Actually, watching folks continue to insist that any queer relationship that isn’t explicitly and overtly romantic or sexual in media is “cowardly” is not only exhausting, but genuinely fucking infuriating.
First, queer coding is not the same as queerbaiting, and queer coding absolutely had and still has its place in all types of art, second, it’s restricting to the types of characters and stories that queer artists can create, especially queer creators who are not out, professionally or at all, and third, your conceptualization of what is queer enough is exclusionary. End of story.
anyway since the shitcourse has started earlier than ever this year I just want to say that my stance on kink @ pride is firmly that I’d rather see one hundred leather pups than a single cop at pride, and it is in fact the half-naked kinksters some of y'all are so afraid of who have, in my experience, been the safest people to be around when cops inevitably revert to their default state and start menacing any queers they don’t like.
also for all the “think of the children"s out there, I wanna let you in on a little something:
I’ve taught a human development class to kids ages 10-12 for the last four years. our curriculum covers a lot of topics, among them sexual intimacy. one of our lessons involves looking at non-sexual nude illustrations of people with visible genitalia, as part of a discussion about all the different ways that bodies can look. we don’t conceal anything - a child once asked me why someone might want to put a penis in their mouth, and we had a great conversation about how different people like different kinds of intimacy.
some of the kids are curious and have a lot of questions. those kids’ parents should be prepared to answer any questions they might have in a thoughtful and age appropriate way, the same way they would if their kid had questions about, idk, a victoria’s secret ad or a suggestive music video or a comedian telling a joke a bit above their maturity level.
some kids prefer not to talk about it; I’ve definitely had kiddos too embarrassed to even look at my very cartoony and poorly-drawn genitalia diagrams. those kids’ parents should be aware of that and check in with their kiddos, the same way parents should when they take their children to any large event that could be overwhelming.
and a lot of kids just don’t give a shit. especially for the ones younger than I teach, sexuality is barely a blip on the radar and public semi-nudity is something silly at worst - although it’s much more likely that they’ll be seeing less skin than they would have at a beach or public pool. seeing a harness or a puppy mask or a dildo isn’t likely to raise any serious alarm or any questions they can’t be answered with "that’s something some people like to wear to special events to express themselves” or “that’s a toy for grown ups.”
what I’m getting at here is that a.) being in the vicinity of a person who’s partially dressed or holding a flogger is not in any way innately harmful to children and b.) the comfort and safety of children in public spaces and the ways in which they process anything potentially confusing they may see in those places is always the responsibility of the caregivers who presumably brought them into that space to begin with.
obviously there is a level of individual responsibility to not be a freak to children, and if someone is, like, urinating on kids or purposefully exposing their genitalia specifically to children that’s Fucking Bad. but baselessly assuming that this is an endemic problem that must be policed and that queer spaces are somehow particularly hostile to children is uuuh homophobic, and if you think so little of your own so-called community maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be attending pride.
“It’s often unhealthy to hyper-analyze your sexuality to the point where how you experience it changes where you belong. This is why the idea that broader terms are somehow more restrictive is baffling. Continuously breaking labels down and creating terminology for each facet of one’s identity shrinks communities until it’s just one person convinced that they’re the only one who relates to their experiences. It isolates people and ignores the importance of individuality within a collective identity.”
I, a nonbinary AFAB person with a beard, cannot currently go into any bathroom without being potentially harassed. Until recently, I identified as a woman, and I was afraid of going into either bathroom. I’m still afraid of going into either bathroom, but I’ve decided I’m not a woman.
Congratulations, you’ve prevented a person from peeing in a space that is explicitly for them. If I tried to enter that space without a mask, with my partial Izzy Hands goatee, some fucking woman is going to challenge me for being there, despite the fact that I have been using the women’s restroom my entire life. The way people reacted to me was not related to how I presented myself. If I continued to consider myself a cis woman but started trimming my beard the exact same way I did… I would still be attacked for existing as a woman with a beard. Which has naturally happened, no additional hormones, no nothing, that’s just how my body happens.
What I’m saying is that policing of identity has nothing to do with how natural your body is, how much it aligns with cis beauty standards. You will be attacked no matter what you do. Whether or not you live in your body as it naturally expresses itself - like mine, with giant painful boobs and a beard that can’t be ignored - you’re going to be treated like an imposter if you ever step outside the framework that was made for you. No framework would ever fit me. Whether or not it would fit you… I hope you understand none of this is real. It’s all constructed, it’s all imaginary. You deserve to live in your body and enjoy it, without modification, or with the modifications to it that you have chosen.
Gender is a lie, sweet children. It’s a social construct, not a biological reality. I’m behind you 1000% if you want bottom surgery still, but gender itself is not the reason you feel this way. It’s more complicated and more wild than that, none of that is a binary choice, but you are often led to believe it is, and that’s a crime. Your gender is what you choose. And that has nothing to do with your genitals or breasts, which you also have the ability to make decisions about, regardless of anything else, independent of each other. Your body is not a binary structure. Biology, sociology, psychology tells us this. You are a human person. You get to choose what you become.
Gender is a lie, sweet children.
It’s ok if you identify with some folks or don’t identify with others. The important part is to recognize that Gender is a lie, my sweethearts.
Just me crying in the bathroom so I don’t wake my partners with this, fuck.
So to sum up: CT and DC have passed laws making it illegal to extradite someone to another state if they are being charged in that other state for crimes pertaining to abortion or trans health care, and makes it legal to sue and get your money back if you are targeted by a TX-style “bounty” law. DC also includes “crimes” of consensual adult sex, gay and interracial marriage and cohabitation and providing or using contraception.
This is, as the thread explains, basically legal interstate warfare. CT and DC’s laws bar compliance with such laws.
This is, on one hand, kind of terrifying, because this is where we are now. It’s going to get worse long before it gets better.
On the other hand… holy shit, someone fucking did something.
Aka: public displays of affection vs performative displays of affection
I was talking to me mom today about PDA and, we got on the topic about how there really are two types of PDA: the first is really just displays of affection where you just happen to be in public and the second being where you are engaging in displays of affection specifically because you are in public.
I don’t know if I’m, exactly, explaining this right but like: sitting close next to a SO on a couch at a coffee shop because you enjoy sitting close to the person would be a public display of affection while, like, making a post on Facebook about how much you love your SO even though your SO doesn’t use Facebook and will never see it would be a performative display of affection.
And, I mean, there is kinda, probably, an overlap between the two but, I did decide to look it up and found this:
Anyway: this is something I would like to explore with the community in the sense of romance-repulsion and how it affects it, because I can definitely say that I can usually tell the difference between PDA and PDAand that, while PDA usually doesn’t flare up my romance-repulsion, PDA definitely does and I’m now wondering if it’s because the people engaging in PDA are, in a way, forcing me to participate in a romantic scene/situation that I did not concent to or agree to be involved in.
Thoughts?
The number of people reblogging this with tags like ‘oh this makes so much sense now!’ Tells me this is definitely something the aromantic community should have been talking about for a while!
[id: an extract from the linked article reading:
Although a number of people said they participated in PDA, 32% of people who identify as women and 37% of people who identify as men said that they had engaged in PDA in a strictly performative way. So it really wasn’t about being caught up in the moment with their partner — it was about grabbing other people’s attention.
end id]
Plain text: (Big text) PDA vs (italics) PDA (end bug text and italics)
(Medium text) Aka: public displays of affection vs (italics) performative displays of affection (end plain text and italics)
I was talking to me mom today about PDA and, we got on the topic about how there really are two types of PDA: the first is really just displays of affection where you just happen to be in public and the second being where you are engaging in displays of affection specifically (italics) because (end italics) you are in public. End plain text
[id: an extract from the linked article reading: Although a number of people said they participated in PDA, 32% of people who identify as women and 37% of people who identify as men said that they had engaged in PDA in a strictly performative way. So it really wasn’t about being caught up in the moment with their partner — it was about grabbing other people’s attention. end id]
Plain text: Anyway: this is something I would like to explore with the community in the sense of romance-repulsion and how it affects it, because I can definitely say that I can usually tell the difference between PDA and (italics) PDA (end italics) and that, while PDA usually doesn’t flare up my romance-repulsion, (italics) PDA (end italics) definitely does and I’m now wondering if it’s because the people engaging in (italics) PDA (end italics) are, in a way, forcing me to participate in a romantic scene/situation that I did not concent to or agree to be involved in. End plain text
really don’t like using “they haven’t experienced oppression like we have” as a reason to exclude fellow minorities for a lot of reasons, but probably a big one I don’t see much of is “if the one single thing everyone in our community has in common is the experience of being victimized, then who are we when we live in a world where we aren’t anymore?”
Aiming for a future where trans/homophobia doesn’t exist, and when we get there, start acting confused about why the the queer “community” is dissolving.
Like… you can’t build a foundation out of sand and wonder why your house is gone when the tide comes in
We’re supposed to be a family, not a museum curation of pain
nothing I or anyone else can add can make it funnier that some movie production company announced a movie named ‘They/Them’ on twitter like it’s a mcu movie
I’m very concerned considering this company makes horror movies (that can be really hit or miss sometimes) so I’m worried about where they’re going with this…….
Things about this movie that made me progressively more excited as I read about them:
The premise is “serial killer at a conversion camp”
The camp is run by Kevin Bacon
The director and a good portion of the people involved in making this are queer and want to portray queer people positively
when someone has a queer identity label ive never heard of or maybe don’t fully understand i just go “well that’s neat” and move on because that’s their business and not mine. why do some of y’all make it your mission to be like “i don’t understand your queerness so i must harass you”
transmascs butch women transfemmes queer people attracted to men
being unfairly diagnosed with bad vibes by the rest of the community for the crime of association with masculinity (especially if we find *joy* in masculinity or masculine presentation)
Op I’m reblogging this with your tags because I think they help illustrate your point better and I don’t want people to misunderstand you
[image description: the tags screenshotted read ‘by which I mean transfemmes are hated for their agab, and even moreso if they aren’t fem enough/like being masc, transmascs are ‘gender traitors’, butch women are told they SOMEHOW copy the male gaze, anyone attracted to men is somehow passing on man germs which. listen to urself, it’s uuuuuh the r@df/em talking points :///, (can u tell this was hard to phrase lol, cldnt say association w ‘men’ bc trans guys Are men, wanted to make sure that last bit was in parentheses, bc transfemmes are seen as masc even if they Are super feminine, but yh my point is u don’t get more queer points for being closer to (heavily cisnormative) femininity), also queer masculinity is good and beautiful!!, some ppl are queer in masculine ways!!!, anyway, mine, misc’ end description]
I recently befriended a girl who is bi, and she has literally apologized for liking men in a zoom room where about half the people do like men. And I kinda wanted to yell at her for apologizing. Like, what’s wrong with liking guys? Gay guys do. Straight women do. So why can’t bi people?
There’s a huge difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity and men. Like, each of them are independent from one another and treating them all as bad is not cool.
Anyway yeah, masculinity should never be a bad thing, of course neither should femininity but I’m advocating for masculinity right now.
I’ve listened to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’ at least 7 times consecutively and plan to give it at least another 3 listens tonight. I make no apologies for this.
“It’s an easy mistake to make. He’s effeminate and therefore we think he’s weak, but that man sits in pubs and clubs and houses and hotels, telling all the world about his homosexuality out loud, all day long. It doesn’t matter who’s listening - priests or housewives or landlords or anyone. He tells the truth and he doesn’t care. No-one else does that.”
I really wish people would understand that there are other forms of queer rep besides two same gendered people kissing.
A queer character is queer rep regardless of their romance or a lack thereof even. Ace and aro people exist. Trans people exist. Bi people exist. Queer characters are rep by existing, not just by who they interact with. If a character is nonbinary, they are queer rep whether they kiss someone or not. A bi character in a relationship with someone a different gender is still queer rep because they are still bi. Queer characters can even just be friends with one another. They can be single! And still be queer because that’s who they are not who they do!
This whole trend of deciding if art is valid representation based on romance and ships is reductive and dismissive of identities existing within individuals. And of the communities that we all need.
Just please, stop reducing entire identities down to relationships. Its all good and fun to enjoy your ships, but you have to remember the community is bigger than just romances.
We have a Discord server where we play & talk all things D&D/TTRPG’s! This is a safe space for Queer Folks! Come to us, D&D friends! We have a lot of Witchy stuff happening too!
“Agree with most of this but would like to point out that a part of the push to make Pride less sexual is to make it a safe space for queer children and to help straights realize being queer isn’t just about fetishes.“
(The person is not tagged because I don’t want to send any hate to them, and the reply isn’t being responded to directly because Tumblr has made that near impossible)
When I came out, my mom told me I couldn’t tell my little sister because it was too sexual.
Later, I moved to the “Big City”, what I hoped to be a haven for queer people. I was with one of the first queer friends my wife and I had made in the city, we had just watched their wrestling debut, and had gone to their apartment afterwards with a group of strangers. Some this group our friend had told us behind the scenes were much more right wing causing our friend to keep parts of their queer identity under wraps.
Our friend suddenly turned to us and began scolding us, telling me and my wife that one of their coworkers at the city Pride Centre had approached them and told them that she had seen me and my wife kiss, and we needed to cut it out with the PDA.
I nodded in front of this group of strangers and when I could no longer hold my tears back I excused myself to the bathroom, cried and waited there until it was no longer obvious I had been crying. We hurried out.
The kiss in question was a goodbye kiss, as my wife went back to campus, and I don’t remember it. I have always been rather shy with PDA and don’t think it could have been much more than a peck. The coworker later told our friend that she was going through a bad breakup and our friend later explained that this was actually the reason for the complaint.
I have never felt safe in queer spaces since. Talking to the same friend later, they asked me and my wife to chaperone the Queer Prom and without thinking I assured them we would make sure not to hold hands or dance while we were there so it would stay “a safe space for children”.
When I was a child, I stumbled into a pride parade and was shocked and upset by the men in gold short shorts. My uncle apologized for letting me see something so sexual and awful.
Every single thing queer people do is “about fetishes” to people who hate queerness. Being less sexual is not going to change that.
I had seen short shorts before. I would see them again, and no one would apologize for that. The thing I was being kept “safe” from was not overly sexual behaviour, and considering there are already laws against indecent exposure, the same is true for children now.
Keeping theoretical children safe has been the justification for the continuing genocide against queer people all around the globe, so this rhetoric is not harmless. It has been used to put queer people in labour campsandslaughter them.
I have nothing to prove to “straights” and I was the “queer child” who was horrified by the pride parades. As an adult, the discomfort I felt at seeing queer people existing happily and authentically in short shorts, is not something I needed to be kept safe from.
This nonsense is nothing more or less than the same moral panic that has killed queer people throughout history.
fauncatboyhonum:a gender related to being a half-catboy, half-faun nonhuman
for anon! the first three stripes are from the faunhonum flag, with the brown and green stripe swapped both for symmetry and because brown can represent both fauns and cats, and the silver and blue stripe are for catboys.
flag id: a flag with 5 vertical stripes. in order, they are very light yellow-green, dark brown, brown, dark silver, and light sky blue.
my take on homoflexible lesbian and lesboy flags for tf2 anon! the left flags are based on this homoflexible flag, the right ones are based on this homoflexible flag, and the rest of the colors are from the lesbianandlesboyflags.
flag id: the top left flag has 4 stripes. in order, they are orange, light purple, dark red-pink, and very dark pink-purple. the top right flag has 3 vertical stripes on each side of the flag and 7 horizontal stripes in the center, with the third and fifth being larger than the rest and the fourth being larger than those. the vertical stripes on the left side are dark red-pink, red-pink, and white; the vertical stripes on the right side are white, orange, and red-orange; and the horizontal stripes are black, grey, white, black, white, grey, and black.
the bottom left flag has 4 stripes. in order, they are light orange, light purple, dark blue, and dark purple-pink. the bottom right flag has 3 vertical stripes on each side of the flag and 7 horizontal stripes in the center, with the third and fifth being larger than the rest and the fourth being larger than those. the vertical stripes on the left side are pink-red, light orange, and white; the vertical stripes on the right are white, soft indigo, and dark blue; and the horizontal stripes are black, grey, white, black, white, grey, and black. end id.
flag id: the right flag has 6 stripes. in order, they are dark blue, purple, yellow, light pink, cream, and turquoise. the middle has 5 stripes. in order, they are light sky blue, purple, light pink, cream, and light sky blue. the right has 5 stripes. in order, they are dark blue, light pink, faded purple, light pink, and dark blue. end id.
flag id: the left flag has 6 stripes. in order, they are red-pink, sky blue, blue-white, red-white, light red-orange, and bright red-pink. the right flag has 6 stripes. in order, they are sky blue, red-pink, light red-pink, blue-white, soft indigo, and dark blue. end id.
On par with the argument of Aziraphale and Crowley fitting so many different types of queer rep into them because they can be whatever we want to see them and that’s awesome… There’s an argument I always miss in this sort of “discourse”, and it’s that even outside of human labels and identities, they are absolutely queer characters? Like, even ignoring all the human stuff, saying they might not have gender for real, are canonically sexless, etc etc… Like, guys, they’re so queer when you just look at them as angels (demons).
Crowley’s presentation is continuously neat, tidy, fashionable and modern. He isn’t presenting at all the way other demons are. Demons are expected to be dirty, with old clothes, hair full of grease and blood and other gross liquids, sores on their faces, animals on their heads. Crowley doesn’t confirm to this presentation at all. We speak about his gender non-conformity in human terms, but his demon non-conformity is at least as important IMO. Crowley chooses how he wants to look, how he wants to be seen, for himself, even if it’s looked down on and met with scorn from the demons around him. (Does this strike cords with anyone else who’s gnc? Because it should.)
Likewise, Aziraphale doesn’t wear the tailored suits and the gold tattoos that are a normal presentation for an angel. He engages in a lot of unangelic activities, like hoarding books and enjoying meals, and he gets flack for it the same way any person who fails at having the proper interests for their gender gets flack from their environment, too.
Already on their own these characters are queer coded that way. And then there’s their relationship, their love for one another, the way they’re drawn to a member of a group they’re not at all supposed to be attracted to. They fall in love with the wrong person. The person they love isn’t the gender sort of angel they’re supposed to, allowed to love. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
Especially Aziraphale goes through all the struggles a lot of us queer folk go though. He tries to not see it. They’re just acquaintances, it’s nothing - okay, they work together sometimes - okay, they might be friends, but they can’t - oh fuck he loves Crowley, and it’s mutual, and he cannot live in a world that doesn’t have Crowley, but loving him puts Crowley at risk, they can’t let anyone see, ever. That’s, yeah, that’s just living in a homophobic world, y'all. It does that to us. And Crowley is more comfortable with his love in itself (and cares less for the approval of his family side), but he too is aware of the risks and aware of how difficult giving in to it is for Aziraphale.
Like, yes, the characters aren’t human. There’s analogies and metaphors and shit here, yeah. But their entire story is queer as fuck. Please shut up about the queer baiting.
We live in a society in which everything is sexualized, and yet heterosexuality is somehow decoupled from the sex part of it.
Being straight is so ubiquitous, it’s somehow not thought of as a sexual thing most of the time. I think it has something to do with conflating sex and love, which is a whole other barrel of monkeys. But I think this explains so many homophobes and exclusionists’ views:
That simply being gay is seen as being openly sexual, even when the person in question is just kissing or holding hands with their partner, or even just mentioning their orientation
That an asexual person mentioning that they are asexual is “dragging people into their sex life”
Meanwhile, a straight person mentioning that they are straight, talking about their partner, and being openly affectionate in public with them is not seen as being unnecessarily sexual or corrupting the children because that’s just love
Related, that assigning children as heterosexual and joking about it is normal (onesies with “ladies man” and such on them)
If I may add; the casual tone that cishets will discuss how they’re “trying to have children” etc. Which is literally just sex like that’s sex. You can talk about sexual reproduction and how often you attempt it but GOD forbid my girlfriend and I share a milkshake at the park
one annoying knock on effect of queerbaiting is how it kind of kills actually good serialized queer storytelling because audiences will either a) assume deliberate relationship and character progression is irrelevant and ignorable until a really obvious beat then claim it “came out of nowhere” or b) go on the offensive and assume malicious intent. like if your audience won’t give the benefit of the doubt then you can’t have long term slow burn romances, gradual identity discovery arcs, or even standard breakup narratives because those could all look like “baiting” before the resolution episode comes out in three month’s time or something.
