#identity discussion

[rainbow-tomato-draws]

🏳️‍🌈!!!!!PRIDE POSTTTTT!!!!🏳️‍🌈

Hello Gelphie Nation! I know this isn’t a super shippy post but it is the gay as fuck witches so?

I hope you like it! If you’re interested in a blurb on my own pride that will be below the cut!

First, thank for clicking “more”!

My identity has been a rollercoaster.

In middle school I came out as a lesbian! My parents were very accepting and I am so fortunate in this. My heart goes out to all the people who don’t have supportive families - you are always welcome here!

From there it was a long journey and struggle inside my own mind on how I identified. I went back and forth between bisexual and lesbian so many times due to personal mental health issues. I have also debated my own gender enough on top of that. To be honest, there are still days where I fight myself.

But now, at the age of 22, I’ve landed on something that should be contradictory but to me it just makes sense!

As far as gender goes?

I identify as demigirl! It feels the most fitting for me. I am AFAB so this identity often feels like I’m just trying to be “special” or “different” but I’m really not! She/they are my pronouns! I am mostly comfortable in my body (which was a long journey in itself) and have no desire for surgery. But some days I wake up and wish I wasn’t seen as a woman and just a person? Words are hard and I’m describing this the best I can 🫠

Next!

I consider myself aroace! But also still a lesbian? I have been attracted to people in the past but it’s very touch and go. I think this may in part be because of my issues and personal traumas surrounding intimacy and love. All I know for sure is that I do still desire to have a relationship - a life partner - and that person would preferably be a woman :D

Sapphics bring me a lot of joy and comfort in a way that I couldn’t imagine my life and choice of partner being anything else.

So, bottom line is…

Identity, sexuality, gender is all very complex and nuanced. And if there’s anything I learned in my almost 10 years of identifying as queer in someway - I know myself best! What feels right to me shouldn’t be ignored and fought against to identify as something that “makes more logical sense”!

Just be you - even if who that is doesn’t always make sense to others and what they think of you.

Thank you for reading! Happy Pride!!

[untouchedbycupid]

hi. welcome to whatever this blog is going to become.

i’m aroace, and after spending years feeling like i was standing slightly outside of conversations about love, attraction, relationships, and even queerness itself, i finally decided i wanted a space dedicated to people like me.

this blog is going to be for, aroace culture, memes, identity discussions, queerplatonic relationships, late-night existential thoughts, joy, anger. community, the weird loneliness that comes with being told your experiences are “just friendship”, and the even weirder relief of realizing there are other people who feel the exact same way.

being aroace can feel strange sometimes because the world is built around romance and sex in ways people don’t even notice. songs, movies, books, family expectations, conversations with friends — it’s everywhere. people act like romantic attraction is universal, like everyone is moving toward the same ending, and if you aren’t, then something must be wrong with you.

except there isn’t.

there is nothing wrong with building your life differently.

there is nothing wrong with not wanting romance. there is nothing wrong with not experiencing sexual attraction. there is nothing wrong with valuing friendship as deeply as other people value romance. there is nothing wrong with not fitting into the story people expected you to tell.

i think a lot of aroace people grow up trying to force themselves into narratives that were never made for them. i know i did. you convince yourself that eventually it’ll “click.” eventually you’ll meet the right person. eventually you’ll understand what everyone else is talking about.

and sometimes you realize the reason it never clicked is because you were never broken in the first place. you were just trying to read from the wrong script.

anyway. this blog is not going to be all doom and existentialism. i also want this to be a place for happiness because being aroace is not inherently sad. there is so much joy in platonic love. in friendship. in community. in knowing yourself. in realizing your future does not have to look traditional in order to be meaningful.

also there will absolutely be garlic bread jokes here. i do not make the rules.

if you’re aroace, aro-spec, ace-spec, questioning, confused, or just here because you relate somehow: welcome. i hope this blog makes you feel a little less alone. ♡

[acronym-chaos]

based on actual thing that happened yesterday at 3 am

my friends: are you normal about your identity?

me, unironically yesterday at 3 am talking with someone:

i dont understand when people ask "what were you born with" and they expect either "penis or vagina" answer. like. ok lets make this clear i dont remember what i was born with. i mean barely anyone does i think unless they have photographic memory but i would say i consider being born into this reality* like my first memory of it i suppose. so my first memory of it was me at age 3 sitting in kindergarten on a carpet in the middle of the room. there are memes and jokes of like "the moment when i realized i exist" but it was that moment for me like looking around and being confused about anything. despite most of our memory being so blurry that one is so vivid to us, just sitting there. existing. being confused about existing. i knew people around me but not sure why. i didnt know what i was supposed to be doing. so while this was not the moment i actually was born, i guess this being both my first memory as well as the moment i realized i exist i can consider it somewhat being born. so. when asked what was i born with: i guess with confusion? to be honest i wouldnt be surprised that if it comes to my actual birth you know at the hospital and all that i was confused as well, definitely crying, like newborns do you know. so yeah i was born with confusion.

[varsex-pride]

How do you define sex identity? Is it a synonym for sex? If so, how would you define them in relation to varsexness?

So far I've came up with this, but I don't know if it is good or not:

Sex Identity: An identity formed based on one’s assigned sex/gender at birth, their current/desired/planned sex characteristics, their body, being gender-diverse/variant, a result of injury/illness, and/or aspects associated with varsexness.  

Just like gender modalities, gender identities/expressions, genders, and attraction-based identities (including m-spec and a-spec), sex identity and sex exists on a spectrum along a continuum. Meaning, someone can have one or more sex identities or lack one and it may be fluid or static for one or more reasons or no reason at all. 

Sex Identity (or sex) should NOT be conflated with gender modality, gender/sex sonance, sexual identity (or other attraction-based identities or the lack thereof), and gender identity/expression, although it can be interconnected and influence with one or more of them. 

I appreciate that you're trying to define it and want us to comment about it. I'm going to comment and try to define it by myself.

sex identity could be multiple things, just like the meanings you listed. however, since it's scope is so ample, when we use sex identity solely and the context talks about the body, it's often to show that the physical body exists regardless of the words we use to denominate or classify it. does that make sense?

sex identity is used less formally than gender identity, and it's more common to see the noun phrase "sexual orientation identity" than the univocal concept "sex identity", at least when used among mainstream activism. because in media and nowaday lectures aimed at people who don't understand much about the community, or from countries where the word gender is unusual, "sex identity" can appear as synonymous to "gender identity". tbh it's confusing to use this term deliberately, and I've seen people using the word "status" instead of identity. however, in the official languages of my country, "status" is more associated with the law, documental things, or computational stuff. that's why I don't use it a lot.

"intersex status", for once, is a term to refer to intersex as an identity, while "intersex variations" to refer to bodily traits (internal/external, and internal here means inside the physical body, and external refers to the apparent traits) or given condition or a set of conditions. status can be recognized by oneself and by others.

about your definition: sex identity in our blog is used totally separated from gender. you can gender your sex traits, and gendering one's sex can be a form of sex identity (eg. I possess a male nipple and a female nipple; I have male genitalia despite producing female gametes). when you gender your sex traits, it's about bodily autonomy and identity self-determination. it's an option to use specific language (eg. my nipples are differently sized; I have a cavernous large phallus despite being oogenic/macrogametic). it should be noted that when using specific language, not everyone will know what those words mean, typically usual to medical studies, and some of them are opt-in like referential language, because it's arbitrary or biased to talk about a indeterminate quantity in a given population. not everyone with a phallus will perceive it as penile or clitoral, or call their pectoral parts as chest or breast, for example.

is sex modality an identity? it can be a descriptor and an impermanent identity that one avoids using situationally, for example. but it definitely can be an identity, or just a relation between how one previously was and how one currently is, between the desired sex traits and current sex traits. it can be about sex sonance too, if one interprets it's tied to.

varsex is sex variance, meaning that it's a dispersion from the expected sex traits. in simple terms, in encompass intersex and altersex statuses. does this stand beyond status? certainly! a group of two people is sex-diverse, regardless of their sex identity. how does that make sense? because even twins are different, so is our genitalia, they all appear dissimilar. except when we talk about groups of people classified by identity or defined with more ample criterion or wider scope. for instance, these two individuals can both carry vulvar tissue. but that depends on how we interpret the word diversity. oh, and there are protsex/protosex people as well, they may or may not be varsex I guess.

sex identity is sex? it depends, it can represent sex. but they are different things. if sex is defined by gametes we produce, are sterile/infertile people exempt from it? it really varies of the context you're using the word sex.

spectrum may not be the best analogy. and: gender & sex can be the same thing for some people. for once, intersex is the gender of many people, and man is the sex of many people too. despite that, they can be distinguished and therefore different things. we can say they can be interconnected or influence each other, but the names/labels/terms are often used documentally and it's inescapable to use them interchangeably sometimes. it's understandable to use only one word for both things, especially when there's only one word in a given language for either sex or gender of theirs.

questions: is "result of injuries" applicable to endogenous traits (since you mentioned illnesses) or specifically about artificial/surgical intervention (therefore mutilation)? would physical changes apply? would it include willingly wanted/planned modifications?

[self-keeping-treasure]

The big difference for me in my identities being a furry vs being otherkin is that I would genuinely rather be an angel. or a robot. or better yet a mixture of both, but I wouldn't want to be a cat, I wouldn't want to have to deal with fur, or whiskers, or having no hands with which to manipulate the world. I like putting cat ears on my OCs and I have a pair of cat ear headphones, but that's just me being a furry because I like the aesthetic, vs me genuinely wanting to shuck my humanity in exchange for for the strength and certainty of steel and a hand of constructed divinity guiding me.

[sevengraces]

pronouns/pet names/references

Updates ((:

Updates ^2 (i’ve aged lol)

Read my bio obvs, but uh (they/he/she) for basic and (star/stars) if you’re so inclined towards neo/nounself pronouns. I’ll be real I really don’t care if you hate neos or anything, uh just don’t use ‘em if you don’t like ‘em it isn’t hard lol. But uh psa, I think they’re chill so if you’re gonna aggro abt it then you won’t like it here lol

Specific/romantic pet names are fine if you know me in real life/I’ve established it’s chill with you specifically. In general ones like “bestie” or “babe(s)” are fine and cool etc but stuff like “love” or “sweetheart” is a hard pass b/c I don’t know you lol. I don’t care for “girl” or “girly” so just nope on that one for anybody, you’re never gonna get permission for that one from me so no thanks. 

In general you can call me Grace or SevenGraces or Seven, just any variation on my user is cool. If you know my real life name then no you don’t! Remember don’t be putting my full legal name on the internet lol.

If you’re worried that something crosses a boundary you can just ask, uh if something I do crosses a boundary feel free to let me know or just block me if you prefer, no hard feelings. If you do something that crosses a boundary of mine I’ll just ask you to stop, if you don’t I’ll just block you after a few tries (: That goes for pet names and pronouns, however if you put my actual god-given name on the internet I will block/report immediately if I don’t know you in real life. If I do know you in real life that’ll be a real life conversation.

Thanks in advance y’all, please be respectful and communicate as a general rule, but this is my corner of the internet so especially do it here!!

[starlightoffandoms]

That TikTok sound that's like "two clips that give off the same energy" but it's situations I've been in recently:

- In a writing group where we critique and give feedback on submissions. My piece of feedback was, "rethink describing your black character's skin as a very specific coffee drink by name."

The writer's response: "why? What else would I use?"

Me: *so confused and trying to decipher the question b/c the answer feels obvious* well there are several shades of brown that can be used. Sooooo...

Them: *404 error* oh...

-Dealing with my identity with my boss. At this point I've reminded them several times that they shouldn't use honorifics or certain gendered language with me. I only use honorifics in very specific situations and they are not work related. They continue to still do it and trying to turn themselves into the victim.

Boss: well what am I supposed to call you then?

Me: *so confused and trying to decipher the question b/c the answer feels obvious* I have a name and I use any pronouns. Sooooo...

Boss: *404 error* *extended silence*

Like... I'm so confused. I don't get it. Both of these situations left me feeling for a moment as if I was living on another planet b/c each answer was simple. I'm like they must be aliens and don't understand human language and situations. How could they not get there???