What is going on?
Everything on that blog is really convoluted.
A troll? A real person? With real opinions?
So confused.
SO.
CONFUSED.
I have no idea, and honestly enough I don’t want to know - I just blocked them straight off because there is shit I do not need to see.
(Source: subvriska)
So on the #genderqueer tag on Tumblr I’ve been seeing this identity spectrum picture going around and thought I’d try filling it out! So, let’s see…
[image description: at the top, there is a transgender logo and text saying “This graph is a fun exercise to help one understand that Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sexual Orientation does not have to be black and white as both the Heteronormative/Cisgender society around us (aka Straight People) and the LGBT Community ascribe them to be — find your own identity with this exercise and sincerely explore who YOU are and challenge the stereotypes of Gender and Sexual Orientation. Simply draw a line that best identifies along these spectrums.”
Below there are four lines indicating the relevant “spectrums”, first SEX, going from “Female” to “Male” with “Intersex” in the middle, then GENDER IDENTITY going from Woman to Man with Genderqueer in the middle, then GENDER EXPRESSION going from Feminine to Masculine with Androgynous in the middle and finally SEXUAL ORIENTATION going from “Attracted to Female” to “Attracted to Male” with “Bisexual Pansexual Asexual” in the middle.
At the bottom, there is text: “This has been a production of http://translategender.org and Ahuviya Harel http://adf-fuensalida.deviantart.com” - Reproduction is permitted for Fair Use and Psycho-Educational purposes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.”
The spectrum labelled SEX has a red “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped across it. In blue cursive, someone has written “I reject your premises” over the other three.]
…uhhhh. Okay, let’s try this from scratch, shall we.
(personalised versions of the above spectra that actually work for the poster and should hopefully serve to point out some of the serious flaws and assumptions in play here at the above link.)
4. Do you identify as a part of the queer community? What communities do you identify with?
As you might have guessed from me repeatedly referring to myself as queer in the answers to the previous questions, the answer here is YES! *g* I used to be more vehement about not identifying as part of LGBT, just if there was a Q or an A, but I’ve had some amazing experiences with my university LGBT society, so I’ve been easing on that - although it still grates that there is no letter for me it’s a bit of a semantic argument, and I’ve seen so-called “queer” communities that were extraordinarily asexual-hostile and plain LGBT ones that were very ace-friendly. However, I really don’t identify as L, G or B in the slightest… if you force me to identify as one of the big three sexualities I’ll generally pick L as the closest, but that’s “closest” in roughly the same sense as that if you’re trying to get to Berlin and you end up on Saturn that’s still closer than being on Pluto - technically true, but for all practical purposes you’re still stranded in the outer reaches of the solar system.
I’m also nonbinary/genderqueer (not quite decided on which one as there seems to be Stuff and History and Connotations I am missing) and consider myself sort of hovering on the fringes of the trans community, and sort of go back and forth between identifying as trans, identifying as trans* only with the asterisk or not identifying as either trans or cis (I don’t generally consider identifying as cis, except sometimes I have these panic-filled conversations with Sciatrix in which I go “but what if I’m cis and appropriating? What if I’m a cis w… w… w-word?!” when I discover that I can’t actually bear to call myself ‘woman’ even in an if clause anymore. :/). The thing is that I have relatively few problems going by my assigned gender; it makes me somewhat uncomfortable and I think I prefer other pronouns if possible, but I don’t have nearly the problems a lot other trans people have and the chances of me ever actually socially transitioning are pretty low. As a result, it seems sort of appropriating to call myself trans when I face comparitively few of the issues and my experience is still a lot like a cis person’s in many ways. At the same time, I don’t know how much of this is internalised “I’m not trans enough” bullshit (especially considering things like, you know, I *cannot* socially transition to my gender because no one bloody realises it exists), I’ve had some really great and welcoming experiences in trans spaces (my LGBT society’s trans evening and the transyadas come to mind) and I do notice that there are commonalities we share that just aren’t there with cis people. And it is nice to be able to sit back and talk about the genderstuff!
Whiiich all has comparatively little to do with asexuality but hey, LGBT has a T in it too!
Kaz has finally given in and got a tumblr in order to comment on all the interesting stuff going on, mainly in the asexual community. Eir main online presence still remains at Dreamwidth, which is where ze can mostly be found.
In no particular order, Kaz is: asexual; autistic; possibly unhealthily fond of tea; nonbinary and possibly genderqueer not sure on that last (preferred pronouns ze/zer/zer or lately ze/eir/zer - if you can't decide between Spivak and ze go for a hybrid of both!); member of the cucumber club (aka "my romantic orientation is divide by cucumber"); disabled; German; a mathematician; a person who stutters; currently knitting a triangular asexual flag scarf.
