This is a personal blog and as such is a bit of a hodgepodge of things I like! I am very bad at tagging things!! If that is going to be a problem, please don't feel the need to follow!
FUB Freely, as it were.
If you're a FFXIV RP Blog wondering why I'm following you, it's one of these Three girls:
Odette Hollows | @ahollowgrave | carrd
A young nun devoted to Menphina doing her best to live up to her vows, both to her goddess and the dearly departed that flock to her.
Prudence Dubois | @prudentfolly | carrd
An overworked retainer whose yet to stop climbing to new heights, literally and figuratively.
Viatrix Volkova | @lonewildling | carrd
A once-wildling with a volatile connection to those who still wander.
There are other characters that remain on this blog! Including a second Viatrix because she started out as a D&D character!
Cherish: Mul/Reborn | Grave Cleric / Wild Fire Druid of the Everlight
Viatrix: Lycan Human | Blood Cleric of the Raven Queen
Opal: Lancer Pilot | LICH Frame | a Hoot and a Half
"Women's bisexuality exposes the misogyny of... like, everyone. But because bisexuality hasn't been recognized and examined as a political issue to the extent other issues have been in the mainstream, we let it go unchecked. We don't recognize it as a specific form of misogyny against a minority group. We just see it as an individual quirk, or even something justified and progressive.
-Verity Ritchie, Why We Hate Bi Women
So much of our perspective on bi people today is shaped by this crucial coming-out moment in our history. Bisexually came into mainstream consciousness because of AIDS, and all the prejudice and hatred and fearmongering that came with it shaped our perception of bisexuality.
--Verity Ritchie, Why We Hate Bi Men
(takes a deep breath)
Okay. I want to try and have a good-faith conversation about biphobia in fandom.
Specifically, I think we might all benefit from talking more about what anti-bisexual tropes and stereotypes are and why they exist, the history behind them. Bisexual history is not as well known, and I certainly don't claim to be an expert myself. But some history and context might help some people to understand why bisexual fans react strongly to certain things.
Before I start, I will say frankly that yes, this was prompted by a recent incident in the FFXIV fandom where a well-known fan artist expressed sentiments that many others (myself included) felt were biphobic. I am not naming that fan artist because if you're in the fandom you're probably already aware of it and if you're not, well, it's out there, and this isn't a callout post. I am not addressing that artist directly because I don't know him or follow his work, and he's already been addressed directly and in good faith by people more familiar with him. This is aimed at a more general audience, with the intended goal of promoting greater understanding.
Just to absolutely emphasize this, do not send the artist hateful or harassing messages. It will not help anyone.
In all of this, it also important to bear in mind that queer people of all stripes are under attack to various degrees all over the world, and the fact that we are all navigating our safety and wellbeing outside of fandom only intensifies the hurt when we feel attacked from those we consider our own. With that in mind, it's important to keep some perspective. First, it's fandom. Fandom is important to many of us, and as with any group context, how we behave toward one another matters, but fandom is also a small niche hobbyist subculture and as serious as it may feel in the heat of the moment, this came about in a discussion about who gets to have their OC kiss a pixel person.
Second, the incident that sparked this is fundamentally an intracommunity conflict, regarding the way LGBTQIA+ people of different identities treat one another; I'm primarily addressing that audience, and frankly I think the majority of my followers are some flavor of queer (though of course there's some straight-and-cis folks in there and you're also welcome here so long as you're chill). To me, the artist in question who expressed the biphobic sentiment is still fundamentally a part of my community even if I don't know him, even if he wouldn't much care for me as an individual, even if he wouldn't think the same of me. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a social club, it's a political alliance, and at the end of the day we all need each other more than I think we sometimes realize. That informs how I respond to things like this, even when someone within the community isn't behaving well toward others. I also don't want to imply that homophobia doesn't exist within fandom, or that bi fans are immune to perpetuating it by virtue of being bi. Just as it is possible for gay people to perpetuate bigotry toward other queer identities, it is possible for bi people to perpetuate homophobia, and we all bear a responsibility to be mindful.
With that incredibly long preface out of the way, here's two videos from trans bisexual YouTuber Verity Ritchie that I think offer accessible context to some common anti-bisexual tropes. Each is under 20 minutes long. Obviously, this is not a comprehensive history of biphobia (though the creator has a lot of other videos about bisexuality and bi history, and if you find these two informative, I do encourage you to go watch more).
Because society is gendered, anti-bisexual tropes are also gendered, and manifest in different ways. Bi women experience a type of biphobia that intersects with misogyny; bi men experience a particular type of biphobia because they are men; nonbinary people will experience types of biphobia that intersect with transphobia and cissexism.
But if you watched both videos, you may notice a common trope that emerges: the bisexual as an insidious, malevolent interloper, invading both straight and queer spaces and tainting them, ruining them, making them unsafe. The bisexual as a dangerous outsider who fundamentally does not belong, and cannot be trusted.
Many bisexuals, I think, are familiar with the feeling of being perceived this way, and the sense of isolation that often comes with it. Before coming into contact with queer community and queer history, we may not be able to understand or explain why we are experiencing this, or why we react so strongly to it. But it does go deeper than simply rejection and hurt feelings. There is history to this trope.
And when someone says, "This used to be a safe space but then they [a group that implicitly or explicitly includes bisexuals] came in and ruined it," this is the trope that is invoked, intentionally or not.
Hearing this from within queer fandom strikes a particular nerve for me, not because it is shocking, but because it is so familiar.
You may also recognize this trope if you're a queer person of color, or asexual, or transgender, or nonbinary, or a lesbian. It turns out to be infinitely reusable.
And to anyone who has spent a fair amount of time in this fandom and interacted extensively with other creators, it is just... self-evidently obvious that there are a lot of queer fans here shipping all kinds of ships. Quite a few of those fans are bisexual or pansexual (and I've been using bi and bisexual as umbrella terms here, because I'm old, but consider that umbrella to include any and all multi-gender-attracted people). Among these fans you will find all kinds of ships and headcanons. And yes, this does include m/f ships (among any and all other categories), because for many of us, that is a part of our experience that we may reflect in our creative work.
It also worth mentioning that some bi women, in particular, have been driven away from shipping m/m because they found themselves regularly accused of fetishizing gay men. In other fandoms, I have seen harassment campaigns launched again female authors of popular m/m fic on this basis--in at least one case, led by gay men. It might surprise some of my followers to hear this, but there was a time when I was seriously questioning whether I should ever write m/m again because I'd experienced so much shaming around it. I did not, in fact, swear off shipping m/m; I still read it, write it, and enjoy it, and my AO3 catalog bears that out, but I won't pretend the discourse around it never got to me.
I would go on to discover, however, that there is nothing a bi woman can ship that exempts her from criticism and scrutiny. If you ship f/m, you are an annoying het shipper ruining fandom with your annoying het ships. Even a mention of the fact that you headcanon the characters as bi and that this informs the way you portray them will only get you further derided, and in some cases will lead to people openly questioning your identity or insinuating that you're lying about it. (The "straight woman pretending to be bi for attention" trope never goes out of style.) And if you ship f/f, your ships and the characters in them will be more heavily scrutinized and moralized because that is what happens to female characters generally. Or you will hear the characters and ships you love dismissively called "vegetables," implying that no one could truly enjoy them authentically.
You will never "win." The only winning move is not to play.
This isn't really about shipping.
Bisexuals are not invaders of queer spaces, or of fandom. We have always been here... shipping all kinds of ships, loving all kinds of characters. Our own lives and relationships are diverse, complex, and not always easily categorized.
And please, don't take the word of one tumblr fandomite, or one youtuber. What I've said here is incredibly incomplete. Go out and learn more about bisexual history.
But I hope that perhaps what I've said here can offer some perspective, and a place to begin learning more.
Hello everyone, it's Caden here. This year has been a big struggle for my fiancee, Mary (@heavens-break-down), and I as I'm sure it has been for many, though May was a particularly tough month with expenses for us. We've been living paycheck to paycheck each month and it's only getting tougher for us. I've been in the process of finding an additional job for months, but no one is willing to hire despite all the applications I put in. It's incredibly disheartening and is starting to take a mental toll on me.
We're constantly making tough decisions about the necessities--medicines (such as HRT and other necessary prescriptions), bills, food, and so forth. It's getting to the point where we both feel incredibly burnt out and depressed because we're struggling so much and have very little money left over after each paycheck.
Right now, we could use a little help for rent and food to get us through the next week or two. Our goal is $500. It would mean a lot to share and boost if you can. Thank you dearly.
since a certain someone seems convinced that there are absolutely no queer creators in this fandom, prove him wrong by promoting yourself in reblogs <3 ill go first - i'm a trans nb aroace artist that draws mostly my wol and fanart, and i have an ongoing webcomic for my wolcanon as well, but it's updating very slowly i fear...! here's my ko-fi and vgen!
hello!! I'm nonbinary and demisexual. I dabble in a lot of artistic endeavors, but lately I've really gotten into 3D animation and modding through Blender. You'll commonly see Vira and Burakh here, under the tag #lionhearts ! Here's some recent art I've made of them:
I haven't written in a while, but the lionhearts do have an FFXIVWrite series from 2024!
It would mean a lot to me this year's Pride, to see acknowledgement and celebration for queers of color of every stripe. Often it feels like BIPOC are an afterthought in Pride celebrations, not only left unacknowledged, but further marginalized by the intersection of their identities. And yet the weight of queer history roars with the resistance of people like Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera who did not stop fighting for liberation until they passed. The uprising at Stonewall itself is a culmination of years of queer activism.
When it comes to conversations about queer suppression, especially as shown by the attitude inspiring this post, we often see takes that certain people inherently don't "understand" gay coding or any number of nods to queer identity, simply due to the circumstances of our birth. I'd like to bring attention to the fact that many people in the world are still unable to openly call themselves queer of any kind of identity, without being severely punished by their own governments. At the same time, BIPOC in the USA especially Black and Indigenous people, regardless of their queer status, are policed and killed every day for the most frivolous reasons; and queerness amplifies the danger they face on the daily, especially if they are perceived as being gender-nonconforming. I'd like us all to remember what we think of as 'normal' now, like posting about queerness and being queer online, is an incredible, incredible privilege that people lived, fought, and died for. Our elders died dreaming that we, the future generations, have a chance to breathe and love together.
Stereotyping a whole kind of people, or blanketing a nation's attitude onto the people who live there, feels extremely antithetical to the history of the term 'queer' as a community and as a movement of liberation. Personally speaking, I was practically raised by a butch while we were both navigating the complexities and danger of being queer, in a country whose textbooks promote civilians to punish homosexuality by stoning gays or putting lesbians into house arrest, whose laws criminalize private citizens' sex lives. I saw firsthand the discrimination she could not shake for the entirety of her work, how she had to bring her own friends as advocates for her because her coworkers and administration disliked her, the way our organization suffered due to the perception of her as a corrupting influence on the band kids she trained. She shepherded us through the most successful years of marching band our school had ever seen, and her reward was to be kicked out of the school the moment my class graduated. Luckily, no worse outcome happened that I know of, but we all saw it happen. She had no partner that I knew of, and she never spoke of her orientation publicly, but that she was so gender-nonconforming as a butch was enough to mark her for life.
Instead of performing that violence of erasure, let's uplift and truly see each other, and continue the hard work of our forebears where we can. We must, we must strive to give the next generation (and our peers right now) a better life.
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
