#do not comment

[souliebird]

Nothing quite like having trauma surrounding Christmas and feeling completely alone and it being coupled with menstrual depression

[shutoffthelights]

since we all know about it and the barbra streisand effect is in action with how much we’re talking about it use this link: https://donotlink.it/7eeV

it goes to perez’s article about the sessions. give it to people who ask about it. it will not give him page views and will make it impossible for it to show up on google. make sure you have adblock on when you use it so it also does not give him ad revenue. i know curiosity is a strong urge. i would rather you didn’t view the page and i know most swifties agree. but if you cannot help yourself, please for all that is holy... use that link instead!

[softestvirgil]

.

[lethal-raindrop]

C u r s e d ™

[irenesfemme-blog]

Hey everyone,

I joined a server centered around the Star Wars franchise in late 2018, and I was a moderator there for a significant amount of time. Tonight I left it. And I’d like to explain why, and where that leaves this blog, going forward.

First of all, I must ask that you do not reblog this post, and I’m really going to ask that you refrain from commenting on it as well. Honestly, I need to heal from this experience. It’s been actively harmful for me for weeks because it’s been such an incredibly toxic environment.

I do want to thank the people who reached out to me, however, during all of this. Who expressed that they wish that they had done more for me, stood up, said something. I don’t blame any of you. I completely understand not wanting to make yourself a target. I love you, and I wish you nothing but the best.

This blog, as well as REVANSFEMME and BINALAARA, are going on hiatus. I don’t know for how long. I’d like to feel okay enough to come back one day, but that remains to be seen. Until then, I’ll keep on keeping on.

Cheers, -- Irene.

Here’s my letter to the community: 

Hey guys,

The original discussion began when a conversation about biphobia, and transgender woman’s contribution to that conversation, was interrupted and derailed. And honestly, guys? No one involved in that interruption and derailing, when confronted with the fact that it was harmful and hurtful, asked if their fellow community members, and in particular the transgender woman who was interrupted, were okay. No one has expressed any acknowledgement or regret for having been a part of that. It’s been completely ignored in favor of airing other grievances. And that’s not fair in particular to the transgender woman who was interrupted, who brought up with the mods that she had been feeling uncomfortable in this server for a long time, and who helped me identify the rhetoric used as trans-exclusionary radical feminist. And this entire conversation about the things I’ve done has come about right after I took a stand, as a mod and as a friend, to support this transgender woman in our community. That timing has not escaped my notice.

I hear that a lot of you have felt guilty, alienated, or angry by me speaking about my experiences and discomforts as a bisexual woman. I haven't meant to make you feel this way; it hasn't been an agenda of mine. I am sorry for bringing you pain. But I am also hurt in turn because it feels like so many of these accusations are in bad faith at best. To be honest, if I had known that sharing my negative experiences as a bisexual woman would have contributed to the difficult climate of this server, I would have kept them to myself. And that’s what’s getting me here: I shared these because I felt safe with the people in this server. I shared these because I considered so many of you friends. And knowing that being silent would have made me less of a target is really painful.

The idea isn't that "discussing solidarity and struggles as lesbians reminds bisexual women of their struggles and difficulties they themselves face, some of them caused by lesbians and lesbian communities, and therefore these discussions shouldn't be held." It's that these discussions can co-exist. You're allowed to express solidarity and support as lesbians. But I'm also allowed to feel hurt and discouraged because so often I and other bi women are excluded from queer spaces in particular, or invalidated as people or as a community, and yes, sometimes this is done by lesbians. The latter conversation isn't a rebuke of the first. It's just a part of the ongoing series of dialogues in the queer community.

What’s particularly difficult about many of the complaints is that they express a standard I cannot meet. I spoke about my discomfort with a conversation in the channel that it was held in, indicating that it’s a good conversation but one that I feel I can’t be a part of because of my personal experience, and that was objected to. I moved to a separate channel to express my sorrow at the biphobia in this server and how it’s made me feel hurt and uncomfortable, with the intent of having a separate space where I could talk without disrupting another conversation, and that was objected to. I silently left a third conversation and brought up my point of view a while later, in a different channel, in a conversation about biphobia, and that’s been objected to. I’ve been told that when and how I’ve been talking about my experiences is a definite part of what’s making people feel guilty and targeted, but in literally every way I’ve tried to talk about biphobia, someone has objected. It’s a losing game: the only winning move is not to play at all.

And these individual experiences – where a bisexual woman’s voiced experiences and feelings are objectionable, derailing, unnecessary – parallel a larger theme in queer communities where bisexual women are told, explicitly and implicitly, that we aren’t welcome. That we take up space intended for the more valid, more queer, members of the community, just by being here, and being hurt, and giving voice to our struggles.

And the concept, reiterated over and over again, that my pain as a bisexual woman was intended to make lesbian women feel guilty feels to me like so, so much more than an assumption of bad faith. It feels like a deliberate act of willful misunderstanding. It feels like silencing through shaming.

And all of this is so much of the reasons why I and so many other bisexual people don’t feel comfortable in queer spaces. Our discussions about our struggles with gay and lesbian members of the queer communities are turned against us as proof that we are dangerous, that we are harmful, that we do not belong. I’ve seen it over and over in IRL spaces. I just didn’t want to see it here. And I really see no way how I could ever talk about my experiences as a bisexual woman in this server again with any degree of safety or assumption of solidarity.

And this isn’t even getting into the long, chastising private message I received from a community member not so long ago about my personal failures. That was … above and beyond.

I had a long conversation with my spouse about these events. He brought up that, paraphrased, “You do realize that these people berating you publicly for miscommunication, when you’ve stated before that you are on multiple spectrums, comes off to me, at least, as ableist?” And I don’t want to realize that. That makes this all feel so much more targeted and horrifying.

As I said at the very beginning of this server, and on my tumblr, and earlier today, I am on both the autistic and the schizophrenic spectrums. I have severe ASD symptoms and Schizotypal Personality Disorder. I have a really hard time reading social cues, situations, and tones, especially over the internet, and that's been a constant struggle in my life. But participating in discussions has always been hard for me, and it's been hard for people who don't know how to deal with my particular neuroatypicality. It’s a wholly foreign concept to me that any of you would have read my expressions of my own struggles and interpreted that as me setting out to make you feel guilty. I just … don’t understand. I never have. It’s why I’ve always asked people to please talk to me at the time of the miscommunication, because it’s almost impossible for me to judge how someone is going to emotionally respond to anything I say.

And that brings me to my last point: I’m leaving. I’m leaving this server, and I’m leaving tumblr, and I’m leaving the Star Wars fandom as a whole, for now at least. Lal’s mother is right when she said, "If you were getting paid for this job I'd tell you to quit and get another job.” This has been an impossible job for a number of reasons, and I’ve stuck around because I loved Lal and Io, and I wanted very much to help them and this community. I’ve been trying to do this work as a mod atop work managing hospice care for my terminally ill mother, the full-time work of running and maintaining a household, and my personal work as a writer. And the longer I spend in this community, the worse I feel. All of this feels … horrifying, in a very visceral and targeted sense.

I am sorry that many of you felt hurt by me. I truly have never meant to cause any of you harm. But that’s accompanied by a very real and very painful sense of being physically ill right now.

I’m going to close the religious server that I moderate. The dungeons & dragons one, and the writing and worldbuilding one, will both remain open, but I’m going to ask that no one bring any of this discussion to those spaces. That’s a boundary that I’m going to have to insist on at this juncture.

I guess I’d like to close by saying that I’m not angry. I’m really not. I just feel really, really sad. I’d like to believe that the timing of this is just unfortunate, that the implications of ableism are an accident, that the pervasive biphobia in this server has been rooted in ignorance and not malice. But after today’s discussion, honestly? I’d always wonder, and I’d never feel good here again.

There’s a line that’s been crossed here into the grounds of active cruelty. Lal’s been hurt, Io’s been hurt, and you guys have just kept going and going and going at these two, who have really tried their all for you. And as I said to Lal and Io earlier, on a personal note, dragging out my admissions of pain and hurt as "receipts" is the point where there's no going back for any relationship.  

And that’s the time to move on.

[chixiegyps]

I identify as queer but that doesn't mean everyone has to. I say that with care It’s its usage as a broader term for lgbtq+ people is where things get messy, because not everyone wants to be identified as such! No one else should tell you how to identify. i mean that both ways

[lastxdragon]

I’ve got you (Rp thread)

Lastxdragon said: “I’ve got you”

@reekcd answered:

       “K… Khaleesi…?”

Wide eyes looked up at her from where he’d curled up on the floor. It had all happened so fast. One moment he was at her side, and the next he was being taken away, apparently by someone who thought to use their relationship against the queen.

His captors hadn’t known what he’d already been through. They showed no mercy, enjoying tormenting him all the same. He had wondered whether he’d ever be returned to his queen. Yet there she was, murmuring soft, soothing words to him as he trembled, hardly able to breathe.

Still… this task was surely beneath her. He was a mess, covered in sweat and blood. Yet still she held him, washing him as gently as she could.

           “Y-you’ll stain your dress, Khaleesi…”

Daenerys had been in a fury since Theon had been taken right off the streets of Kings Landing. The Great Council put out ravens to every corner of the realm demanding his release, but one week melted into two and then three and Daenerys could not be consoled. Every night, she slept restlessly with his collar in her hands and every morning, she demanded to know why Prince Theon had not been found.

At the dawn of the third week, Tyrion had come to her with a suggestion, a quiet hint of hope. Dany took one of Theon’s tunics to Drogon and her dragon chuffed impatiently. Signaling Aggo to bring the Dothraki, she climbed onto Drogon’s back and her mount took flight, heading directly for the ruins of Harrenhal. It was there that they found him, tortured and bloody.

“Shhh, Theon, I have you,” she told him, gently touching his cheek.

He was hurried back to the Keep and the Maester looked after the worse of his wounds. Daenerys had a bath drawn in her chambers and led him to it. As he sank down in the soothing heat, Dany grabbed up a cloth and dipped it into the water, lifting it to gently wash at his face.

“Faceless take the dress, Theon, all of them. From now on, you do not go out without Aggo or Rakharo,” Dany told him fiercely, blinking back tears. “I thought I’d lost you.” Her hand curled around the back of his neck, pressing her forehead to his temple.