ough

i am not your enemy

[jupitermelichios]

you’ve probably seen the jokes about how archie andrews from riverdale went to war, but the producers refuse to say what war it was

but i’m here to tell you that the reliality is stranger than you could possibly imagine unless you watch the show

this is archie’s dress uniform

(the tepia overlay is present every time he wears it, i have not altered the shot at all)

this is archie and his buddy in the trenches, in their combat uniforms

yes I said trenches. that screenshot is from a flashback archie has to a member of his platoon loosing a leg to enemy shells in no-man’s land. (he specifically calls it no-man’s land)

Okay, so it’s WWI. That’s deeply weird, given Riverdale takes place in more or less the present day (there’s a weird amount of old-timey tech, but everyone also has iphones and laptops, so we can assume the old tech is people being retro), but it’s at least an answer

but it gets weirder.

because we know what country archie was fighting in. his deployment was in uzbekistan.

now despite it being called a world war, not every country was involved in the first world war. uzbekistan did not fight on either side.

because the country didn’t formally exist until 1991

so in whatever parrallel universe riverdale takes place in, new york and the town of riverdale exist essentially in the present day, the soviet union has fallen, but former soviet union countries are still fighting a war which should have ended more than 100 years ago.

so that’s bonkers, but i’m not done

in the episode in which archie decides to join the army, the school digs up a time-capsule from the 1940s and opens it. inside is a picture of four riverdale high students who were shipping out to the army the day after the time capsule was burried

the ghosts of these four WWII soldiers then appear to archie, convincing him that he should join up and fight

so to be clear, archie fought in the first world war, in a country which did not exist during the first world war, because he was told to by the ghosts of soldiers from the second world war, a war which could not have happened yet because the first world war is apparently still ongoing

and also it’s the present day and archie owns an iphone

[esoanem]

[arrowmantic]

Rly wish ppl acknowledged that the book Hung Jury is severely lacking for accounts of bottom surgery that weren't rff phallo instead of holding it up as The Definitive Work about transmasc bottom surgery. I read that book while preparing for meta and was extremely disappointed that book had all of 3 essays that were relevant to me, one of which wasn't even a personal account, but rather a retreading of Lou Sullivan's diary by a third party.

[i-suggest-aro]

by the way, if you're weird about aromantic heterosexual cisgender men, i kill you. if that man wants a purely sexual relationship with a woman and communicates that with her, and she agrees, hell yes. good for them. you have no right to be a bitch about that. that's frankly none of your god damn business. he's not "emotionally abusive" for wanting a specific type of relationship. you're being stupid and weird. and weirdly misogynistic, by assuming that women are inherently these helpless victims that have no agency or autonomy.

you're literally being the "the myth of consensual sex" meme when you talk shit about cishet aro men in purely sexual relationships with women.

[aroace-avenue]

I want old aros so badly. I want a history. I want a future. I want tales of lives that I understand. I want to see myself in a future where I’m happy and comfortable.

But I don’t have that, so I’ll have to build it.

[blood-on-my-french-fries]

I’ve got a story!

When I told my grandmother’s friend group about aromanticism most of them didn’t understand, they were polite and asked a lot of questions, some didn’t really believe it bc well, people in their 70s are rarely that open minded; but there was this one lady that looked pensive and when the others quieted down she asked me if the name for it had existed long, and when I said no she told me about her best friend:

A 74 year old woman who had married young, back when my country was in a fascist dictatorship and women couldn’t have/make their own money, so their only hope was marriage. They lived together years, and I’m not sure if they had children, but as soon as it was legal for her to divorce she did, and, living in a small town, she faced her neighbours’ questions and judgement: Was he a bad husband? Did he cheat or treat her badly? Was it the other way around? He wasn’t “man enough”? And many less nice things.

Her answer to all of them was that her now ex husband was a wonderful man, and that they’d remain friends as they’d always been, because on her side that’s all there could be, because she didn’t find it in herself to love, not him nor any man or woman, but still cared deeply for him as she did for all her friends.

She now lives happily in retirement, traveling around the country with her friends, ex husband included, and also has a cat.

When the lady told me this she sounded doubtful at first, afraid she was appropiating but when I told her that the experience sounded like those on our community she looked so happy, and kindly asked me to write down the terms and what they mean on a paper so she could show her friend when she went back home, tell her that she wasn’t alone that there were more people who had united and have a name and are fighting to be recognised.

That day I realised something: That there are more of us than we know about, that in this age of information many of the older generation were still estranged from the net and among them there are aromantic people too. And that for those people who have probably felt other and wrong most of their lives, the knowledge of the label and community, the confirmed existence of others like them that feel it’s important enough to recognise that feeling or lack thereof, can be just as healing, reassuring and important as it was for us, the newer generation who stumbled upon the term on the internet when we were teens.

The internet is great, of course, but if we want to find the older aros de have to look for them, because they most surely haven’t found themselves in that label yet either. And to do so we must share our terms and experiences and shout to the world that we exist outside the screens, that we are real. I know it can be risky or even dangerous but if we wish to find them, and hopefully make them a bit happier, it’s all we can do.

TL,DR: There are old aros out there, we just have to find them by spreading our visibility, not only for us, but for them too.

[aroace-avenue]

this makes me so happy to hear! thank you for sharing

[kaiscove]

Just wanted to tack on another sort of series of personal stories from work (a Canadian engineering company, employee age typically running 35-60 with more people on the older end). I co-run our company’s queer employee resource group (ERG). We run all sorts of workshops and events annually and ofc one of my favourites is in-person in-office Pride celebrations 🌈🌈🌈 I’ve been out for 20+ years and this place is no exception, plus I bedeck the heck out of our cafeteria with rainbows and pride swag, so there is little way to mistake what our ERG is there to bring visible joy and celebration to.

I always set up two frames at the table our group hosts over lunch in the cafeteria. Each frame has 8 of the most commonly used queer identity pride flags with labels beneath them (16 total). What ends up happening is this: some people shy away, some shyly approach, and others enthusiastically come over as allies and the handful of out fellow queer peers. Everyone who makes it to the table generally has their eyes drawn to the framed pride flags first because they’re so colourful, they’re standing up, and they recognize some of the “main” flag’s variations.

I have a lot of info in various formats to ask about, but what are my most common questions, every single year?

“What’s asexuality?” and “What’s aromanticism?”

And almost every single time I can remember answering that question, I see either 1) rapid mental calculations now exploding in their mind 2) a long, pensive stare at the ace or aro pride flags as they ask sort of distantly “A term for that exists?” Or 3) curiosity-animorphing-into-deer-in-the-headlights

100% of those people have grabbed one of my “identify definitions and where to find more info and communities related to them” printouts then ran away (at various speeds lol, some are in their 30’s but others are indeed in their 50’s and 60’s!)

And each time I’m just like yeah that makes sense that these people I particularly admire for their passion for their job/cool life stories of adventuring with friends/amazing technical and/or artistic skills share a large overlapping Venn diagram with the “oh I was not expecting to be in this aro/ace picture” people at our pride table haha

(for the nuance, I am never going to diagnose someone else’s identities. I am simply open to the fact that there are many, many people of the older generations are queer in some way but have never heard of identities beyond gay, lesbian, and now bc of the media, trans people)

Sharing the wide variety of different identities is one of my favourite things to do with our ERG ✨

[gay-otlc]

If I have not already ruffled enough feathers, then let me start plucking: There is no such thing as butch flight. There are transsexual dudes who cheat themselves out of a full life for fear of being ostracized. There are butches who fear to live beyond male and female because dykes might assume they are guys. There are FTM-spectrum folks who have never been butch in their lives. And there are genderqueers who want nothing to do with our decades-old identity wars. But there is no butch flight. There is, however, butch arrival: people who have tried other genders, most often femme and/or guy, who made the switch and joined the ranks. So if more butches is what you want, I can get you butches. Is your community short on butches? First, we need to remember economic class. Most of the butchless lesbian spaces I've seen are also moneyed spaces. Butches, being gender-variant, tend to be broke. Second, we need to help butches transition in. We must celebrate former femmes who want to dance the boi's part. Like any dancer who switches roles, she'll probably be more graceful than those who haven't. We also need to help MTF butches make the trip. Their roadblocks are (1) an underfunded, ageist, and rigorously heteronormative transgender medical system and (2) a lack of accessible radical gender education. You need to be a gender radical to grasp that it's possible to transition into gender variance and come out as an unconventional kind of trans and/or woman, but most radical gender education is aimed only at those who are already out as trans and/or who the educators read as female. Why are there so many more flaming FTM dudes than butchy MTF women? Most of the trans-flamers started their critical feminist education among women who read them as gender-bending butches. And while they were included, this education did not welcome my untransitioned MTF sisters. So the swishy FTMs transitioned and most of the boyish MTFs assumed they couldn't. But this is changing; every year, I see more MTFs in boy-drag, neckties, and mullets than ever before. So what we do now is keep fighting gender-normativiy in the medical system and orient feminist education to grasp that many "boys" are actually girls who are stuck in the closet. We do this, and the world will not only be a friendlier place for all genders, it will also have more butches. They'll even be tall and stubbly if that's what you're into. And they won't re-transition to male. Probably.

"Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie" by Amy Fox, from Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

[arrowmantic]

I'm like 80% sure I'm shadowbanned here lmao.

[arrowmantic]

I wish it were more feasible to use no pronouns. He is fine. Better than any alternatives and I am a man, but I still dislike it. I dislike that people feel entitled to know my gender, I dislike that I have to declare it, I don't like being referred to and I don't like thinking about pronouns at all.

But no pronouns is just. Unfeasible for me to use in English. Yeah you can work around it, but only in clunky ways that just draw more attention to the absence of pronouns than just using a pronoun does, which sorta defeats my purpose of not wanting to think about pronouns at all. And people tend to then just default to they when they struggle w not using pronouns, and I absolutely fucking hate being called they. But I can't really say "no pronouns but if you're gonna use them use he" cause then people just use he and there's no point to me saying no pronouns.

So just using he instead of having to deal w ppl dancing around the whole no pronouns thing is ultimately the lesser of two evils.

[set-for-deletion]

The reason transandrophobia/transmisandry don't work as terms is because instead of coming up with a specific term for transmasc specific oppression, it instead tries to borrow the structure of the word "transmisogyny"

The word transmisogyny was coined as a way to describe the intersection between two axes of systemic oppression, misogyny and transphobia, as transfeminized individuals are both punished for their femininity or for being women, and punished for being trans.

The words transandrophobia or transmisandry imply there to be an intersection between transphobia and systemic oppression towards men. Men are not systematically oppressed, and trans men are not punished on the basis that they are men. They are punished on the basis of being trans and attempting to diverge from "femaleness."

This is why I prefer the terms 'anti-transmasculinity' or simply 'transmasc specific oppression'.

The discrimination which transmascs face is not the intersection of two axes, it is simply a type of transphobia, unlike transmisogyny which is both a type of transphobia and a type of misogyny.

Maybe this is dumb, but I illustrated it a bit, this is grossely oversimplified for the sake of the point being made, but I believe it to be an accurate dumbed down version explaining the roots of specific forms of oppression.

A more detailed version would include the overlap with racism (transmisogynoir, anti-blackness, the euro-centric origins of the gender binary etc), homophobia, and intersexism but again, this is purposely oversimplified version.

[spaghetti-steven93]

I agree with this take, etymologically wise it’s important to have words that are precise. And I just don’t feel the words are prescise.

I think the issues brought up are valid for us trans guys, and we should be taken seriously of course, i just don’t like the terms.

I do think we need more words though for specifically how the a the core of anti-trans masculinity is also a lot of misogyny but in a different way than for trans women?

Because you are correct. Even homophobia boils down to a kind of misogyny because it’s hatred of the “wrong kind of man”.

Here are Specifically a few points I have seen the most complaints of:

trans men often don’t have access to spaces or resources made for women, sometimes bc of “no men” rules, but there are little alternatives because of the general purposeful suppression and lack of knowledge about us.

Trans men are treated as both the evil demons who want to corrupt the maiden youth AND be infantlized as being too stupid to know what we are doing. Which boils back down to transphobia- ie seeing us as out-of-line women. You either smother or kill.

This is also why I think violence against trans men is both prevalent and not as well documented because it seems like a trans man victims identity is more purposefully suppressed (as opposed to the blatant misgendering that happens with trans fems) when a trans man experiences violence and hate.

A lot of this is anecdotal but rings true and is prevalent.

And lastly there is a huge overlap between trans men’s identities being suppressed and how our bodies and bodies of other people who can get pregnant are severely regulated in law and societally.

The last one I made a word for called “uterofixation”.

Mocking vs erasure. Burning in the heat of the bigoted rage at all hours vs the slower death of freezing in the cold of bigoted suppression that leads to quiet violence.

That’s how I usually see the difference between trans misogyny and anti trans masculinity.

So we need different kinds of help from each other and allies to get through. And one way is precise language.

[set-for-deletion]

I do think we need more words though for specifically how the a the core of anti-trans masculinity is also a lot of misogyny but in a different way than for trans women?

An amazing transfeminist theorist, Talia Bhatt, actually has actually come up with a term for this! transemasculation

trans -> pertaining to how it is rooted in transphobia, and targets trans men/mascs

and

emasculation/emasculate -> to deprive of strength, vigor, or spirit, often used to mean denying or taking a way a man's manhood.

The act of emasculation is rooted in misogyny, as it is meant to present a man as having lower value by likening him to a woman,

I truly wish transgender men had their own "Whipping Girl", I believe this gap in trans men not having academic literature/theory to point to when describing their experiences has caused many trans men to make various mistakes in attempting do so, such as inconsistencies, inproper terminology, and the way bad faith actors have used the oppression of trans men to spread transmisogyny

I've seen so many try to cling onto Leslie Feinberg's "Stone Butch Blues", and Leslie wasn't even a trans man (though xie was transgender)

I wish trans men had a book that was specifically made for them that would make them feel seen in their oppression, the way Whipping Girl has done for so many trans women

[arrowmantic]

While transemasculation has merits as a word and a theory,,,,it doesn't escape me that it is one of the only proposed words for antitransmasculinity that was not coined by a transmasc, and that it is the word that I've seen more non-transmascs latch onto, and that makes me uncomfortable. Especially given that a huge portion of our oppression is rooted in the silencing of our voices and the dismissal of our understanding of our own experiences. I've read Bhatt's posts and works and trust that she is coining it in good faith, and a lot of her ideas in transemasculation are sound, but the mere fact that ppl trust her word for it over any of the numerous words (including ones that don't reference misandry in any form) transmascs have floated for the phenomenom is, ironically, a pretty clear example of antitransmasculinity, transemasculation, transandrophobia, or however you wanna call it. And I feel like that's the basis for a lot of transmascs' resistance to the term, though a lot of them tend to not know how exactly to voice it.

[demonprincex]

Why Does Nobody Flirt with Me? How Do I Deal with Social Anxiety?

Autistic Advice #9

In a piece for The New Inquiry from back in 2017, George Dust states that when queer people complain about there being a top shortage, what they really mean is “nobody is fucking me the way I want, and I have no agency in that.” Alongside co-authors Billy-Ray Belcourt and Kay Gabriel, Dust suggests that many queer people align themselves with a passive or “bottom” position because they believe that role will absolve them of the guilt of really wanting things. They present themselves as what they believe to be the sexual party with zero power; the receiver, the accepter of action rather than its cause.

This position is drawn in contrast to the bottom-identified person’s idea of a top: the one who approaches, the person with hungers and desires, the person who decides which sexual activities will happen and how intense they will get. The top, from this perspective, is the stronger, more capable, more dangerous person. They’re the only one who can ever be guilty of intruding or harming somebody else. This power is scary, but it’s also compelling.

Dust calls this fantastical version of a top a “brute” — and they are the most cartoonish stereotype of what it means in society to be a man. Because it’s a cartoonish stereotype, no human actually lives up to it — and we’d probably revile a person even if they could.

Though queer people know we are harmed by the gender binary and heteronormativity and all the social scripts those things force upon us, its biases are still embossed on our brains. Without meaning to, we reproduce tired gender stereotypes in our relationships. And so we see expressing a sexual want as masculine, and being masculine as being more capable of violence and coercive control, and thus bad. We see failing to communicate one’s desires openly as desirably feminine, as well as a sign of blamelessness and purity — because on some level we still feel it is wrong to have desires.

But this entire worldview is a complete lie. Desire is not evil. Expressing attraction is not a violation. Failing to express oneself can be just as dangerous as not listening to someone else’s limits. Women can be abusive. Bottoms can sexually assault. No matter our gender, presentation, or sexual role, we are each capable of harm. And the only way to make a safe, mutually pleasurable sexual encounter happen is by going after it, actively, and communicating from a position of inner strength.

So how do you do that, if society’s been telling you all your life that you’re meant to date by acting like a deer passively snapping twigs in the woods, waiting for some hunter to hear you, and pursue you? (That really is dating advice that Evangelical Christian counselors give to women, if you can believe it).

By not fixating so much on what you’re doing or not doing to draw other people toward you, and instead thinking in terms of what you want and what you observe beyond yourself.

[demonprincex]

thanks for these additions !

[demonprincex]

#ooooh boy. yeah..#i definitely was like this whne i was first coming out. this is really good writing#it's hard to unlearn. it's hard to change. but havigg that agency is so so important#for yourself. for not making your partner do all the emotional work#for owning your sexuality/queerness without guilt#anyways. genuinely sorry to every butch/masc i had a crush on when i was a baby gay. hope y'all are doing well

Love when people add these. Thanks for sharing about your growth!

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Here’s the New Inquiry piece, totally worth the read.

Top or Bottom: How do we desire?

Kay Gabriel, George Dust, and Billy-Ray Belcourt consider what queer memes of a top shortage reveal about the racialized orders of desire an

[demonprincex]

#long post#both articles are really really good#especially the second one#and everyone should read them #as a black person i'm expected to do all the heavy lifting of pursuing/flirting/initiating/fucking#and this makes it incredibly difficult for me to date#because i KNOW that#and i don't want to be in that role#i resent it#and i've come to resent dating because everyone i've dated in this area (vancouver is very very white)#has been suuuuuper passive/uncommunicative and it drove me insane#the second article uses “brutishness” and i think this encompasses the experience#of what you're expected to be while dating other queers #it's not just forwardness that's desired it's rawness they perceive as animalistic#which is extremely dehumanizing obviously!#which makes the whole experience extremely fraught#because ultimately it's all about that other person and how they feel and what they want#without them ever having to overtly express it#which allows them to wallow in passivity and sexual shame while still getting their needs met (but only partially)#(hence the whining about a top shortage) #it's part and parcel of a narcissism i've noticed in most white queers#where they position themselves at the center of the universe#they see themselves as The Most Oppressed and also The Most Desired#and they forcibly make you a part of this narrative#it's extremely insidious#it's also not just white people tbh nonblack poc are guilty of this too#but i won't even touch that rn#anyway great stuff and i need to show it to some people lmao#find later

[heckling-hydrena]

I have a complicated relationship with the concept of microlabels and more specifically aspec microlabels, because on one hand I have nothing against people who want to use a term that more closely describes their experiences it's literally none of my business good for them etc. but on the other hand I do think that sometimes people feel pushed to use microlabels because there are sooo many misconceptions about what asexuality and aromanticism actually are. so for example people who are just discovering their identity will try to connect with other aspecs, realize their experiences don't fully match every other aspec's experiences and get insecure, and that leads to interactions like "is it normal that I'm aromantic but I like shipping and romcoms?" "that actually means you're aegoromantic!" like it doesn't have to! it literally doesn't have to you don't have to identify as aego you can just call yourself aromantic! I feel like it would be way more productive to put effort into dispelling the idea that there's a 'proper' way to be asexual/aromantic instead of creating a microlabel for every experience that doesn't match common stereotypes.

and I'm gonna talk about asexuality specifically here because asexuality is still talked about so much more often (sorry to the aroallo warriors out there) but we've, and I can only assume this is a consequence of the stupid fucking ace discourse, internalized this weird idea that anyone who doesn't 100% fit into the category of 'never felt sexual attraction ever + no libido + sex-repulsed + never even THINKS about sex' either needs to use a microlabel or maybe even isn't really asexual. I've genuinely seen people ask "can I be asexual if I masturbate" "can I be asexual if I think this fictional character is hot" like YES? YES OBVIOUSLY? who is making you feel like you can't call yourself asexual point them out in the crowd for me tell me their name and their home address.

not to mention the fringe group of idiots (and I'll be real it's mostly weirdo terfs saying this shit) who are like "ohhh I feel bad for the REAL asexuals IF they even EXIST because these STRAIGHT people who don't put out on the first date are HIJACKING their community" which pisses me off so bad every time I see it. who the fuck are you to speak for me? keep your forked tongue behind your teeth etc etc.

like idk! people are totally allowed to call themselves aceflux and quoiromantic and fray and litho and whatever they want, but they should never feel like they have to! and it's become abundantly clear that some are being made to feel like they have to.

[beaft]

being on the aro spectrum would be a lot easier if being single wasn't made to feel like a literal death sentence

[beaft]

it's all very well to say "friends are just as important as romantic partners" but in practice this simply is not the case lmao. you can share a flat with a friend but it's expected that sooner or later that friend will meet someone and will move out to go live with that person instead. if you're hanging out with friends you can bring your partner along but your friends can't come on a date night with you because that's third-wheeling and it's weird. you can know somebody for most of your life and still be second-best to some guy they met on tinder 6 months ago. you're meant to just accept without question the fact that your friends will prioritise time with their partners over time with you. being single is treated like a problem that needs to be fixed. we casually use expressions like "just friends" or "more than friends". everything we read and watch reinforces the idea that romantic love is what gives life meaning and therefore your life is meaningless without it. i try to keep my chin up but my god it is bleak out there

[thatqueergarbagerat-deactivated]

Me then: I don't understand why other aros complain about fandom so much, it can't be that bad

Me now, crawling out of fandom covered in blood: I see

[zemathememequeen]

So, I was thinking today about how, as an aroace, I started identifying as asexual several months before I started identifying as aromantic. I just found it more difficult to come to terms with my aromanticism than my asexuality, thereby taking me longer to accept it.

And that got me curious:

Aroaces: Did you start identifying as aro or ace first?

Aro first

Ace first

Both at the same time

Not aroace (see results)

Voting ended onApr 13, 2024

[psybabasblog]

[onenicebugperday]

I’ve posted them before, but have some more Picasso bugs because they are so dang cute.

Sphaerocoris annulus, Scutelleridae (Jewel Bugs). Found in sub-Saharan Africa

Photo 1 by alastair61, 2 by nielspouldreyer, 3 by bartwursten, 4 by b_louboutin, 5 by azizhingora007, and 6 by also_sprach_susscrofa

[arrowmantic]

Really fun and really interesting how gender noncomformity is seen as the territory of monosexual queer ppl and never bisexuals.

[aromantic-diaries]

The bisexual to aroace pipeline is pretty much having the right idea and coming to the wrong conclusion. Yeah buddy you're not straight and you're also not gay. No not like that though, the other way around