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High-Tide Hope

@rediscovery-music

I'm a musician and a fangirl so virtually anything can be found here from fandom posts to vids with original music.
She/They
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I'm coming to hate the weight society puts on sex more and more the more I talk with people. Sex is not something you can't live without. It's might be one of the pleasures of life, but it's not a pleasure that everyone wants to participate in. And that's fine. Everyone gets the choice of how they live their life, and everyone's mind works differently. So instead of shunning those differences, maybe we should celebrate them instead and just accept that everyone's a little different, and that includes whether or not they wish to have sex.

As a demisexual person it took a long time before I had sex for the first time because I didn’t feel connected enough until my relationship with my current partner. I got a good bit of crap for it and people saying that sex is one of the most important aspects of a relationship and I never understood that, I still don’t. I can’t imagine how much pressure and crap people who are sex repulsed or just don’t want to have sex are put through. It’s ridiculous how much people let sex dictate their happiness in their relationships and how much they push their ideas about sex on others.

Just because one person might not be happy without it doesn’t mean that another person wouldn’t be happy without it. How about we let people determine for themselves what makes them happy in their own lives and we just respect them simply because they are human beings

It took me a long time to realize that I was bi. I spent years questioning and then shoving the unanswered question in the recesses of my mind. I avoided it because I was afraid of it being true. I didn’t want to be bi, not because of myself but because of others. I was, and still am, afraid of how my family would respond if they found out.

I have grown up deeply religious and I even went to a religious university to be further involved in the religion of my childhood. Ironically this religious university is where I finally accepted myself as bi because of a supportive ethics professor and a friend’s unprompted rant on the treatment of queer people.

The place where I was supposed to be indoctrinated the most is the first place I found myself. I remember an attack on the queer community that was made by new administration resulted in an uproar of love and support from all corners of campus. I remember waking up and rainbow chalk art being on the sidewalk telling me that I was seen and loved. I also remember a campus security guard standing in the rain getting soaked and kicking at the word Love written in chalk.

Queer people are not made, we are born. No one is forcing us to be whatever gender or sexuality we identify with. We exist and we have existed for all of history. We are your children, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, and community leaders. We are strangers on the street just minding our own business and we are the people you love and keep closest to you. We exist despite the cishet centric culture.

Let’s talk about what demisexuality is not.

First off: what is demisexuality? We have to establish what it is to talk about what it isn’t.

  • ‘demisexuality’ describes not experiencing sexual attraction until a close bond is formed. This doesn’t mean demis are attracted to everyone we bond with, and we can have differing desires towards sex. Demisexuals may or may not be demiromantic — they’re not one and the same.
  • While demisexuals can also be demiromantic, this isn’t true as a rule. Just like being asexual doesn’t necessarily mean you’re aromantic. It’s possible to be both, nothing wrong with that — but they’re not inherently synonymous.
  • *For some people who are aroace, include demi aroaces, their sexual and romantic orientations are deeply intertwined and there isn’t a big difference between the two. Other people use the split attraction model, which recognizes a difference in sexual and romantic orientations.

Many people think that “everyone is demisexual” because they read the definition and say “oh, that’s just being normal”. They’re confusing not experiencing sexual at ALL with waiting until a relationship is serious to have sex.

Demisexuality is a sexual orientation. The thing people confuse it with is a decision regarding sexual behavior that can be made regardless of orientation— the decision to wait to have sex until you’re emotionally close. That decision can be made by anyone, demisexual or not.

Often people read the definition and say “I’m demisexual, I wait to have sex until it’s not just sex. I want emotional fulfillment too.” When it’s explained that demisexuals rarely have sexual attraction and only under certain conditions does it occur, one of two things happens:

  1. they misunderstand and assume that demisexuals are also experiencing sexual attraction without the bond and just not acting on it, or
  2. they begin to understand that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and action.

More often than not it’s the former.

It’s interesting that this misunderstanding happens when demisexuality is described because allosexuals (people who aren’t ace) abstain from sex all the time but still feel sexual attraction. There’s this underlying assumption that everyone experiences sexual attraction.

But… just imagine that feeling of not being attracted and expand it. It’s doubtful that you experience sexual attraction to every person you see is physically attractive. Just expand that and there you go. Or imagine it like not seeing a particular color until you suddenly can.

Demisexuals aren’t all cisgender and heteroromantic. But there’s nothing wrong with demis who are! If ace isn’t enough for you to respect someone is LGBTQIA+, you don’t understand or accept asexuality or the orientations under its spectrum.

Demisexuality is NOT “just being a woman”. Demisexuality also isn’t “the patriarchy convinced young girls not having casual sex was a sexuality”.

There’s so much wrong with both of these, and they tie together, so I put them together here. Not only does this thinking see cis women and feminine people as being inherently “more” asexual, it robs allos and aces alike of bodily autonomy towards sex and sexuality. It bleeds out from conservative Christianity — it’s the same ideas that lead us to abstinence only sex “education” and that women must be sexually available at all times or their husband will cheat to “get his needs met”. Saying that cis women & feminine people are just all demisexual or ace removes the bodily autonomy of those who want sex and those who don’t by assigning a culturally acceptable narrative as more important than lived experience. But sexuality isn’t limited by cisheterosexism.

The truth is there are still a lot of people learning they’re under the asexual umbrella as educators and advocacy groups get education out there, and even in queer spaces asexuality isn’t always accepted, let alone its spectrum. A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option!

In addition, and partially because of, tropes like this, asexuality and everything under it are considered more “feminine”. Sex is seen as a symbol of status and depending on your gender and presentation, that status gets lowered or raised depending on the number of partners had.

Cis men and masculine aces exist, and also have to contend with cultural pressures to “perform” sexually, whether they want to or not. Erasing these experiences doesn’t help further acceptance towards asexuality or just sexuality in general.

And! Cis women and feminine people can have and enjoy casual sex! Others don’t but still experience sexual attraction regularly. Being allosexual isn’t limited to the masculine. Libido can also exist without sexual attraction. Human sexuality is just not as narrow as you think.

That’s where I’ll leave this one. Remember, it’s okay to be demisexual. It’s not okay to dunk on a group of people you didn’t bother to try to understand. Keep an open mind. There’s room at the table for learning, not bigotry.

Sure, taking E won't change your voice.

But taking T doesn't remove tits, either.

Taking E won't reverse facial hair.

But taking T won't make me taller.

To act like E doesn't cause changes to a body during puberty is misogyny. To act like it's "easy" for trans men to transition is misogyny.

I've been on T for over a year, though some of that time it was low dose. I've been on a higher dose for 8 months. If T was the miracle some people describe it as, I'd have a full beard and huge muscles and I'd be passing 100% of the time.

I don't pass at ALL.

Stop claiming trans men have an easy time passing. You're invalidating and erasing our experiences.

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This is why there isn't such a thing as free speech absolutism. You either allow questions like this to become legitimate or you let oppressed people enjoy their own free speech. You can't have both.

i love you closeted trans people

i love you out trans people

i love you trans people who aren't fully either

i love you trans people who don't want to "pass"

i love you trans people who can't "pass"

i love you trans people who "pass"

i love you trans people who don't want to medically transition

i love you trans people who can't medically transition

i love you trans people who medically transition

i love you trans mascs

i love you trans men

i love you trans femmes

i love you trans women

i love you trans neutrals

i love you unaligned trans people

i love you multi gender trans people

i love you mono gender trans people

i love you genderless trans people

i love you trans people who are combinations of these things

i love you trans people who don't fit into these categories neatly

i love you trans people who don't fit into these categories at all

i love you trans people who are none of these things

i love you trans people who are all of these things at once

i love you trans people with identities too complex to put into words

i love you trans people that don't feel reflected in any of these things

i love you trans people who use neopronouns

i love you trans people who use common pronouns

i love you trans people who mix and match pronouns

i love you trans people who use one set of pronouns

i love you trans people who didn't realize they were trans til later in life

i love you trans people who always knew

i love you trans people who are unsure of when or how they knew

i love you trans people

any other autistics (and others with sensory issues) feel Bad if their clothes dont Match Perfectly? like you need the textures to match, the blacks to be the same, the color palette to be aesthetically pleasing, the formality to match, etc. etc. it literally makes me upset and distressed if my clothes Dont Match to me, even if they match to others. it's like being in a messy room except you're wearing it so it Follows You.

I accidentally have 10 blue articles of clothing that are the exact same shade of blue. It wasn’t a conscious effort, but even the textures match too. After I noticed, I can’t not have everything match. It bothers me now if my clothes don’t match up perfectly

Being autistic is so funny because even when you're not totally awkward, you still end up with all these misconceptions about how friendships and relationships work because Neurotypicals never feel the need to explain themselves. I fr asked someone if I was allowed to read fanfiction while in a relationship or if my partner would get too jealous one time. Even when I've learned to communicate, I still don't know jack shit about socializing

neurodivergentlondon-deactivate

Growing up afab and as an undiagnosed autistic person

Growing up as an afab undiagnosed autistic person is a very difficult experience. You know that something is off but medical professionals refuse to diagnose you because you aren’t a boy and don’t fit racist, sexist and ableist stereotypes.
I quickly learned how to mask but then I was seen as “trying too hard to fit in” and nothing I was doing seemed to be enough for the people around me. For years I thought I was an alien from another planet. I was so different no matter how hard I tried to fit in and I had no answer as to why. To this day even after being diagnosed I am still learning how to unmask.
My needs were pushed under the rug and seen as me being dramatic and overreactive. When I would go non-verbal I was seen as shy. When I would get sensory overload I was seen as quirky. When I would have a meltdown or shut down do to changes in routine or not having my needs met I was seen as entitled.
My needs were not met because my autistic traits were pushed under the rug simply because I was born a female. This caused years of trauma. It’s important to understand that our system and the diagnostic criteria is broken and needs to be fixed.