Happy Pride Month! Today i offer you: aspec knights. Choose your fighter.
ojovivo
will byers stan first human second

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Claire Keane

titsay
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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shark vs the universe

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@pride-and-flags-47
Happy Pride Month! Today i offer you: aspec knights. Choose your fighter.
My book on aromanticism and asexuality comes out in a month! Shout-out to my publishers for just... giving me free rein to ramble about:
How amatonormativity hurts absolutely everyone
Why there are so many nonbinary and gender non-conforming aspecs
Why asexual awareness is essential in pushing back against incel culture (because men and boys deserve to know that manhood is not defined by sexual desire or prowess)
Why coming out as aspec can be so incredibly complicated, espeically for aspecs of colour
Advice from aspecs on how to navigate sex and relationships as an ace and/or aro person
A really wonderful bunch of stories from aspecs on what their non-normative relationships and families look like, from queerplatonic partners to poly aspecs to best friends raising kids together
How refusing amatonormativity can help us fight the loneliness epidemic, by encouraging people not to retreat into two-person units and instead invest in multiple close relationships of every kind
What steps we need to take to challenge aspec discrimination in medicine and the law
Why all you aspec people out there are an indispensible, revolutionary force that helps us all explore and create new models of love, relationship and family
So uh please do check it out if you think it might be up your street (or just because it'd really, really annoy a certain children's author who's decided aphobia is the new big thing)
The book is titled "Love, Expanded " by Wren Burke.
How do I call characters who were born as identical twins but one of them is non-binary but has not transitioned medically. Are they still 'identical'? One is 3 inches shorter than the other, one wears glasses one is muscular the other average, they also have wildly different clothing/hairstyles so there's never actually a misunderstanding. But yeah if they were cis you'd still call such identical even though they look so different but not sure about if one was non-binary.
"Identical" in terms of twins refers to the specific genetic phenomenon - like how they came to be twins. It's not really a gender thing.
Identical twins also don't always "look" identical. Sometimes non-identical twins also "look" identical but they aren't, scientifically speaking.
The specifics of twin genetics aren't really in the purview of this blog, but I will say I recommend maybe doing more research on this topic in general if you're planning to represent characters who are twins. Twins can also be half identical, and there can also be triplets where two are identical and the third isn't. There are also twins who grow up thinking they are identical and then get genetic testing done to find out they aren't.
All that said, I think most people will wonder how your characters got to be 3 inches apart in height if they are truly identical and neither has taken any hormones.
mod nat
Hi yes I am an identical twin with a nonbinary sibling who has not medically transitioned and I would be happy to answer questions. So would @birbofthestars
All that’s required for identical twins is to be born from the same egg which was fertilized by the same sperm and that egg then clones itself. If the twins looked very similar when they were born and were the same assigned sex, hair color, eye color, etc. then likely they would’ve been called identical twins and they might still retain that identity even if they grew up to look different.
I do think three inches is an unlikely height difference without medical influence like hormones though. My twin was more involved in sports than I am but we are still almost the exact same height. I’ll get them in here because they know more about the science than I do
it is i, the non-medically transitioned nonbinary sibling with an identical twin sister. i have short hair and different glasses and dress very butch so i am never confused with my sister anymore, but when we were little we looked exactly the same. we are still identical twins even though we are different genders because we still have vastly similar DNA (everyone gets slight genetic changes over time, but we were born from the same egg and sperm that fused and then cloned itself!). environmental changes can affect how identical twins look, for example my sister has a heart-shaped face while mine is more oval due to our positions in the womb, and i weigh a little more than her probably from sports, but our height is almost exactly the same because it's so genetically dependent.
i would advise if one wears glasses that the other wears contacts (my sister and I both have myopia and astigmatism from our dad), but mostly identical twins is a state of mind (and genetics). as for the height difference, i would say the way that makes the most sense would be if one of them had an illness or injury growing up, but as the others said, this is an LGBTQ blog, not science, so i'm just here to confirm that my sister and i are still identical even though we are not the same gender.
Hey! I'm also an identical twin and I'm the nonbinary one, my sis is cis. I concur with the heights being a bit iffy, I think my sister is at most one inch taller than me and agree with the illness/health aspect being a good explanation for your characters' difference in height.
I've done some light research into identical twins a while ago and found a study that reported only one third of the studied identical twins had 100% the same genetics.
The later the fertilized egg splits, the more likely the twins will have the same genes. The earlier they split of course, gives them the most chance of variation since they are developing separately longer.
As previously stated in the reblogs above, there are environmental influences that can change your genetic mark-up, which genes are activated and read, and which aren't, things like that.
Fun fact! Sometimes twins can be what's called mirror twins. It's not a technical term, just kinda a fun term to explain when twins have similar features that, well, mirrors the other. This tends to happen to later-split twins iirc, and it can result in hair parts/whorls going opposite ways, different handedness (leftie or rightie), and in extreme cases, mirrored organs in the other twin.
Also, please, if their age difference comes up, don't make them just two minutes apart! Think of the poor mother/parent having to pop two babies out rapid fire. I'm not sure what the average time between delivery are for twins but my sister and I are 63 minutes apart
Non identical twin, but still a twin (and trans), you can have their ages be two minutes apart, I myself am two minutes older than my sister. It does depend on method of birth, but if its a c-section, then its probably close to a few minutes apart most of the time (not sure on cases of vaginal birth so im not commenting on that)
writing, repulsed
[ID: A digital black-and-white comic.
Panel 1: A light skinned person with short hair is shown. They have black lipstick marks on their face, are frowning with furrowed brows, and have a hand on their cheek. Text next to them reads, "Everything is about romance and attraction. Everything."
Panel 2: A silhouette of a person with one hand on their chest and another behind their back, on a character creation screen. There are unlabelled sliders that pertain to parts of their body. Text reads, "How hot do I have to make this OC for people to love them? For people to care even a little about their story?"
Panel 3: Silhouettes of two couples, both kissing. The short haired person from the first panel is there, at the right of the panel. They have their little finger in their ear and are glancing at distance, away from the couples, with a straight face. Text reads, "How many sets of characters must kiss before people consider reading it?"
Panel 4: A pie chart, with the biggest part in grey making up half of it, black making up the majority of the other part, and the white part being a small percentage. The chart isn't labelled, although scribbles representing information are there. Text reads, "What's the (caps) largest (end caps) ratio of plot to romance I can stand without ruining my own story for me?"
Panel 5: A grey silhouette looks at some papers while the short haired person watches, clutching their own hands and sweating. Text reads, "So people like it."
Panel 6: The grey silhouette hands the papers back to the short haired person, who has their mouth open and is still sweating. The silhouette says, "Would be more compelling if they kissed." and the person says, "Right. I'll get on that." Text on top and bottom of the panel reads, "So people will listen to my writing."
Panel 7: There is a black, dripping circle with a hole in the middle, with dripping thick lines extending from it to the sides. Text reads, "I can try to convey a metaphor or subject matter that's important to me. But I have to cover it in filth and rot first. Kisses and love." The second sentence ("But I have to cover it in filth and rot first.") is written on the black thing in the middle with white letters, juxtaposed with the rest of the writing.
Panel 8: Eye and ear of the person shown. Text reads, "My opinions on love come and go."
Panel 9: Half the face and hand of a black silhouette with a white, open, smiling mouth and no other features. Text is written in white on its face, and reads, "And so do they."
Panel 10: A graph comparing "Personal interest in love" and "Other's interest in my work". They are around the same levels; if the personal interest in love is high, other's interest in my work is high; and vice versa. Text in a box reads, "In tandem."
End ID]
My Missing Wedding Ring Finger – A bittersweet comic about queer identity as exorcism.
cw: implied violence, comphet.
So you like this comic huh? 🔎
Well you can get a copy of My Missing Wedding Ring Finger on My Shop! Along with some other tasty tasty zines, stickers, and print goodies ✨
HEY YOU!
Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?
Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?
That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.
The spreadsheet currently has 400+ entries spread across the following categories:
Books
Manga
Memoirs and non-fiction
Movies
TV Shows
Graphic novels / Comics
Webcomics
Audio dramas
Books and movies are also sorted by:
Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)
If the trans character is POC
The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)
If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)
It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.
If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.
If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags
About short link: <a href="https://bit.ly/FTM-protags">https://bit.ly/FTM-protags</a>,Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/_nekhcore">@_n
I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!
I think part of why people don't like to call PCOS and gynecomastica intersex is because it challenges the image of intersex people being super rare. We're more common than you think.
These make me really happy to see. Like genuinely having an impact on people from me speaking out is amazing.
As an actual developmental biologist who did genetic research and is now an ob/gyn, I will always maintain that the biological sex is just a bunch of separate max and min sliders of hormones, gonads, chromosomes, parts, and signalling molecules.
A whole lot of people fit criteria to be intersex by our current understanding. Even more probably count but die before discovering it about themselves because those parts never become relevant.
Very very few things in the human body are perfect binary categories. That's part of the beauty of being human.
ID: Three screenshots of Tumblr tags. The first one reads: "[caps] PCOS Makes You Intersex????? [caps end] wow... i need to think about some things"
The second reads: "w what do you mean pcos counts huh <- got a pcos diagnosis last year"
The last reads: "that's……..this is a really good point actually which I guess means my best friend IRL is intersex intersex pcos gynecomastia"
I'm not going to keep going on about this, because I didn't really mean to make a whole Thing of it, but there are two reasons it really bothers me when people say my books should have had a romance plotline/love interest:
They're saying they wish my protagonist's sexuality was different. When somebody says, "I wish this gay book was straight instead so that I could relate to it more," or whatever, we rightfully recognise that as homophobic. When somebody says, "I wish this aroace character had a love interest," people call that a personal preference and make excuses for why that's not the same thing. Given that my protagonist's sexuality is something she shares with me, it feels particularly unkind, because it's essentially saying, "Lives like yours aren't interesting to me, I wish you had a different sexuality." Ouch.
I may have been exaggerating when I said 99.9% of YA books have a romance plotline... but not by much. It is everywhere. If you want a YA book with romance, you don't have to make any effort to find one, because nine times out of ten, whatever book you pick up will have one. It might be the main plot, it might be the subplot, but it'll be there. I was told repeatedly that I would have to have romance if I wanted my YA books to be published, because the category insists on it. So if you want YA books with romance: basically every other book is for you. It's not like it's a rarity that you were hoping I would finally give you. You have the entire cake; leave us our crumbs.
Like I said in the tags on my original post, this wasn't about one specific person or review. Please don't single anybody out if you've seen them say something similar to this. If it happened once, it wouldn't bother me; it's the pattern, and years of being told before publication that I would have to compromise on this element of the story if I wanted to make it, and social media marketing trends that focus almost exclusively on romance tropes and make it hard to engage when you don't have them.
And, on top of that, it's the weird anxiety of knowing that my next book, the Bisclavret retelling, is more romance-heavy, and while I want it to succeed, there's a bittersweetness to the idea that my yearning book might succeed where my aroace books didn't, purely because romance is marketable and friendship isn't.
(Even though I know there are so many other factors -- different genre, different category, different format, different publisher, different style, and a retelling that can appeal to an existing audience rather than my own characters and story that have no prior fanbase. It still feels like the romance will be what makes the difference.)
As I said on Bluesky yesterday, talking about both my fiction and my academic work:
Okay. That's all.
Latest reblog reminds me of how much it pisses me the fuck off how every queer person alive has to adapt to the usamerican style of queerness lest we get shunned by the community for being too different. I bring this up a lot but bro that time I got death threats for having ele/dele in my bio bc "by using neopronouns I was making a mockery of REAL trans people" when those are literally just my pronouns in my native language, and when I said that I got hit w the "well you're on the internet so speak english" I HATE GRINGOS I HATE GRINGOS I HATE GRINGOS
I feel the need to miss out a crucial detail I missed out in this post I made out of anger, and no, it doesn't add any silver linings or good context, it honestly only serves to make it worse.
In portuguese, much like spanish, we have no gender neutral pronouns. People who do not use ele/dele and ela/dela (he/him or she/her) all use whatever neopronoun suits them best in portuguese (ie elu/delu, eli/deli) because we have no access to a universal gender neutral pronoun like gringos do. When I brought this up upon them making fun of my "neopronouns", they said to suck it up, and that being foreign does not make neos valid.
In mocking people who use neopronouns in english, you are mocking a very large sum of latin american genderqueer and trans people.
I know various latin language speakers that struggle with their identities in their native tongue due to us not having they/them equivalents, so they are forced to let go of their, in example, brazilian queerness, to appease to anglos who would harass them and call them mockeries of trans people for not sticking to what The Cis want.
When non-anglos tell you the usamerican and british dominance over queer spaces ruins things for them, they mean it. We are forced to repress our identites because you people think they're too "out there and problematic". We are forced to suppress our own queer culture because we don't fit into your neat little boxes of what makes someone gay what makes someone a lesbian what makes someone trans or what makes someone anything else.
You tell us to remember "our queer elders", but do you know of any queer latin american figures? We learn your history, and you refuse to learn ours because you already have "too much on your plate". You disregard us and shame us for not fitting your ideals of queerness and using labels for ourselves you dislike, and try to baby us and tell us the proper way to be gay.
Your culture is not universal.
You are not saving queer people by making jabs at other queer people you don't personally get. Odds are you are harming an entire group of foreign queers you never bothered to consider, because your anglo bubble is too self important.
If you want to do queer people a real favour instead of getting mad at identities that existed long before you were even born, here. Make yourself useful. Donate to queer brazilian housing and support programs. Your beloved dollar is worth a lot more than the Real. Even five dollars help.
Casa Um
Eternamente Sou
Transviver
Hey man reblog this version instead lol
Gendered parenting is so weird. As a little kid I was a total daddy's girl, I was told I would always try to sneak the garage, I was always very interested in everything he was doing and would follow him around while he was working, but while my family was never the type to outright say "you can't do that because you're a girl", they simply didn't entertain the idea that I could possibly be interested in cars. Then when my little brother was born, it was just assumed he would become a mechanic like our dad because he was a boy. Even though he, unlike me, didn't like being in the garage much and wasn't all that interested in what dad was doing. Once he got to a certain age, dad started making him help and would drag him away from his actual interests for it, which lead to a lot of arguing and not much actual learning.
Gendered expectations sort of create doubles of children. There's the real child with their actual personality, interests and behaviors, and then there's the Gender Child.
My real brother hated soccer and team sports. The Gender Child that existed only the minds of the adults in his life enjoyed playing soccer because that's what a Boy Child likes.
Growing up, I always felt like adults didn't actually know me as a person and they weren't interested in getting to know me. Because they felt they'd already learned everything there was to know about me when they were told "it's a girl".
When I talk about how I never got gifts I actually liked from my relatives (to this day I still don't like getting gifts that aren't something I picked out myself), it isn't actually about the gifts themselves. I don't even remember them. What I do remember is the feeling of being given gifts that were seemingly not bought with the real me in mind. They were for the Girl Child™️ version of me. The me that adults wanted me to be, not who I actually was.
Queerplatonic Angels (alternate) - final version. Flat colors, transparent background, linework under the cut.
Read the FAQ and follow the campaign: Pride Angels.
[Image description: A digital comic. It begins with a woman obscured by her long hair. Her hands are pulling away from her chest and black blood is being pulled with them. The sentence next to her says " you pull apart my chest hoping to find the emptiness beneath". Below, there's a panel filled with dandelions - there's hair draped over it and also a hand, suggesting it to be the woman's chest. Next to it, it says "instead you are faced with a garden". Underneath, there's a fully black heart shape beneath a dandelion. The sentence around it says "my heart is filled with dandelions". The sentence after is "love does not grow here. And finally, there's a drawing of a hand clutching a cluster of dandelions with black blood dripping from it. The final line is "and yet, it beats".]
I'm slightly late, but happy aro awareness week <3
An academic paper on split attraction in the ace community? Fascinating!
“I’m asexual bisexual,” Scott, 37, told me in 2018 as we sat in the Southern California sun.
After the third time watching I checked the tags
aro culture is using a slate and green color scheme on Firefox that’s really pleasing to the eye (it’s called Aromantic Aroma)
(link to the theme)
terfs keep mentioning the % of autistics who are trans/nb and that we're 'brainwashed'
and because i'm an asshole, i decided to look into why so many autistic folks are trans/nb. it's not an inaccurate statement, at least the first half, but terfs lie through their teeth so i decided to get to the scientific root of it.
the answer blew my fucking mind.
the study on gender and autism i found said two very specific things about autistic people: we are more mentally resistant to things like social conditioning and binarism. we like our secret third things, y'know.
an excerpt:
“The finding that non-binary identities are most elevated seems to support hypotheses focussed on autistic resistance to social conditioning, which are consistent with existing evidence of the same effect with respect to self-description of sexual orientation. Perhaps elevated rates of trans identity in autism might result from a rejection of the binary cisgenderist norm, which combined with a below-typical concern for social norms could promote the disclosure of the identity.”
94% of autistics surveyed for that paper identified themselves as non-binary.
other studies have found autistic people have higher levels of critical thinking, and require more evidence to maintain or convert to a belief system (hence why many of us eventually fall away from religion) than allistic people.
which means, at least from my perspective, that:
a) the 'brainwashing' terfs are accusing the trans community of inflicting on autistic folks would likely not even work if they tried.
b) the current binary definition of gender flies directly against embedded autistic modes of thinking to begin with.
you cannot brainwash someone into thinking something they already believe.
This essentially suggests that autistic people are likely to be NB because we are in fact resistant to the relevant brainwashing.
As an autistic person with a weird gender this lines up with my personal observation, which is that autistic people are not really prone to follow social norms that don't make sense to them or provide them with any benefits just because.
There is an immense amount of cis allistic anxiety about this, because they like to think adhering to the gender binary is in the same natural-law category as "don't kill someone for pissing you off" or whatever, and it completely isn't, and our collective refusal to play ball makes something in them angry.
The typical allistic reaction to autists behaving unusually is to insist on controlling them, or treat their social "failures" as deficits of parental, workplace, partner, state, societal control. The idea that autistic people are "brainwashed" into being trans and nonbinary is in fact projection by people who want to brainwash autistic people to follow their stupid fucking rules, and are existentially terrified that they can't seem to get it to work