up about this, because I can only speak so far, because you’re right: OUR JOURNEYS ARE DIFFERENT.

Hell, even a cis lgbt male vs a trans lgb(t obvious) male have entirely different journeys even though they’re both validly men. These battles are not the same. One community can speak up to defend another, and help hold them up and amplify them if there’s just not enough of them to project the way they need to, and this is something *greatly under respected* in this fandom. Nobody’s holding up the LGBT male voices when actually talking about representation. And you’re right, it’s mostly women, and you’re right, our path is different and our struggles and needs and wants and lives are different. But unless you take a considerable amount of time talking and sharing and learning personally the perspective of the LGBT male community, you’re not… really… helping them speak.

And let it be said, “holding up LGBT male voices” does not and should never equate to “despite having multiple LGBT men saying one thing, I found the one LGBT male saying the thing that matches what I want, who may or may not even actually be in the targeted demographic set of the character we’re discussing representation about, because it’s more than just being bi, it’s entire lives, paths and challenges– but you know, I found the ONE, so fuck the others.” That’s using your friends as tokens and cards. If you want to genuinely add to the conversation, what you do is you introduce your male LGBT friend to the other male LGBT friends and let them have a long conversation to talk out the sources of their disagreements before engaging in conversation.

But drawing a pretty base line collective from all people in the represented demographic, respectfully learning the majority wants and needs and struggles, and helping voice those is pretty key.

Women can sit here all day, and pass around things they’ve been told by other women are woke points, or things that sound progressive and good, and often sort of decontextualized from their purpose (be that the dresswear mentioned shortly hereafter, or what LGBT want/expect/SHOULD want or expect – but in the end, if you’re not sitting down and having dialogues – not just with one, or two, or even three LGBT men – but large handfuls and subsets, able to actually critically examine the differences in LGBT males of gen X, Y, or Z and their lives and stories – if you’re not doing that… If *that* isn’t the core of your discussion values, rather than pass-along buzz vibes– then you’re really not talking representation. You think you are. But you’re not.

There’s the uh. Thing. You noticed. About how women expect the men to engage.

When it comes to young queer women, I’m going to risk pissing some people off, but the long and short of it is (I could probably dig up the link but it’s been an eternity) a while ago they ran a psychological study to figure out why young women were attracted to yaoi, and gay porn, especially what is essentially stereotypical force-role type gay porn. It has to do with blooming attraction, primal fear, and trying to make the men more appealing in a way that does not intimidate them. 

This later manifests into feminizing them, setting twink/bear roles that go beyond into top/bottom, and conflating it with penetration, position, power, dom/sub, fork/spoon, sometimes served with a dose of internalized misogyny being projected into the vessel of whatever twink/sub is positioned, and generally— like, kink culture. Often this is passed with narrowly progressive-masked arguments of “Men should be allowed to be feminine if they want!” rather than a genuine answer to, “Why do you perpetually heterosexually resize, or reframe, and enforce heterosexual structure onto characters that do not meet this mold, and why is that a personal gain to you?” because in the end– it’s a personal gain. And again, at that point it’s not about representation.

Now again, I’m not… shaming anyone for having a kink. But kink/fetish needs/wants have blurred themselves in as if to hedge on equal territory to discussing canon content. Or sprinkling the quite literal fetishized art (power to you if that’s your thing, I guess, even if I do bear discomfort over fetishization of any LGBT demographic, even by another LGBT demographic) and reasoning with dialogue that implies it as being representative, and inserting that into the representation discussion, which *literally* just makes the entire bog muddier, makes the LGBT men trying to speak more easily dismissed in a vat of “just women/fetishists”, it just– it’s Not a Good. I’m… personally not a fan of it. Like at all. A lot of it makes me angry tbh. So I don’t engage. I don’t browse fanfiction. I look at very little art. 

Hell most of the people around here don’t even realize it’s actually a *minority* of LGBT men that choose to engage in penetrative sex, but it’s become a topic of outright obsession around here. There is so much simple… lack of awareness and discussion of the lives LGBT men lead, even by LGBT women because again – we don’t have your path. We can only listen to you. (And BOY have I gotten earfuls from my LGBT male friends absolutely going apeshit banana bonkers over fandom’s obsession with penetration culture, gender role enforcement while feigning it as liberation, and all kinds of other stuff. And that’s what I base most of my talking points on.)

Because if I’m going to talk representation, I’m going to talk about representing the demographic the character is supposed to represent, not molding him into a tokenized wash-over of every single person’s wants. If you’re an LGBT woman that can resonate with Dean Winchester, that’s great. Sometimes representation can be shared. But a character’s origin determines what demo he represents and not all of any given representative’s character’s attributes, methods, functions, anything – not all of it is going to meet any one person’s goals collectively, but the target demographic is inevitably closer to it.

Another point to raise is that it feels like people have lost track of *what* the representation battle is about. It isn’t just about any one person attaching to any one character. It’s about developing a TVscape that looks more representative of the real world, with a fair presence of PoC, of women, of LGBT people of all types, of the disabled community, of people that are even more than one of these, of people with different stories: people. About, well, normalizing it, because it should be normal. About saturating television enough that one day, and that day will not just be tomorrow per convenience, that people won’t be desperate for representation even vaguely in their wheelhouse, that they can turn on and see people of any intersectional type and go– wow, the world finally realizes we’re real. And that in that wide, realistic menu, yes, being able to turn a channel and eventually see someone *just like you*. A day when any show turned on has at least *someone* in your wheelhouse because every show eventually should have some sort of realistic spread, but if you find the *right* show, *there you are.*

That’s how it’s built. We don’t start by footstomping and tokenizing everyone to be vaguely representative of everyone or it doesn’t count because it didn’t work for *them*. We start by sharing truly diverse narratives, each unique to their own, just as diverse as straight stories are, maybe even more. That’s the only way you’re actually going to end up with a TVscape full of The Gays, and full enough to find *explicitly yourself* in there.

Deleting normalized, non-sensationalist text for lacking either visibility or flavor, even if you weren’t the intended demographic for it to speak to, is quite literally contrary to the entire fight.

and tbh?

This shit is why I hate shipping culture.

And I say that as someone who presumably “ships” Dean and Cas, if it’s shipping to address canon bullshit happening in front of you and just watch the show as it folds out without going into denial for *whatever* personal reason. 

There’s a lot of well intended people, most shipping fandom is full of good beans, but as a collective group – skewed by sociopathically manipulated dialogues we can literally track the origins of – have been driven into much of the above while genuinely believing they were doing the right thing, in a long chain of being told this was what and how to fight for, without really stopping and critically examining the nuance of the conversation. Because why would you? Seems to be the popular gay thing to do – while a lot of bisexual people currently hide their commentary via reblog hashtags or hedge awkwardly into an anon box sideways.

That all said, it continues to be my focus. It will never change on this blog. I will never surrender to being pressured, be it by antis or bitters or people just wanting to argue, into pretending things that were text are subtext. I will not move that goalpost. You are real, and you are valid, and you are welcome in my inbox any time, Nonnie, confidentiality guaranteed. Like, DM too.

but lmao like shit, dawg. There’s a reason the LGBT guys I’ve had as writing partners as Dean literally refuse to play with another Cas. That’s not just because I’m a *super aweSOME auTHOr*, it’s because they recognize I do not come from the wing lost to fanfiction, to troll wars, or even to shipping culture, love of a ship be damned. I don’t try to force gender roles on them. I listen when they speak, and often, surprise many with the angle I ever enter discussion or listening from to begin with, because of spending so many years listening to begin with. It’s an intrinsic understanding of why they resonate with the content, not what I can pull some transformative art stuff on or wanting to *make* it into anything else to fit *my* molds. It’s because of being someone engaged to the male perspective, without the need to twist or change a character to be content with it, and being WILLING to hold those challenging conversations.

Listen first. Talk later. But never in front of or over the people you claim to be talking for.

[mori--calliope]

i just think 

its funny for how long i despised danganronpa despite it having the same themes i look up to, anyone who knew me pre-dr knows how stupid i was about hope and inspiration a la my idealism on knights, justice, the soul, etc. i am fueled on white burning off black and the perseverance of determination and hopefulness and i just cant describe the feeling it gives me. its like the emotional manifestation of a child looking up at their parents in a smile, like a very important figure in their life, a pillar of creation. it’s one of the reasons why i love dark souls and shadowgate, it is fucking awful to tread through and just vehemently against you at all times, you’re constantly dying, fucking up, everythings stronger than you initially, and you’re nothing but ash in a world of fire. but what is the one defining factor of pursuing your goal? hope, determination, sometimes even vengeance. you really want to kill the thing that killed you, and after you kill it, the same feeling courses through you, justice. and this is where we get to the music part of every insane rambling post, prince lothric of dark souls 3, you’re fighting two prestigious royals, a knight and a cleric, you’re a corpse who wandered out of a downtrodden casket with rusty gear and nothing to your name, but you understand you’re more than anything you were left with. regardless of what path you went down, you fought against colossal foes and nightmarish woes to get here, and the fight is grueling. constantly bombarded with lightshows of holy array and bombarded by brutish slams and cunning ploys of the light. the whole time their theme is heavy, looming, dreary, ...hopeless. you have no chance against these titans of hierarchy, you’re common rubble, you’re ash. but in the midst of battle, the score turns back to you, the player, with a fit of retribution, with hope on ears, and encourages your fight to hold out just a hair longer, before dropping you back down in the wolves den, you will earn this fight. there’s just something so inspiring about that part of the song, that even if for a short while, got me to keep going back to it even if i hated the fight itself, it felt incredible. it was just such a unique fight to partake and i couldnt figure out why until i had finally beat the game and listened back on the ost. while i was so focused on what was in front of me, it was the music in the background that kept me going. there’s another song i’ve been addicted to this week, which is smell of the game from gg strive, an absolute encapsulation of what i adore. it is SO heavy and so ANGRY while it upholds the same outlook as before, it’s incredible and i can’t stop listening to it. i havent fully understood the story behind it, but as i understood it’s from the perspective of a (symbolic) monster? maybe a gear, im not versed in guilty gear lore, but the basic gist of it is a lot to do with self identity and rejection of labeling from authority/other figures. in two separate verses “ I know who I am,  The moonlit lake told me,  "This is who you are", My nails are sharper than ice, That is me, I wonder what that will prove?” and “ Do you know who you are?, When you speak your words, Don't sound like your own, You're trapped in a dark cell created by this world, "That is who you are", Norms, standards, rules and guidelines must be kept, So time to wake up!, Gravity keeps us on the ground” i don’t know if it’s internal conflict or an argument between two beings, but it’s apparent they’re fed up with something authoritarian and governing by the following chorus “That is bullshit blazing!, Still my heart is blazing!, If I lose my wings, I dont need a new world order, You can't feel a thing, We already know the smell of game.” it’s in that really cheesy anime fight scene (which it is) tone but it’s just such a liberating feeling, a true feel of justice, a rebel against a corrupt odd. it’s delivered with such passion and strength i can’t help but tear up when he delivers “Remember you are blazing! Still your heart is blazing!” it is THE peak of inspiration of a song, it really just blows a gas fire in your heart and lights the rest of you with it, there is so much going into the emotion behind these songs to get you riled up and determined and i can’t express enough how much i cherish this form of encouragement in media, i need more of it, people need more of it. 

#i wanted to fit promare in here but not yet #nooooot yet...

[feminismforlesbians]

I mostly see accounts of people who were terfs in their youth and changed their mind. What made you go the other way?

@bluegone  

I’m finally back at my laptop. 

(I had this huge essay going in reply to this and then realized that absolutely no one would read of all it and started from scratch).

I’d have to agree with some of the people who commented on this through replies or reblogs while I was away—-I have never seen someone who was a “terf in their youth” shift entire ideologies into liberal feminism. You’ll see a lot of people apologize profusely for being a transphobic cis gay before opening their eyes to tumblr dot com and becoming an instant trans inclusionist. That means that as young 14, 15, 16 year olds (their youth) they had never heard of gender identity vs sex or else didn’t know that attraction based on sex, which was their natural attraction, was a bad thing. It doesn’t mean they were “terfs”. It means they were young gay or bisexual kids who hadn’t ever been exposed to gender theory before and now have subscribed fully to it, apologies for the past crime of feeling sex-based attraction always ready to be offered up. They didn’t change their minds from one ideology to another; they simply subscribed to one without comparison to anything else. 

I actually fully engaged in one movement, then consciously made the decision to subscribe to a different one. 

I’ve been on this hellsite for a very long time. I’m 21 now and I was either 14 or just newly 15 when I first ~made an account. The mainstream “LGBT and feminist movement” on here is liberal trans-inclusive ace-inclusive feminism. It’s large, it’s the default, it’s the social justice community you participate in unless 1) you know there’s a different one you value and you find it or 2) you find a different one through the mainstream and value it (a la me). This mainstream collective has enjoyed trends such as monosexual privilege, gender bang pt 1, mogaii, split attraction model, gender bang pt 2, “q*eer”, and others. I was involved in all aforementioned and the others in between. I believed myself to be bisexual when I first started, because I knew I was attracted to girls and I assumed I was attracted to guys. The monosexual privilege, mogaii, and split attraction model trends all did fantastic jobs of reinforcing this internalized heterosexism but also created a substantial amount of internalized lesbophobia. Gender bang pt 1 and the split attraction model together also created some short-lived but intense body sex dysphoria (wherein I would find myself browsing through packers and binders and shutting my eyes while using the restroom, despite still knowing myself to be a woman) because between the pressure to hyperdefine every aspect of my attraction and to deconstruct my gender, I went through the extra identity crisis that was never needed. This is all a very compressed version of the experience, and is more of a background for the events that started the momentum to my switch in ideologies. 

The tumultuous gender and sexuality crises that I personally experienced as a result of these trends lasted from about the ages 14 to 18; I didn’t start to drift away from the libfem community until I was 20. It was not the personal crises that made me leave, and it’s not my crying about them, about my individual woe-is-me tale that makes me a “terf”. It’s the foundation, though, and that’s why it’s worth mentioning. So you are aware I am not talking out of my ass when I describe things in the libfem community, like language used, priorities made, or the effects on young and/or gay people. I’m not talking out of my ass because I was fully subscribed to it for years; enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. It was my community. 

By the time I was about 18-19 I had finally just let myself be a girl and the sex dysphoria had dissipated along with the frantic attempts to gender-trend myself so that I could make my sexuality “make sense”; I knew I was attracted to girls and though I assumed I must have been attracted to guys, I couldn’t describe how and gender-trending seemed to be the answer. I let that go, the gender-trending part, and then I was just a “cis” bisexual girl. I was okay with that; I accepted that trans people were The Most Oppressed. I knew (and still know) that trans people are deserving of safety, and health care, and that dysphoria can be life threatening. I was content with the standards that trans people came first. Trans women are women and trans men are men, check your cis privilege, and so on. 

And then somewhat of a trio of things of happened in quick succession: there was finally that “duh…I’m a lesbian” moment, a wave of gender theory craze that I call gender bang pt 2, and then I got involved in the ace diskhorse. When I finally let myself be a lesbian it was like…learning to fly. For about two seconds. I just felt free from the discomfort and frustration and pain I’d put myself through trying to convince myself I was attracted to men when I really just wasn’t. And then I came out as a lesbian on here, on this hellsite, and I got people telling me, immediately, that that was great as long as I wasn’t One Of Those Lesbians. The terfy ones. Suddenly it became imperative that every time I talked about women I said and trans women. It was with my own internal freedom to be attracted only to women that I finally saw that the reverse was true in this community I was a part of. I was friends with straight women, bisexual women, pansexual women, q*eer women, q*eer nonbinary people, and many trans people. And they were all attracted to men. And what I watched was how normalized and encouraged attraction to men was—how the “thirst” for men was being called empowering and sexy and “q*eer”. Maybe it is empowering and sexy (it’s certainly not “q*eer”), but not when attraction women was either hush hushed or practically infantilized. Attraction to men was loud and suggestive and sexual and humorous and encouraged; attraction to women was…not. This I noticed first. Men and women. And then I noticed something else. It was okay to connect men to penises. It was assumed, by nearly every person around me, that when one “thirsted for that dick” they were talking about a man and that was okay. If someone said “I really want to fuck her”, without even citing whether “cis” or trans, the entire community was on alert. If someone were to say “I would eat her out”, there would be goddamn riots in the name of transphobia. This was where I started think that it was kind of fucked up that people could be “transphobic” in talking about men and penises have it celebrated as feminist, and then utterly destroyed for talking about women and vulvas. This was where I started to wonder why it was okay for my straight female friend to talk about her thirst for men using explicit details involving dick, but it wasn’t okay for me, a lesbian, to have a sexual attraction to vulvas. This was where I started to want to ask questions about sex-based attraction (but I didn’t, because you don’t ask questions in libfem communities. You just accept, validate, and welcome everybody and shut your goddamn mouth if you don’t.)

This overlapped with the gender bang pt 2, which was a reinforcement of the gender theory that had been prevailing for a while but was more significant to me at the time. While I was now starting to wonder why people attracted to men could specify male genitalia in their attraction and lesbians weren’t permitted to do the same for women, there was beginning a larger push to pretend like biological sex didn’t exist at all. There was a push for people to believe that only gender, a concept of personal identity, factored into attraction. It was a push that made it so a woman was only a woman because she said so, and to speak of biological sex was to be transphobic. It was a push that deconstructed my womanhood and my sexuality in one blow. It was a push that further amplified discussions of “dick”, except now where my lack of participation in such talks would have been unnoticeable, it was a “red flag”. It was upsetting. It wasn’t trans people that were upsetting to me, or trans women, or trans “validity”. I wasn’t angry about the fact that trans people existed, I didn’t wish them ill or dead. I was angry that my femaleness, my womanhood, the part of who I was for which this movement claimed to stand for—feminism—was now the enemy. It was being erased. I was angry that my sexuality, which I had had barely a breath to revel in, which I had had denied to me through all this other genderist bullshit, was now treated as a “risk factor” for being a transphobe—the ultimate evil. I couldn’t say any of this, though, I couldn’t ask any questions, I couldn’t differ even slightly in opinion, or disagree with something or have some fucking boundaries, because this is the libfem circles we are talking about. So, instead, I just buried my thoughts because part of me felt that maybe I was evil for thinking that way. 

And right around then I stumbled into the ace diskhorse. Yes, that one area within liberal feminism where there is the slightest variety—I say slightest because in fact, if you openly suggest ace exclusion as a libfem, you will be decimated just as you would for criticizing genderism. However, I say variety, because there are a decent amount of libfems who are ace exclusionists but subscribe to literally everything else in libfem rhetoric. That’s where I found myself, on another tiny blog, lurking curiously in these trans-inclusive gender-not-sex q*eer ace-exclusive posts. (Mind, I am ace exclusive. But that’s not what makes me a terf. Just an aphobe, apparently). This was where I learned that, hey, it was possible to not agree with every single little thing that the tumblr mainstream declared “valid”. I had never strayed away from the mainstream because I didn’t know of any other circle except, you know, terfs, which were obviously evil—so why would I have ever bothered to look at a so-called terf’s blog or in a “terfy” tag? I hadn’t. I hadn’t ever seen anything but the tumblr mainstream all very forcefully agreeing with each other, supported by kawaii banners and not much else. Yet here was the tiny ace-exclusive corner, where people actually discussed like, concepts, and constructs, and facts, and histories, and actual manifestations of oppressions. I saw people actually asking goddamn questions. 

A few times, I would see an ace-inclusive libfem telling an ace-exclusive libfem that they were evil fucking aphobes that were “just as bad as terfs”. Privately, I would think, no, no I’m not like a terf. Terfs are evil! They want to kill trans women and are total fetishists! I don’t want to kill anyone, I know trans people. Just because I think maybe being female matters and that maybe it’s okay to be attracted to sex, does not mean I’m a terf. 

So it was all happening in congruence: I was a lesbian finally free from her own internalized lesbophobia, looking to embrace and revel in my sexuality after hating it for so long, as the community I trusted told me that it was wrong to desire vulva but empowering to suck dick. I was starting to look up and outside and thinking about asking questions just as I discovered that questions could be asked. I was thinking.

I can identify a moment that could be called the catalyst. 

I was perusing my ace-exclusionist corner, and an ace-exclusionist libfem had made a post about asexuality that a “terf” had dared agree with. There was no mention of trans people or sex or gender on either end and still the libfem said:

“go get hit by a truck and die, terf”

It was so brutally violent and since the “terf” had said nothing that was trans or gender or sex related, I thought that this must mean that terfs are so universally evil they’re worthy of fucking death threats just for commenting on a post. And then I worried the thoughts I’d been having, the anger about devaluing my sex and sexuality in the name of trans activism, were terfy. And so I clicked on that terf’s blog, to see how maliciously cruel and hateful these terfs were so that I could reaffirm my previous loyalty to trans-inclusive feminism. 

Except what happened was that I clicked on that terf’s blog and she wasn’t the spawn of Satan. I clicked on people she reblogged from and people they reblogged from and soon found myself lurking in honest-to-God terf circles. It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t evil. No one was asking for the rapes and murders of trans women. No one was fetishizing women. There were black terfs and brown terfs and disabled terfs and lesbian terfs and bisexual terfs and young terfs and older terfs. These terfs weren’t at all the kawaiied pasteled hivemind that libfem was. They actually talked about things; they explored, explained, and support ideas, history, facts, and values. It was invigorating. They didn’t all agree all the time all at once and no one was threatening lives for having a different perspective. Their commonality? In the most basic definition, these trans exclusive radical feminists believed in sex-based oppression, in sex-based attraction, and in the prioritization of women in feminism. Obviously there’s much more to it than that; that’s what made it so fascinating, this movement that had a foundation and entire layers of analyses and arguments and facts and history and convictions. 

I lurked and I lurked and I lurked and then I said fuck it, and I made a blog. I believe that gender is a social construct, that biological sex is fact, that sex-based oppression exists; I don’t want trans people dead, I don’t think trans people don’t deserve health care, I don’t think trans people don’t deserve safety. There’s more, but those are the baselines. 

So I guess now I’m a terf that switched sides. And apparently deserving of things like getting hit by a truck and dying. Comes with the territory when you decide to be part of a movement that asks questions and doesn’t deny reality. 

#terf #feminism #trans activism

[geniusorinsanity]

Any opinions on Dex/Nursey as parents?

OOF. So I’m actually halfway into the first chapter of a secretdad!Nursey fic so I have a lot of dad!Nursey thoughts, but I actually had to put some thought into dad!Dex opinions, and then a good amount of thought into the combination of Dex/Nursey as parents! That said, do I have opinions on Dex/Nursey as parents? DO I EVER, MY FRIEND.

So first off: the way these boys were brought up has a Big Impact on how they are as parents.

Nursey was raised by two moms who loved him to pieces and let him be soft and feminine when he wanted to be and were hugely affectionate when they were there, but who also traveled a lot for work. Dex was raised by parents who also worked a lot, but who were almost always stressed about money--and he felt that stress really young and learned to internalize it. They both love their parents, but they also both picked up a lot from their parents--both “what to do” and “what not to do”.

That said:

(continued under the cut)

Nursey is definitely the Soft Parent. Not that Dex isn’t gentle with his kids--he gives great hugs, he can kiss a skinned knee with a fresh band-aid with the best of them, etc etc--but Nursey is the Soft Parent. Nursey is the one whose lap the kids will crawl into when he’s writing or reading and he’ll just absently readjust his position so that he can put an arm around them, Nursey is the one who reads bedtime stories and always indulges requests for extra kisses and snuggles, Nursey is the one who hums lullabies, who talks about feelings, who strokes the kids’ hair and sings quietly to them in whatever language seems right at the time when they’re upset, etc.

Just. Soft Dad Nursey.

You would think that Clinically Anxious Derek Nurse would be the more anxious parent, but surprise, it’s Dex! 

Even though he and Nursey are pretty financially stable when they have kids, all his issues about money from childhood shoot DIRECTLY BACK TO THE SURFACE

He’s always lowkey worried about being Not Enough for Nursey, and that gets a lot worse when it comes to providing for their family.

Nursey is shit at knowing what’s going on with his own issues, but he’s super attuned to Dex, and when he realizes that Dex is taking longer and longer hours at work and Dex finally has a breakdown and is like “I’m just--Derek, do you have any idea how expensive college is going to be by the time she’s eighteen?” 

“Will. Go. To. Therapy.”

He does. It’s really, really helpful.

Dex is also the Practical Parent. Doctor’s appointment bookings? Dex. Remembering Parent-Teacher Conferences? Dex. Gently coaxing the kids away from the books they’re reading for pleasure and towards the books they need to read for school? (“They get this from you, Derek.” “Chill, babe.”) Dex.

They realize very, very quickly that they Can Not be the kind of parents who get nervous when their kids fall down, fall off shit, or are generally...well, kids. Why, you ask?

Baby Dex was a climber. Baby Nursey was...approximately as much of a human disaster as adult Nursey. Their children--despite not being biologically related to them--somehow seem to have intuited this, and acquired BOTH OF THESE TRAITS, and are determined to scale everything that can be scaled, and then fall off it. 

Their apartment is very, very well baby-proofed until their children are about twelve.

They also learn the careful balance between acknowledging that their kids might be hurt, not letting their kids know that they might be hurt, and keeping any trace of their own internal panic off their faces.

Nursey is way better at this than Dex. 

“I told you all those years of faking chill would work out.” “I literally fucking hate you.” “Babe, chill.” 

Nursey is absolutely the dad who posts photos of himself doing his kids hair on Instagram. They occasionally go viral, because even into his thirties, Nursey is hot, his kids are Cute as Fuck, and the internet loves that shit. 

Every time this happens, Dex gets chirped to shit at work. Dex’s response: “I’m sorry, am I actually supposed to apologize for the fact that my husband is so hot that he broke the internet?”

NAMES. How did I forget names?

Nursey is “Baba” and Dex is “Daddy.” 

When the kids become Cool Teenagers they start calling Dex “Dad” but Nursey is still “Baba” and Dex definitely cries about it for like an hour until Nursey explains that it’s a translation thing and it doesn’t mean the kids love him more.

The kids also definitely will just yell “Daaaaaaaaads” when they want things and Nursey calls his moms and is like “Was I this annoying?” and they laugh at him for ten minutes until he hangs up the phone.

The biggest fight they have about parenting is whether to send their kids to public or private schools.

Nursey would never, ever send his kids to boarding school--Andover fucked him up bad--but he can’t deny he got an amazing education in the private system. 

Dex thinks it’s a waste of money and also doesn’t understand how someone as liberal as Nursey can be all for public education but not enough to send his kids to public schools.

The word “hypocrite” is used. It’s not a pretty fight. (This fight takes place before any of the kids are in the picture.)

In the end, they agree on public schools at least through middle school, with the option to re-open the discussion when the oldest kid is close to high school. 

Nursey’s depression is the biggest challenge in his parenting--there are some days when he just can’t. When the kids are old enough they buy picture books like “Why Are You So Sad?” and “The Color Thief” to help them understand why he can’t do things like he usually does, and they know that when he has bad days it’s okay to crawl into bed and snuggle with him. When they're little they’ll just play quietly, but when they get a little older sometimes they’ll read to him, or tell him stories about what they did in school, and if he cries they’ll wipe his face with small hands and say, “it’s okay, Baba, I love you,” and it makes him feel like maybe he’s not fucking this up entirely.

Dex pokes his head in to check in on them to let them know that dinner is ready--he’s not sure if Nursey’ll eat, but the kids don’t get a choice--and finds Nursey asleep and their six-year-old daughter petting his hair and humming the lullaby that Nursey used to sing to her when they first adopted her. “Shh, Daddy,” she tells him, softly. “He needs to sleep to make his feelings better.” 

Dex nods, and backs out of the room, and feels like he has to call his parents, or Nursey’s parents, or maybe just start praying, or something, because holy fuck. He doesn’t know how it happened or how they figured out how to do it, given what disasters they both are, but he and Nursey are definitely doing this parenting thing right. 

This is way too long, but in conclusion:

Yes. I do, apparently, have some Opinions about Dex and Nursey as parents.

#otp: you'd totally sing to me #nurseydex #dexnursey #nurseydex headcanons #dexnursey headcanons #Anonymous

[ihearducksaregoingquackers]

Sorry for long post, but anything you can say will help. Deeply personal.

Tumblr is a super weird experience for me, with just who and what I am. To kind of put a million labels on me at once (the labels that I know of), I am a seemingly-but-not-always white-passing light-skinned Egyptian Muslim capable of growing an afro who is heteroromantic, bi-curious, demisexual-ish (I can be sexually attracted to anyone, but I’d almost never take clothes off unless it was with someone I was in love with), cisgendered male, was essentially raised on Western (mostly American, some British) media influence with English as a first language and hardly able to speak Arabic despite it being my native language, legally an American citizen, with diagnoses of depression, anxiety and ADHD, with an education background of partially physics, animation and partially game design at a university level (the partialies are due to dropping out because of depression). Also, I was ‘a gifted child’, aka I was naturally adept at science and math, and dropped the humanities like a hot rock as soon as I could.

And that’s what I can think of off the top of my head.

(The rest is put under ‘keep reading’ because the post is super long. If you have the time or energy to read this and just say anything to help, I’d super appreciate it. If not, I appreciate you reading this far. If you didn’t read this far, I still appreciate you following me anyway, because it helps make it feel like tumblr is worth doing, even though audience isn’t the reason why I use tumblr in the first place.)

This, of course, not only leads to huge amounts of internal anxiety with regards to “who or what the fuck am I”, being Egyptian and Muslim but having been raised and immersed in Western and Christian or Athiest media. But following the diverse blogs of Tumblr makes it even more confusing. Specifically black tumblr, not because there’s anything wrong with black tumblr, but black tumblr has made me ask myself questions that I never would have thought to ask myself. But all sorts of tumblr (especially social justice tumblr or educational discourse tumblr talking about geography or history) have had this effect on me too.

Like, what does it mean to be African? Am I African? I actually had to go up to my mom and ask that question, because it bugged me so much and I just didn’t have the answer, and there’s an apparent distinction between Africa and North Africa, where Egypt is in North Africa. But also, I can grow an afro. When I was still in the states and working as a cashier at a dry cleaning place, I actually asked a couple of black co-workers if they thought I could grow an afro. When they responded with “yeah, I could see a Jew-fro”, I had to show them this video of me getting the largest afro I’d grown shaved. They were surprised, to say the least (and it was totally worth the look on their faces). But like, black tumblr has a habit of calling curly hair ‘black hair’ and I somehow feel like I can’t own my hair? But I’m technically African, but does that allow me the same courtesy?

And, like, obviously I don’t want to be That Asshole™, cultural appropriation is such a huge thing and I don’t want to promote it in any way, shape or form. But I have curly hair, I can naturally grow an afro, been able to do it my whole life, how do I embrace that without accidentally promoting cultural appropriation? If the answer seems obvious, there’s the ‘sometimes-but-not-always white-passing’ thing which I go into detail later on. I also know that black tumblr isn’t intentionally looking at my obscure, one off tumblr that has 57 followers and saying “let’s make this ONE individual paranoid about what he can or can’t do or say about his hair”. I’m not egotistical or narcissistic enough to think my opinion matters that much to an entire tumblr culture for them to try and send me a message, but I feel that there’s enough of a message for me to at least be concerned about what my actions might unintentionally say.

It also doesn’t help that my family hasn’t really learned about taking care of afros since I was kind of a pariah in wanting an afro and my family insists I look better without one and that what little I’ve learned about taking care of afros I’ve learned from black tumblr. Also, depression makes it hard to get out of bed or even take a shower, so taking care of my afro is kind of out of the question at the moment.

There’s also another awkward one of “How Arab am I?” That question is multi-layered, partially due to my westernization through the media I consumed, my faulty ability with the Arabic language, the fact that I’ve had too many Egyptians in Egypt ask me where I’m from (I’ve answered with ‘Egyptian but raised in America’ which gets people to not ask more questions).

And then there’s also the part of what does it mean to be Egyptian as well. Like, specifically Egyptian. Should I be proud of my ancestors? Is that even *my* legacy? Or has my legacy been so muddied by the multiple empires that have conquered Egypt that I can’t lay any claim to it? My family trees can also be traced back to Tunisia (Carthage specifically), Morocco and Lebanon (I’m quarter Lebanese so that’s sorta the easiest to trace), but that’s only looking at two straight lines and an obvious link and almost none of the other branches of my family tree are really explored. Like, my family almost entirely hails from Alexandria, I have great grandparents that fought in World War 2 for Egypt and that’s quite a few generations of living in Egypt, so potentially one of my ancestors was Ancient Egyptian, right?

But THEN there’s also the legacy of Egyptians, the muddied part I mentioned because, at one point, Coptic Christians were the dominant population before Islam became a thing, and then Egypt became part of the Islamic Empire, which resulted in 80% of the current Egyptian population being Muslim now. But also, Ancient Egypt was a thing. And Ancient Egypt traded with Ancient Greece and that’s it’s own bag which I don’t even have all the information on that. Let’s also not forget the Jewish Egyptians that exist in the world. Or the fact that Jews had to run away from Egypt (God, that one Hannukah I attended with my ex-girlfriend was awkward).

There’s also the whole fetishization of Ancient Egypt by essentially everyone, but also holy shit Ancient Egypt was so advanced for its time too, which no wonder why people are obsessed with it, but then it kinda gets weird and it’s super complicated to get into right now. There’s also debate about the skin colour of Ancient Egyptians too, and like, if it’s discovered that they were dark-skinned, do I have no right and no claim to my ancestry?

And THEN there’s what it means to be Muslim, and how some of what I’ve been told clashes heavily with liberal western political ideals (imagine my ass being conservative, HA!). That also clashes with my status as bi-curious, which used to be bisexual (still heteroromantic) but now, isn’t? I don't know, I’m still very much in this “I have no idea what my sexuality is” stage. Being bullied from an early age and learning to take ‘gay’ as an insult has superbly affected my ability to even consider being called gay. I get REELED at the idea of being called gay or kissing another man, but there’s that bi-curious thing due to some events that will not be described (no abuse, I promise). There’s just so much shit that clashes from these different things. And I don’t even know how to fit the pieces together even remotely.

The ‘seemingly obvious answer’ of ‘you can be all of that’ doesn’t apply when you hear shit like the Egyptian government tracking down gay people through gay dating apps and are actively living in Egypt. I’m not even LOOKING for that kind of thing with another man, and it’s not even a potential future thing in my mind either, since, you know, demisexual-ish. But there’s still that occasional attraction? It’s weird. Just, being me with regards to these things is weird and I can’t fit the pieces together, not on my own. And, also, I always have to ask the question: with being so marginally LGBT, do I even have the right to consider myself as part of the LGBT+ community? With all the stuff that the LGBT+ community go through, how could I, as a heteroromantic bi-curious demisexual, even CONSIDER being a part of the LGBT+ community? It’s such this deep question, and I only have the label of bi-curious because I don’t even know anything that more accurately describes what’s happening in my head, you know?

Don’t even get me started on Arab mentality of mental health issues, which further complicates things with my liberal western ideals. Just don’t.

There’s also that fun time my sister accused me of being ‘too westernized’.

God, and then, just, I look at Egypt and I can’t find much to be proud of my people? There’s stuff that is improving, no doubt, but it’s so slow and gradual that it might take a few lifetimes in order for things to even measure up to something I’d consider good standards. But again, are these the ideals of an Egyptian who wants the best for his country, or a foreigner who can only see through the lens of his own privilege? The number of times people have said that “[I am] not Egyptian” because I don’t like a certain Egyptian dish or don’t say a certain thing or whatever other standards I have is absolutely infuriating.

I wish I was one of those people who didn’t need labels to identify themselves. I wish I could just say “I am who I am, that’s okay with me”. But I can’t, I’m just not that kind of person. I’ve had the label of ADHD from when I was first diagnosed as a child, and also Egyptian too. Also, being ‘so smart’ as a kid, ‘so obedient’, ‘quiet’ etc. as a child. But I was bullied too, I had two or three friends for my youngest years that I remember (I remember nothing from before age 8 aside from literally three memories), and what I can now put a name to, dangerously severe depression. I survived, which is really all that matters, but I only have vague memories of being a child and a teen.

Anyway, let’s ignore that tangent and get back on track with the labels. Sometimes-but-not-always white-passing. Having lived in the states and being able to experience the looks that some people give me, whether I’m white-passing or not depends entirely on the person who sees me. My name isn’t ‘obviously Arab’, so people kind of have to guess where I come from. I’ve been mistaken for white for sure, but I’ve also had an older black woman tell me “shalom” as she was getting off the bus “because of the nose” with a hand motion, thinking I was Jewish. Then there was the elderly white psychiatrist, lemme just set the stage.

I walk into an INTAKE with this elderly white psychiatrist, not even a session, this is purely an assessment part. He asks questions, gets my name, gets my original nationality, age, guesses correctly that I’m Muslim. He asks if I drink, I told him no, because I haven’t. His IMMEDIATE response: “Oh, that’s good, because if you did, they’d have to take you out back and shoot you in the back of the head.”

I got so scared, I forced myself to see him for three sessions because I had to make sure that he wouldn’t think the reason why I didn’t go to my first appointment was because of his racist ass. Then every time I went to that clinic, I was scared out of my mind that he’d accuse me of not seeing him because of that (my Philipino therapist, who I’d been seeing for weeks before that, was in that clinic so I couldn’t just up and leave, also she was really good and I needed that stability). You could also bet your ass I didn’t report it to management because, again, I was so scared I was gonna be shot by some white dude with a gun if any of that came to light. After that, the anxiety was too much for me to bear and I went to see another psychiatrist. This was in Maryland, 45 minutes away from DC, and since I don't know anything about gun laws in those states, I have no guess about what might happen.

I didn’t exactly hide the fact that I was Egyptian from the people I became friends with, but still, I feel like I should have assessed what to say first. The question always came up “where are you from” and I’d be forced to answer “Egypt” since any other answer is kind of dishonest.

There’s just a lot on my mind. What does it mean to be me? What does it mean to have all these different backgrounds? Who and what am I? Having lots of time on my hands because my depression has essentially made me bedridden does not help in the slightest because I have no way of finding out those answers. And being bedridden doesn’t mean ‘I have time to think’, because I’m too busy actually dealing with my depression (and, some days, surviving my depression) to be philosophical in any way, shape, or form.

This is kinda selfish of me to do, but I'm queueing this because I desperately want people to see this and just, help, in some way. I might even reblog it and schedule it at another time because holy cow I need some advice.