Gender abolition, but make it:

And NOT:

the reason so much of mainstream lgbt media is about coming out is because thats the only part of being lgbt that directly impacts the cis het people around you, and since mainstream media has to cater to a cis het audience, it has to represent the most palatable part of being lgbt in order to be the most profitable. portraying other experiences of being lgbt that don’t directly involve cis het people is too alienating to them to win their interest and will likely cost you a huge chunk of potential viewership. in this essay i will

Thrift stores are like “we have the ugliest shirts that have ever existed on this planet” and gay teenagers are like “do you promise 🥺🥺🥺🥺”

reblog if you’re a lesbian who supports bi girls, a bi girl who supports lesbians, or if you want all wlw to have a nice day

every cis woman crying about elliot page rn bc "b-but he identified as a lesbian 🥺 this is lesbian erasure what about lesbians/gnc women 🥺" needs to go the fuck outside and learn to care about people other than yourself oh my god. trans people existing and having previously identified as your identity doesn't mean you can't be a lesbian. do yall know how many lesbians I've seen that used to identify as trans men? a whole lot. do I cry every time and go on about how they're betraying trans men and forcing me to also id as a lesbian? no, bc I'm capable of recognizing that someone else's relationship to their gender and sexuality has no bearing on my own.

stop being transphobic and shitty. there's plenty of lesbian celebs for you to look up to. elliot page just isn't one of them and that's okay!

like honestly for everyone of any gender and sexuality: someone’s coming out is not about you. it literally really isn’t. a trans man that used to id as a lesbian coming out doesn’t mean you can’t be a lesbian anymore. a lesbian that used to id as a bi woman coming out doesn’t mean you can’t be a bi woman anymore. a lesbian that used to id as a trans man coming out doesn’t mean you can’t be a trans man. a bi man that used to id as gay doesn’t mean you can’t be a gay man anymore. it’s literally all fine. it has no effect on you, personally. it is not your business. go outside. be a nicer person.

it’s actually really easy to include gay characters that don’t die, what you do is, you just write a character, make them gay, and then don’t kill them

Supermodel Aweng Ade-Chuol photographed with her wife Lexy 🥺✨

straight people don’t get that it’s really easy to tell the difference between gay short hair and straight woman short hair

not to be extremely trans/nonbinary w this take but it's so fucked up that we can't shapeshift

not to start discourse but if your reason a character can’t be ace is because “they want to fuck” then maybe go to sleep for a long time and come back when your head’s on right

do NOT talk to me i am busy having unrealistic gay daydreams

gender is a performance and i forgot all my lines

do NOT talk to me i am busy having unrealistic gay daydreams

he’s thinking

Me looking at other gay people from afar in hope they'll notice me and know that I'm also gay

Sam Smith saying they're going to be misgendered til the day they die hit in such a deep way as a nonbinary person. It's something so specific to the nonbinary experience specifically. I went on a date with a trans woman recently who looked a little sad when I got misgendered by the waiter and asked "Does that [the misgendering] happen a lot?" And I remember being slightly confused for a minute bc I genuinely hadn't registered the misgendering. I go into public just under the assumption that I'm going to be misgendered even by those with the best intentions.

Girls are hot, full homo

UK residents SIGN HERE on the government petition

https://transrightsuk.carrd.co/

https://uktransrights.carrd.co/

please, if you’re a UK resident, trans or not, please speak out on behalf of your trans family, friends. we suffer enough without the right to self-identify in the UK

if you aren’t from the UK please share this so that more Uk residents can see and speak up.

I know tumblr is america focused but PLEASE PLEASE reblog this, we trans folks in the UK have so much difficulty already. Please help us and reblog this.

Sex While Asexual: What’s Going On?

Disclaimer; I debated heavily on whether I should even write this. But with all my talk about how little sex education exists for asexual people, I’ve never taken a huge step towards explicitly describing the process of sex while ace from my own experience. It’s something that should be done, because very little of it exists.

This is a voice that needs to be heard for the asexual community as a whole. Also, there’s tons of non-ace allosexual people who have no clear comprehension of what goes on in the minds of aces under sexual duress. And more specifically, they don’t know what happens when you get a sex-repulsed asexual in a sexual situation. One that they willingly enter. Repeatedly.

Why is this information important? Because, chances are, this will be the first time you read a perspective like this. No one has ever given me answers about my aceness when it comes to sex. No one has ever taught my anything about sex education in the asexual experience. This is for all the aces out there. This is for all those people who have aces in their lives, and want to understand them. 

“But you said yes, didn’t you?” When come a scenario where the other party is unaware of my aceness or the true level of my discomfort, then they’re clearly not meaning any harm. I gave them consent through language that they understand. And that was my first mistake.

Asexual consent is not allosexual consent. When you’re not actually drawn to the other party, and you’re not interested in them sexually, then mutual sexual stimulation becomes something akin to a chore, or a favor. And that chore can so very easily become a stressor, and from there a danger. 

That’s not the case every time, of course. If we imagine sexual activity as a ‘dance’, then we can easily imagine a scenario where one person is interested in their dancing partner sexually, and therefore the act of dancing together is a sexually intimate moment for them. But the other person, an ace, simply enjoys the act of dancing together, or the act of dancing in general. And in that scenario, there’s no stressor.

But that’s never been the case for me. When I’m with another party, there’s obviously a completely different world happening in their mind. They’re seeing me, and the situation, through a lens that I don’t approve of, that I don’t empathize with. They’re getting something out of the situation that bothers me on a fundamental level. This ‘dance’ becomes a chore.

So when they give consent, it’s in a significantly different language than mine. They say ‘yes’ to something that I’ll never say ‘yes’ to. And from there, that imbalance of consent leads to disaster.

But they don’t know that. How could they? I certainly didn’t until it was far too late. But it’s affected me extremely adversely, in a similar way that my transness and my race has affected my sexual relationship in a white man’s world. It’s an issue of consent and how badly it can go when there’s a dearth of vital information.

“But what if you controlled the situation?” I’ve asked myself this question, and I’ve gone at lengths to test it. I didn’t want to live like this; my biggest regrets of my life are involving each and every awful night spent in these dangerous spots. I shouldn’t have gone to that party, I shouldn’t have done this. I should instead have done that. So I decided to try a different approach.

I got subs. The naughty kind, not the youtube kind. I looked for the most non-threatening, willingly-submissive people in the city. It always started out as a long talk beforehand (usually as a skype video call, as my preference, so they can see me outside the dom role) asking about their expectations, what their subspace is like, whether they want individual scenes or an extended episode, their experience, my experience, and so on. We started off on even ground, gearing up our tools and our knowledge of each other.

So what happens when I get full ‘control’ over the situation? Well, first of all, a sub/dom scenario gives an illusion of control. As a dom, your actions are for the benefit of the sub. You stick a bubble wand up their ass because they want to cry, never mind whether you got off on that shit or not. It’s a specific type of illusion that involves very real control, but it’s still not the control I wanted. I was again entering these dangerous spaces and expected to order people around because of something outside my control.

And when you take sexual activity out of the equation, it’s almost the same thing. I can get people to spend hours combing my hair or whatever, and have them do everything I ask of them without even touching upon sex. But to them, it’s all a clear act involving sexual attraction, which is something that’s not coming from me. In a very real way, they didn’t consent to me, even knowing well enough that I was ace.

“So what does sex mean to you?” I can easily imagine enjoying myself in a sexually explicit scenario, but the language and communication is markedly different. Masturbation becomes self-care, rather than a ‘precursor’ to sex. Skin-upon-skin contact has the context of taking a shower with your infant child, instead of a passionate act between lovers. Pleasuring genitals with whatever on hand is exactly what it is; it’s not elevated when done with someone you’re particularly fond of, and most of the time there’s no difference between your own stimulation versus someone’s inexpert fumbling.

Basically, sex to me is the same visually, but different through intention. And that’s what I’m missing in my sexual encounters, and also what I see missing in discussions involving sex and ace people. This is a gap that needs to be closed off. 

You can’t claim you’re sex positive, or inclusive, or lgbt-friendly without being aware of the ace experience when it comes to sex. It’s far past time that sex education includes what it means to be unnattracted to people in general, and how that affects sex as a whole.

It’s important that voices like mine are heard. I don’t want anymore aces to grow up and get the same aches and pains that I do because no one has any answers. If it takes my life, I’ll gladly make a new set of rules for my fellow aces, especially if no one else will.

So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.