Tag: lgbtqia

the-ghost-of-keith-kogane:

i’ve said it once and i’ll say it again.  queer people need to trust other queer people.  

don’t question someone else’s labels.  TRUST that they’ve done that already.  if they ask you for advice, fine, but DO NOT go in swinging.  don’t go up to a straight trans man and ask why he doesn’t identify as a lesbian.  don’t talk to non-binary people and tell them that their identity is a sham if they don’t transition.  don’t ask bi people when they’re going to pick a side.  don’t assume that someone who is ace is just repulsed by their own internalized homophobia.

like just… have respect for your fellow lgbtq+ folks because there are so few of us in an OCEAN of hetero-cisnormativity.  we don’t have to chip away at each other until only the Cardinal Few remain.  there is no reason that we can’t have space for the people who question, the people who change their minds, the people who dip a toe in and pull back out.  i am HERE for those people, just as much as i am HERE for the people who can write a dissertation on their attraction and knew from the moment they were born that they were Hella Gay.  

there is nothing simple about self-discovery and frankly, i’m not here on this earth long enough to scrutinize my fellow marginalized peoples.  there’s no reason to do that shit.  it does not, in fact, hurt queer people to be wholly accepting of any wayward identity.  non-dysphoric?  demi-gray-ace as hell?  don’t care, as long as you’re fighting on my side, because i’m fighting on yours.

inclusivity all the way, yo.

fabbittle:

momnar:

roachpatrol:

one of the nice things about heterosexuals i never see talked about on here is that they haven’t already heard all your gay jokes yet. i just really appreciate having a new audience sometimes for my completely automatic responses to phrases like ‘i’ll be straight with you’. so, shoutout to all the innocent hets out there who have a genuine giggle over lame quips that a fellow queer would groan and hit me for. ilu guys. 

I recently no scoped my coworker when she asked me “What’s in the closet, anyway?” and I automatically said “me”. She lost her mind. Full cackling in the middle of the store. I never thought I’d see the day that joke would work but here I was, blessed with an unexperienced heterosexual. It was transcendent. 

one time i had to go to the utility closet at work to refill my waterbottle and i said “alright im going into the closet…just like high school” and my straight coworker lost it. she started crying she was laughing so hard

How do I accept myself as aro? I know it’s different for everybody and I’m not asking for a “one hit solution” kind of thing. Just things that help you accept this about urself. I’ve been struggling a lot lately

amazingaro:

This is kind of vague, but I think the best way to find self-acceptance is to find community, which looks different for each person.

For me, it was knowing aro people in real life and finding aro people online to talk about experiences with. It was reading headcanon posts and fics about characters I thought could be aro. It was writing my own experiences down in stories about other people and putting them where other people (aro and not could) read them.

There’s a lot of different ways though, and you have to find what works for you.

One thing I would advise is to stay far, far away from discourse. There are parts of the internet that are full of anger, and even if they are angry about the same things you are, I don’t think it’s very healthy or productive to dwell there for long.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t feel angry or bad or that you shouldn’t express it when you do, because you should be able to. But find people that celebrate the positives as well.

This is sort of easier said than done, but I’ll try to help if I can. If you want someone to talk to about being aro, my main blog is @buffintruda. You (and anybody else) can just send me a message like “when did you know you were aro?” or “what are your favorite books?” or “what other cool aro bloggers do you know on tumblr?” or “who do you headcanon as aro and why?” or just tell me about yourself or basically whatever.

I hope this helps!

–Mod Buffintruda

aroace-nestingplace:

I’ve made a post like this before, but it’s valid if you are struggling with accepting yourself for you asexuality or aromanticism.  When there are so few accurate representations of aspec folks, combined with how single people are so demonized, it’s definitely hard.  But don’t worry, you’ll get there.

jumpingjacktrash:

savvybananasbitches:

lesbianrey:

the famous mormon ‘gay man but married to a woman and happy’ couple is getting divorced and apologizing for the damage they did 20gayteen is so strong

http://www.joshweed.com/2018/01/turning-unicorn-bat-post-announce-end-marriage/.html

This is actually a really really important and beautiful and honest post and story. Take the time to read it.

from the article:

One thing that
has been interesting to me is how people have reacted when I have told
them about our decision to end our marriage and how hard it has been to
love Josh with all my heart and to not have him love me back in a
romantic way. Almost everyone has said to me, with an air of protective
emphasis, “Oh, but Lolly, you deserve to be loved that way! You will find someone else who can love you like that. You deserve
to love and be loved in that way!” And I agree with them. The thing
that I find interesting is that these are all straight people looking at
me, another straight person, and being able to see the injustice of me
not experiencing true love. They see that it is wrong that I have never
felt that love. They feel it. They can put themselves in my shoes and
realize how hard that would be for them. They can see it because it is
presented from a straight perspective.

The thing that’s so interesting to me is how few people think of Josh in this way.

How to know if you are actually atracted to guys or you are just brainwashed through heteronormativity letting you believe you have to give guys a go because you have some kind of connection?

asexualmew:

ace-muslim:

closet-keys:

This is such a good question and it’s really important for any woman questioning their orientation/attraction. I’m going to explain the difference using three specific examples of times when attraction gets confusing, but there are a ton of different ways compulsory heterosexuality manifests, so if none of these hit on what you’re feeling, feel free to shoot me another anon. 

Attraction vs. Compulsory Heterosexuality

  1. Nervousness and Blushing

    A ton of romance media and common cultural tropes have this idea that you know you’re attracted to someone if you’re nervous or blushing around them. Because of this, you might feel like you must be attracted to a man if you feel nervous around him, just because you’re experiencing the physical bodily response you’ve been told to expect, not because you actually want to date him. 

    Actual Attraction: You’re nervous because you’re excited to get to know someone. You find them attractive first and because you’re thinking about your attraction to them, you get self conscious because you hope they might like you too. 

    Compulsory Heterosexuality: You’re nervous because you are aware that he is attracted to you, and because he’s paying such close attention to you– especially if he’s pushing boundaries or getting too close into your personal space– you become self conscious because you know he’s watching you. You blush because you’re uncomfortable. 

  2. Hypothetical Attraction

    Many questioning women have a hard time sorting through their attraction because of hypotheticals. Our culture, in general, disregards or challenges wlw’s attraction and it gives this anxiety that we need to know 100% that we are not and will never be attracted to men no matter what in order to claim labels.

    It’s hard to do that as a young person who is just learning about themselves, flooded with “what if”s about the future. Because of this, you might feel like you can’t rule out being attracted to men because you might hypothetically be attracted to one someday. Who knows?

    Actual Attraction: You imagine a hypothetical future where you end up with a man and it feels exciting and makes you feel good and hopeful and happy and right. It’s a nice feeling and is comfortable to think about. Reassuring. 

    Compulsory Heterosexuality: You imagine a hypothetical future where you end up with a man and it makes you feel uncomfortable, scared, sad, disappointed, wrong. It’s an upsetting thing to think about and you hope it doesn’t happen. You don’t want to end up with a man even if you feel like you could. 

  3. Sexual Fantasies

    Our culture places a big emphasis on sex when it comes to orientation. Some people’s orientation includes sexual attraction and some people’s orientation doesn’t, but most of us feel like our sexual fantasies are the most important indicator of non-straight sexuality because LGBPQ+ people have been so thoroughly reduced to sexual acts and sexual objects in the homophobic culture we’ve grown up in.

    Along with that, we’ve also grown up in a heteronormative and cisnormative society that repetitively teaches and reemphasizes the same singular sexual “script” for how sex is supposed to go, over and over and over. They do not teach any others, and it requires non-straight and non-cis people to invent their own sexual scripts individually and with partners.

    But as a young person, when you’re aroused, your mind has a very limited template of potential narratives associated with that feeling, so many people default to the same heteronormative script in their fantasies because it’s unconscious and easy. Because of this, you might feel like you must be attracted to men because you imagine abstract situations of sex with men, even though you have absolutely no desire to sleep with men in real life. 

    Actual Attraction: When you fantasize about men, it is because you’re attracted to their bodies or specific men or the idea of having sex with men. You imagine qualities of their body and you like the idea of what you’re imagining. If you think about the fantasy later that day, you might feel like it’s embarrassing, but you also feel like it’s sexy. 

    Compulsory Heterosexuality: When you fantasize about men, it is mostly just enacting a kind of narrative. More focused on movement than features– the men in your fantasies might be faceless or blank-featured or their bodies might symbolize some emotion. You don’t really like the idea of what you’re imagining. You might not even be in the fantasy, but instead another faceless woman might be. You might even imagine yourself as the man. The narrative follows the sexual script, but the details are more vague and abstract and might even shift and change throughout the fantasy. If you think about it later that day, you might feel vaguely nauseated or uncomfortable or feel invalidated and wrong. 

It’s really difficult to unroot compulsory heterosexuality. My simplest advice on getting through it is this: even if you are attracted to men, you do not need to date them if you don’t want to. If you only want to date other women, then you have the right to that. The rest is less important than the simple reality of what you want right now. 

File under things that would have been helpful for me to have read many years ago. I could have saved myself a lot of time.

This is also just so useful for people who are confused on the idea of attraction as well and also have to face compulsory problems like this!