i’ll see your “any amount of even mild joshing about the bad behavior of privileged people is Setting Back the Movement” and raise you “humor is necessary to sustain any movement since responding to every instance of your mistreatment with deadly seriousness and boundless patience is demoralizing” and “a world in which people dare not ever joke at the expense of the powerful without fearing the loss of their fundamental rights is a dystopia, actually”
i’ve seen a lot of people concerned about questioning kids lately.
lots of people who were concerned that young girls might identify as nonbinary, for example, because of internalized misogyny. or young gay people who might identify as ace or aro, because of internalized homophobia.
i honestly have a lot of sympathy for people who mis-identify themselves. it’s something that most of us have struggled with at least once before realizing that we aren’t straight or aren’t cis. many of us have struggled with it twice, three times, or a dozen times!
it’s not fun to realize you were wrong. it’s not fun to live one way, feeling wrong and lost and strange and broken, because you wrongly believed that that must be who you are.
but. mis-identification is not caused by having “too many” options.
i understand this concern. i really do. I have no doubt that those examples i mentioned above do happen, very often. but it’s not really any different than my experience, and i would not blame it on any other person but myself. i was a “tomboy” little girl, i was gender nonconforming, i was a trans guy, i was a bi chick, i was a gay guy.
the way i choose to identify is ultimately up to me. i went through the trials of finding my identity in the haystack like everyone else.
i care a lot about the people who mis-identify, and i’d like to offer them support. this support does not mean that the groups that they mis-identified with are wrong or evil for allowing this person into their ranks. it means spreading the message that mis-identifying is okay! that it’s okay to change your labels as much as you want, and to try out different identities, and to change your mind or change over time. THAT is how you support a confused, questioning person.
try to remember that for every confused gay kid who thought they were ace because they couldn’t cope with the idea that they were gay, there was also a confused little ace kid who thought they were gay because they couldn’t cope with the idea that they were just “broken”.
try to remember that for every young girl who has been taught to hate femininity and herself, there is also a trans or nonbinary kid who is constantly being told “no, you HAVE to be a girl. there is no other option.”
we will make mistakes. everyone mis-labels themself. practically no one just knows themself without any effort – it’s a process of self-discovery, and it is painful and complicated. and we should be helping each other.
mis-identification happens when someone doesn’t know all of the options that exist. it happens because of stereotypes, because of bigotry, because of societal pressure and peer pressure and and and.
it is too complicated to blame on one thing. and you don’t know another person better than they know themself. assuming that is dangerous.
present all of the options to someone who is questioning instead of disguising, denying, or slandering some options rather than others. knowledge is power. that questioning person should be well-equipped to think, and try, and get to know themself, without you adding even more prejudice to the list.
concern is one thing, but pushing other people to identify one way instead of another because YOU think it’s right or better (or more likely!) is another thing entirely.
be careful. be kind. and support that questioning person no matter what they end up identifying as.
happy valentines day the born this way narrative is simplistic and simply does not encompass the full range of the lived experiences of members of the queer community, from self-discovery to shifting identities to those formed by and/or in response to trauma. people are complicated. i love you
happy valentines day theres no wrong way to be queer, your experiences and feelings are your own and whether you feel like you were born queer or chose it or anything else you are no lesser for it. i love you
The word queer really gets on my nerves like I was trying to chat this girl up and flirt and it turns out “queer” for her just meant she dates trans men like hoe you’re straight leave me alone
Not to be a bitch but I feel like there is a small but non-negligible and vocal “queer” demographic who started using “queer” because they figured out that if they actually went into detail about their identity politics people would call them bigoted creeps.Â
“"MOGAI”“ genders and orientations will continue to feel threatening to the soul and progress of the community so long as your priority is to appeal to the sensibilities of the oppressor class and try to gain their approval in order to access their privilege.
Abandon that mentality for the self-defeating lost cause it is, and you no longer need to tailor yourself to be palatable to your oppressors, to fear or reject your allies, or to constantly calculate which vulnerable people you are willing to sacrifice for your own conditional acceptance.
Then and only then can real liberation happen.
a lot of queer people feel this thing you’re describing, this sense of being unmoored or aimless or overwhelmed with the prospect of living adult lives we — unlike our cis, straight peers — never imagined. Because our community struggles with higher rates of depression than the general population; because we haven’t historically had role models in books and TV shows and movies to show us the way; because political parties and religions have consistently scapegoated us and tried to take away our civil rights by distorting or erasing our stories; because we didn’t have a chance to test out our futures playing make-believe as kids or a chance to talk out our futures with our parents or pals or guidance counselors, for fear of seeming weird or because we didn’t even know queer adulthood could exist.
What you’re feeling is perfectly normal, is what I’m saying.
Queer discourse isn’t even discourse. Its just a bunch of queer people being queer and then some more people saying “you’re not allowed to actually and this is somehow progressive.”
🍓🧀 (archive) 