#older queer

[ellewantsrevenge]

part of being an older queer person is watching the clumsy queer steps artists took to support us or dip their own toe into the pool being called phobic and cruel and evil when they meant so much to you in your youth and kept you going and alive and safe and exploring

we were just figuring things out the best way we knew with the tools and language we had available to us at the time

the culture you cancel may be your own

[artofsirio]

Absolutely obsessed with my beloved older drow, look at him

[queerautist]

The isolation that i feel rn because all other forms of social media (fb, IG and tiktok) are all now somehow run by right wing conservatives *cough* facists*cough* is deafening.

I am a millennial and autistic. I grew up on the internet. The early days in chatrooms, talking to people i probably shouldn’t have been talking to. To having a place for fat folx to hang out on tumblr and tinychat. To the social media era, where i just felt lost, but it was numbing enough to make it feel like i was apart of something.

Now, returning back to tumblr after a decade feels like I’m in my square, shouting, but no one can even hear me.

It feels like so much has been lost. I need to find my people again.

[tjpunkchef]

Who am I?

Well, I’m not 24601. Obviously queer though.

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. Who am I? Do I really have dysphoria? Is my therapist full of shit?

I go back and forth daily. Hourly.

I’m reading books on gender, watching videos on gender, doing the work to dismantle 50 years of socialization telling me I can only buy deodorant or shampoo or lotion from these aisles and goddamit THESE aisles ONLY.

Flowers are for girls; wood is for boys. We are divided in nature.

But what is a forest if not both? I’m like both. “Both” has been a part of my anxiety for decades. I wish the answers were more definitive for me; they never have been.

I, personally, want a label. I want a flag. I want to be able to express who I am in the alphabet, the community. Most of all want acceptance which has never come easy; not from the straights and not from my queer community. Yes, I need to accept myself first.

I live in the middle. I dance in the gray.

Am I trans? Am I non-binary? Am I genderqueer?

What does it truly mean to be any of these?

Who am I?

[laceymay2630]

The ungodly amount of money I’d pay to see them too…

[queerlovingqueer]

To the older people who have not yet found out who they love, or in which way. It is okay to struggle, that does not make you fake, nor makes the experiences you had useless. There is no age at which you have to have found out who you are. And there is also no age where your orientation has to be turned to stone. For some people this is an everchanging process of a grande scale. As long as we live, we can and do change. Change is what we are, there is no need to be ashamed.

[fishthegenderwiz]

Microlabels help

I'm still figuring myself out, but currently I'm listing this so I can keep track of my self awareness journey, and so I can let you young'uns* know that self discovery is a lifelong thing. It's okay to know right away who you are, what kind of human you identify as being, but if you're still learning that's okay too. I'm 38, and just admitting today to myself (and by extension, Tumblr) that I am a panromantic genderqueer demisexual. (That's more flags, fuck yea colours!)

I filled out a form today to apply for help in getting a part time job that'll fit my personality and skillset, and it was literally the first time in my life that I had a form ask my name along with Preferred Name, and for gender... With the choices being Male, Female, Trans, & Other- please specify. I wrote in GenderNeutral because I was unsure if Queer would make the reader uncomfortable (& also I had never been given the opportunity to write it anywhere so I was sort of in a blank spot lol) but once I did, I had SUCH a profound sense of relief!

As I'm really starting to take better care of myself, this journey of self discovery is taking me places that I didn't know I'd be, and I'm becoming more and more comfortable with being who I really am; forget being who I think others want me to be.

It's okay to relabel yourself when you learn something new. You don't have to fit inside the box you had before. Be your own hermit crab. Fit in the home you fit in.