not LGBT as in rainbow capitalism

@queerasinfuckthecistem

up with queer liberation, down with gay assimilation

93 posts

queer people aren’t pokemon you don’t have to goddamn sort yourself into such an absurdly specific category holy shit just do your thing and apologize to no one

Femme and Butch have been used by bisexual people since the terms were fucking created. Femme and Butch have NEVER been “lesbian exclusive” terms. Exclusionists and radfems are lying to you. Femme and Butch are our terms too.

princeofdoomrps-archive

They weren’t even female exclusive when I was growing up, and into the late 2000s. Like people of all genders within the community could call themselves fem(me) or butch. Butch and fem guys were a thing. Butch and femme nb people definitely were.

My gay grandfather who died in the early 90’s called himself butch and exclusively dated femmes.

The arguments against using queer are wrong.

“’Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’ are words we chose ourselves”

Gay was used to mean promiscuous and morally destitute. A “Gay woman” was a prostitute. A “Gay man” was a philanderer. A “Gay house” was a brothel. Later the term meant uninhibited, sexually active, and hedonistic. By the mid-20th century it came to mean all those things AND engaged in sexual relations with people of the same gender. It largely supplanted “homophile” as a descriptor of LGBTQ people in the 70s but has been used as a slur since, especially during the 90s and 00s.

“Queer is a slur”

Queer gained a pejorative meaning in the early 20th century, meaning sexually deviant. It was reclaimed in the 80s, and quickly rose to prominence. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” became a rallying cry at pride marches. It was especially used by those who worried that the policies of some LGBTQ rights groups were verging toward conservatism and assimilation which was leaving people of color, trans people, immigrants, etc. out of the loop. Queer became an identity that stoop opposed to the cry to keep your head down and be presentable and quiet and private to garner the tolerance of straight society. The Queer identity was seized on by trans rights activists, people who did not neatly fit the labels of “gay” and “lesbian,” and people passionate about political causes (especially AIDS).

Like “gay” and “lesbian,” queer has continued to be used as a slur by straight people. The only difference between the reclamation of “gay” and the reclamation of “queer” is a couple years.

“Reclaiming slurs is individual, you can’t apply it to everyone.”

Queer has been used as an umbrella term longer than most of the people who call it a slur have been alive. Having lived through the 90s and 00s I remember when “gay” meant bad, when everything bad was “gay.” People sneered “gay” at me when they tried to beat me up as a kid and teenager. Gay and Lesbian are every bit the slur today that queer is, yet anyone who said that “gay” shouldn’t be used because of its history as a slur would be laughed at.

“It excludes people who don’t want to be called ‘queer’.”

Refusing to allow queer to be used in public discourse and robbing it of its history and use excludes queer people.

“LGBT is better because it’s been an umbrella longer and no one takes offense to it.”

LGBT has been used since the 1990s.

Loads of people take offense to it and its adoption was and is a fight in activist circles. There are dozens of different variation, addition of + and *, both of which are celebrated and decried in equal measure. There is endless argument over whether the “T” belongs there, whether the “B” belongs (traditionally you see most of the anti-queer rhetoric in-community coming from people who want to pare down to “LG”). People have pitched MOGAI and MOGII and GSM and GSRM. MLM/MSM and WLW/WSW get tossed around. “LGBT” has been fraught with discourse.

“Academia appropriated ‘queer’ without asking, had they talked to actual (LGBT/Queer/MOGAI/MOGII/GSM/GSRM) people they’d have know it was a slur.”

When Queer Studies began in the 1970s who do you think was teaching it? Who was taking it?

So sure, Queer is a slur, Gay is a slur, Lesbian is a slur, newsflash, to the straight world WE are slurs. All our words are taken from the slurs they called us, our identities themselves are reclaimed.

So kids, go learn your own history.Don’t listen to people on the internet making arguments in bad faith. Don’t make assumptions about what is and isn’t ancient history, or what is or isn’t settled fact.

I try to keep my nose out of shit like this but today. man. today I encountered something that really ticked me off.

today I met a professor who does queer studies. she told me that her teenage gay son yelled at her recently for using the word “queer” in describing her discipline and demanded to know how the university “could get away with calling it that.”

so of course she’s baffled right, and asks him where on earth this is coming from. and he told her he read it on Tumblr.

listen if you don’t want to be called queer and don’t want to be lumped in with folks who comprise the queer community, that’s fine. that’s totally fine. it is 100% okay. people are allowed to have complicated histories with that word. it’s a fraught signifier. it’s a mess and it’s allowed to be.

what’s not cool is telling young LGBTQ+ people that queer is a slur in all contexts because now you are stripping away not just the language that we use to describe ourselves but also the language that creates the discipline that lets us study our own lives and our cultures. Queer studies has been a part of American academe since the 1970s (possibly earlier, depending on who you ask). “Queer” has been a functioning and largely unproblematic signifier in American academe since ten years before the AIDS crisis. If you don’t at least know that much, you have absolutely no business trying to educate LGBTQ+ youth about queer history.

Trying to censor the word queer from our collective cultural lexicon is 1) impossible. it’s here now. and 2) an erasure of our lineage of scholarship. I could spend all day lobbing criticisms at American academic culture and I do, but queers created space for ourselves in academe. We built a queer world inside the tower that tried its best to keep us out and now we have a place here.

I am a queer person and I am a queer scholar. You use whatever words you want to signify who you are and how you live your life and how you love your loves. You won’t hear a peep of criticism from me. All I’m asking is that you do me and mine the courtesy of leaving our collective body of text very much the fuck alone.

Look let me rephrase this because some of y’all in the notes and certainly everyone in my inbox aren’t getting what I’m trying so say.

“Queer” is a complicated word (I call it a signifier, usually) and there is no easy way of discussing the ethical implications of its usage. Claiming that queer is an umbrella term that’s fine to use in all contexts is irresponsible. Claiming that queer is a slur in all contexts is irresponsible. We all owe it to each other to be conscious of these complexities.

One context where queer is *not* deployed as a slur, and has not been historically, is in an academic context, ie queer studies and queer theory. Telling LGBTQ+ youth that queer is a slur *in those contexts* cuts off their access to a field of study that is *committed* to documenting and sharing the lives and knowledge of *anyone* who feels like they belong in that alphabet soup of marginalized identities. Regardless of how we feel about that word and regardless of our personal histories with it, we owe it to young LGBTQ+ people to give them enough information to make their own choices about how they relate to that signifier. They do not HAVE to be tormented by that word. They DESERVE to try and pursue a future without that trauma.

Queers in academe have finally found a place where we can say who we are in our own terms, where we can be the authors of our own collective histories. Why are some of you so determined to take that away from the next generation of LGBTQ+ scholars before they even have a *chance* to make their own decisions?

idk can we stop…treating a.ce disc.ourse like it’s some haha funney cringe compilation or whatever the fuck because it fucking destroyed the entire ace and aro communities. there is no solid aspec community on tumblr anymore (which was by far the biggest number of aspec ppl). exclusionists took our community and fucking smashed it to pieces and y'all treat it as this fucking stupid joke when they traumatized, gaslit, and abused an entire group of queer people back into the closet. fuck every single person who doesn’t take that seriously.

showmesomeoneinnocent

My personal experience is just that, but it’s really indicative that I have watched almost every single ace and aro person I know, irl and online, actively recloset themselves as a direct result of the consequences of The Disc Horse™

I watched irl queer groups disintegrate bc a few ppl who got into leadership positions used that to make the space hostile towards ace ppl (among others as well), saw friends go from being loud and proud aces n aros to actively avoiding any mention of it and letting ppl assume their sexuality. I myself, having been IDing as ace for 10 years at least, have in the past couple since this whole “"discourse”“ came into being, actively and intentionally stopped telling anyone at all that I’m ace. To put that in some kind of perspective, I am incredibly out as trans and will actively out myself pretty constantly except to total strangers I will never see again. I feel safer telling ppl I’m trans than ace. Especially in queer spaces. It’s fucked me up so much I didn’t even quite grasp how much but today my therapist asked me for the first time about like romantic relationships and I physically could not say I am aro and ace. Completely incapable, utterly frozen, and I just kinda let her believe what she will. Ironically the fact that I’ve gone from being willing and ready to tell ppl I’m ace as just another facet of myself to entirely unable and unsolicited to tell anyone, is probably a thing one might want to talk w one’s therapist about.

This has really fucked not just the community at large but fucked up individual ace ppl in so many ways. It’s not something “funny” or remotely harmless, it’s absolutely devastated us.

for people in the notes looking for “elder” aces, i just wanna say that i’m 28 years old and am also desperately searching for that representation. i first found out about asexuality through tumblr when i was 21 and started identifying as asexual when i was 21-22 (around 2012). i’ve sought other online ace communities but nothing compared to tumblr. i mean, props to aven for existing as a repository of resources but in terms of just chatting with other aces “in the wild” as it were, tumblr was the perfect place.

but then this fucking shit happened. around 2015 is when it really kicked into high gear. “discoursers” or exclusionists or aphobes or however you want to refer to them consider asexuality to be a joke and that everyone who identifies as ace is a cringey cishet college-aged white girl who loves dr who. recycled biphobia, homophobia, and even terf rhetoric made its way into the mainstream tumblr conscious by reframing the arguments to target ace people (you’re only X because you’re ugly/can’t get laid; you aren’t part of the community if your partner is of a different gender; maybe something happened to you to make you this way; have you had your hormones checked?; by accepting this identity you are allowing the oppressor to infiltrate our spaces; etc.). you know, in case you think this is just about “snick snack” memes.

this has alienated ace people of color, who already struggle with desexualization/hypersexualization, disabled aces, ace survivors, trans aces, mentally ill aces, neurodiverse/AUTISTIC ACES (you guys get REAL fuckin nervous when i highlight that the majority of your jeering about aces’ perceived awkwardness, missed social cues, infantilization/dehumanization, or “unfuckability”/“cringey-ness” are repackaged ableism, especially considering that a good percentage of the ace community is also autistic), and both young AND older aces.

younger people are being discouraged from exploring the possibility of being asexual by exclusionists for reasons that vary from internalized homophobia to asexuality being a side effect of SSRIs. they are being told that they are “actually” something other than what they say they are, or that they are broken, or that they’re too young to know, or that our ace identity is simultaneously something that must be excruciatingly examined to determine its “cause” yet so irrelevant that it’s unworthy of discussion or representation—”nobody cares that you don’t want to have sex”. i WISH i had known about asexuality as a teenager, as a kid. I wish i had saved myself from so much grief, abuse, pain, and corrective rape by not subjecting myself to experiences that i hoped would “fix” me.

and older people like me, who in the grand scheme of things is uhhh really not that much older than the majority of tumblr, are ridiculed for having a presence on tumblr in general, let alone as an asexual person. aces over 30? 40? 50? unicorns. conjured rhetoric. people straight-up don’t believe they exist. people ten years my junior attempt to deny and erase the lived history of aces by saying asexuality was “invented” only ten years ago. i have been terrified of attempting to enter Q* spaces irl because i have heard from even my IRL gay friends that aces do not belong, that “it’s not important enough to form an identity around”, that we are not oppressed enough or we just desperately want to be oppressed.

i have only heard in passing of people much older than i am who are ace. i have absolutely zero examples to turn to of people like me continuing to live a long life or any evidence that i am worth loving unless i become a parent, which i don’t want to do. when you’re a teenager there’s more discussion about sexual boundaries, but what about dating in my 30s? what adult is going to be satisfied knowing i can never validate their sexual attraction, unless they were ace like me (less than 1% of the population)? am i forced to be alone forever? you can imagine how bleak my future feels.

it pisses me off that i’m seen as a curmudgeon who “just doesn’t get the young people’s humor” when i have to beg people that i consider friends, for the eight billionth time, to stop making/reblogging jokes about how “cringey” aces are or are tongue-in-cheek declaring themselves to be aphobes, and then those people try to assuage me with respectability politics about how it’s about “THOSE” aces on tumblr and not, yknow, me, who is “one of the good ones”. and since the jokes themselves are so juvenile, it further compounds on the poor social graces and stoicism assumed of asexual people if I’m getting upset over ace war criminal moodboards or whatever the fuck. EVERY time i post about asexual ANYTHING on tumblr, to this day, i lose followers. without fail. people dont bat a lash when i spam 20 untagged posts in a row about a fandom they dont care about but i post two positive words about asexuality and theyre gone.

the environment promoted on tumblr condemns asexuality as a social deficit, as an attack on other Q* identities, as a subject of derision and embarrassment, as an identity lacking in “woke” capital, and makes every effort to expunge us from communities we have already belonged to in favor of making our own while also actively seeking out and dismantling those communities. if tumblr really is in its last days, i sincerely hope that these awful practices will die with it.

this picture was taken in 1973, asexuality has been part of the lgbt+ community longer than you’ve been alive.

loverofsomanythings

The first mentions of asexuality as an orientation are from a leaflet published in 1896 and the X on the Kinsey Scale for non-sexual was added in 1948. It was not invented by white teenage old girls on Tumblr.

ASEXUALITY WAS NOT INVENTED BY TEENAGE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

For more information on sexual history read this http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history

Before aromanticism was used as a term there was non-limerant. Limerance described romantic attraction and so a non-linemerant person didn’t experience romantic attraction. It has a lot of similarities to aromanticism and it’s first documented appearance was in a book called ‘love and limerance’ published in 1979.

Aromanticism was also not invented by white girls on tumblr.

AROMANTICISM WAS NOT INVENTED BY WHITE GIRLS ON TUMBLR.

Tumblr might be the first place you saw these terms and where they are most used but the orientations were not invented here maybe the words were first used by a lot of people on here but the orientations not.

infiniteglitterfall

(Image transcription: The sign behind them reads: “YEA - IT’S A HEAVY TRIP. BUT! This is a chance to CHOOSE YOUR OWN LABEL instead of having someone else do it for you: straight, asexual, lesbian, bisexual, anti-label, dyke separatist, ?, lesbian feminist, [something partially obscured but i think it might say anti-sexual], or whatever”)

When I saw the picture I just started crying and what came after it… I cant, is like someone put a hand on my shoulder and said “is okay to exist” and I’m sobbing right now.

I did know I needed this. But I never thought it would get me to tears. I never knew I needed it for me, to show to myself, to tell me it’s fine to be me.

I can’t stop crying, fuck.

infiniteglitterfall

💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

This is why representation is important. This is why visibility is important.

Sometimes I see exclusionists shooting their mouths off about how the way you can tell aces aren’t oppressed is that our main need is for representation, that our positivity posts are about being valid.

And I’m just like… you have maybe temporarily forgotten what it is like to not see yourself reflected anywhere?? You maybe have been lucky enough to find people like you in history and in media before you came out?? Perhaps you are blissfully unaware that if you don’t have that kind of representation, the only messages you get are that you are a shitty gross broken person that doesn’t have any worth????? Possibly you do not know the effect of hearing that from both the straight and the “LGBT” communities at once??

I don’t know if anybody has studied this (I’m gonna find out!) but I would bet a lot of money that that stuff has a huge impact on health, and that it’s a big part of the reason that m-spec and a-spec people (including aros) have such incredibly high rates of things like suicidality.

We’re valid. We have worth. We are incredible people, part of incredible communities and cultures and histories. We deserve to exist, and the world is much better off with us.

There were older aces on here. I watched 2 ace folx in their late 30s, one in her early 50s and one in her late 40s get chased off of here by constant harassment. I’m in contact with all 3 on other platforms and have been friends with all of them for 5+ years, so.

One of them specifically came to Tumblr to be a resource for younger aces (the one in her late 40s) and left in horrified disgust over the level of direct, awful harassment she received.

So, yeaaaaaaah, they’re out there, and Tumblr dis.course succeeded in making Tumblr so vile to them that they left.

imfemalewarrior

I also want to point out the exclus also usually have sideblogs for this stuff, so they can choose when they engage in dis.course, but us Aces can’t choose to engage or not engage in it, because we are always Asexual.

We especially can’t escape when it’s purposefully flooded into our positivity tags.

So: I am asexual. I hate it when people are actively working to shove us back into the closet and fracture our community when we have been acknowledged as existing since ancient times, and when we have had a term to name ourselves since the 1900s.

This is our history, we have always been here, we will always be here.

-FemaleWarrior, She/They

Important thread! Representation matters. Inclusion matters. You matter. You are not alone. 💜🖤🤍🏳️‍🌈

ALERT FOR ALL TRANS WOMEN ❗❗

radfems and terfs (🤢🤮) have a new trend..... they say that transwomen who are beautiful and fishy need to shower

that is CLASSIST. not everyone can afford to shower. we live in a capitalist anti trans society that is literally oppressing transwomen. not everyone has it as easy as terfs. you think its hard being a "biological woman"? ok try being a transwoman with a receding hairline then

if someone makes a jokes about being "hygienic" or say that they "don't smell like piss and the inside of a belly botton" they are terfs and therefore nazis.

block and stay safe fellow queens

that is CLASSIST. not everyone can afford to shower.

Ah, yes. That’s why all those non-trans homeless people are squeaky clean and why homeless trans women - mostly those of color - get to shower every day.

/s

I am sincerely to GOD hoping that you’ve never had to live in a situation where you don’t have even BASIC access to daily hygiene or toiletries. Because I cannot fathom being able to make a joke like that and think it’s funny in any capacity. Even if it WASN’T a stab at trans people.

I like how they made this as a joke but like... using the homeless and poor AS the backend of your joke is fucking classist.

Like I just feel weird about it because I have dysphoria which has made bathing sometimes really distressing since I'm naked. But I usually don't bring it up because then I'm told I'm over reacting and stupid.

But since we're talking about it, I do see it as suspicious that for a group of people, in which a lot of them have dysphoria and/or another mental illness, it sure is a coincidence to be made fun of for not bathing when that can be of consequence of those issues.

Anyway, making fun of people for their physical appeance is shallow and the opposite of feminist. Sorry.

butch-with-a-tortoise-deactivat

Yikes here’s some vile, classist, ableist bilge

queerasinfuckthecistem

Also, does OP not realize that tons of cis women also have receding hairlines?

Well put. Please don’t ask us to censor our own identity. We’ve done our research, we don’t use it against people who don’t like it, and it’s exhausting pulling up the same reasoning over and over again, you know?

Honestly “queer” is so useful for people like me w/ a “complicated orientation” b/c instead of having to say I’m “asexual panromantic” and explain what that means, I can just say “I’m queer” and it tells you all you need to know (that I’m not straight).

violet-lesbiann

yeah sure good for you but don’t ever ever use that word for someone who doesn’t identify as it themselves, it’s not an umbrella term for everyone. also “pan/ace” would definitely work, even if you don’t want to use it, other people could. i use ace lesbian and definitely not the q slur.

Wow its almost like they were just talking about using it on themselves for individual reasons and you butted in to be an ass and be condescending because you think you’re superior for not using queer, then you called their identity a slur right to them. But that can’t possibly be what you were trying to do, right?

violet-lesbiann

Anyone is allowed to use it for themselves, I never said no one should do that if that’s what they want. Queer is a slur though. I just want people to be aware of that, I have no idea if OP is aware of that or not but some people using that word aren’t. I’m tired of people including me and other people who don’t want to be included in that word, and before anyone asks, I never meant that OP did that, because I literally have no idea if they do.

Queer is a slur as much as any other LGBT+ word, I just want you to be aware of that.

“Gay” is used as an insult. It is used to be demeaning. Its used to discriminate. And yet its used as the all mighty umbrella - gay rights, gay marriage, gay community - when discussing the entire community.

Gay gets used as a slur. Queer gets used as a slur. But I don’t walk up to gay people and say “your identity is a slur, you know that right” or get pissed when they say “the gay community” when they mean the whole community.

Personal identity and preference in terms, even harmful words that get used as slurs, are not questioned; except for the word Queer.

Queer gets shut down. Queer people get others in their faces saying “your identity is a slur!” Queer people don’t have the freedom to identify in a community, but are forced under other terms against their will due to hypocrisy and double standards.

So if you’re not going to come onto gay people’s posts for the same behavior, maybe critically analyze why exactly you feel the need to be so condescending to Queer people, specifically on posts that ONLY have to do with personal identity. Why you feel the need to insist to Queer people that their identities are slurs, to directly slap away the power of reclaiming a word from them by demanding it remain in the hands of the Straights as a perpetual slur.

I think an important difference between gay and queer is however, that queer started out as a slur used against members of the community and continues to be used as a slur in many places. Whereas gay began as a word the community chose itself to describe itself and was then later used by homophobes and heterosexuals in general in a negative way, meaning however, that gay doesn’t hold the same negative connotations as queer for many people simply because it was our word that they took, and not a word that they forced on us to make us “strange” or “other” like queer means.

That’s…. Not true. People think so because the history before gay was reclaimed is way older (older than any love community member’s lifetimes, probably,) but gay had the exact same origins.

It was meant to denote sexually perverse people, most frequently sex workers and those who hired them. Anyone who participated in anything but married, vanilla, straight sex might have been referred to as “gay,” including any suspected LGBT person.

The word (already being one frequently used on the community,) was reclaimed as a community identifier when the community wanted to disconnect from the clinical and diagnostic implications of “homosexual.”

There is record of queer being reclaimed and used as a personal identifier literally before the popularization of gay. Both words are reclaimed slurs with negative histories, and BOTH are used as slurs against the community still to this day.

The more recent history of the mid to late 20th century more prevalently favored queer as a slur, as is represented in our media. However its clearly undeniable that the switch back to gay as the popular community slur (along with the ever present f slur,) happened in the 2000s. Which is trying to be denied and rewritten by the anti queer crowd, who completely ignore the words popularity with community members who actually lived through when it was a popular slur.

Yes to all of this. When it comes to words for “not straight” there are hardly any choices that didn’t originate as ways to stigmatize or pathologize us. We are all using reclaimed slurs to describe ourselves.

Also, queer is reclaimed in a particularly empowering way. It doesn’t just mean “same-sex attraction” but encompasses a whole spectrum of attractions and gender orientations. It’s a word that says to asexuals, pansexuals, bisexuals, trans folks, genderfluid and genderqueer and genderless folks and people who are still figuring themselves out, “hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.”

This is important because there are a lot of divisions within the LGBTQ+ world, and in particular cis gay men and cis lesbians often overlook or exclude trans, bi and asexual people. Queer is the only word that not only demands equal acceptance for everyone, but leaves the door open for words and descriptors that haven’t even been invented yet.

Somebody else pointed this out earlier to me, and of course I’ve lost the post, but it’s really suspicious that of all the reclaimed slurs, the one that gets the most pushback is the one that is most radically accepting of all identities

“hey, you’ve got a home here. We don’t need to categorize you to love you.”

Lmao yeah! the pushback against this idea is overt and disgusting and I don’t trust anybody who perpetuates it.

Queer is an ideology and an identity, historically and now. It is an umbrella for that ideology and an umbrella for those identities, historically and now. They can’t be conflated (with LGBT) and it’s super fucking disingenuous to pretend one is just the tarnished besmirched dirty slur version of the other. They’re different. In my particular work for example, Queer bioethics is different from LGBT bioethics and conflating the two will muddle any discussion you try to have about them because they lead to literally opposite conclusions in some cases.

Yeah I freaking love pancakes

Wait wrong post

By far the best addition to this post

This is one of those things where I feel like an old. Like, *the* slogan I associate with pride is, “We’re here, we’re queer – get used to it!” There was a TV show called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” that was total mainstream pap. (Not that the show wasn’t riddles problematic elements from the concept out, but ‘queer’ in the title was clearly meant as a positive.) I just have a hard time processing queer as anything but reclaimed.

They actually shot “Queer As Folk” in my city!

TERFs and radical gender/sexuality bianarists are flooding social media and blogging sites with propaganda smearing the word queer in the hopes of silencing all of us who don’t identify with their hate politics. I fought hard to reclaim the word queer in the late 80s and early 90s, and it’s the one word that doesn’t worship exclusion. Which is why these people are trying to convince you not to use it. fuck that noise. there is literally no word i could use to identify my sexuality that hasn’t been thrown at me in hatred, fear, and violence. No way am I giving up the one of those that allows me to talk about all of my community without trying to put people in boxes they don’t fit in.

I will never not reblog this post. Queer, queer, queer here.

mswyrr-deactivated20181203

“Queer” has been claimed by queer people as a self-descriptor since at least 1910. It’s an insult to those historical people (and all the generations of queer historical people who have identified as queer since then) to pretend that the people using it as a slur owned it more than the queer people who used it as a self-descriptor.

Source: George Chauncey, “Gay New York,” page 101

killerchickadee

They don’t want us to use queer because they don’t want to be lumped in with anyone who’s not cis gay or cis lesbian. So fine. You don’t like the word queer? You don’t want to be in the “queer” community? Get the fuck out, then. Y'all don’t welcome us in your community anyway, so we’ll just have our own.

And it’ll be queer as fuck.

I fucking love the word queer ❤

Or, to put it another way, using a great old slogan of the community: I’m not gay as in happy, I’m queer as in fuck you.

Yes yes yes yes yes! These younglings today don’t know their queer history but feel so free to comment on it. Trying so desperately to assimilate into straight culture by turning your nose up at queer, and all the people who take refuge under its umbrella. Queer accepted me when nobody else would, not even the LGBT groups.

Queer is full of the types of people who don’t make good poster children for the middle class assimilationist cis gay couple just looking to get married and have some kids. Queer forces us to realize the fight didn’t end with gay marriage, and cis gays are gonna have to step out of the spotlight sometimes, and realize cis gays have privilege, and fight for someone with less. Trans people, nonbinary people, people in nontraditional relationship structures, aromantics, asexuals, sex workers. Heck more and more bisexual people these days are switching over to queer because the amount of biphobia in the so-called lgBt community is so alienating, and also because so many of us feel the term bisexual reinforces a false gender dichotomy and we’re too tired of jokes about kitchenware to use pansexual.

Part of what I love about the term queer is that it does make people uncomfortable. It makes them aware of their privilege, exposes certain biases, even within the LGBT community. What’s so wrong with a movement that strives to fight for everybody, huh? Huh?

Proudly bi, proudly queer, and being part of this movement when I was young was an honor.

thebreakfastgenie

If you watch the documentary We Were Here about the AIDS crisis in San Francisco several of the survivors interviewed refer to the queer community.

gauntletknight-deactivated20230

In doing research for my thesis, queer is used as a political word of power. There were gays and then there were the queers; the politically active, vocal, fighters who got angry, who weaponized their queerness against the cisheteropatriarchy. They were those who were proud of being different, and fought for that right.

Queerphobes cannot take that history away from us.

Nyle DiMarco & Chella Man Teach Us Queer Sign Language [see captions for sign descriptions]

Genuine question?? Im a 19 y/o lesbian and ?? I dont find p*nis attractive does that make me a TERF?

I’m happy you sent this ask, because it’s a perfect place to talk about how someone can get hurt, feel wronged, and become susceptible to extremist recruiting.

First off, treat this as a simple yes or no question, asked with zero surrounding context, the platonic idea of penis preference if you will. “I don’t find penises attractive” is not a sentiment that makes you a TERF. You’re okay not liking them. My nonbinary wife doesn’t particularly like them, yet they are married to me (who has one) and we love each other more than anything in the world.

In fact, in the abstract, I don’t like ‘em much either, and I own one! Ridiculous looking thing, wish I didn’t have to deal with it. A general dislike of genitals doesn’t make you a TERF… not by itself.

Now, here is where the critical thinking comes in, because if you posted something like that on Tumblr or something, it has a different context. You might not even know! It could be a totally innocent mistake, and it happens, and some women either get criticized in ways that makes them feel attacked, or actually attacked because you never know if what you post online is hitting someone on a bad day or a good day.

The context first of all is, without any clarifying statements, saying you don’t like a genital could imply you’re reducing anyone with that particular set of genitals down to their genitals only. And it could result in either someone telling you it sounds TERFy (if they’re trying to be gentle) or calling you a TERF (if they’re out of spoons) because that’s what TERFs do. Here’s where it becomes a recruit pitch.

You say “I don’t like penises.” This doesn’t mean you’re saying you dislike trans women (not all of whom have penises anyway), but if you get the above lecture/yelling, a radfem can come along and empathetically agree how unfair it is that someone made you hurt for saying you don’t like a genital, and it’s not fair to tell a lesbian she has to sleep with a male or she’s a TERF and- OH WAIT A MINUTE!

Hold up, it looks like they were just being nice but wait wait, they just slid cozily from “it’s okay not to like a penis” to “anyone with a penis is male.” See that? Like a sleight of hand, once you’ve agreed with that premises, saying “I don’t like penises” suddenly becomes attached to “and anyone with a penis is male.”

Alright now in context, going back this kind of equivalency is so common with radfems that at this point saying you don’t like a genital is what we call a dogwhistle. It’s a phrase which is seemingly innocent, and can be innocent, which has been so widely appropriated by a hate group that it carries extra connotations in a certain context. Contexts like posting on Tumblr, which happens to have a particularly large trans population.

Now you can’t know every single dogwhistle because that’s the whole reason they exist - so normal people don’t spot someone’s bigotry and it looks like a disenfranchised group is getting angry over an innocent statement.

And lastly, which you probably already know, but generally not being interested in something doesn’t have to equate to disliking anyone with that trait, or even not being attracted to someone with that trait. I bring this up because the difference between a lesbian who just generally doesn’t like genital and a TERF is that the TERF things anyone with a penis is automatically bad and a male and probably reading this right now thinks I’m saying you have to have sex with men or like penises, somehow, despite saying exactly the opposite.

You may have a general preference, but in practice I’m sure you’ve already found a difference between “I am physically attracted to how this person looks” and “Holy shit I am in love this person is amazing and everything about them is beautiful.” If you haven’t had that experience yet, I can promise you some day you will. Not necessarily over genitals, but some day someone will come into your life and you’ll love every part of them whether or not it’s something you normally find abstractly attractive.

Keep your heart open to love, keep your mind open to constructive criticism, and you’ll never be a radfem or TERF or SWERF or whatever. That’s all.

Because of this post as usual. 😘

This is such a beautifully written, gentle, educational post, and I am infinitely grateful to @cipheramnesia for taking the emotional energy to write this. Especially the part about how dog whistles, by their definition, are meant to slip by unnoticed.

Sometimes when I get a couple radfem notes on this I reblog it, and get a larger volume of kind notes. I take this as a sign that on balance the world is kind.

littlebabycrybtch

staying out of discourse is one thing honestly i understand its brutal but this ‘no opinion’ on aspecs being included in the lgbt+ community crowd definitely leans more towards exclusionist bc uh… we were already Part of the community. for decades. despite the rampant misinfo, we did not actually ‘ask to join’ them in 2010 or smth, we were already there historically and this wave of exclusionists are actually a modern addition. so when you claim no opinion what you may Think you’re saying is, ‘i dont care whether or not lgbt ppl make the New Decision to Allow aspecs into their closed community”, but what you’re actually saying is, “i dont care if they kick yall out of this shared community after years for absolutely no reason”. like. no opinion seems to translate to not wanting change for most ppl but they seem to not realize regs are literally the ones asking for change.

animefacialrecognitionsoftware01

That link tho

FINGERPORI 20.7.2015

Finnish translation:

“It’s against nature for a child to have two dads!”

“Phew! Good thing there’s three of us!”

snootyfoxfashion

Pride Pins from Doodlepeople

x / x / x / x / x x / x / x / x / x

star-wars-discousre

You are LGBT if..

You are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. That’s it. Aces aren’t LGBT.

feminismandmedia

I mean for one your forgetting a bit of that. Like the Q+.

Mod Bethany

star-wars-discousre

The full acronym is LGBT.

I love me some ahistorical bullshit

The “full” acronym at one point was “GL”, after lesbians fought against male homosexuality being the “face” of the movement (i.e., the Alliance for Gay Artists (AGA), founded in 1982, was renamed the Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Artists shortly thereafter; and the Gay Activists Alliance never included “Lesbian” in their title).

The “full” acronym at another point was “LGB”, only after bisexual activists campaigned fiercely to be included, and is often still not even included in acronyms

The “full” acronym at yet another point was “LGBT”, only after trans activists campaigned fiercely to be included

Queer was added to the acronym after it was reclaimed and re-politicized by ACT UP off-shoot Queer Nation in the early 1990s. LGBTQ has been a thing since the 90s.

ONE Archives, which is the largest repository of LGBTQIA+ materials in the world and was founded by some of the principle members of the early (1950s-60s) homophile movement, which led to the gay rights movement post-Stonewall, uses the full acronym LGBTQ on their website and also freely uses the word “Queer” interchangeably.

As of 2014, NOW (National Organization for Women) agreed to switch to use of the full LGBTQIA acronym, and it likely isn’t the only large social rights organization to have done so

Many LGBTQ+ magazines use LGBTQ, including One (which has existed in some form since the 1950s) and The Advocate, use LGBTQ or LGBTQIA as the full acronym and regularly use “queer” as a phrase (and, in fact, some articles have welcomed asexual people and their narratives as part of the queer experience).

The acronym is constantly evolving. It’s not static. To claim otherwise is blatant ignorance. The modern-day LGBTQ+ community is a result of decades of political activism, social inclusion, and community outreach. It’s not a rigid structure that operates by a strict set of rules about who can and cannot join.

star-wars-discousre

The full acronym is LGBT. Cishets don’t belong in the community. Aces aren’t inherently lgbt. We don’t want our oppressors in our community.

“we don’t want our oppressors in our community”

as if trans people don’t already have to deal with their oppressors (cis people) being in their community

as if LGBTQIA+ people of color don’t have to deal with LGBTQIA+ white people in the community

as if LBTQIA+ women don’t have to deal with GBTQIA+ men in the community

as if disabled LGBTQIA+ people don’t have to deal with able-bodied LGBTQIA+ people in the community

the LGBTQIA+ community is huge and consists of people with multiply-overlapping identities and privileges. we all (unless you’re a cis, able-bodied, wealthy, white gay man) have to deal with a member of our oppressing class in the LGBTQIA+ community

ETA: “Straightness” is a position of power. Ace people, even if they are in heterosexual relationships, do not necessarily perform “straightness” in ways that are acceptable to the Straight class.

Friendly reminder that LGBTQ+, Queer, and LGBT+ are the preferred terms for the community (x).

Friendly reminder that Queer is approved by 72.9% of the people, and the groups who don’t prefer it’s use as an umbrella term are straight people, exclusionists, transmeds, truscums, sex-negative people, and sex work critical people (x).

Friendly reminder that aros and aces are excluded only 9.2% / 8.1% of the time respectively while being included 78.9% / 81.2% of the time (x)

Friendly reminder that exclusionists are in the minority and aro/ace people are included in the LGBTQ+ community by the people within the community.

lesser-flamingo

Also, i checked out the survey the second claim sources a while back: this is not OP choosing the words truscum, exclusionist, etc. These are labels that the survey gave people the option to self-identify as. It’s self-proclaimed exclusionists who dont like the word queer, not random accusations

butch-with-a-tortoise-deactivat

yeah that’s super important.

lakesdeadblog-deactivated202009

romance isn’t dead it’s just very sleepy

I thought I recognized this art so i looked at op’s blog

idk if y'all remember this homophobic mess of a comic. Granted people can change but op’s more recent stuff reflects the same views.

scorpiialpha-deactivated2022100

hi! wow, you have a good memory, this was almost a year ago!

I think you might have misinterpreted the comic. the joke was how she, an ace person, could forget something as obvious and familiar to other people as sexual attraction! I thought her reaction was so funny I suggested making a daily comic about it.

Lyd is my girlfriend! We’re in love! Passionate lesbian love. For four years now! Since that comic we moved in together and we’ve started building savings for our life together! We talk online (Twitter, we don’t really use tumblr) about struggles we face, homophobia, lesbian history and representation, and the intersection of being gay with being ace, not ace, gender conforming, and gender non-conforming. That comic you’re saying is homophobic might look like it to someone without the context of our life, and maybe it did cause a sapphic woman to feel alienated due to her sexual attraction. I understand that because I’ve felt that way many times from the words of both lgbt and non-lgbt people alike. But it was an accident, and while that can’t take away the damage, I promise that Lyd’s comics showing our happy life together, our posts online, even our youtube channel all do infinitely more good for fellow sapphic women and other lgbt people than this comic did bad. Lyd apologized for the misunderstandings and lack of clarity.

Please stop holding other lgbt people to an impossibly high standard. We have so many enemies in this world, the last thing we need is to be attacking each other for the smallest infractions.

- Meg, a lesbian

(we went on vacation together last week! :) )

transenbyhollis

how tf is “allosexuals experience sexual attraction” homophobic

ace lesbian: *makes a comic about being an ace lesbian*

exclusionist: the HOMOPHOBIA Y’ALL

pennie-dreadful

Jesus I got to that first reblog and it was so jarring I got whiplash. And the artist felt the need to apologize?!?! Can aphobes just…not.

midnight-spectrum-again

What the fuck

hidingoutbackstage

important! the artist now identifies as nonbinary, and their name is lake. try to spread this version around if you’re going to reblog

Precious beans

terf, to her girlfriend: babe… i’ve been wondering. are you a troon?

girlfriend: a… a what?

terf: you know, a genderist?

gf: huh?

terf: do you have a neovagina or not?

gf: what are you talking about

terf: well…. when i made quesadillas the other day, you asked what i put in them

gf: are you asking me if i’m a trans woman?

terf: no, no. not a trans woman. a trans male.

gf: right, well. i’m not sure what you’re saying but i’m pretty sure i’m cis

terf: i don’t believe you. only genderists use the cis slur. i’m making an appointment with the geneticist to get your chromosomes analysed

gf: oh okay… i’m breaking up with you

queerasinfuckthecistem

Fuck I completely forgot about that quesadilla thing. Who the fuck puts hummus...

theliberatedtiger-deactivated20

Dumb bitch. Apparently describing (born) same-sex attraction as exclusive to SEX is a consequence of radical feminism, the same radical feminism that also proposes any waman can be a lesbian. Sounds so familiar. Hmm. This is a bisexual lesbian larper that hangs on intact cock n balls of trans women like Tia that legit thinks they’re lesbians too. Terflies… the only people lying are people that would take a whole ass dick antithetical to their supposed sexual orientation to validate other larpers. You want us politically non affiliated lesbians to give a shit maybe start off by respecting that lesbians aren’t attracted to males and won’t fuck them even if they change their outward aesthetics. Because if that’s off the table we’re straight enemies. “If it wasn’t for those pesky gatekeeping radical feminists trans waman would be able to get their dick wet with actual lesbians uwu” is how the fuck your desperate disgusting rape advocate ass sounds.

hello-homophobes

terflies is one of tygressofaera’s sockpuppet accounts btw

I literally wouldn’t be surprised

hello-homophobes

no it actually is and so is terfslying and thisstripperhatesyou

I’m dead lmao How do you know?

hello-homophobes

posting patterns and wording. he has a particular way of talking. tyger had a bunch of sideblogs disappear when he deleted over his racial slurs. it makes sense the loss of his status and the reveal he lied about his age & who he was dating meant he needed fake sideblogs again to go after terfs. he fakes being a young cis lesbian with a vaginal disability to “call out” lesbians who won’t fuck trans women. it’s an old backstory gotcha of his. i’m not entirely convinced he and nerdylilpee aren’t the same account but i haven’t been able to prove it.

Amazing.

Btw I am a genuinely real young cis lesbian with disabilities. I’ve threatened to do this before but here’s a fun pic of my uterus and medical records from my laparoscopy!

And some proof that I am actually an Australian dfab person:

I love how desperate terfs are to claim anyone who disagrees with them is a trans woman.

Edit: Oh and my proof of POTS syndrome (a condition which predominantly effects young female people) too since I pulled my medical records folder out already.

@loaiasdust it is just so liberating to be constantly accused of faking my disability, my sexuality and my identity, you know? I’m so glad I have terfs out in this world to defend disabled lesbians like me! Life would be so much more difficult if everyone actually didn’t constantly accuse me of lying for attention 24/7.

queerasinfuckthecistem

Also, @thisstripperhatesyou has routinely posted selfies, so unless you think tygress is secretly an afab sex worker...

not LGBT as in rainbow capitalism @queerasinfuckthecistem - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag