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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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On Validity Culture and Alter Race - Parethnicity and Racism in the System Community

Remy here to talk about a difficult and uncomfortable subject, but as a white person who considers themselves an ally to people of color, and especially systems of color, I feel like this is something that definitely needs to be brought up a lot more, so I’m going to talk about it, since no one else really seems to want to.

I will note that this post is mostly directed at white people, so there is a lot of speech directed towards white people and the potential white person reading this post. It should also be noted that this post is going to be very long, but if you actually care about people of color, I suggest you read this post before sending me a death threat for questioning you. If you don’t, well, I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me, and that’s on you to think about.

Introduction

So, another issue I have with validity culture, is that it’s all about making safe spaces...

For white people.

So many system spaces I’ve been in online have been very, very white and generally kind of hostile to systems whose bodies are people of color. Even if it’s not direct, these communities are still working hard to /seem/ not racist, but don’t actually make an effort to unlearn racism and many systems of color, (SOC), feel safe and comfortable in their spaces.

This is such an issue because SOC are already traumatized from childhood onwards by racism, intergenerationally, and as if that wasn’t enough, in the case of DIDOSDD, they were also traumatized enough to gain a system from even more childhood trauma piled on top of that. SOC need a safe space away from all of this more than anyone else, but I so often see them get ignored and thrown under the bus because white people and white systems don’t want to feel bad about their own racism, which they refuse to unlearn.

This isn’t something I want to ignore anymore. Racism is a huge problem in the system community, on all sides of syscourse, in every part of the system, multiple, plural, DIDOSDD and endogenic communities, and the only people that are talking about it are SOC, who can only talk about it with other SOC, lest they get ostracized, harassed, guilt tripped or gaslit by white systems who feel threatened by being called out for racist behaviour, as if being traumatized or mentally ill is an excuse for racism.

So I’m going to talk about it, because I feel like other white people and systems would listen to me more than they would SOC.

What Causes This Behavior?

There are a lot of contributing factors to white systems being so hostile to SOC, even if they claim to be anti-racist or allies to POC, but there are generally 4 big reasons I see as the biggest contributors to this kind of behavior in (white) system spaces:

1) White people first and foremost think that because they know about racism, that they cannot perpetuate it, which is far from true. These people don’t want to see racism as an inherent part of being white, as an inherent part of white privilege and an inherent part of themselves as white people. They don’t want to face the reality that, as white people, we are inherently racist. Not born this way, but raised this way by an inherently racist society made to benefit us and use POC as stepping stones to our success as white people. They don’t want to admit that we actively have to make an effort to unlearn this racism, because that would require not only making an effort, but giving a shit about POC and expending emotional labor that they simply don’t want to give out.

2) Because of this, they want to distance themselves from being white by hiding behind other minority labels, such as their autism, mental illness or their queerness/LGBT identity in a vain attempt to rid themselves of their white guilt, but all it does is make them seem more ignorant. These people will behave in a very ‘I’m not white, I’m nonbinary’ kind of way just to get out of being ‘attacked’ by the big, scary POC who are just trying to make spaces for themselves more comfortable and trying to minimize the trauma of just having to live their life in a society that’s constantly trying to set them up for failure.

3) Then, they do everything they can to seem ‘woke’ on a surface level to other white people without actually putting in the work to unlearn their racism. This is because they care more about getting accused of being racist than they do about actually not being racist, so when they are accused of being racist, they see it as an attack on themselves and get extremely defensive. “Well I can’t be racist, I have BLM in my bio”, “I can’t be racist, I’m queer and I love Marsha P. Johnson”, “I’m not racist, I’m ADHD and you’re being ableist for criticizing me and my hyperfixation, which happens to be racist/include racist elements”.

4) And most of all, they don’t actually, fully understand our position of power over POC and their own white privilege and how they benefit from it--and they refuse to learn because it requires them to unpack their own ingrained racism and try to unlearn it, which means they have to confront the fact that we are racist and have been born and bred to be racist, which is bad to them because they perceive being racist as a personal failure and an irredeemable flaw instead of something that, once recognized, can be learned away from and grown out of with the proper work put into it.

How Does Validity Culture Factor Into This?

I specifically mentioned ‘validity culture’ in the title of this post for a reason, and now it’s time to talk about that and what that means for the discussion of ‘alter race’ and white-bodied system’s usage of Japanese names.

Because of those points listed above, ‘validity culture’ in white system spaces becomes a very subtly racist area that’s full of white systems trying to validate other white system’s racism, and only agreeing with the (few, in my experience) SOC that agree with them.

It actually feels like a natural progression if you think about it. Validity culture in system spaces prioritizes validating everyone and every experience out of fear of making someone feel bad and possibly invalidating their experiences, and that progresses to racism very, very quickly because when you try to call white people out on their racism, they tend to feel bad about it, but not bad that they were doing something racist, instead bad that they were called out for doing something they liked that happened to be racist. As I’ve stated before already, white people tend to care more about being called out for being racist and how that makes them feel than they do about making their spaces safer for POC and how they feel about experiencing racism.

But these white systems very often don’t get called out for their racism because 1) most of these spaces are so hostile to SOC that they tend not to join spaces like this, or when they do, they stay quiet out of fear of being demonized, harassed, and kicked out of these spaces, and 2) this would mean that the other white systems in that space would feel bad and have to work on their own racism, especially if the system doing the calling out in the first place is also white, and as we’ve already established, that’s just too much work for these poor, mentally ill, neurodivergent, LGBT systems, and it’s not like they don’t experience discrimination too! What, are you demeaning the struggles of mentally ill, neurodivergent LGBT people by asking me to do some inner-reflection on my own subconscious, racist biases and actively work on them to make my space and the spaces I’m in safer for people and systems of color?

The answer is no, obviously. You are not having your struggles demeaned and shit on by SOC who are just trying to speak out and make spaces safer for themselves, because there are mentally ill, neurodivergent, LGBT systems of color, too, and to act like SOC/POC are some monolith in which they can’t be these things and that they are persecuting you for asking one of your alters to use a different name, at least online, because it muddies the meaning of that name in their culture for the sake of white people’s aesthetics and how /they/ identify is racist.

This really is one of the few instances where my current blog title, ‘If you feel attacked, you’re part of the problem’, is more than applicable, because it’s true. White people feel attacked for being called out for their racism, and I’ve said this several times before, but I feel it must be reiterated at every instance I can get so that I can drill it into the skulls of other white people, but white people more often than not care more about being /accused/ of being racist than they actually do about the rights and safety and comfort of people of color, which is why even so many leftist/’progressive’ spaces, feminist spaces, spaces for mental illness support, LGBT support and pride, support for the homeless, and many more, online and in real life tend to be so white across the board, and this still rings very true in system spaces.

Validity culture and racism very, very often go hand-in-hand, with primarily white spaces validating other white people for their racism because facing the idea that they might be racist makes them feel bad, as if SOC/POC don’t already feel terrible enough actually having to experience racism on a daily basis.

Parethnicity: Are Alters Actually a Race Outside of the Body?

The short answer to this question: No. Obviously. No, alters/headmates are not actually a race outside of the body, no matter how hard you want to believe this, no matter how offended it makes you, no matter how defensive you get, nothing will be able to change the race you actually are in the body you’re living in because it’s the first thing anyone notices about you when looking at you.

But here’s the long answer, for those who want to understand more, since I know everyone else is just going to come into my inbox and tell me I’m a terrible person:

One of the biggest ways this hostile behavior towards SOC manifests, especially behavior number 2 in that list, is in the form of anime introjects claiming to be actually Japanese in the headspace, partaking in Japanese culture, speaking Japanese and missing/wishing to be a part of Japanese culture/home ‘again’.

The thing a lot of these people and their systems aren’t going to be happy about hearing is that these alters/headmates are not actually, literally those characters and they are especially not actually, literally Japanese. But that doesn’t stop entitled white people from trying to claim to be, or trying to create new terms for themselves to describe a common experience that doesn’t need to be labelled with a confusing and racist/racially weird as hell label that, frankly, doesn’t need to exist because of everything it implies.

Enter: ‘Parethnicity’.

‘Parethnicity’ is the term referring to an alter that identifies as a race or ethnicity outside of the body’s race or ethnicity.

First off, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ are two entirely different things, so the term ‘parethnicity’ is already extremely inaccurate and offensive on that front, and that’s /ignoring/ the fact that it’s a term primarily for white systems to claim races and experiences that they are not a part of.

Secondly, they created another term to go along with it, ‘parethnophobia’, which is doubly offensive because it implies that alters modeled after a specific race outside of the body can experience oppression for a race that they simply, straight up are not, which is absolutely not how it works.

See, a term needs an ‘-ism’ or ‘-phobia’ term when oppression against a minority group reaches a point where it’s so severe on a systemic level that language is required to describe that oppression, the oppression that is getting them killed, ostracized, denied homes, denied jobs, denied medical care, forcibly sterilized, physically attacked and harassed, even in public, especially where attacks like this can be validated by other people in the area, and more, all just for being a member of this specific minority.

‘Parethnic’ alters are not, in any way, shape or form, a group of people that are so significantly oppressed in a systematic way that it needs a term to describe the specific oppression against them because they aren’t a minority and they aren’t oppressed in any way for anything relating to their ‘parethnicity’.

‘-Phobia’s and ‘-ism’s are added to words to give voices to the voiceless, to give words to help these people understand what’s happening to them and so they can help themselves and others fight against what’s happening to them. Not for entitled white kids in system spaces to claim that they have a ‘black alter’. Because 99% of the time, this doesn’t get you persecuted by /anyone/. Most of the time, it’ll just get a white singlet, sometimes even a white system, asking you if you can say the n-word, which I can only hope to god that you said ‘no’ to. That’s not oppression, that’s just an annoyance for us, as white people. On the flipside, a SOC telling you that you can’t use the n-word in a white body because you’re in a white body and your ‘black alter’ isn’t actually black, they’re just a subconscious projection of what you think a black person is and acts like, also isn’t oppression. That’s a fact.

You might not want to hear this, but the thing about alter race is that if you are an alter in a white body that identifies as a race outside of the body, or is otherwise made to look like a race outside of white (when you’re in a white body), you still aren’t actually that race. You have never actually experienced racism and you never actually will, because you exist in a white body and the first thing that people are ever going to notice about you is your skin color, and the facts are: your skin is white. Even if you have (pseudo/exo)memories of experiencing racism, those memories are not applicable to the life you’re living right now, and you cannot ethically or reasonably claim those experiences without speaking over actual POC and SOC on things they experience every single day of their lives.

You have to be aware of the context of the life you’re living right now, and the context is that you’re in a white body and you are the oppressor here now. If anything, you should be enjoying and thankful for the privilege of being able to be white and ignorant of the horrors of actually having to be a person of color.

A Real Life Example and Analysis: Whi-T

This is the longest section of the post, and could be skipped to the TL;DR if you don’t have time to read it all, but if you have the time for an analysis of arguments used against people of color calling out racism in spaces they’re in and you want to understand why some arguments are bad and even racist, and generally how white people act in situations where they are called out on racism and racist behavior, I suggest you read it in full.

I have a very good real-life example of the kind of hostility and entitlement a lot of white systems, especially those with anime introjects, tend to have bubble up in discussions about racism, from a discord server I’m in, starring an introject of a Japanese anime character in a white body that for the sake of their privacy, we will call T.

The discussion begins in a discourse channel within a discord server I’m in.

A friend of mine, S, is part of a bodily Japanese system, and they begin the discussion by asking the channel how they feel about systems who are not bodily Asian having alters with names that are explicitly Asian. T says they never thought about it in depth, but S says that they find it pretty offensive to their culture, specifically mentioning that it’s offensive to them because they and people from their culture get made fun of for their names, while white people get to pick and choose the ones they think are cute and ‘aesthetic’ and get praised for it online, despite these names having a lot of cultural significance in how they are chosen and the meanings behind them.

T jumps into the conversation again and says that they think it’s fine, because, quote, ‘it’s a name and people can choose whatever name they want but again it’s not my culture so not my choice’. Notice them inserting their opinion, and then tacking on the last bit about it not being their culture, so it’s not their choice. They know that they don’t have a say in it as someone who is not Japanese, but they decide to insert their own opinion anyways, speaking over an actual Japanese system to do so. It’s already clear that T did not come into this conversation to debate, they came in to assert their (white) opinion to speak over an actual Japanese system, so they could continue to validate their own racism and the racism of other white people, especially white people in that server.

The next string of messages between T and S go something along the lines of S saying that ‘it’s not just a name it holds high importance to the culture and the culture is closed’, and continuing to reiterate that cultural appropriation is bad, even in systems and even if alters cannot control how they form, and T has the compelling argument of ‘i feel like anyone can choose a name they can feel comfortable with if it represents them. but again not my culture /gen’. Their arguments don’t really branch out much further than them just repeatedly saying this, and something along the lines of ‘that’s gatekeepy and iffy to me, but not my culture so it’s totally not my choice and I don’t get a say, even though I’m actively trying to give myself a say anyways /gen’.

What’s really important to note here is T’s usage of tone tags, and how maliciously deliberate that can be in demonizing people of color trying to speak out against racism in online communities they’re a part of.

Tone tags have become very normalized, to the point where it feels expected for people to use them because it’s polite, which is fine, but when discussing things like this with systems of color I know personally, they very often feel extremely pressured to use tone tags just to soften themselves and how they actually feel about a situation just to appear palatable and not (justifiably) angry with neurodivergent white people being /racist/ towards them, otherwise these white people will blow up and throw a shitfit, they’ll accuse you of ‘mini-modding’, their RSD will flare up and they’ll feel too bad for being called out for their racism and change their statuses to ‘DNI’ and make their profile pictures black.

The fact that T is using tone tags this early on in the conversation is less of a way to soften their tone and more of way to set S up later in the conversation, so they can accuse S of being aggressive and needing to step back from the conversation when they’re just being blunt and mildly assertive, just because S didn’t use tone tags. Even if this is unintentional, this is a manner of T trying to make themselves seem nicer, like they are the innocent one and S is attacking them for no reason, so that S’s blunt and vaguely assertive tone could suddenly seem a lot more aggressive to other white people.

T says that it’s a little ‘iffy’ to them that a Japanese person is uncomfortable with appropriation of their culture, and says it’s because if they identify with a name, T doesn’t feel it’s their responsibility or right to correct them on how they identify just because it would make themselves uncomfortable. The usage of using words like ‘identify’ when talking about cultural appropriation is a way to make system experiences seem like LGBT experiences, when I’ve already said in previous posts that the two are nowhere near the same. When discussing alter race in systems, it’s a lot more complicated than just ‘identifying’ as something, because alters can and do identify as all sorts of things, to the point where they get dysmorphia when they don’t look the way they do in the inner world, I get something like this as my appearance in the inner world doesn’t match up with the body. This doesn’t mean I actually am what I look like in the inner world, similar to how littles in systems aren’t actual children and animal alters aren’t actual animals, and it would be somewhat inappropriate to treat them this way, especially if they don’t want to be treated this way.

Culture is a lot more than just ‘identifying’ as something, it’s something you’re either born into or taken from, a birthright, something that is passed down to you for generations and often times these cultures that belong to people of color get taken from them by white people, who only take the parts they like for the ‘aesthetic’ and muddy their actual meanings to the people in this culture, which leads to a fetishization and misrepresentation of these actual cultures.

Another thing to address in this poor argument is the usage of the word ‘uncomfortable’. Notice how T uses this term to demean the struggles of POC who are threatened by cultural appropriation and cultural theft. They use this term, ‘uncomfortable’, to describe actual racism to demean what actual racism is and try to boil it down to people of color in closed cultures simply being ‘uncomfortable’ with people outside of their race and culture stealing aspects of their culture, fetishizing them for themselves and demonizing the actual POC who actively love and partake in said culture.

S says that it’s more than just being uncomfortable and T says, ‘it makes you uncomfortable yes?’ They say this in an attempt to twist S’s words and continue to demean POC’s struggles with cultural appropriation.

These arguments are incredibly malicious and are made to shut down POC who even remotely try to speak out about racism.

T continues to twist S’s wording by saying ‘so you’re telling them they cannot have a name. that’s iffy to me-’ and when they are questioned on why they feel entitled to speak over an actual Japanese person on this subject, they say that S wanted to debate, and they’re just debating, (again, with tone tags ‘/nm’ and ‘/gen’), but I would disagree strongly. This isn’t them debating with S, this is them intentionally twisting their words to get around being accused of being racist, trying to shut down an actual POC on the subject of racism and cultural appropriation, and pretending to be innocent about it when they very obviously aren’t.

At this point, another white system has joined the conversation, let’s call them B, and they argue on T’s side, saying that S is trying to take away a person’s ‘right’ to identify with and have a name, again, twisting the wording and it’s another example of white people validating the racism of other white people because they’re uncomfortable with changing or admitting that they could’ve done something wrong.

T and B continue to argue with S, essentially claiming that S is gatekeeping their own culture and how people identify, and trying to take people’s names from them, and S saying that it is literally, actually racism and cultural appropriation, while T and B have no other arguments other than ‘that’s iffy’.

C is another SOC who is a friend of mine that joins the conversation on S’s side, saying that T and B should listen to people who have experience with racism and cultural appropriation, and they are completely ignored by everyone except for S, like, several times.

T brings back up the argument of ‘well you wanted to debate and I’m just debating’ despite their arguments not being intelligent or coherent enough to qualify as an actual debate while S, /again/, tries to state the fact that it’s /literal cultural appropriation/, and are once again, spoken over and ignored. S brings up the fact that T is repeatedly disregarding their arguments and speaking over them, and T, bafflingly, again says that they’re just ‘debating’ and, even better, that if they can’t handle a ‘debate’, then they shouldn’t be ‘debating’, when it’s clear to every SOC in the chat that this is not actual debating, this is twisting the words of and silencing SOC, and it only gets worse from here.

This is only the beginning of trying to portray S as the aggressive, antagonistic SOC.

S states how they feel, saying that they are being talked over and ignored and disregarded by white people in the discussion, and and T tries to say that they’re not ignoring them or disregarding their opinion and that they’re listening and just ‘stating [their] opinion’, and proceeds to tell S that they think S needs to step back, saying that they’re getting defensive and aggressive when they clearly aren’t, but S apologizes for potentially coming off that way anyways.

T then sends a couple of messages that form into an argument that essentially boils down to two direct quotes: ‘[...] but you cannot tell someone what to do and expect them to listen’, and the far more baffling take of ‘a lot of people say a lot of things are “closed” when they just don’t want to share their culture.’

The second one baffles me the most because... That’s the basis of a closed culture? What do you think a closed culture is, exactly? You think that Native Americans are so closed off to outsiders about their culture because someone is forcing them to be? NO! It’s because white people have stolen their culture, misrepresented it, disrespected it and muddied its meaning so much that they don’t want to share it anymore. They did share it in the past, but actively made the choice not to because of how shitty outsiders have been to them about their culture! That’s the basis of a closed culture or practice!

Then, when another POC, M, in the chat says that T is blatantly disregarding POC and that people can just be decent and not culturally appropriate when it’s brought to their attention that they are, and T gives us another absolute gem of an argument that, as usual, makes so little sense and is full of an unbelievable amount of ignorance:

‘you can’t expect people to be decent, humans are crap.’

Ah, yes, cultural appropriation is okay and its okay for white people to not listen to POC when they’re calling out white people for these things because *reads writing on hand* ‘humans are crap’. Alrighty then.

S goes on to say that there’s a difference between cultural appropriation and respecting other cultures boundaries, such as eating Japanese food and still respecting said culture and not stealing from it, but T misinterprets this and asks how having a name that S ‘disagrees with’ would be cultural appropriation, and the next exchange is pure gold:

S: i don't disagree with the name? it's cultural appropriation because your taking a name which isn't yours to use.

M: ^^

T: on what grounds? who’s says we can’t use it? /gen /nm cause if it’s just you, no offense but nobody is gonna listen

K, (part of C’s system): Respectfully, T, you're being kinda rude lmao.

M: POC, BIPOC, we say that..../gen

T [in reply to K]: no I’m debating, if you can’t handle it don’t debate /gen /nm

S says that multiple POC agree with them on the subject, and K then goes on to say to T that ‘debating isn’t grounds to be an asshole’. T responds saying that the ‘we’ S is referring to is just two people and threatens to mute K and says that they aren’t being rude, they’re asking questions, as if the two are mutually exclusive. M and S try to tell T that it’s not just them in this obscure discord server that are saying this, but tons of actual, real-life POC, systems or otherwise, and T says that ‘you can’t say what people can and can’t name their kids/themselves :]’.

The best part comes when K and S say that T is the one being rude now despite having gotten onto them earlier for being ‘rude’ and that is when T decides that the debate is over suddenly, saying ‘debate over you all are to upset over my opinion’, and says ‘another message and i’m muting’, and when M says ‘You sure we are the ones that are mad?’ T responds with ‘yes cause you don’t like my opinion. now debate over or I’m shutting the channel down :] /gen /nm’ and forces the discussion to be over.

TL;DR

T didn’t come into this discussion looking for a debate, they came in to assert their opinion by twisting the words of POC, shutting down their arguments, misunderstanding closed cultures and threatening to mute people and shut down the channel, all while using tone tags to make themselves seem a lot more innocent than they actually were, and to paint the POC who weren’t using them as angry and aggressive.

T is an insidiously racist person who only cares about their own comfort and not the comfort and safety of the POC in their own server.

In short, these are the kinds of arguments that white people tend to use, and the kind of entitlement that white people tend to bring to the table when brought up in discussions like this, especially when they’re in a position to silence the POC that are speaking out against them just because they have better arguments than them.

Don’t be like T.

What Now?

So, if you feel attacked, think about why. Because it probably comes from a place of not wanting to face your racism or change your ways because you care more about your own comfort than the comfort, safety and protection of people of color, and you need to remedy that.

This can actually very easily get started just by talking to people of color in general, following them on social media, watching their content on youtube, even if they’re singlets, even if they post things unrelated to mental health and plurality/multiplicity content, even if it’s ‘just’ videogame streams or art or music or etc, because even then you’re supporting a content-creator of color. Of course, that’s not all you have to do, again, that’s just a start, but following and supporting POC on social media and such does so much to help your subconscious views of POC in general that it’s a good idea to just do it anyways.

Oh, and changing the names and negatively stereotypical traits of alters/headmates that appear to be from races and closed cultures outside of the body, and listening to POC when they speak up, and not getting defensive when they tell you that you’ve done something racist and calling your white friends, systems or otherwise, out on their racism and their internal racist biases and etc.

It’s hard, but if you don’t want to do these things, you can always just take the ‘BLM’ and ‘anti-racist’ out of your bio, because you don’t actually support any of these things, you just support these things performatively as long as they benefit you to do so and make you look good.

Sincerely,

Remy

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lesbomatriarchy · 3 years

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Hello. I haven’t been on here in a long while. Here are some updates:

- firstly, for those of you who won’t read this entire post, I’m probably abandoning this blog. If you want to keep up with my various art projects, check out @twiceshyincites...am on a bit of a music kick right now, but who knows what I’ll do in the future?

- am still a dyke, just a slightly more stable one now

- I use they/them and she/her pronouns. I’ve noticed that I seem to prefer they/them around people I feel comfortable expressing my gender presentation around, but I don’t think I feel okay saying to use exclusively they/them pronouns. This is okay. I don’t have to choose and I can change my mind in the future.

- I’ve got a girlfriend now. Fell in love through letters/letter-length messages. They’re an artist, among other things. In true lesbian fashion, I’ve entered into an extremely long-distance relationship that I would probably laugh at if it involved anyone but myself. But I can’t help it. I’ve never felt the way I do about this person, and I wouldn’t trade them for anyone in the world. It feels good. It feels right, finally.

- I’m learning that the idea of an overarching LGBT community is functionally useless in terms of organization-based structural change. It is important to understand that LGBT people exist all over the globe, but to reduce us all as one group is dehumanizing at best. I am not in some secret club based on my gender and sexuality, nor do I want to be. I will not show solidarity to a racist, antisemite, transphobe, etc. simply because we both like women. If we are to form any organization based on a broad spectrum of identities, it must have a specific goal. Otherwise, it is inevitable that we will be distracted by what is considered the “x experience--” the ignorance of which may be distressing but ultimately meaningless compared to the literally life-or-death matters induced by homophobia and transphobia. Someone projecting bullshit onto lesbians, especially butches, is frustrating, but I will not waste time in a useless internet argument about it when my friends are homeless and dying.

- On that same note, I don’t think it’s possible to have truly trans-inclusive spaces until we understand that women are capable of misogyny. While we should of course focus on victims of prejudice before anyone else, but ultimately all prejudice is internalized to some extent. Sexuality and gender have never determined one’s politics. Or should we pretend Roy Cohn wasn’t horrifically homophobic?

- I mention these things because I think as a young person I needed to believe otherwise. That was what Tumblr, and especially this blog, was about. Shouting I’m gay into the void. Finding a singular similarity with people because we were womenthings or gay or bi or questioning our gender or whatever. And it’s so important to find people who are like you. In a strange way, identity politics sort of saved my life. But I am no longer a scared teenager in tears over the thought that I might be something I had told myself for years I was not. I am a complex person with political beliefs, with religious beliefs, with a particular relationship to my gender that cannot be shared...with a particular relationship to me sexuality that cannot be shared. A particular relationship to myself. There are a million facets of my identity that I finally feel comfortable and confident to explore.

- I know I have some younger followers on here. If this doesn’t make sense to you, that’s okay. I literally made this blog because I wanted a safe space after coming out as bi (oops). All I wanted to do was draw a girl in rainbow. Put pride flags all over my blog. Discuss how the TV writers were clearly trying to fuck us over. Or give us the content we deserved. Or something. Settle for poorly-written content because it was all we had. And that was what I needed. It may be what you need too. But know that there may be a time when what you need is something a little different, and this will be okay too.

- None of you are unloveable. None of you are completely alone.

- X-Ray Spex still fucks

- Also I got a vibrator. And a weighted blanket. Highly recommend.

- Goodbye

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into-control · 3 years

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sorry into, this is going to be a rant, but I'm so heated and upset right now

everyone who takes TTB's side (aka that demonic monster of a straight woman) is just a bad person at this point.

one side literally has multiple detailed testimonies from different people, evidence including countless emails that she sent to them, that demon woman literally spoke on her blog about how she'd managed to find people's real life identities and also said multiple threatening things like "your identity is not a secret" to people who called her out, like those are her OWN WORDS, that she said on her ACTUAL BLOG herself, one of her minions also accidentally admitted in a k*ylor discord server that TTB had contacted someone's workplace, TTB herself slipped up and accidentally mentioned that she knew the identity of a person who anonymously spoke about her outing them, etc

like she has OUTED multiple people. one of those people literally has a physically abusive extremely homophobic father, and she could have gotten them seriously harmed or even killed

and despite the mountain of evidence against her, all TTB has to say is "lol no they're all lying, I'm not TTB btw, I'm sp*de riddles, TTB is innocent, they're all just jealous of her and probably homophobic, they're all liars, don't listen to them 😌"

and then she focuses on semantics and keeps saying "TTB never doxxed anyone" bc she's using the definition of posting private information on the internet, even though people often use doxxing as slang to mean revealing someone's online identity to people they know in real life. but notice how she never says "TTB never sent those emails" or "TTB never dug up people's identities", she avoids that and always just says "TTB never doxxed anyone"

and that's all it takes to get all of her minions and her followers to strongly take her side and dismiss all of the evidence against her and to attack the people who have spoken against her and call them liars

she is fucking EVIL, she could have got people kicked out of their homes or fired or even killed, she's a disgusting human being and if anyone here still supports her, I literally don't know what to say

also on top of the fact that she OUTED people just for disagreeing with her over K*YLOR, she also fucking kept calling jewish people rats and "lizards" and "the lizard crew" which is literally taken straight from antisemitic conspiracy theories (no surprises there), she called BLM "drama", she said that bipolar people are "mentally unstable" and "literally crazy" and that they shouldn't be able to work with children, she posted fucked up things about karlie faking a miscarriage, she spoke about the baby having "dirty bloodlines" and being "k*shner spawn"

she constantly uses "that person is mentally ill" as a way to dismiss the opinions of anyone who disagrees with her, she treats people with mental illnesses like they're dirt, she claims everyone who disagrees with her is homophobic EVEN THOUGH SHE'S STRAIGHT, she's complained more than once about being "attacked" for being straight and compared it to what LGBT people go through, she called black people who asked her not to be racist "toxic" and "negative" and "keyboard warriors" and then she told them they clearly didn't actually care about BLM and that taylor was doing more than they were, etc.

like she's genuinely fucking vile. people could have died. she was genuinely trying to ruin people's lives just because they disagreed with her k*ylor blog, and all of these people that she harassed and outed were LGBT themselves which is really fucked up given that she paints herself as an ally

I mean, are we even surprised given that she had threatened to out karlie multiple times on her blog? but I guess people thought all of those threats of her outing karlie were just jokes, and now they're in heavy denial about her actually outing people for real

genuinely, if anyone still supports her, then idek what to say, she's evil.

so many people in the gaylor fandom have deactivated their blogs in the last month or so, especially kids, because they're terrified of being outed by her like those other people were. and yet she claims she's an ally and that her blog is a safe space

you’re absolutely right anon. we have to stop letting straight women define what homophobia is because it allows them to participate in things they don’t think hurts us but does. i would even go as far as to say that we should stop letting them label themselves as allies (it should be a label that comes from one of us) because they let it get to their heads and they start thinking they’re an important figure to the lgbt community, which ttb obviously thinks because of how often she repeats how she’s an ally in response to members of the community criticizing her

the fact that she’s actually become so full of herself that she thinks she has the right to out people exemplifies that. and yeah maybe what she’s done isn’t *legally* considered doxxing but it doesn’t make it any less shitty. it’s just common decency within the lgbt community to not out another person. it doesn’t matter if somebody has made some of their info public. in my friend group only one of my friends is out to their parents but other than that we all know not to talk about our sexualities around our parents and other people we’re not out to. it’s just basic fucking decency.

she doesn’t understand our experiences in the slightest and you can tell in the way she reacts to certain things taylor (and by extension karlie) does. you shouldn’t be a gaylor because you’re anxiously waiting for taylor to come out. i used to not think ttb being a hallmark of the kaylor community as a straight person wasnt really a big deal but you can see how over time whatever bit of allyship she had in the first place has turned into a superiority complex.

and i can’t really speak too much on the antisemitism and racism as a non jewish and white person but in general you’re just supposed to listen to marginalized groups when they tell you not to do something

#i try to keep the ttb content low nowadays but this was a good ask #ask #anon

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 4 years

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um hi who’s steve moffat??

Oh my goodness. Okay, my sweet summer child, buckle up. I’ll try and keep this short. I assume you’re asking this since I just reblogged that post about Moffat creating the new Dracula show for BBC, so I’ll explain the particulars of why that’s upsetting as well.

So, Steven Moffat is a British television show writer and creator. He created the very popular (and well-done) comedic show Coupling, which was a take on the modern-day dating world and apparently inspired by how Moffat met his wife. He was also a writer on Doctor Who, the long-running British science fiction series, and this is where the fun (note the sarcasm) begins.

See, Moffat wrote some very very very good episodes on Doctor Who. In fact he wrote two of my favorites: the two-parter “The Empty Child”/“The Doctor Dances” (which includes my all-time favorite television moment, “Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once–everybody lives!!!”) and “Blink.” “Blink” is considered one of the best, if not the best, DW episode as it works so damn well and is so well written and ALSO functions very well as a standalone episode. Someone who has never seen a single DW episode could watch “Blink” and enjoy it.

Given Moffat’s good writing chops, everyone was super excited when he became the showrunner for Doctor Who after Russell T. Davies, the original showrunner, left, and when Moffat also announced he was creating Sherlock, a modern-day adaptation of the beloved Sherlock Holmes character.

I will direct you to this highly entertaining video that explains why Moffat’s show running skills and BBC’s Sherlock are, well, garbage.

Please do watch that video when you have the time since it’s fucking hilarious but here’s the gist of it: Moffat relies on building cliffhanger after cliffhanger and never actually delivering any climax, catharsis, or answers to the questions he gives. He makes his shows about one “super special genius” male character whose only function is to be “super special genius” and never actually has any character development and really actually is an asshole to everyone around him. And he writes female characters horribly, Irene Adler just to start. He crams in LGBT+ characters and other such “minority” characters in order to get “woke” and “diversity” points but he doesn’t actually give them any legitimate layers or nuance. The genius straight white male always saves the day and he does it while being a dick to everyone.

Yay.

Moffat’s constant reliance on twist after twist after twist without any character development, conclusion, explanation, or even logic, means that eventually his shows spiral into the absolutely absurd, as happened with season four of Sherlock. I would argue the show went off the rails in season three but that was before I saw it completely jump the shark in season four. Holy shit.

Which brings us to Dracula.

Look, vampires are sexy, I will be the first to admit that. But Dracula himself is not a vampire you want to swoon over. In the original book he is a sexual predator (the passages where he feeds on Mina are particularly disturbing and evocative of rape) who brutally and mercilessly murders people by twisting their spines and bashing their heads in until their brains burst out, sending wolves to tear them to pieces, and ripping their throats out. He literally throws a toddler to three vampires who do something so horrendous to it that Jonathan Harker blocks it from his memory.

Dracula is also, to add to all of this, a metaphor for two things a) the powerful and charismatic but “forbidden” gay relationship/love (and the shame that comes with that because this was the 1800s) and b) the racist/xenophobic fear of the “pure Aryan race” being “corrupted” by the “impure” eastern/non-Aryan bloodline.

Yeah, you heard me. The second one is pretty damn obvious and it’s a real sign of continued xenophobia and racism if you ask me that no adaptation (save for the silent black and white film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary) has addressed this issue. Dracula literally says that he will destroy the Western race of heroes “through your women, and through them your children! I shall have them and through them I shall have you!” and basically says yeah I’m gonna rape your wives and they’ll have my children and your pure bloodline will be corrupted. This is far from an uncommon fear. It’s a repeated threat from the non-white villain in racist texts and it’s a common rhetorical trick. You even hear it in historical films when the heroic leader stands up and is like “would you have them kill us and rape our wives?” The fear isn’t just death, it’s that the “oh so pure bloodline” will be corrupted by the “unclean” race mating with the “clean” one.

AND THAT’S IGNORING THE BLATANTLY RACIST STEREOTYPE OF THE ROMANI PEOPLE AS EVIL STOOGES OF DRACULA LIKE WTF STOKER I’M GONNA RAISE YOU FROM THE DEAD JUST SO I CAN KICK YOUR GODDAMN ASS–

*ahem* Anyway.

The first one is also pretty obvious given that the entire first third of the book is Dracula flirting with Jonathan up to and including making innuendos about Jonathan teaching him English by “showing him how to use his tongue” (NO I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP). Most people believe that Dracula was based on Vlad Tepes aka Vlad the Impaler but actually, while Stoker did research on good ol’ Vlad, Dracula was based on a popular actor and close friend of Stoker’s, Henry Irving. Dracula was originally supposed to be a play, written for Irving, with Irving in the title role. When Irving refused, Stoker changed it to a book.

In fact when people who knew the two read the book they all went, “holy shit Dracula is totally Irving and Stoker is totally Jonathan.” Contemporaries noted that the relationship between Irving and Stoker was toxic, with Irving being manipulative and narcissistic, taking advantage of Stoker, while Stoker was too damn in love with Irving to stand up for himself even as he knew that Irving was being an asshole.

SO THAT MEANS WE HAVE: queer subtext, racist subtext, and vampirism as a metaphor for sexual assault.

None of which Moffat has a history of handling well.

It’s a sad tradition in Hollywood to change Dracula into a sexy anti-hero, and to claim that Mina Harker, the heroine of the book who saves everyone’s goddamn bacon, was actually attracted to Dracula and wanted to be with him. Y’know, the man who in the book makes her drink his blood in a way that is explicitly worded to make it sound like she’s forced to give him a blowjob (no seriously reading those passages is genuinely disturbing). Seeing how Moffat treated Sherlock and The Doctor on their respective shows, he’ll probably turn Dracula from a monster that is legitimately scary (because y’know he rapes people) into yet another pale white super special genius Mary goddamn Sue.

Seriously, the next time someone asks me what a Mary Sue is I’m just directing them straight to the Moffat-run seasons of Doctor Who and BBC’s Sherlock.

And given how Moffat handled the character of Irene Adler by turning her from a woman who received the world’s first unsolicited dick pic and was forced to use it to protect herself from persecution by royalty in order to quietly marry the love of her life into a dominatrix whose bisexuality was used as a one-off line to show how “irresistible and sexy” Sherlock is and is beaten by Sherlock, is a villain, not just a villain but the lackey of another villain, and has to be rescued by Sherlock twice instead of being the clever quick-thinking woman who gets one over on him and teaches him not to underestimate women and that he’s not always right…

Yeah. I don’t have high hopes for how Moffat will treat Mina Harker, the meticulous wannabe journalist who loves her friends to death and has a fucking backbone of steel and memorizes train schedules in her spare time like the utter dork she is.

And even if you set all those things aside! Even if you hope that Moffat will do justice to the women in the series, that he’ll properly address the sexual, gay, and racist subtext in Dracula, even if you hope that he won’t make Dracula another annoying can’t-ever-do-anything-wrong-jackass that treats the people around him like shit but we’re supposed to think he’s cool for it and people still somehow inexplicably stick around him and forgive him for it…

EVEN IF YOU HOPE FOR ALL OF THAT

…there is still Moffat’s major storytelling issue which is that he never tells a complete story. He never delivers on any of the promises he makes to the audience. He dangles cliffhangers that promise some big revelation is upcoming, but he never actually makes good on that–he just gives another twist instead, so that you never conclude any story arcs. It’s like listening to a song but having no resolution in the music so it’s just hurting your ears. Moffat is all about sound and fury, about making things look and sound cool, but without giving them any actual substance.

Moffat has done some great writing work, but it was always when someone else was in charge reining him in and forcing him to tell a complete story. He was given carte blanche with Sherlock and look how well that turned out. Season four was so bad people actually wondered if it was a joke. Yeah. Seriously.

So, people are understandably frustrated about this upcoming Dracula adaptation and have zero hope that it will handle any of the characters or the complex issues with any kind of nuance or substance. My personal bet? The women will be treated as props who fawn over Dracula, Dracula himself will be an asshole that we’re supposed to somehow like, his bisexuality will be a throwaway thing and the men who fall for him will behave in stereotypically gay ways and God forbid he actually get a long-lasting substantial relationship with any of them, Van Helsing is gonna be a woman and be either his bitter ex or eventually fall for him, and oh yes the racism/xenophobia in the original text will never be addressed ever.

That, my dear, is Steven Moffat, and that’s why people hate him and aren’t happy about him creating a Dracula television series, bisexual vampires or no.

#mads answers things #dracula #dracula bbc #moffat #steven moffat #I'm paraphrasing the Dracula quotes because I've read that damn book ten times by now #and I'm too lazy to go find my copy to get the exact quote right #I hope this explains everything satisfactorily my dear!#apologies that it's such a long answer lol #I tried to be succinct #nalgenewhore

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the-lulu-one · 4 years

Text

Your Life Matters

The way my personality works is that, unfortunately, I care too much; I care to a fault. I love everyone; black, white, tanned, rainbow coloured… It doesn’t matter to me if you have translucent flesh and come from outer space. I don’t care what your skin looks like and I don’t care where you originate from. I don’t care if you’re human, animal or plant. All living things are equally important in their own way.

There are millions of people who feel the same way as I do. Unfortunately, they are the ones who go noticed because we are too busy focusing our attention on those who make the most noise. We allow the squeaky wheel to capture our attention and manipulate our emotions.

The problem with caring to excess is that these emotions can easily override my sense of what is actually real, which means I end up suffering for no reason. Additionally, as a result of failing to examine my own mental and emotional processes, I put myself at risk of being blindly led to fulfill the selfish agendas of those who really couldn’t give a shit about me (or anyone else, for that matter).

I found the antidote to my excessive care in the practice of an equal amount of reason and logic. I study the facts and then some... I examine statistics before I can allow myself to form an opinion on anything. It is necessary, and the only way to function as a “normal” person in today’s world where we are constantly inundated with information (not all of which is factual, and much of which is based on people’s egos and the desperate need to appear like a moral human being.) It is called people pleasing. Therein lies the danger of following the crowd – people’s motivations are hidden, even to themselves. The result is not good.

If this movement is not about an innocent man being murdered by a corrupt cop, but rather, a black man being murdered by a white man. If this is about the police brutality and the justice system being fundamentally racist. If every single member of these institutions (including blacks, women and those who identify as LGBT) are racist. Then why are black people attacking everybody, without consideration or mercy? Worse yet, why are we actively encouraging it?

Why are we saying it’s okay to behave like criminals, like crazy people? Why is it totally acceptable to destroy all businesses (including the mum and pop stores that are barely surviving as it is)? Why are we saying it’s okay for people to post stolen items on social media, knowing they have ruined the lives of families and children who simply do not deserve such injustice? What about those guys? And what does it have to do with police brutality and racism?

Why are we encouraging people to leave bricks outside protest areas, knowing full well they will be used for destruction? Some people are just a-holes and like to sit back with a bag of popcorn and watch people hurt one another. That is how they get their kicks and it’s sickening. They have no investment in the cause and could not care less about racism. They don’t care that black people are losing their lives in these protests (17 and counting…) and that they helped contribute to such a tragic turn of events. They sleep perfectly well at night, while families grieve. Why has death become the answer to death?

Let’s imagine something for a moment. Let’s imagine that the statistics which show that white people get it just as bad as black people are in fact correct. (The sources that support this statement are incredible if you wish to venture outside the echo chamber.) Not only would this mean the system is hurting everybody, regardless of skin colour, it also means that all those white victims of police brutality and justice system unfairness died in vain. (If we hate white people so much, that fact alone should suffice for cause of celebration. Because racism is not okay. Unless it’s towards white people, yes?)

Getting back to my point, if just as many white folks are suffering at the hands of authority as black folks, then the problem truly is about police brutality and corruption of the justice system. Can we at least agree on this point? This is our enemy, not each other. This is what we should be fighting against. But we are not doing that. We are making all white people our enemy, which is so pointless and absurd that it does my head in. Yes, racism exists in the world. Yes, there are ignorant people walking among us. This cannot be helped. People are racist and ignorant all over the world, not just white folk areas.

In fact, what seems obvious to me is is that white people are the ones who are learning faster than the rest of the world that racism is simply not okay. Clearly, otherwise our little hearts wouldn’t be so hurt and we wouldn’t be fighting so hard. We simply wouldn’t care. White people fought to help end slavery. Does anyone remember this? It was called the American Civil War. It is behind us now. Why can’t we accept this glorious achievement in history? Racism and slavery is still practiced in other parts of the world, such as Africa and the Middle East. Why aren’t we focusing our efforts on this little problem? There are open air slave markets in Libya. That stuff should have ended in the Roman times, but it hasn’t. Nobody bats an eye though.

Why? Because facts require the effort of research and once we reach the Truth, it is really uncomfortable to share it with others. Per chance we might appear “racist”. And right now, all white people are shoved in the same category of racist. We really, truly cannot escape the label, and we dare not try, because we are too nice. And too scared. So we just let it continue and take it from every angle, even if we know ourselves to be loving and kind people. Name calling is the only way some people can make their point and it is something that’s very much on-trend these days. That and hating yourself for being white.

Because self-hatred isn’t the number one most damaging thing to mankind or anything, and we don’t struggle enough with it, as it is. There aren’t enough self-help books published to help us out of such a toxic mentality. Yes, more guilt and shame is what we need, even if we weren’t personally involved in the enslavement of black folks and even if zero people in our bloodline were involved in such a hideous way of life.

Let’s just hate ourselves for being white in the name of “solving” racism, because that makes heaps of sense. Let’s not communicate or brainstorm actual ides for it, because that’s uncomfortable. Let’s just self-flagellate till the end of time, to prove what wonderful, caring human beings we are, and how much we love everyone, clearly, because we hate ourselves. No. Just no.

Calling one another racist should not mean anything anymore because it’s become such a common go-to insult, but unfortunately it still has an effect on our fragile sense of identity. Feeling triggered? Name call. Losing a debate? Name call. Here’s the thing: name calling is not an argument. It is what little children do in the playground because they haven’t yet developed their emotional intelligence. It is not what adults do.

We cannot continue to make emotional noises with out mouth holes and call it an argument. But because tribe mentality is part of our human nature, it’s easy to worry about what people think because nobody wants to be rejected and cast aside at the end of the day. It just isn’t a good feeling. But here’s another thing: we should not fear insults, because it is just sticks and stones. Our fear should center around conforming to illusion and bad ideas instead.

Here is yet another uncomfortable truth: racism is not about skin colour. I should know, I had white Australians as well as Indigenous Australians tell me to “go back to my own country” when I arrived as a newcomer. (I hate the word “immigrant” so I deliberately use “newcomer” instead.) They showed me how intolerant they were of those who didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t fit in with the Australian culture. Regardless of me clearly feeling scared and alone, and trying my best to assimilate to a foreign environment.

* Which is more than I can say for some cultures who refuse to assimilate and want literally everybody to work around their value system by using their “cultural beliefs” as an excuse to get away with horrific behaviour, such as domestic violence against children and the “traditional” practice of repression of women. This is unacceptable behaviour and nobody should stand for it. But we do, because we don’t want to appear racist. At the end of the day, we should be protecting women and children, no matter what.

But getting back to my story, what I was shown by whites and non-whites alike was that I was not welcome because I was different. It was that simple. A brutal lesson. Unfair. And had absolutely nothing to do with my porcelain complexion. It had everything to do with a fear of “other” and an incredible ignorance and laziness of mind to boot.

The looting, theft and violence of the Black Lives movement needs to find a different angle, because it is not about justice anymore. One cannot receive justice through violent acts. One cannot force justice onto society by inflicting pain on the innocent. Therefore, I truly believe that what is happening here is a long-waited for excuse to behave badly and get away with it. And we are all for it, cheering on the protesters and handing them bricks. (Feeling triggered? Name call.) The truth sucks, I know. I almost want to name call myself. But we need to look at this issue clearly with both heart and mind, and not just heart.

It makes me wonder what hope we have as a society when even health professionals are actively putting people at risk by saying “it’s okay to protest in these times”, knowing that social distancing rules will be broken and many people’s lives are at great risk. These professionals are directly going against their Duty of Care for their patients and the code of ethics initially agreed upon when they started their doctoring, or whatever it is they think they’re doing.

The idea of putting my life in the hands of doctors now terrifies me, because they too are not immune to pushing their agendas onto people, and they too are scared of looking like they don’t support the movement and are therefore racist (because that makes soo much sense!) If we cannot trust our own health care experts to stop encouraging us to protest at any cost then who can we trust? https://funnyjunk.com/Only+protestors+will+be+getting+sick/jqdmMwd/)

Some of us support the destruction going on around us, not because we are bad people. But because we are sick to our stomachs that racism actually exists and we are letting our emotions run away with us, hoping it will make a difference. What we actually need to do is step back and look at the bigger picture from a bird’s eye perspective and consider all angles.

However, those of us who love a riot (until it affects us personally, of course) should review our value systems and what we pass down to our children, who are the future. As well as check that we’re not actually psychopaths. That would be a good start. This is what freedom of speech looks and sounds like. If such a thing truly exists (as it claims to do) then I should be allowed to have my say, like everyone else and not be crucified for it. I value freedom of speech. I need freedom of speech. I will hear everyone out, no matter what their point of view, as we are all learning how to properly human in this fucked up world. I will never stop people from expressing themselves. Ultimately, I will check all the facts but come to my own conclusion. As it should be. If I am wrong in the way I am perceiving this movement, I welcome the challenge of my ideas. I don’t mind civilised and honest debate as long as it is not a screaming contest and based on actual facts. I want to learn as much as I can about the world and the human condition, and I will never stop exploring. However I do reject name calling and unnecessary put downs in the name of “being offended”. Because, newsflash! Everybody is offended right now. I am offended, you are offended, the entire world is offended. That doesn’t mean we have to walk on eggshells around one another until the end of time. Please, can we not do that anymore?

In fact, there is great danger in submitting to that sort of game, as Steven Fry would agree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJKXJNM3W-c&feature=youtu.be

* For some comedic relief after such a heavy topic, here is Steve Hughes’ video on being offended too. It’s much more light hearted but ultimately makes the same point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs

I am a human being, like everyone else, and I want to live in a better world. I want future generations to have a better planet in which to thrive. This requires me to speak my mind and I expect the same courtesy returned. We are not monkeys anymore; we have evolved from that. Let’s leave the past in the past and invest our energies on further growth and evolution. Let’s communicate. Let’s debate. Most importantly, let’s invest our very souls in the Truth, by allowing the antidote to our vulnerable sense of empathy to be introspection, hard research and the civilised sharing of ideas. It is the only way forward.

May it be so.

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 5 years

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Opinion on asexual and aromantic people?

Hi there! It’s about time i reaffirm my stance on ace and aro folks, huh! (And you would think it would take me like two sentences to do so but nah, it’s me you’re talking to so naturally it takes multiple paragraphs)

They/we* belong in the LGBTQA+ community, 100%. The LGBTQA+ community is for anyone who isn’t cisgender and heterosexual and heteromantic, because if you don’t fit into all three of those categories your sexuality and/or gender are marginalized, invisibilized, oppressed. Asexual and aromantic persons have to deal with the heteronormativity and pressure to date and have sex with persons of the opposite assigned binary gender just like so many other members of the LGBTQA+ community do. They too are often made to feel broken or wrong or sinful, and to grow up not knowing others like them exist.

*i consider myself to be somewhere on the ace spectrum! Though it’s not a part of my identity i think about very often these days, discovering the word asexual and immediately realizing i was ace was the first part of my queerness i was able to embrace. finding support and encouragement in the ace community online was hugely important for my queer journey overall :)

________________________

To preemptively respond to one argument sometimes made against ace/aro inclusion: of course there are differences in the experiences of an asexual aromantic person and, say, a bisexual person – but the same goes for a cis bisexual person and a gay trans person, or for a Black queer person and a white queer person. The community will always be diverse, and that’s a wonderful thing, an asset rather than a reason to fracture ourselves! Different members face different forms of oppression with different justifications made for that oppression by our oppressors – it is still in all of our best interests to unite as one LGBTQA+ community. We should stand in solidarity with one another and join in one another’s battles rather than fighting amongst ourselves.

Fighting about whether we should “let” asexuals and aromantics into the community uses up time and energy we could be spending on teaming up to fight oppression. Whenever i read arguments about why asexuals and aromantics don’t belong in the LGBTQA community, i can’t help but be reminded of arguments i have read about why bisexuals, or trans persons, or nonbinary persons, or some other group should not be “allowed in.” And for each of these arguments, i can’t help but wonder how much more progress we could make towards winning justice for all of us if we focused our efforts upon fighting the cisheteronormative, classist, racist, sexist, ableist structures that oppress us.

In chapter 12 of Transgender Warriors (published 1996), communist butch lesbian and transgender activist Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) discusses how our infighting only serves to benefit our “common enemies,” who depend upon a “divide-and-conquer” tactic to keep us all marginalized. The “enemies” Feinberg identifies are the institutions and individuals who enable any and all forms of bigotry, from homophobia and transphobia and queerphobia to racism and sexism and classism. For Feinberg, all of these forms of bigotry are interwoven; fighting one requires fighting all of them (think of the slogan “none of us are free until all of us are free”).

In that text Feinberg is primarily talking about the divide between the LGB and the T, but i believe that what zie says about those divisions can be applied to infighting between gay and bi persons, or between binary and nonbinary trans persons, or between asexual/aromantic and allo-sexual/romantic persons, and so on. And i believe that Feinberg would not be opposed to expanding the conversation in this way, because zie hirself affirms asexuality in hir discussion of the many sexualities to be found in the trans community: “we are heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, and asexual” (p. 98).

What Feinberg wrote back in 1996 about being both transgender and a lesbian really resonates with me as a person who is likewise both transgender and sapphic; but also with me as a person who is asexual and sapphic:

“I view the trans population as a broad circle and the lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities as another large circle. These two circles partially overlap. I am one of the people who has a foot in each of these communities, and, like a person with a foot in one of each of two rowboats, I have a deep personal hope that they don’t move in opposite directions. I hope that those of us who do overlap can serve as bridges, because I think our communities are natural allies and all our strengths are magnified by solidarity” (p. 98).

To use Feinberg’s metaphor, I find myself playing an awkward game of Twister in which i have one foot in the “trans” rowboat and another in the “LGB” one like zie did – and, when asexuality is forced into a rowboat separate from the LGB one, i also have to stretch a hand over to that boat too and just hope i don’t collapse into the waves.

In hir hope that the trans rowboat and LGB rowboat would not “move in opposite directions,” Feinberg spoke in favor of the “lasting coalition” that we call the LGBTQ community. Feinberg saw that attempts to kindle transphobia amongst cis LGB persons, and homophobia among trans persons (as well as racism in white LGBT persons or sexism in male LGBT persons, etc.), are all “an attempt to drive a dangerous wedge between potential allies.” Any attempt to kindle anti-asexual and anti-aromantic sentiments among other members of the LGBTQA+ community is also a dangerous wedge, fracturing us when we are stronger when united.

Feinberg closes hir chapter on solidarity by stating that “people who don’t experience a common oppression can make history when they unite to fight a common enemy” (99). The experiences of LGBTQA+ persons are as numerous as we ourselves are; and the shades of oppression we face vary. The solution to this diversity is not to try to kick out all the members who don’t experience the same exact things “i” do but instead to learn from each other and use our diverse perspectives to fight our common enemies together.

_____________

To close this post because i just remembered i’m a Christian blog haha, along with believing that asexual and aromantic persons belong in the LGBTQA+ community, i believe that God loves and affirms them just as they are. Asexuality and aromanticism are part of the incredible diversity God wove into the world. See my #asexuality tag, which has posts like this one, as well as my #aromanticism tag, for more on that.

#blog stuff #avery speaking #Anonymous #asexuality #aromanticism #asexuality tag #essays #transgender warriors #leslie feinberg #aromanticism tag

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believe-in-the-unbelievable · 5 years

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So I need to entrust some emotions on the internet for a minute here Bc I don’t rly have many personal friends that like talking about religion/spirituality stuff, and/or some i just don’t know their stance on, but like

I’ve been really distressed and sad for months and months now whenever it comes to what my heart wants to believe, what the majority of others believe, and what appears to be the truth of things.

I want, very much, in my heart, to believe in the existence of all deities. And to believe that they all love us, and are looking out for us, and want the best for us. No matter what our culture/s, where we live in the world, or anything like that. Even if I never actually have any interactions, sought out or otherwise, with, say, Japanese gods, I don’t like the idea of them turning me, or anyone else away, just because you’re not Japanese and/or living in Japan. I love and respect them because I consider them family, and I want them to see me in the same way. And all of us.

I want, in my heart, to not believe that Satan is this Horrible Person That Wants Your Souls and blah blah blah

Nor do I want to believe demons are here to try and make that happen, or always only want to scare you and terrorize you and ruin your life.

I want to believe basically the Lucifer (show, lol) version of things. Where he had to learn and grow (and I’m sure still does so) just as much as any of us. Where he’s not bad, or maybe struggles with that all the time, but still isn’t technically Evil or whatever. And demons are, or at least have the potential to be, just the same.

But, at the same time, when you constantly see and hear things about people’s experiences with things they shouldn’t mess with like Ouija boards, or sometimes even just paranormal investigating as safely as possible, hearing about bad experiences with things that sure don’t sound like only ghosts or spirits, it can feel hard to think maybe the truth isn’t as dark and scary as these stories are.

I want there to be something after we die. The thought that you just end, depresses me, and it always has and probably always will.

I don’t really care what awaits us, wether we reincarnate (the idea definitely sounds cool and sure seems to have a lot of cases that proves it’s happened before), still atone for whatever bad things we’ve done in one way or another in life, but genuinely want to become better as a race, and reincarnate to try and do just that, wether, eventually, some deity or deities come to make us immortal and we just live in legit peace and happiness for forever or smthn, like some kind of Bible Revelations shit, which I can’t say doesn’t sound unappealing to me or not make me happy at the thought of, I don’t know and I don’t care. I just want something, and I don’t want it to be sad. It would be great if we didn’t have to go through a sad period that separated the “Good” people, or “good people that believe this specific thing” from the “Bad” people, or if we at least didn’t have to have something sad and horrible happen to get to that happy ending, whatever it is. But I do understand sometimes sad and awful things have to happen before you can get to the happier ending. But I definitely hate, with a fiery passion, the idea that only people that accept one religion the way the majority of people WANT them to accept it, won’t get that happy ending, just because.

But then you’ve got so many people shoving in your face proof of the End Times and shit like that.

I don’t want this to be the end times. I’m 22. I’m young. There’s so much I want to do while I’m alive. There’s so many wonderful new generations coming. I want to see them blossom and grow, and make this sometimes awful world a better place. We’ve barely started to get our shit together, and it doesn’t even seem like we’ve been here for all that long when you think about it.

And it sucks, too, because I feel like I’m not really gonna be able to ever get any kind of irl interaction that gives support to that at all.

On one hand I’m certainly not a typical Christian. I don’t even call myself one anymore, but it’s not like I don’t wanna like certain things about it. And the truth, not what the majority of the believers tend to try and push. (I know not all of them are horrible, that’s why I say the majority Bc I was once in it and unfortunately know first hand just how true that is.)

On the other hand I’m not really a typical Heathen or Pagan either.

And on the third hand, I’m not straight, nor am I cis.

So, yeah, maybe I could eventually go to a church that’s LGBT friendly once I get my own way of being able to get to one separate from the phobic, sexist, racist churches my parents want to go to all the time. But will they shun me for wanting (and actively being) open to other beliefs too?

My parents, already being phobic, sexist, and racist as they are, are also the type of supposed Christians that I can’t stand, abusive, and try to be controlling. If I don’t want to go to church for perfectly understandable reasons, pray in the typical way they deem acceptable, or read my Bible all the time, they flip their shit and just assume I don’t believe anymore. That I’m being “rebellious against god”. And yeah, I am being rebellious lol. But against them, not god. 😒 I’m 22, and last year my mom threatened to kick me out of the house (that’s not hers), just because I don’t, and never really liked, expressing my belief in those ways. (It was an empty threat to try and scare me into doing them btw, don’t worry. They’re emotionally and verbally manipulative and abusive like that, but I’ll get out when I can, for now I just sadly have to deal with it for now and try to avoid the topic as much as possible.)

I know I know myself, that my parent’s voice don’t matter more than anyone else’s, and that what other’s say doesn’t matter. But I’m still human. I still don’t like hearing that I’m rejecting god just because of X Y Z. Because someone doesn’t approve of, or like, what I’m doing or how I’m doing it. I hate that kind of entitlement.

I don’t hate any religion. I don’t disbelieve any religion. Regardless of what I like the sound of, personally, or not. The only thing I hate are intollerant and cruel people, narrow minded or not.

But sometimes it just feels really dizzying, I guess. I know perfectly well that I can think and believe whatever my heart desires, it’s just been saddening me a lot for months now, that I have no idea of or when I’ll ever be able to have the chance to get support for when I’m having a hard time, like I am now, with someone I can actually interact with face to face. The internet’s amazing and great, but sometimes you’re just so surrounded by the opposite in your actual life that it would feel a lot better to have it around.

You’re welcome to relate, or comment, or reblog, or just leave something nice~. It would certainly help a lot right now ♥️

#lokean #ok to rb/comment #paganism #heathen #personal #pagan #faith #spirituality #hejfhskfbs yall i know what agnostic is i have a friend that is one and looked into it i have already felt it wasnt a good fit i #im not trying to find a new lable or get advise on what to do with my life or about my situation #I know what is and is not best and safe for me you let me worry about that pls and thank you #i know you have good intentions but you gotta understand how.......entitled that sounds.....#im just venTING when i said commenting and reblogging was ok i did not mean tHAT ok come oN #:’ ))))))

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herefortheace · 6 years

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Masterpost: People in “Ace Discourse” DO Hate Aces and Aros

And it’s despicable and scary and it needs to stop.

I’ve made most of this post before, but I’m creating a new one because 1) I didn’t expect how long it would get and failed to include a by now much needed “read more” at any point and 2) tumblr won’t let me update the old post anymore via reblogging.

So before I copy the old links and add new ones, a not so brief explanation of why this is necessary.

People, for some reason, after years of blatant evidence to the contrary still claim “ace discourse” has NOTHING to do with anyone hating aces and aros, that not even a single person involved (or anywhere) does. By blatant evidence for people here hating aces and aros, I mean everything from pathologizing our identities to comparing us all to violent misogynists and white supremacists to wishing harm and death on us. Yet the anti-ace/aro crowd will claim we’re just making it all up because we’re hysterical liars who “wanna be oppressed”. It’s a blatant and nasty silencing tactic, but sadly not ineffective because people fall for that shit.

Which is why I originally made this post and am now making it again.

A too influential bunch of people on this site have spun a wild narrative wherein aces and aros are this super privileged group of people who essentially can’t be harmed and whom it’s therefore funny to treat like shit. They also act, over and over, as though asexuality and aromanticsm are some sort of evil idoelogy rather than minority orientations.

A lot of us - most of us I see around - belong to various oppressed groups, but the anti-ace/aro crowd has worked hard to erase that, because it becomes very obvious very fast that it’s not funny to sexualize aces and aros or compare us to Trump or claim our orientations give us an “oppression fetish” when you keep in mind who exactly they are saying it to (I’ve spoken at length about the anti-ace/aro crowd’s efforts to erase aces and aros of color and how they make me furious as a WoC here, but you’ll find plenty proof among the links below). This is not just incredible bullshit, but harms especially the most marginalized of us.

As does the more general willingness of the anti-ace/aro crowd to throw misogyny, racism, ableism and all sorts of bigotry around as a weapon against us. A ton of the links here contain some seriously dehumanizing shit.

Whatever else you may believe, asexuality and aromanticism as identities do not confer any social privilege and do not make people impervious to or deserving of harm. And frankly I should not need to say this.

But apparently I do, and I also (after all this time still) need to prove we’re not just making it all up for attention or to trick people, so here we go. I’m mostly copying the old parts (1-8) of the list as-is because I don’t have time for anything else. Also, while my point definitely isn’t that every single person involved loathes aces and aros, this crap didn’t suddenly come into an already existing “ace discourse” (by that name) either - it’s a huge part of how it got started and was a deliberate move by many to make it gain traction.

This is by no means a complete list, but the shit the anti-ace/aro crowd on this site has pulled includes:

Comparing aces and aros to Trump (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to Pence

Comparing aces to Ronald Reagan (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to a literal slave owner

Making fun of aces not being accepted by their parents and of aces finding this upsetting (making it into a crytyping “joke”)

Making aces feel shitty/shaming them for telling their parents they’re ace because it’s supposedly “unnecessary”

Saying if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy

Doing their best to sexualize the orientations of aces, in so many cases. The link before these two is also connected to that. They treat our orientations like (graphic) details about “our sex lives”, frequently acting like if we want to talk about them ever we’re gross/creepy

This one is also “nice” re sexualizing aces (one of many examples of ppl also engaging in sex-shaming while they’re at it, saying only one’s partner should know anything about one’s “relationships with sex”. Except this person goes kinda even further)

More sexualization, when I say this freaks me out as a WoC, I’m told this white person gives no fucks and wants me to be miserable

Another person who says the identities of aces but also of aros need to stay between them and their Partners because they’re “TMI” and inherently sex-shaming somehow

Oh yeah did I mention, much the same with sexualizing aros and ppl frequently link our identities to misogyny and to using people while they’re at it

Making light and fun of ace WoC asking to not be sexualized because don’t we know aces have done Bad things and so we deserve it/don’t get to complain

One of many examples of white people who hate aces+aros talking over PoC and trying to erase us from our communities (+usually when we call that shit out they don’t care. This is actually one of the more cordial responses I’ve come across despite the lack of apology lol.

Another example of white ppl in the anti-ace/aro crowd talking over aces and aros of color here complete with that person condescendingly lecturing a PoC about racism

People like this saying outright they hate aces

Saying sex ed shouldn’t teach about asexuality

Outright stating they think being ace/aro gives people privilege (because supposedly aces+aros both benefit from conservatives pushing for abstinence)

Outright invalidating the identities of aces (who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have)

Calling asexuals demons

Outright calling aces and aros a “plague” and saying aces/aros regardless of other identities all need to be kicked out of the LGBT+ community.

Erasing the identities of people who speak out against anti-ace/aro shit to declare them “straight” or “cishet” …or saying that treatment is what they get for being “traitors to their own community”

Ignoring the boundaries of aces/aros who have them blocked and don’t want to be vagued to make fun of them …

…or even to continue sexualizing them after they have made it very clear that shit freaks them out (cheerfully doing this to a WoC)

Someone saying asexuality does not exist and “encourages slut shaming”

Spamming the ace positivity tag with vile hate (ppl have talked a lot about how this harms and endangers especially mentally ill ppl)

“aces are embarassing“ in the positivity tag

Posting nsfw content in the ace positivity tag and being completely unapologetic, apparently using the reasoning that our identities are inherently nsfw anyway (see the “TMI discourse” aka people sexualizing our identities)

Calling aces and aros a “sexuality fandom” while pretending we’re a group full of people with every privilege imaginable, bored of being accepted by everyone and of having no Actual Problems in our lives. This kind of nasty erasure constantly goes on and is a big tactic in this mess tbh

Wanting aces to be “exterminated”. For good measure putting this in the ace positivity tag

This disgusting vile shit that I don’t even know how to sum up but it includes wishing death on someone

Talking about wanting aces/aros dead after somehow misunderstanding(?) a post that was very clearly not about asexuality or aromanticism

Graphically telling aces to die

Specifically telling ace kids to kill themselves

Did I mention that many people in this mess have wished death on aces and aros and that they often put it in positivity tags. Some of the most messed up shit I’ve seen is missing because I didn’t reblog/respond to it at the time or can’t find it right now

And I know anons don’t count as hard “proof” for anything but have the less graphic one of the death/rape threats I got in my inbox for speaking out against anti-ace/aro shit (still kinda eerily detailed though. Not linking the other one because it is extremely graphic)

Part 2:

Comparing aces to a literal white supremacist (in the positivity tag)

Again someone invalidating the identities of aces who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have

Sexualizing aros again, not caring about how it affects particularly aro PoC. And here two other ppl sexualizing and demonizing aros, like in posts further above claiming (non-ace) aros just use people for sex (said on positivity post).

Someone sexualizing aces again and engaging in sex-shaming at the same time, as usual with the claim that literally no one but a partner “needs” to know our orientations

Those Rachel Dolezal comparisons I mentioned made by non-black/white people who want to use antiblackness for what they call “ace discourse”? Yeah here is one white person doing it and here is another, even worse example where a white person goes “this is like if I pulled a Rachel D. and put on blackface and used the n-word…” (paraphrasing here). Here is the latter person utterly dismissing me being upset by their antiblackness (because black ppl’s pain only matters when it’s useful)

[For ppl who don’t know: Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who pretended to be black and built her career on it. White people sure as hell do not get to compare this shit to anything that is not antiblackness and use black people’s pain for their own purposes.]

A white person using antiblackness as a weapon against aces and aros in general (aka “ace tumblr”), acting smug regarding how supposedly we’re all so racist and “get triggered” by black people existing. (I am so tired of white ppl using racism as a cheap “gotcha” against aces and aros - groups which include PoC. And who then ignore or belittle PoC who call them out)

White person randomly informing WoC aces/aros can have white privilege

Again someone claiming ace privilege exists and here another person doing it adding to the post further above, claiming aces/aros have privilege for being ace/aro and that this is the case bc people who don’t have sex are privileged (wrong definition of asexuality… also of aromanticism??… and also no. No.)

What I mentioned about ppl telling us asexuality/aromanticism are not orientations but only ever modifiers? It’s happened a lot but here’s one example. And here’s someone outright saying aro aces don’t have an orientation but only modifiers.

Here’s the same person who said aro aces don’t have an orientation later turning around saying the orientation of aro aces is determined by how they behave and who they have sex with.

Another person putting nsfw shit in the ace positivity tag (link is to nsfw text)

And people try really hard to justify despising aces and aros by pointing to shitty people who share our identities/orientations. Honesty is secondary in this. Here you have someone taking a shitty post from an obvious nasty troll blog to say this is why ppl hate aces, and later when having the troll thing pointed out to them saying they already know. The post got over 3k notes.

“asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves”, with a second person in the thread agreeing

Part 3:

Someone saying they hope all aces “get checked out by a doctor” first (holy shit)

Saying asexuality is not a sexuality aka more invalidation like in posts further above

Someone calling aces a “turbo virgin club”, then declaring if an ace gets upset about it this shows their immense privilege

I’m 96% sure this is a troll and/or worse but here’s someone using absolute bullshit reasoning to claim asexuality is an inherently racist/antiblack identity (…on a black person’s post)

Speaking of racism, someone claiming vile crap and utter bullshit about aces including that we are all white

Once again a white person trying to use (extremely vile) antiblackness for so called “ace discourse”

Another incident of a blatant troll post getting nearly 3k notes because people wanted to use it to demonstrate how horrible aces/aros are, since we supposedly made up the fake slur “arobot”. Explanation in link, but basically no, “we” didn’t, it was an ancient pretty blatant troll post.

Again someone linking aromanticism to misogyny and to using people for sex

Someone in our positivity tags basically claiming aces and aros in relationships are selfish leeches who demand things but don’t give anything back. Talking as if we don’t deserve “time, effort, attention and love” and as though people in relationships with us are to be pitied

People spamming the ace positivity tag with nasty negativity and hate (once again)

Someone repeatedly wishing rape and like so often death on aces and aros (among other things) in our positivity tags. This person also put nsfw content there and spammed the tags

Again someone specifically wanting ace kids dead, talking in the positivity tag about hoping they get hit by a bus

After someone in this thread talks about the worry of being sexually assaulted for being ace, a person responds with the vilest victim-blaming, claiming shit like “it is easy to learn how to defend yourself“ and worse that I don’t want to put here. If you want details check the link

A number of screenshots of extremely vile posts, out of which two older ones weren’t listed here before: one is about wanting aces/aros to have “full blown panic attacks” and “cry themselves to sleep” over being marginalized/erased by society;

the other utterly disgustingly talks about wanting aces/aros to face torture and medical experimentation and death (the person brings in concentration camps)

This anon was also among the screenshots just now: extremely graphic torture and death threat I got from someone because they hate all us “ ~uwu~pure~smol~aceys~”. There’s wanting to peel the skin off my body as well as gun violence and sentiments that echo the post above

Since we’re already talking anons, somewhat graphic rape/death threat I got in my inbox, this time using the “dare I say meme” that is frequently employed to shit on aces and aros (still leaving out the most disgustingly graphic threat I’ve received bc I don’t want to link it)

Part 4:

“I would actually fucking slaughter aces if I could“

Listen this crap is terrifying and at this point I’m just tired. I could add the same sort of shit to this list over and over. Yet there’s still a huge crowd here denying any of this is happening, who’ll come to posts about ppl hating aces and aros to declare that no one does and we’re all just making it up or too clueless to understand what’s Really Being Said, because that’s how they like to paint aces and aros and anyone who supports us. It’s unbelievable and so so horrible and draining.

It needs to stop. I hate putting this negative crap on ppl’s dash but what’s going on is just so harmful and there’s not much else to do about it I can think of. Aside from people condescendingly explaining to us all the time none of this is happening (or outright calling us liars the moment we don’t put the links directly on a post and claiming we’re making this all up to make other aces/aros feel unsafe holy shit), I’ve also had ppl come to this very post (the original version) saying it’s just “mean words on the Internet” so I shouldn’t talk about -isms here and ppl literally wishing us dead.

Please help get word around that this is happening and a serious issue if you can? (But also if you can’t please don’t feel bad about that)

Part 5:

Someone saying ppl only get to headcanon extremely privileged characters as ace/aro

Someone spouting the incredible, unironic line: “isn’t that the point of being ace?? to desexualize yourself??“

Telling aces to date non-aces otherwise they’re automatically abusive for “taking sex away” from their partners (holy shit)

As I mentioned, if we speak about the anti-ace/aro shit on this site, ppl love to try and shut us up by coming to our posts acting like we don’t know what we’re talking about or are deliberately lying for example because they’ve not personally seen what we’re talking about, and they can get really utterly horrible about it

Someone making up an insult (”stiff”) for aces to mean “a prude who cant keep their trap shut abt it “ (the person also posted a screenshot of a dictionary entry of the word in the positivity tag where “a dead body” is listed as one of the definitions)

Same person saying aromantic means “a boring person nobody will ever love”

Yet another person sexualizing aces, making fun of how supposedly we constantly talk about wanting to “fuck”… and about wanting to be led around on a leash in public

Two people defending hating all aces and comparing this to statements about privileged groups like white people, because ace/aro privilege I guess

A white person mocking me having experienced racism in “ace discourse” while heavily implying I must be lying (while demanding proof and no I’m not saying asking me for links is the problem)

Another person outright defending hating aces, except it’s okay and not bigotry according to them because it’s… not our existence that’s the problem but us existing as aces??

Part 6

Saying ace/aro identities belong in the DSM

And also a post I really want to talk about that made me add to this post again:

Saying asexual/aromantic people are “weird” and “ugly as fuck” and we id as ace/aro because “no one wants us” (I got an extremely vile anon once that made a similar “argument” and this line of thought is neither new nor harmless)

The thing about this post that makes it especially horrible and made me put it here almost right away? The notes. There are tons of people who responded to that post with approval and if you check, you’ll see them acting like aces/aros being treated like this and getting upset about it is just one big joke. There are many people going “lol that’s mean but true” and “lmao careful they’ll use this as proof they’re oppressed haha” (paraphrased) and otherwise talking nasty shit about aces and aros. This is fucking vile and the kind of shit you’d expect from anti-sjws, but nope, “ace discourse” everyone

Someone saying ace awareness week should not be a thing because they’re already “painfully” aware we exist

Did I mention when we talk about any of this people immediately in big numbers rush to silence us, dismissing and mocking us out of hand and painting us as hysterical liars who “just wanna be oppressed“ because who gives a shit about aces/aros saying they’re being harmed

As a bonus, let’s return to the anons for a moment, which I’ve not talked about much before:

Someone telling me to die after I made more posts calling this sort of anti-ace/aro shit out

Someone telling me they want to ally with conservatives and shoot me and also other aces, calling aces a “plague”

Someone telling me sending the above to a black person has nothing to do with racism, and also that asexuality is a symptom of mental illness/trauma that needs to be corrected, not a sexuality. They tell me to “get fucked” so I’ll be fixed

Right after these asks I also got a nazi in my inbox (”88″ is nazi code). Make of that what you will

Another person coming to my inbox calling aces a plague and wanting us all dead

“Tumblr aces are deserving of every drop of loathing they get”

And now back once more to the posts people actually put their blog names on (aka most posts by far on this list, so no one skimming better try to claim this is primarily about anons just because I put a few in)…

Reacting to hateful vile anons by claiming we must have sent them to ourselves (why? because they say so), such as graphic anon rape/death threats. Nasty on so many levels and encourages people who hate us further to send shit like that

Part 7

People thinking it’s appropriate to tell a black ace woman (me lol) she has an “oppression fetish” just based on her minority orientation, in response to her asking ppl to not do EXACTLY that

Someone comparing asexuality to a kink to mock the idea of and paint as gross aces talking to family or anyone not involved in “their sex life” about their orientation

Same person in a wild post calling all aces “demons” (as ppl keep doing)

Someone not only as so often comparing aces to Trump with a moodboard, but also including the word “fascism” in ace colors in it (this is an older post)

Someone coming up with the wild conspiracy theory that people upset by aphobia (along with inclusionists) are actually largely the alt-right trying to disrupt activist communities wtf I can not make this shit up (the person being ace themselves does not make this better or any less anti-ace/aro. This is fucking vile)

Someone mocking all aces by calling us “aceys” and talking about wanting to fight us, and another person approving of this and calling aces speaking out against it “dumb” and my legitimate anger “cute”. Also apparently being upset by this at all means I’ve “deluded” myself into thinking I’m oppressed

Same person who said the above claiming aro aces are somehow straight

Mocking aro terminology and aros for calling their partners (who they may or may not be married to) anything but “friends”

People (once again) painting aros as monsters who by virtue of being aro treat their partners without basic respect and decency. Also making aro identities all about wanting to “fuck” people without loving them, or caring about them in any shape or form. This shit is both sexualizing our identities (as usual) and nasty as hell in general

Another person outright saying they hate aces and trying to justify this by comparing it to venting about a privileged group, as if ace privilege exists rather than asexuality being a minority orientation

Someone (as too many ppl have done) comparing aces to “incels”, dangerous misogynists who are frequently rape apologists/rapists

Silencing tactics still include viciously mocking aces/aros speaking out against any of this shit and painting us as irrational, Senselessly Angry, and evil like in this bullshit “parody” post of what I (and two others?) have supposedly been saying. Apparently when I make posts like this one, that is what the OP gets from that… somehow. People keep doing shit like this to me, and painting black women as hysterical and angry for no reason when we’re legitimately upset is not a new move?

While we’re on the topic of antiblackness and misogynoir, remember how ppl love to send me graphic anon threats? Yeah this person purosely invoked the image of lynchings while doing so, aware themselves it’s racist and admitting they don’t care, as long as they can tell a black person they’d like to “hang me from a tree” and then also all other ace ppl, because “ace discourse” has proven to them we’re evil apparently

Part 8

Saying there’s somethong “wrong” with aces and aros and that we need to get professional help, and that our orientations are “unnatural”. There’s way too much pathologization among these links

Comparing aces to Ayn Rand, a racist rape apologist among other things. Apparently it makes for a fun moodboard about how we’re evil (and hate poor people?? wtf)

Once again someone comparing aces to incels (for some reason people love associating aces with misogynists, rape apologists and rapists, hmm)

Someone sexually harassing a user for simply saying to ignore/block aphobes, putting extremely explicit sexual content into the post’s notes, very possibly trying to deliberately trigger the OP. This is disgusting af

Someone saying asexuality isn’t a real sexuality (again)

As usual someone putting negativity in the ace positivity tag like we don’t deserve to have positivity - this time about how we’re “idiot aces” and all “cishet”

Talking about how this masterpost that, you know, has literal death threats on it and not few of them is hilarious

Here we have someone after being linked to this masterpost defending the Ronald Reagan and Trump moodboards (while completely ignoring all the other shit on this list)

Someone spewing the old bullshit notion that conservatives love aces for our supposed “celibacy”, with the typical implication of ace privilege or at least the idea that being ace makes those of us belonging to various oppressed groups less oppressed (or that we don’t exist at all lol)

Here’s an older post where someone cruelly made fun of an anon on an ace blog non wanting to get a pap test, presuming it’s due to internalized oppression and treating that as funny and inherently mock-worthy (the post got lots of approving notes at the time), because haha aces “valuing their virginity more than their health”, even though 1) the anon said nothing of the sort and 2) even if they had, people not wanting to get health care due to messed up ideas surrounding “virginity” is not funny either. (And this sort of ridicule is nowhere near comparable to correcting actual misinformation)

Making Kylo Ren ace/aro moodboards because aside from real life fascists it’s fun to compare us to fictional ones

Since we’re on the topic, another, older post that has a lot of people comparing aces to various fictional abusers, mass murderers, fascists, etc., “joking” about how these are the characters we can have as “ace representation”. And then ppl going “lol it’s just a joke haha silly aces not getting the concept of humor” in typical bigot fashion, something the anti-ace/aro crowd does A LOT

Meanwhile once when I in response to someone comparing aros to Voldemort (based on him being incapable of love) made an aro-spec Hermione positivity post using the same meme the Voldemort post had used, emphasizing her good qualities/sense of justice, a whole wild mess happened that included people making jokes about (house elf) slavery on my aka a black woman’s positivity post and calling one of the most commonly hc-ed as black characters demonic and equating her to Taylor Swift… for among other things the evil trait of having an issue with, you know, slavery.

(Later a white person tried to in a separate post paint me as hysterical/irrational for getting upset about this, completely [and deliberately] erasing the fact that it was about race at all in that retelling of things. Not that it’s not bullshit and extremely telling to gleefully heap negativity on a positivity post like this in general, but damn.)

But back to comparing us to real life fascists, someone literally said “cishet asexuals act almost identical to white supremacists and nazis” because saying this about a minority orientation which includes aces TARGETED by white supremacists isn’t fucked up at all I’m done

For the xth time someone outright saying they hate aces

Here we get tons of misogynoir again from someone making a sort of Nicki Minaj ace moodboard that compares ace inclusionism to her breasts/”silicone implants“, and someone else approving of how hilarious that supposedly is. It’s pretty fucking gross tbh, the OP even put it in the Nicki Minaj tag

Fitting in with the above nicely: someone suggesting that subsets of aces and aros be called “breeders” (this is an older post)

Calling asexuality and aromanticism “cults” and comparing them to scientology among a ton of other vile shit including once again pathologization

Calling (non-ace) aros “objectifying assholes”

More demonization of aros, claiming as so often that being aro is the same as fetishizing and using people

Once again someone calling aces (or well just ace girls this time because misogyny is fun) ugly and claiming we’re all white (because racism is also fun)

Part 9

And here finally the new part that tumblr wouldn’t let me add to the original post the usual way. Not to repeat myself but I’m exhausted. And pissed. Remember these are all just examples. And I’d like to say there won’t be more in the future but who am I kidding.

Making light of comparing aces to incels, who are still dangerous misogynists/rapists/rape apologists. How dare aces and especially ace women be upset about it

Another person making light of (nasty moodboards) comparing aces and specifically ace teenagers to vile af dangerous bigots

Again someone comparing aces to incels (....who apparently no longer oppress women, at least if they’re ace)

They really love that incel comparison

They love it a lot. Yet another person comparing aces to incels (while defining asexuality as “not wanting to fuck”). Someone else joining in and going, “Is ‘turbo virgin’ better for u”

The same ppl as in the link above continuing to be horrible+apparently thinking ace and aro WoC are no longer oppressed by racism and misogyny. Did I mention I could not make this shit up

Also if you scroll a bit, there’s a link there to one of them telling an ace to “get laid” to be fixed (this link here leads to the same thread as the one above)

Once more comparing aros to Trump

White person thinking it’s a good idea to equate aces/aros of color upset about being compared to white supremacists with white ppl upset about jokes about white ppl

“asexuals go to hell”

Claiming it’s just “crying racism” and funny that I call call out, you know, all this pretty blatant racism, such as comparing aces and aros to slave owners/white supremacists to give just one example of the literal dozens here (even sth on the level of that anon wanting to lynch me apparently doesn’t count as racist for the OP there what the hell even)

Pathologizing our orientations, saying aces all have some “underlying issue” and that we just id as asexual as an excuse bc we don’t wanna “work through” said issues

Again someone claiming aces can’t have sex, making fun of ppl saying otherwise (apparently we physically can’t this is so wild)

Again ppl claiming aces and aros are basically all white, hurting (and pissing off) aces and aros of color bc that’s always fun. Also I’d argue some not that subtle misogyny there but decide for yourself

Among other things claiming aces are obsessed with sex which uhh uncomfortable+creepy. If ppl’d stop sexualizing us that’d be fucking nice

Another nonblack person comparing ace inclusionists to Rachel Dolezal (not giving a shit about black ppl’s opinion on the matter)... and then claiming antiblackness isn’t racism (when coming from other PoC)

Claiming asexuality is a “specific sexual preference” that no one wants to know about and also the same as “not fucking”. Literally saying (as ppl in this mess do so often) we should literally mention our orientations to NO ONE but our partners bc of this. AND not giving a shit about being told this sexualizes aces including aces of color

As usual pretending we make all the shit documented in this post up (and let me repeat this post was just meant to have EXAMPLES, there’s way more horrible crap out there)

Ace girls are apparently “like straight girls, only worse”. And that regardless of other identities

Using the term “acehets”

Another person referring to “acehets and arohets”

Apparently asexuality and aromanticism are “technically het” now

Calling aces (explicitly+deliberately ALL aces) a “cancer to the lgbt community”

Saying a black aro ace woman wouldn’t have time to be “melodramatic” (=make posts like this one lol) if she had more sex. I CAN NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP it’s so incredibly sexist, racist, and creepy omg. There’s already examples further above of this person’s misogynoir BUT DAMN

Here we have some pro Trump, pro gun person after going “fuck tumblr ace culture” talking about how aces aren’t oppressed (especially those of us to whom guns or ppl like the president they support are an incredible danger I’m sure lol) and how dare we make our orientations “our entire personality”. This is all so wild help me??

Remember when we talked about how ppl like to when we talk about this despite all the easily available proof accuse us of lying/being hytserical/just “wanting to be oppressed” as a silencing tactic? Yeah here we have someone calling me speaking out against some of the (racist) shit listed further above “delusional”

Linking being ace to being a nazi (”Been noticing a lot of these “Asexuals” are also nazis”)

More linking being ace to being a nazi (”You can't spell asexual without axis power”). Did I mention the anti-ace/aro crowd is wild and despicable af

The solution to people being this horrible to us is CLEARLY for us to “log off” so why the hell are we whining

This white person wants millions in “emotional damages” from people with ace headcanons for characters belonging to various oppressed groups, including characters of color. Because clearly others acknowledging the existence of aces of color must be incredibly painful for them. Wtf is the anti-ace/aro crowd even. Also, this is what aces and aros of color mean when we talk about constantly being erased by ppl wanting to pretend our orientations are somhow “white” identities - frquently like here under the guise of protecting us from those evil aces and aros aka ourselves.

Putting “your flag is ugly and so are you“ in the ace positivity tag

Same person posting in the ace positivty tag about wanting subsets of aces to get hit by a bus

Okay I know further above I’ve directed you to such unbelievably vile anons they must be getting old but I’m gonna put just one in this part: wanting aces dead but it’s our own fault because the ace community on tumblr made them into a shitstain devoid of decency who thinks fondly of people dying based on them sharing a minority orientation!! They had no problems with aces before!! And it’s just if we’re on tumblr that they want us dead really!! Using this site like other people makes us... wait for it... “incel equivalents” apparently

Aaand here the nonblack ppl go again with the comparing ace inclusionism to antiblackness/Rachel Dolezal, one of them specifically complaining they got called antiblack for it when clearly this white person also doing it proves it’s okay

After as the anti-ace/aro crowd loves to do pretending none of this is happening, this person admitted that yeah sure their crowd compares aces and aros to misogynists and racists, but it’s not because of our orientations but because we’re Bad, and if we claim otherwise we’re manipulative and just wanna victimize ourselves!!

racism and comparing PoC (because their asexuality continues to not magically turn aces of color into white ppl) to their oppressors are apparently still funny (”date an asexual who thinks reverse racism exists“)

Someone talking about wanting “porn of aces” where aces are raped and turned into “hypersexual sluts”. The person adds, “ESPECIALLY if it’s real”. This shit is VILE AND DISTURBING AF HOLY CRAP

And apparently aces who have sex are by virtue of this themselves rapists now, along with anyone who consensually sleeps with people they’re not attracted to?? Wtf even. (These people REALLY want to villify us and for us to not enter relationships - if we don’t have sex with a partner, we’re absusive, but if we do, we’re rapists. We’ve had both these “arguments” now I fucking can’t.)

Again someone posting (in the ace positivity tag) about wanting an “ace concentration camp”

“asexuals get death challenge”

And listen I WISH I was making this shit up and that these posts all didn’t exist. Then I’d not have to deal with the knowledge that a ton of people here don’t even see aces and aros as human beings, constantly throwing -isms and nasty af shit in general at us and pretending when aimed at us it’s somehow okay. People are doing all this to us, and trying to claim we deserve it, based on our MINORITY ORIENTATIONS.

It’s wild, it’s despicable, and it needs to stop. And I’m going to say it as many times as necessary.

#ace discourse #aphobia #asexuality #aromantic #masterpost #crapcourse mess #rape cw #abuse cw #sexualization /#suicide baiting cw #death threats cw #rape threats cw #concentration camp mention //#victim blaming mention /#long post

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sol1056 · 6 years

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My ask box continues to fill up, and I have no answers for any of this. I’ve gotten comments that @dreamworksanimation is good about things like fair representation in other shows when it comes to disability, queer relationships, racial diversity, and just plain solid storytelling. Why was @voltron the exception?

Or you can just have the questions from my asks:

I really, really wanted [Dreamworks execs] to address the situation, to tell us why VLD took that enormous shitty turn and to apologize and do us better. But I'm guessing we already know the answer (arrogant inexperienced EPs) and I think they won't do anything about it, just try to fade Voltron to the background as it's ending and focus on She-ra, if they ever decide to apologize, they're just gonna focus on the LGBT rep as if its the worst problem of their story.

You know what, I hope someone makes an extensive list of all the morally questionable messages Voltron has sent with all its characters (Shiro & Kuron everything, and Lotor as abuse victim in particular), all in detail and shove them in their faces saying, but to you it's 2 guys in love and in a healthy relationship that is wrong, instead of ableism, racism, homophobia, etc. When I think of what the kids will take from Voltron I feel sick. But queer love is the problem here, right. I’m disgusted.

Us: can we get a happy ending too like the het people and couples in the show?

VLD: no, not a happy or even semi-happy ending, you'll get a miserable ending but get this, we're going to write the last survivor of the 4 queer characters we killed off to be totally on board with this. We'll write him and animate him as if he's happy and got resolution, growth, and catharsis and not as if he got demoted, sidelined, isolated, discarded by his family, worst of all by Keith. We'll say a monster like him can’t be a paladin.

Let’s also go back to talking about how they not only made Lotor, a victim of child abuse not to mention biracial character who grew up with everything against him: suddenly evil, be the same as his abusive "father" and "mother" (who even after remembering who he is pulled the same crap as before), took every happiness away from him and had the nerve to mock his abuse in S7?! As a child abuse survivor I'M HORRIFIED.

The messages in the Shiro/Adam scene is disgusting, this is such a difficult subject, even for adults show with plenty time to explore and be fair to both characters while being explicit about it all. I was worried: in a kids’ show? how can they write this in a way they'll get it? With barely time for it? but look what they wrote, Adam gave an ultimatum instead of support and died, then they blamed the disabled guy for everything. Message: you’re gay so your relationship and your life are worthless, you'll be miserable and alone.

For a team that is all about working together, voltron members after 7 seasons still don't feel like a family and more like colleagues from work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It feels odd knowing that they weren't actually battling homophobic higher ups. It feels more tactical and greedy for social justice points than out of genuine desire to showcase diversity. Is it coincidence that the character they dislike the most is the one selected for this honor? As a lesbian fan i'm skeptical and angry and refuse to watch anything else by these two.

People keep trying to excuse this stuff with "Voltron is a kids' show", but you know what? There are gay kids out there. There are disabled kids out there. Much as we may wish it otherwise, there are kids out there experiencing trauma. Do we REALLY want to teach those little kids that they are broken and tainted forever and nothing good is waiting for them in the world from here on out? People need to know how damaging it is to have ZERO stories in media showing realistic healing of trauma.

The lady who betrayed them got a proper send off scene even tho she send Adam & the others like pigs to slaughter & betrayed them & caused them all to almost lose and die. Got screentime & some characterization. But sure why respect Adam that way too. I will never forget the dread I had for him when I saw he was with the fighters who were sent to die, then watched them one by one lose their lives until he too, was killed. I still feel sick thinking about it. We never even learned his last name.

I know it's been a while but I'm not over how they treated Lotor in s6. I'm from a broken and dysfunctional home and this show I watch for escapism told me I'm doomed to repeat the same mistakes of my parents, end up just like them. ... Are they even aware of the messages they send to their audience? Not all of us had good childhood like Allura.

From a chronically ill perspective, I felt downright insulted by the choice they made to give Shiro a degenerative illness. The idea of a chronically ill hero is cool but they pull the cure narrative, they don't give him a real illness, and it's just used for cheap irrelevant drama. Plus the whole "Has to choose between loved ones and goals" thing was pretty insensitive, we're already expected to sacrifice so much as ill people so the reinforcement of that was unpleasant to watch and read meta on.

Even if everyone was white cishet abled guy the messages sent to kids were awful: One who fought to carve his own path was forced to become someone else, one who suffered and fought till the end was told he’s a monster that can’t be a paladin, the insecure one will never be worthy as himself and he'll always be someone else’s replacement, one who survived genocide and suffered loss upon loss until reduced to nothing, one who suffered by his parents’ hand became like them, the whole Kuron thing. You cant brush off all THAT.

going into the new semester with the horrible messages of s7 on my mind...i’m lethargic. i have been since the “retired paladin” interview. it was bad for me to balance my mental health on the state of a fictional character, but it was really effective. Until that awful message that disabled people are helpless in controlling their own lives. I’m trying to disconnect and thrive anyway, out of spite against ableism if nothing else.

I had this horrible realization: you know how Shiro is a victim of abuse and him getting the Black Lion was him regaining the control the lack of he suffered in his capture? I think they gave him the illness and handwaved it with the clone, so as to argue for his removal from the Black Lion. They claim that the reason he wanted control was the illness and not the victimization in the Galra hands. They're essentially erasing his trauma.

Writers: so we'll write endearing multidimensional characters with many layers, we'll have them subvert stereotypes, especially those that characters like them usually are written with, ie. Keith isn't a loner nor is he angry just 'cause, but a lonely abandoned kid with trust issues due to his mom leaving him, thus has poor emotional control and anger management, struggles to connect and open up, he is the one whose arc embodies the found family theme more than anyone.

EPs: nah we want stereotypes loool

We talk about Shiro and all the ableism in his story but we don't talk nearly enough about how horrifying the message is that Keith is the one to take it all from him and kick him aside. Keith chose to discard Shiro because he's broken and useless, so he can take his place. I've been through things they both have and I find all that horrifying. S7 sent terrible messages to kids watching.

They had the chance to let Shiro overcome and be a hero. To defeat his own abuser (Sendak) except Keith takes over everything and fixes everything for him while he lies helpless on the ground without a new arm yet. They had the budget. The animation. They could have empowered Shiro. They saw how many people saw themselves in Shiro's struggle. They must have seen the concerns. And they actively chose to go against that.

The Bury Your Gays trope is even worse this season when you consider the heavy lesbian subtext with Lotor's former generals who get blown up on screen. And naturally, it's the one with a crush on Keith who turns good and survives.

Was there a minority that hasn't been screwed over? Bury Your gays was merely the last shocking straw, because the whole season was chockful of terrible messages and proved they would never treat their characters right and address stuff from before. Homophobia, racism, ableism, sexism, mocking of abuse, excusing abandonment & so on.

I’m adding my voice because I'm so, so tired. None of the characters i see on screen are the characters we got to know in s1/2. The character i most related to was beaten down out of spite for 4 seasons and now may as well be a cardboard cutout. DW and the EPs don't seem to give a single shit about how badly this season has affected people. i don't know whether to jump ship or spit fire over everything. i'm just... exhausted.

I want a transparent statement & apology from DreamWorks. I want to know THEIR stance & role in this, ALL the events that ended up with us getting a show that is not only homophobic but also ableist, racist, mocks child abuse and so much more. I want them to acknowledge & explain why they allowed the marketing team to bait fans with ship content in their videos, thumbnails and even that EP interview about shipping. I want to know who and why allowed the show to to take a worse direction in recent seasons.

I have no answers for any of this, @dreamworksanimation. If there are any explanations, any reassurances that you’ll work hard to prevent any repeat, you need to say so. The longer you’re silent, the more it looks like you’re fine with the story and all its horrific messages. Are you?

#vld #voltron #representation

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yelloskello · 5 years

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i fucking hate the stag/doe - butch/femme thing. I hate it. I hate that we are explicitly told that we’re not allowed to use these terms, and for what? I went a’googling to see what lesbians were actually saying in regards to why they’re lesbian-exclusive, read the arguments straight from the horse’s mouth, and it amounts to this:

TERFs (and no, I do not mean lesbians = terfs, I mean it is TERFS who came up with this) straight-up believe that bi women and trans women just weren’t there in our history. They say that butch and femme carry the weight of a painful history and fighting for our rights in the words, and that when anybody but lesbians use the terms, they’re putting it on like a fancy dress and calling it an aesthetic.

As if bi women and trans women just straight-up weren’t there for that history, too.

They argue that ‘nobody fights men to use phrases like bear/otter/twink!’ and quite frankly, i’m pretty fuckin’ sure bisexual men and/or trans men can happily use those terms, too, so shitty argument there pal.

So they kick us out of a history that we were actively a part of, and younger lesbians who want to do the right thing but don’t know the history of this argument latch onto it, and bisexual people... Within the last year... Create the terms stag/doe, since it’s evidently morally wrong to use terms that are part of our own history, but since we can experience the same kind of dynamics in our relationships, we need SOMETHING to describe them. And what do people say?

‘wtf this is so dumb/fucked up, this is just watered/down butch and femme, they’re literally the same thing, why would you make up new words to mean the same thing?’

because we experience the same goddamn thing, just because we like multiple genders doesn’t mean we always hop on “opposite” genders, we can have relationships with similar-gendered/nonbinary people, even outside of a relationship we are still part of the community, we still experience Gay Attraction, and it can still be part of our identity because we’re still LGBT+, but we’re not allowed to use those terms! We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

I hate the wave of separatism that we’ve gone through. I hate the idea that everything has to have shit exclusively for them, even if it has a history of being used by multiple sexualities. I hate that people think No Experiences Overlap Ever, when in truth, marginalized people (and I don’t mean just queer/LGBT+ people - I mean PoC, disabled folks, etc) have SO much more in common than anyone might ever think. Yes, some groups do have things that exclusively happen to them, as a white person i’m NEVER going to fully understand the struggle that brown and black people go through, there’s SO much i’m still ignorant to concerning that, i’ll never pretend all our experiences are exactly the same, but there are also at least some issues that I can strongly empathize with because I hear what they go through and can see similarities in the way i’m treated as an AFAB person or as a bi person or as a nonbinary person. A microaggression because you’re gay and a microaggression because you’re brown are both microaggressions, even if they’re presented in different ways, over different issues. Multiple groups are denied housing and jobs for their identities, even if it’s done quietly behind closed doors so the law doesn’t crack down on peoples’ bigotry. As a trans person I can feel the personal pain of my people being accosted in bathrooms by bigots, and I can look at how black people are assumed to be criminals by virtue of simply walking around in a store, and even though the issues are very different, I can see the similarities - we both are mistrusted by “””normal””” society based on hideous stereotypes - and I can feel for them, even if I don’t experience being assumed to be a criminal personally. I listen to them and I believe them not just because they’re fucking people who deserved to be listened to and believed, but because I have seen how general society treats people like me, so why should it be so hard to believe they could be treated like shit, too?

People think that our struggles are so fucking exclusive that they lose all empathy for other groups, thinking that the only people who have ever suffered are themselves. It’s always baffled me that LGBT+ people can be so fucking ignorant and racist and hateful when you think they’d be able to tap into their own hurt and understand that other people are being treated in similar ways because they’re ‘different’, too. But then again, LGBT+ people can barely understand how other subsets of LGBT+ people have struggled, so I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising. I think of how ace people can write a laundry list of things they personally experience, and other subsets will scoff and say ‘yeah as if we don’t go through that too’, completely fucking ignoring what that overlap means. Thinking that since they go through that, anybody else who reports that they might, too, are just Faking, or trying to steal the spotlight. How can people so completely lack empathy? Why are we not there for each other? Why do we not care about anybody else? Why can’t we recognize the same fucking pain we’re all going through, even if that same pain comes in different flavors, and try to be there for each other because nobody should have to go through what we’re going through?

Like, it’s a complicated issue. Like I said, yeah, groups do have stuff that effects them exclusively, and it can be frustrating to express unhappiness with something exclusive to your group and have people who clearly aren’t actually understanding what you’re going through say they can relate. But denying that there are any similarities at all just drives us farther apart when right now marginalized people desperately need the support of one-another.

(I was gonna give bi people’s Double Discrimination as an example of that exclusivity, unwanted by communities on either side of the fence, since obviously lesbians and gays don’t experience that... But y’know who probably can empathize? Mixed race folks. Or folks with invisible disabilities. Or ANYONE who’s caught between both communities, not x enough for one and not y enough for the other.)

Speaking only of communities that I am personally in: in LGBT+ circles, separatism breaks up the subsets and causes infighting. In circles concerning disability and mental/physical illness, it isolates its members, denies them support, makes them feel like nobody truly understands, even people dealing with the exact same disability or illness, because symptoms can be so widespread and varied. Hell, even when dealing with our oppressors, separatism fails to actually try and change the views of the people oppressing us: i’d much rather have narratives where men are gentle, kind, feminine, loving, supporting, open to their emotions, and respectful permeating our culture, teaching young boys how to be as they grow, than narratives where men are just evil.

There’s a lot of gray area. There are people who have been so hurt by oppression that I do not blame them one bit for prescribing to a separatist narrative. But I mean in a general sense... I don’t want separatism to be pervasive. I don’t want it to be the mindset people automatically turn to regardless of what they’ve gone through. I want sympathy and support for the people who have been hurt, and I want the groups that have been doing the hurting to change. I want people to recognize the similarities between each other and be unafraid of empathizing and sharing.

The butch/femme and doe/stag thing is a result of separatism, and I can see where they get the idea for it - basically pulling the ideas of appropriation from communities of PoC telling white people not to appropriate their stuff - but they’re lashing out at the wrong people. When a white person appropriates locs, they’re seen by the public eye as being carefree, trendy, and cool, while black folks are still punished for wearing the same look that occurs naturally for them. When a white person puts on a war bonnet, they’re seen as being high-fashion and ‘exotic~~~’, while literally desecrating a sacred part of a culture they don’t belong to in any way, shape, or form. When a bi person calls themselves butch, they’re a part of the community that shares the exact same history, their histories are literally interwoven, and experiences extremely similar dynamics, at the very least, as lesbians. These are two very different things. Tell cis/straight people not to appropriate the terms, but remember, other LGBT+/queer people aren’t fucking cis/straight.

anyways this got way longer than I was expecting but shit, I got like 60 followers, who gives a damn what I say, right? peace.

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knightofbalance-13 · 6 years

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http://saltwukong.tumblr.com/post/177992323986/rwby-actually-has-poc-representation-you-dolts

You know, even a newbie can kick your asses.

For the sake of saving space, I cut the gifs out of your post and edited the format. Anyway here’s why you’re the most wrong person to ever be wrong. I’m going to give you a list much like the “doing LGBT rep” thing I did a little while ago, in fact it’s pretty much identical.

Translation: watch me bullshit out of my ass.

If your “poc rep” falls into any of these categories:

unimportant/background

villain

dead

whitewashed

You get no points whatsoever. You have no representaton. Shame on you

A. Doesn’t matter

B. Doesn’t matter

C. Doesn’t matter

And D. Is always misused.

Not to mention you didn’t explain how this doesn’t count. And no, it doesn’t work with ‘racism’ because I can find an equvilanet in white people.

So each time you just throw someone into one of the ‘doesn’t matter’ categories, you lose a point. You are erasing representation. Sucks to be you. Oh, and double points for the ‘Is always misused’ category.

So how many of the characters you just outlines pass this test?

Dunno, how many of yoru arguments make you sound like a racist by your own standards?

There is no RWBY equivalent. Besides, even if them having Chinese names had weight, they’re still white as fuck. Yang and Tai are blond and blue-eyed as fuck, and Raven can only barely be called Asian-coded because of her dress and choice of swordplay–both of which are ripped directly from Adam Taurus, who isn’t the least bit Asian-coded. “Whitewashed” is in full effect here. So no, these characters don’t pass the test.

Not whitewashing as that requires the original to be anything but white. So -2 points.

Oh wait, Asian people are alos known to be light skin. Double points for racism. so -4 for you.

You’re knee-capping yourself. You not only admitted she’s white, but headcanons don’t count.

So your headcanon of “RT is racist” doesn’t count?

Ding dong, you are wrong.

“Racial parallel” does not actually equal “non-white”, especially when there actually are non-white people in the show. Blake gets a 0 for representation.

BZZZT!

Skin color doesn’t matter in Remnant so your argument is invalid since it requires Remnant to work by OUR definitions which it doesn't.

Also you didn’t explain WHY it doesn’t equal. So double points.

1 - -6 You are losing.

You don’t. Lie Ren is Asian-coded, heavily so, and his features and name all match. He’s not whitewashed, dead, a villain, or unimportant, so he gets a pass. We’re 1/6 on your supposedly poc characters right now.

And you're at -6 of your so called ‘right’ points. You ain’t one to talk.

Yatsuhashi Daichi is also very Asian-coded without being whitewashed, dead, or a villain. He is, however, incredibly unimportant. He smashed a few Grimm, got beat up by Mercury, and then no one had any more reason to care about him. He does not qualify for representation per the rules we laid out. 1/7.

Doesn’t matter

2 - -7

Aside from the fact that this is just as invalid as Blake was, I have some information from you: you can’t represent poc with white people that are abused and harassed. You can represent them with ethnic features that actually have more variety to them than the standard barrel of white characters allows. Velvet does not do that, so she does not qualify.

Doesn’t matter and you don’t explain why.

3 - -9

That almost becomes amusing, but doesn’t quite make it, considering you go on to try and tell me how those very white villains are also poc.

At any rate, her being a villain is absolutely important. Black people are tired of being the villains just like gay people are. That is nil for representation. It breaks the rule, so it doesn’t qualify.

Equality is equality bitch, there are white villians too.

So double points for double standards.

4 - -11

Sometimes I think I’m too confrontational and rude, and should make more of an effort to come across as nice rather than an asshole. Then this sort of dumbassery pops up and reminds me that I’m fine the way I am.

And yet I’m a racist for calling out your bigotry and lies.

First off, narrowed eyes are not an Asian trait. “Slanted” eyes are, and while Ren and Yatsuhashi have them, Tyrian does not. If this were an Asian trait, Mercury, Torchwick would also be Asian, and you pointedly did not list them. Narrowed eyes are a character designer’s way of saying that this person is a bit more serious than the more animesque or bubbly characters like the main team, who all have very large eyes that mimic the style. Long hair? That damn sure isn’t an Asian trait. Weiss, step forward.

Also, you dumbass, he’s white as fuck and, at best, is from Vacuo.

Also Fanaus

5 - -12

For reference ya’ll, since I removed the gif, here it is again so you can see Arthur Watts’ reflection in a dark, red, glassy orb that obviously doesn’t make him look darker than he actually is. That’s the gif rwdebitch chose to go with.

Actual good point.

5 - -11

Not to mention he’s from Atlas, which is so far coded as “land of white people and that one meme team who aren’t”. Here’s a gif of him next to Cinder in broad daylight.

two women on each edge are clearly not white so coding is bullshit.

In fact, why don’t we go ahead and take off a point for each use of the world ‘coding’ as an argument to showcase how bullshit it is?

5 - -17

Darker than her, admittedly, but that isn’t saying much. There’s also the fact that he’s coded as English. I’d say we could give him half a point, but he’s a villain. So he doesn’t qualify anyway. We’re 1/11 and the record is only going to get worse.

You’re right-

You just showed racism against mixed race people by your logic.

Also another instance of coding.

And you fail to explain how he’s English ‘coded.’

5 - -20

Hazel looks like my lumberjack uncle who visits seedy bars. Yeah, his skin is darker than others’….but he breaks the same rule that Tyrian, Watts, and Cinder do. In fact, why don’t I go ahead and say it: even if you were right about all these villains being POC (and literally the only villains you don’t try to twist POC are Torchwick, who’s dead, Neo, who’s gone, and Salem, who’s the color of snow), that would be worse. A team full of villains who want to wreck the world and they’re all nonwhite? No thank you.

You did Cinder a little later but I’m doing her early to match the other villains.

Don’t explain why, has show to be a liar and admits that the leader of the group of ‘non whites’ is white.

6 - -20

The only point you’re gonna get here is the part where Monty said that. Because no, narrow eyes, as we already pointed out on Tyrian, aren’t an Asian trait, and you’re confusing that for slanted eyes. Her costumes are no more influenced by Asian culture than the basketball shorts I’m wearing. But yes, despite her pale appearance, Monty did indeed imply she’s Asian.

She’s still a villain.

And guess what? Monty’s Asian. So it means he was fine with it, which goes to show your villain point flies in the face of what some people want.

And again, equality bitch.

7 - -22

He has a tan, you dumbass. He’s a Chinese-inspired character with a Chinese name, who looks like a surfer from California considering his blond hair, blue eyes, and coastal tan. Got all that? We call it “whitewashing”, so he breaks the rule, too.

Except many interpretations of Son Wukong portray him as light haired. Including other Japanese media.

Also not whitewashing because Sun is his own character.

AND he’s a fanaus so it STILL doesn’t matter.

8 - -25

Besides. He’s also unimportant as fuck, a fact I’m very upset about. All he’s around to be is Blake’s love interest, which is the only thing that saved him from vanishing into the void with his team, who haven’t been mentioned.

You know...

Aside from saving Blake against the WF in Volume 1...

And getting illa’s scroll in Volume 4...

And protecting Blake in Volume 5...

Huh, you seem pretty quick to devalue the efforts of minority characters.

1) I have a question for you–why do you keep saying all these pale people are dark-skinned?

2) HE’S FUCKING BLOND, WHITE, AND BLUE-EYED. SO YES, YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS ONE TO ME. LOOK AT THE GIF DIRECTLY ABOVE THESE WORDS.

He’s whitewashed, so he breaks the rule.

Because minorities are all dark skinned! yep, Asians don’t exist at all!

8 - -26

Huh, I didn’t think Qrow had long hair. Or are you talking about another feature that blatantly isn’t Asian, on a white character?

Yeah, they said ‘non white’. Not the same thing. Point would have worked then.

On top of the fact that I already told you Raven is just a genderswapped Adam, I’m gonna blow your mind–she’s still white. Just like everyone else on this list. Is she a white-passing Asian? Perhaps, but considering all the other people who are white on this list you tried to tell me were Asian, I’m not gonna trust your judgment on that matter.

And considering you unironically used fucking white passing as an argument, you’re lucky I don’t just double the negative points you have.

Even missed out how their last name is Welsh.

8 - -27

Hmmmm, you’re gonna have to–because Flynt Coal is a character literally created after a meme, to be marginally important as an enemy for one episode and never be important again. Like all the Vytal Tournament characters. You could’ve done better by putting Arslan Altan on here–at least not only is her skin tone dark, but her style of dress and fighting are also eastern as well. She’d still fall into the same “unimportant” hole though.

And you’re gonna have to explain why I should care.

I didn’t care when shows like Boondocks and Black Dynamite did this to white people, why should I care here?

9 - -28

Ooh, this one is especially bad. Yeah, you got the dark-skinned part right, but guess what else he also is?

A villain

Dead

So he doesn’t pass, either!

So is Torchwick, who is white.

No dice.

10 - -30

Neptune is based on a Greek god! I hope you’re not another person who thinks Greeks aren’t white. Because they are. I’ll admit to him being darker-skinned, but that doesn’t look so good considering how we outlined Sun being whitewashed and still tanned.

You can make a case for him being Asian-coded based on how he’s Sun’s partner and the original Sun Wukong’s partner was also, obviously, Chinese. But that’s about it. A reach at best, whitewashing at worst.

He’s also never been important, in the scale of the small plots or the large one. He fails on two fronts. So he doesn’t represent either.

Exact opposite of what OP was saying.

Coded penalty.

And not explained.

11 - -33

I’m neither, thanks. But I also don’t look to characters who got one line, never got to do anything of importance, and whose only moment to shine was against a stationary opponent who couldn’t move, for representation. I don’t think most poc RWBY fans would, either.

No, calling you dumb is an insult to dumb people. You’re willfully ignorant.

Also: I considering the number of people who love Sage, you’re wrong. Oh and seeing as you tried speaking for my best friend, double points.

You are right. I could make a case for him being unimportant, since he basically exists literally for white Ozpin to project himself from, but as far as RWBY goes, he doesn’t break any of the rules. Record is so far 2/20. One tenth of the characters you’ve proposed to be poc representation actually are poc representation.

A. Ozpin has no race since he takes on the race of whoever he inhabits.

And B. You’re at 12 - -34. They are 46 points ahead of you.

She’s also a villain who nearly kills one of the other supposedly-poc characters here. She doesn’t pass. Nor does she pass as LGBT rep, for the same reasons. 2/21.

Doesn’t explain why on either end.

13 - -36

If you reach any further, you’ll touch God himself. [clears throat]

YOU CAN’T SAY THAT A PALE-SKINNED CHARACTER WHO MIGHT HAVE EYES THAT ARE SLANTED IF WE SOMEDAY SEE WHAT HIS FACE LOOKS LIKE, IS POC. THAT’S LIKE SAYING HEY, SUN MIGHT NOT BE STRAIGHT, SO HE’S GAY REPRESENTATION!

And I already outlined why race parallel =/= poc representation, so please stop using that as your platform

And I explained how that’s jackshit. still doesn’t work/

14 - -38

Right you are! It’s a shame she got killed off without a fight 5 minutes after her interesting introduction, a move that incited so much anger she got a posthumous fight scene that was busy trying to salvage someone else’s character.

She’s dead. Guess what that means? Representation test failed!

And Roman is dead too. As are a lot of white characters. Guess what that means? Doesn’t count!

15 - -40

His eyes look the same as every other heroic character’s eyes you dim-witted motherfucker, now quit hurting your arm like tha

Qrow.

Out of the twenty-three characters you listed, most of them were white as snow and their gifs were immediately followed by reaching and twisting to try to make them non-white representation, which doesn’t work. Out of the twenty-three characters listed, only two actually were nonwhite without falling into one of the pitfalls laid out at the beginning.

And of the pitfalls you listed, none were explained and all of which white characters also fell into as well so it still works.

You also disregard all but two fanaus characters for skin color despite them being the minority equivalent in Remnant.

Rooster Teeth is looking pretty damn racist. Now go away.

Actually you came out of this looking racist, especially for bitching at RT for them treating minority characters like all other characters.

Or can white supremacists call racism over white characters dying now?

Despite OP being a newbie, you completely lost. You fell into every pitfall they did and didn’t but even fucking harder. Congrats, in yoru own words, a reaching dumbass can beat you in an argument.

#saltwukong

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chamrosh · 5 years

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Ya know that post that went round a few weeks ago about how the creator of the typical lesbian flag was a transphobe/biphobe/racist, etc?

I went onto the creator of the lesbian flag’s website and did a VERY QUICK perusal of literally just the first post on the front page.

She said that that post was damaging her reputation and was very harmful...

She said that she literally can’t be racist bc she’s “50% Native American, 25% Scottish and 25% African-American” Well, whoop di doo, we’ve solved internalised bigotry entirely, haven’t we. She has an entire paragraph devoted to how having preferences is fine (true!) and then says she just doesn’t like Asians but she loves Hispanic girls which... I mean, Hispanic people seem to get enough issues with being hyper sexualised. She devotes a good chunk of her statement into how hot Hispanic girls are just for being Hispanic. I do not have an issue with people having preferences but when you’re going on about how hot one race is and saying that another race just CANNOT be attractive to you, at least in my eyes, that goes a little beyond having a preference. I don’t think there’s any issue with people primarily dating people from one race/ethnicity/etc, and I get why it might be safer for someone, it might be more comfy to date people with a similar background to you, and so on, but it is not fine to say everyone from one race is sexy while saying that no one from another is.

She then says that she has no issues with bisexuals, and that she has dated more bisexuals than lesbians. This looks fine... but then she says that she “doesn’t like to date bisexuals long term because they tend to “flip flop” more”. And yes, flip flop was the exact term she used to state the biphobic belief that bi people cannot stay faithful because of their bi-ness.

The only thing she did to “help” herself with that statement was saying in a passing comment that “most of the kids in the LGBTQIA+ shelter I helped with in New York City were trans” but... 1) you can be trans and something else, too, not all trans people are straight, so saying you shelter trans people doesn’t mean a lot when you could have chosen to shelter them for something else, and as trans people have about an 8% chance of being immediately kicked out when they come out to parents, and are way more likely to feel like they have to come out, for obvious reasons, and are less welcome in shelters generally, it’s not a surprise that you’d find a majority of trans people in an LGBT+ shelter. Older LGBT+ people are more likely to be able to afford their own housing and so on if they’re kicked out, so if you’re kicked out at 25 it’s less of a big deal than a trans teenager being kicked out at 15 (it’s still awful, don’t get me wrong). That shelter does not have to be especially good for a trans teenager to feel like it’s a good option for them, considering this is a shelter and so presumably they’ve all been cut off from family, and have no where else to go... mild transphobia is better than violence or the street, and they’d be more likely to be younger and lack the assertiveness and life experience to stick up for themselves. 2) you helping in that shelter doesn’t mean you didn’t treat them different 3) you devoted whole paragraphs to trying to defend yourself on the other two fronts, and a single clause in a single sentence to defend yourself from people saying you’re transphobic (I skim-read a little once I read that point so I might have missed something, but I don’t think so. It looked to be more a complaint about people viewing her being biphobic and racist as bad being an awful thing for them to do...). I didn’t see anything that was actively transphobic in that, but her defense was... poor. And it’s very much still problematic for her to be racist and biphobic even if she’s not transphobic, and to me it looks like she might be, from the lack of defense and the lack of effort in that defense.

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queer-ii · 6 years

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I Need Advice, Please

Here is my situation;

(TW; racial stuff, rape, molestation, abuse, self harm)

My parents are super racist

This is pretty ironic since only one of my parents is white, and I'm a mixed child. They often say things like "this area has gotten so ghetto" when anyone that isn't white is around. They told me when we moved that they looked for a school that was "predominantly white so you will get better education, and we won't need to worry about the other students' behavior." They even speak about other mixed kids and praise the lighter skinned as "good mixes" while shaming those who inherit darker tones.

My parents are super sexist

They often say things like "you need to marry rich" to me and it's just horrific. Considering they're both women. They'll often slut shame anyone who is open about their sexuality, they justify any actions a guy does to a woman because "guys are more rough." It just pisses me off. I'm honestly too tired to write out all the stupid shit they said here, so I'll just leave you with that.

My family is abusive

They are very big about hitting, beating, throwing down, throwing things, and so on. They were the kind of people that forced me to eat my food from the trash can as a child because I was a picky eater and would try to throw it away--they also threatened to force me to eat my vomit if I ever threw up. I don't think I can recall every belt, broom, mop, or wooden object that has been broken over me, but I can assure you it's a lot. It got to a point where my father sprained my leg and yelled at me for limping on it because it impeded on my ability to continue my chores. I was nine.

There's also the emotional stuff. They'll be cruel to me in so many ways. For example, they would praise my brother--he's the favorite--for things that I do. There's also times like when I was sent to suicide watch, where my mother clung to my arm and made everything about her. My father yelled at me the entire time. They're both manipulative as fuck, for instance they will try to buy my affection and trust, and then the next day throw everything I own away(which they have done numerous times.) They're controlling. I haven't been allowed outside on my own in almost five years. Then there's examples like the most recent time my father kicked me out of the house. They blamed me and claimed I was a runaway, yelling at me for not answering my phone. Right after kicking me out, my father had taken my phone and thrown it down the hallway, away from me. Just to give you an idea of that. And I don't even want to get started on my brother.

My parents are transphobic to nonbinary folk

They equate nonbinary folk to drag queens and girls who like to wear pants. They like to shout about how their existence is fake and a cry for attention. When I came out as nonbinary(which was over four years ago) they ignored it until it was right in their face. Then they yelled at me and did as they always did--push unnecessary arguments that don't make sense and punish me for not being who they wanted as a child. That's an entirely different story, about the time they told me they would have forced me to be female, even if I wasn't born as one.

My parents are transphobic to anyone who is under the age of 20

It's bad enough that they don't respect the fact that I am trans. They disrespect EVERYONE. All of my friends. Kids younger than me. You name them--my parents will ignore it.

My father--WHO IS A TRANS WOMAN--also doesn't like "new age" trans folk for having plans on how to transition(such as when to start horomones after taking blockers for younger kids). For not experiencing the same prejudice--like being forced through shock therapy. For killing themselves over something "so small" when peers push them too far. From what I gather, her mentality is "How DARE you not suffer as much as I did? You haven't earned the right of passage."

I have known I was trans since I was very young. It took me time to know just what it meant, but I have known since I was in elementary school. Yet both of my parents like to remind me that I'm not trans--because I couldn't possibly understand what it means to be trans.

My parents are narcissistic

They really enjoy complaining about everyone else's behavior, and then do the exact fucking thing they were complaining about. My mother brags constantly and acts like everyone around her is a child that doesn't have basic knowledge. My father down plays everyone's achievements--including the fact that I have written over a dozen books while she's only finished one--and says that they will never be good enough.

My parents ignore me and do not respect me

They will ignore nearly everything I have said. They ignore me when I try to show them something important to me. They ignore me when I ask them to stop calling me things like "baby" or "lovies" or even any of the countless insulting nicknames they've come up with for me.

Then there's the bullying. They will sit there and pick apart every detail about me. My hair? Ahh, that looks stupid, let's mock it and laugh! My stomach is visible? Better remind our child to suck it in! Keep in mind with that last example; I'm the skinnest one in my family.

Oh! And then there is the family business. Once, back when I first joined Tumblr and tried to reach out for help after I realized I had been molested and raped for years as a child--it suddenly became the family scandal, and I had to hide in my room for hours because EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Of my relatives was calling to ask why I would ruin his life (I'm not going to say who it was, but know it was a family member). Keep in mind, my account was not open to anything they would have normally seen. No, instead my parents have a list of all of my accounts and passwords. They have access to my original email. And they demand to have the passwords to every other account I've made.

I'm financially under the thumb of my parents

When I turned 18, the funds from my previous work was moved into an account I had access to. However, my mother made sure that HER name was on the account, so I cannot close it without her permission or remove funds without her knowledge. In the time from when I lost my first job to the time I gained access to my bank account, about a thousand dollars went missing. Anyone want to guess where it went?

My parents prevent me from seeking help for my mental problems--and will chastise me for having them

Ever since I can remember I have been punished for crying. I have become more than aquainted with the phrase "You want to cry? I'll give you something to cry about." Except i was almost always crying because of what they'd already done to make me cry. I've had panic attacks regularly since I was seven years old because of them. Fuck, I've had nervous breakdowns increasingly too.

Then there's the time they found out about the years of sexual abuse--which, by the way, I confided in a friend online about, and they learned of it by snooping through my accounts. They sent me to therapy because they thought I was lying and was trying to ruin his life. I was not allowed alone in the room with the therapist. I was barely allowed to talk. All of it was everyone screaming at me and saying things like "you want to ruin him? Send him to prison for the rest of his life? Is that what you want?" Or things like "you want to sue him, right? No? Then he must not have done anything wrong." Think of a ten or eleven year old going through that. I would also like to mention that I contracted a urinary tract infection from it--something commonly caused by not urinating after sex. And they ignored it until I was clawing the skin off my arms from the pain.

Then there is the time I was sent to suicide watch by my former high school. I was punished for being sent there. I was punished for self harming. I was guilt tripped and yelled at for feeling so stressed that I needed to cut--and they ignored me when I asked to seek help because I actually cut when nothing fells real, and only the pain could make me see what was real and what wasn't.

Keep in mind, I am now a legal adult. I was unable to emancipate myself because I have no where to go. I have no money, I have been unable to find a job, and I unfortunately still live with them.

I would also like to bring up that I can't bring charges against them. I can't contact police about any of this. I don't have any proof anymore besides my word against theirs, and even if I did, there are other reasons of why I can't. It will impact how people view trans women. It will impact how people see interracial couples. It will impact how people see two women raising children. Those people who like to think abusive childhoods cause lgbt kids because of how many experience it. With the struggle of people barely accepting the community--if at all--I can't put people through that because of what they did to me. It wouldn't be fair.

What can I do?

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poettheythem · 2 years

Text

I posted 422 times in 2021

37 posts created (9%)

385 posts reblogged (91%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 10.4 posts.

I added 67 tags in 2021

#sander sides - 11 posts

#thomas sanders - 8 posts

#ace - 7 posts

#nonbinary - 7 posts

#roman sanders - 6 posts

#roman - 6 posts

#lgbt+ - 6 posts

#gay - 6 posts

#patton sanders - 5 posts

#patton - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 112 characters

#i'm leaving for camp in like 10 hours is this really what i want the last thing i do on the internet for 7 weeks

My Top Posts in 2021

You know what. I'm pissed

TW: mentions of knives, mention of LGBT+phobia, mentions of hate crimes

I'm pissed because I am scared to go to the bathroom at my school. I'm Non binary Gender fluid and I either use the ONLY non gendered bathroom(Which is just the teacher bathroom that I have permission to use) or just any of the other bathrooms. I'm so fucking mad that one time the teacher bathroom was being used so I went to go use the mens room because it was closer and the women's room was on the floor below. So I'm about to walk in when this kid who I know is a homophobic, transphobic, racists, anti vaxer, asshole walk in. For context I'm AFAB, mixed race, and very open about my gender and sexuality at a school where people will purposely tell new kids my dead name and tell them to use "She/her" pronouns for me instead of my real name and "they/them" I see him go in and my first reaction was to instantly look for my pocket knife I carry with me for emergencies or if I need it. I then realized I had left it in my bag and decided that the likely hood of me being bullied or kicked out of the bathroom, or even fucking hate crimed was too likely so I walked down to the women's room. I hate that I have to feel THIS unsafe to use the fucking bathroom

THEN when I explained this to one of my cis friends he was just like "That doesn't actually happen" "That's unrealistic" and I'm like "There have been MANY cases where LGBT+ people were beat up in bathrooms by LGBT+phobes. People have been hate crimed in so many places, but sure it's totally unrealistic and it never happens, and I totally don't carry a knife with me everywhere for safety and it's a realistic and understandable " so yah I'm pissed

14 notes • Posted 2021-05-23 03:57:06 GMT

Sander Sides Theory

I love unsympathetic!Patton AU’s so much and heres why. I’ve always had a theory about Patton and the fact that he is the most controlling and “evil” of the sides. Yes we are still talking about Patton Sanders.

Patton is the reason there are “Light” and “Dark” sides. Patton is the one who stoped Roman from ever slightly agreeing with Janus when we met him. Patton is Janus’s opposite and has the biggest problem with him, so it makes sense that the other sides will also have videos where they face their opposite. But we have Roman and Remus and they barley interact with each other that video. Patton is the one who has the biggest problem with Remus. He’s also the entire reason Remus and Roman are separated. He shunned them out. Now in the first video Janus is in Roman seems opposed to him but agree’s with him some times and Patton makes him feel guilty for that, but when Patton accepts Janus and Roman(Who has just been told that he was bad by Patton and changed his mind about Janus after he was manipulated by him) still is opposed to him Patton tells him off. He tells Roman that “No janus is good we accept him now” when the ENTIRE VIDEO and other past videos he’s saying “Janus is bad we can’t trust him” Patton controls EVERYONE has has control over who is accepted and who get’s a say in things

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

15 notes • Posted 2021-02-23 15:34:41 GMT

Something they can never take away. No matter what they tell you.

16 notes • Posted 2021-02-23 15:40:03 GMT

OK I ACTUALLY DREW SOMETHING WELL FOR ONCE!

25 notes • Posted 2021-03-13 02:36:01 GMT

Virgil @ Patton: You are my daaadddd. You're my dad

BOOGY-WOOGY-WOOGY

27 notes • Posted 2021-11-16 12:33:27 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

Hahahah THIS is my Tumblr lol

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

0 notes

not-gae-cuz-i-like-straight-wae · 3 years

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Part 2: Here we go again

So Jeansaaa wrote another message and I don't feel like putting too much effort in my answer, because I actually shouldn't give him/her any more attention, but I think I can make things even a bit more clear this time for all other people out here on Tumblr. Also, I blocked him/her now instead, because she/he seems to be incapable of keeping me blocked... I'm gonna talk to him/her, so I'll use "you", because that's more easy and direct then him/her or they.

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You first started of by saying (in the title) that you made a response post becasue responding to a re-blog in mobile is hard (smiley included), which is not very important... Then you followed with "for context look at my re-blog below" and thereafter, your message actually started.

Before I copy-paste the first part I'm responding to, I wanna say: use punctuation, dude! Your whole message is like one long sentence with commas.

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Okay, that being said, let’s begin:

I just wanna be done with This, the reason why I texted this 🙃 (the “smiley face”) after I said “don’t worry i’ll block you” is because it was supposed to be passive aggressive, I un-blocked you by accident (because I’m a clumsy mess, and I didn’t even know I un-blocked you until after you private messaged me about it), and I told people to block you, because this kind of stuff can make people incredibly uncomfortable,(and you’re being blatantly homophobic which I’m sure nobody within the lgbtq+ Community would like to see that)

Yeah, I'm glad I decided on blocking you myself! I'm not someone who blocks others. I'm not gonna hide from someone that doesn't share my opinion. Just acting like a little child and press that block button. I'd rather have normal conversations or even discussions like not-little-kids, teens and adults do (that's why I take so much time to explain myself as much as possible), but that blocking-unblocking-blocking-unblocking started to become quite annoying.

Also, I think people can decide for themselves whether they wanna block me or not. We're not all imbeciles, you know? And probably the only reason why people would even go to your blog and see you telling them to block me, is because of me. Right now, you literally got seven posts and almost all of them have to do with me (exceptions: 2). Kinda feel honored, really, but I actually pretty much regret bringing you in the spotlight now. If I hadn't reblogged your post, I doubt it if anyone would've ever seen your blog...

no matter how much you sugar coat it, supporting straight pride is under the umbrella of homophobia,

It's not, though. Don't make up your own definitions. Homophobia is showing dislike of or prejudice against gay people.

you’re basically saying that putting up lgbtq+ posters, making lgbtq+ safe-spaces won’t work, and you’re wrong, I live in Florida, a very anti-lgbtq+ State, I’ve been a victim of homophobia / transphobia ,

Posters won't stop homophobia / transphobia. Neither people who don't like your behaviour nor people who already accept your behaviour will change their behaviour because of a poster. Or at the very least, it will only anger those "very-dangerous-straights-that-hunt-you-guys" that you're talking about, more. But I know why you like those posters. You want those posters to be hanged up because you want to be the "star of the show". And that, I have to admit, IS working.

and when I see a poster, or even just a small sticker saying, lgbtq+ safe space, it just makes me feel better about myself ,

Honestly, that you need POSTERS and STICKERS to make you feel better about yourself, already tells me more than enough about your self confidence. WOW.

and yes you’re not “victimized”or “oppressed” if you Truly think you are

Dude, I literally said I know I'm not (in real life, because online, the story is a lot different these days).

answer this , have you’re parents ever kicked you out for being straight?, have you ever been bullied for being straight?, have you been called slurs for being straight?, have you ever hated yourself for being straight?,

No, why would I get kicked out / bullied / called a slur? WHY would I hate myself? I seriously don't know how to respond to this. Just an example: if a alcohol addicted person would ask me "have YOU ever felt bad for NOT feeling the need to drink?" I'd also be like... "Err. NO."

and about the gay friends, what you said is basically the same as, “I’m not racist because I have black Friends”, it doesn’t matter what friends you have your still homophobic. (Sorry if the formatting is weird, i’m not the best at writing, but I hope I got the point across)

I hate that nasty habit of you all to make comparisons with racism in discussions with lgbt+ topics. It's not the same! I know it's a filthy trick of yours to pretend like it IS all the same, but I'm not falling for that! I'm NOT a racist! Besides, I didn't say "I'm not homophobic, because I have gay friends". It was just something I added. I did give enough actual reasons for why I'm not homophobic, though.

This time, to even clearify that point MORE (when will I ever be done clearifying myself, hahaha), I'm gonna take that alcohol addicted person (shortening it to: AAP) as an example again. I don't support people to be alcohol addicted. It's their own choice. Imagine if that AAP wants to campaign for allowing drunk people to drive. I'm very much against that. The AAP gives alcohol to his/her children (and might pass the addiction to them). I'm most definitely against that too (because it has impact on the next generation). When he's/she's in the mood, the AAP drinks him-/herself half to death. I find that disgusting. I find it inhuman. I find that this person should work on some self-control over his/her desires! Having all these thoughts about the AAP, still doesn't make me AAP-phobic, though. Because if this person encounters me (in a not drunk state, of course), I will act normally towards him/her. I might tell him/her what I think about the addiction, but I'm not being a hateful person by doing so. I don't show dislike / prejustice against people that are addicted to alcohol (I also don't know why I should have to know about someone's alcohol addiction in the first place). And if the whole world starts to campaign for all AAP's due to an agenda that's been executed and they push it all in my and everyone’s face and I'm against THAT, it STILL doesn't make me AAP-phobic. That would make me AAP-agenda-phobic. Or that would make me changing-the-world-wrongly-phobic. Or altering-general-morality-phobic. Because YES. That IS what I am. I'm not lgbtqabcxyz-phobic, but I'm most certainly against all this brainwashing and mindcontrolling that's happening nowadays. This is what I told someone recently in a similar discussion (it’s “ABC”, the person I still intend to respond to on my blog and I wrote this in our private chat too):

“Look, you just can't expect everyone to just accept everything. You can't expect everyone to alter the vision of reality. You can't expect everyone to just be a leaf in the wind. To go with the flow. I know lots of people are like that, but I'm not. If they would suddenly tell me eating through your ears is just as normal as through your mouth, no matter how many people would agree with that, no matter how many people would tell me I'm crazy for thinking otherwise, my opinion would remain unchanged. That's just me. I don't wanna be a leaf. I'd rather be a tree. Only I'd try to stay in my grounds even during thunderstorms or in a hurricane... Hopefully, you can understand that.”

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Jeansaaa’s message ended here initially, but then:

Edit: holy fucking shit, I re-read you’re response, it’s even worse then I remember, so I will add a bit more to this,

All right first of all you said being lgbtq+ was ABNORMAL, (wow that is really not helping your case) it’s not at all, it’s just as “normal” as being straight, people have been lgbtq+ for fucking CENTURIES,

Even now, lgbt+ still ISN’T the NORM in the world (I know some would love to see that differently, but I’m (not) afraid that won’t ever be the case). So that’s a FACT. And yes, a lot of people have been a lot of things for centuries, but what kind of argument is that?! That people are or do something, doesn’t make it normal. Some people are in jail. Some people are in mad houses. Some psychopaths walk around freely, but does that mean all that is normal too? No, it doesn’t. Your argument is bad. VERY bad.

even animals can be gay, if you do even the slightest bit of research you’ll see

And you know when? When they’re in ABNORMAL situations!

( but Seeing how your skull is as thick as concrete, you probably won’t ),

Thanks! I’m taking that as a compliment! I’m very happy if my skull really is as thick as concrete instead of as thin as paper (or even thinner)! Or else everyone (such as (social) media) would be able to just fill my head with whatever they want! Mold and knead me however they please! That would be one of the last things I’d want to happen. I got a brain for a reason. I got a brain to use it. To think for myself, using logic and not other people’s opinions.

now let’s move onto the second homophobic thing you said, you don’t support the lgbtq+ movement because of a so-called “ agenda”, why are you so mad?, Is it because straight relationships aren’t pushed in your face as much as it was back then?, ( magazines, Books, TV shows, billboards, straight relationships are literally everywhere and you’re COMPLAINING) you probably saw like one poster one day with a gay couple and freaked out,

Firstly, I’m not the “mad” one here. I’m angry about various things, but not “mad”. Secondly, straight relationships indeed aren’t pushed in my face as much as it was in back in the old days, but I don’t care about that. It’s lgbt+ that’s been forcefully pushed in my face CONSTANTLY (and it is) that bothers me so much!

Because NO. I didn’t “saw like one poster one day with a gay couple and freaked out”. That’s what I’ve been telling / explaining since pretty much my very first post about this! Saying this, makes me wonder if you can even read? Or else, you’ve obviously not read the parts of my posts in which I spoke about the hundreds of lgbt+ flags, many lgbt+ zebra crossings and lgbt+ wall paintings, lgbt+ public transport vehicles and to that list I can add the lgbt+ posters and stickers you spoke about, all lgbt+ promoting articles, shows and programms on the news everywhere (news papers and online) and on television, initiatives and activities of schools because of lgbt+, the countless lgbt+ campaigns that are being held, all other kinds of lgbt+ support of millions of people that just follow the herd AND the entire internet, including - of course - our most favorite straightphobic place, Tumblr (and I believe Twitter is pretty much like that (or even worse) as well). And who knows what else I’m not even aware of?! Ah, yes. And NOT to forget: the entire PRIDE MONTH. Because your kind of people are better than us straights, aren’t you?!

Really “like one poster one day with a gay couple”. REALLY.

please just stop,

I stop whenever I want...

nothing is gonna convince me that you’re not homophobic, because you’re clearly are

Nothing is gonna convince ME that you’re not STUPID, because you (not “you’re”) clearly are, stupid.

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I’m not even gonna respond extensively to the tags. They’re the stupidest things ever. I’ve never tagged my lgbt+ posts with the Arch-Illager OR Minecraft Dungeons tag, so Jeansaaa is just being a jerk for doing that anyway.

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That’s all. It turned out to be a very long response. Once I start typing, the words just flow from my head to and out of my fingers on the keyboard to the screen. And that. That was indeed a strange sentence. But... poetic... right? (No? Oh.)

#this must be #like #my longest post to date #and yeah #discussing lgbt+ again #well #as long as i get my message conveyed #it's fine

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