Link
August 23, 2011
57 notes
Our language, tiger: Wow, the "queerplatonic" post has over 70 notes

zincfingers:

Oh no, some people were telling you not to use a homophobic slur to describe straight platonic relationships. HOW DARE THEY

…

…

Because. You know. The relationships I - nonbinary identifying as in between female and neutrois and presenting as/passing as female in RL - have with two women. Both of whom I love very much and where I really, really want to permanently live with at least one of them (both is looking pretty unlikely :( and this would require a transatlantic move in both cases), maybe raise kids with them, maybe marry one of them if legally possible - because of tax/visa/citizenship stuff and because if I’m ever going to marry *anyone* they’re at the top of the list-

Those relationships are totally straight platonic relationships.

Not even going to touch the rest of it, just. JFC.

Tags: privilege lgbtqap asexuality queer queer hierarchy white privilege lgbtq rant. over.

Link
August 23, 2011
57 notes
Our language, tiger: Wow, the "queerplatonic" post has over 70 notes

weesleyisourking:

Most of which are people replying, saying things akin to “No one cares about your micromanaging of your relationships”; “Stop trying to be pretentious or get oppression street creds”; “I have relationships like this, you don’t need a special word for it”; and even, “Wow, the asexuals always have…

I… had no idea this was going on, and this upsets me so. Damn. Much.

Okay. People. You’ve got issues with the word queerplatonic? Shut the FUCK up. I’m not the originator of the word, that’s s.e. smith/meloukhia of this ain’t livin’, but it *was*, AFAIK, first properly introduced to the world on my blog in a conversation ou was having with me… partially because we had both felt the lack of a word for this so keenly.

I spent two. Fucking. Years. Driving myself up the wall over my relationships - in particular, over my ideal relationship *and* over the relationship I had with one of my now-zucchini. Was it romantic or friendship? Was I accidentally dating someone? Did I have a girlfriend? How could you even tell? And what on earth did you do if the question didn’t lead anywhere because neither of the two options really fit? I agonised over this, and I honestly don’t think someone who has been there, facing not just “this relationship I have, I have no fucking clue how to categorise it, I don’t think the categories I’ve been given work” but “actually, the categories I’ve been given don’t work for my relationships at all, neither in terms of the ones I have but also the ones I want.” All around me were people iding as hetero/homo/biromantic or aromantic and I was sitting there going “…homoromantic? aromantic? in between? NOTHING WORKS NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE”, do you have any idea what that feels like?

Queerplatonic? Zucchini? I may not have invented those words, but they’re my words all the same. They are, in a a way, some of the most important words I have. More than asexual. More than nonbinary. And if you don’t feel the need for them, then don’t you fucking touch them.

Tags: privilege lgbtqap asexuality queer queer hierarchy white privilege lgbtq rant. over.

Link
July 14, 2011
4 notes
Kaz's identity spectrum

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.)

Tags: asexual asexuality queer genderqueer nonbinary lgbt

Text
July 11, 2011
5 notes

30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Days 8 and 9

Do you believe there should be asexual pride? What do you imagine it being like?

…

*looks at cake, Doctor Who, amoebas, ace flags, ace crafts, black rings, veggie puns, everything ever in the #damn my asexual privilege tag, etc. etc. etc.*

“Should be”? Doesn’t it sort of already exist?

By which I mean: like now, but more, with more stuff offline, and having it be more known - my (lost, sadly lamented, replacement underway) asexual flag keychain isn’t all that useful in terms of PRIDE!!! if nobody I meet knows what it means.

9. What does being asexual mean to you?

It means not being broken.

It means community, it means pride (see above!), it means dissecting the definition of romantic love, it means creating the relationships I want for myself, it means sharing an identity with some amazing people and incredible friends, it means being really fucking queer and loving it. ;)

It means not feeling I have to share the parts of my body which I feel are mine and mine alone and where the thought of someone else touching them makes me want to curl up and hide with anyone (and sometimes I feel like being able to say “no, I am not going to have sex or anything remotely approaching sex, with anyone, ever” is the most wondrous and amazing thing in the world.)

But at the end of the day, it means - I’m asexual and that’s okay, and the fact that I love being ace is also okay, there is nothing wrong with me and I don’t need to try to dig through my soul or medical history hunting for sexual attraction hidden in some cranny somewhere and nobody gets to tell me I ought to.

Tags: asexual asexuality queer 30 day asexuality challenge

Text
July 09, 2011
11 notes

apparently there is an asexuality and queerness thing going around AGAIN or possibly STILL-

Dear people who are going “how dare asexuals call themselves queer!”-

I am a nonbinary (call me ze, baby) somewhere in between neutrois and girl maybe fluidly maybe multigenderedly it is not quite clear asexual with a romantic orientation of “error: divide by cucumber” who spends eir free time deconstructing the romance/friendship binary and is queerplatonically attracted to women and not men (and sometimes calls this “homoWTF” via rounding to the nearest binary especially since people read this as same-gender.)

You fucking wish you could be as queer as I am.

Tags: asexual asexuality damn my asexual privilege nonbinary queer

Text
July 06, 2011

30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Day 4

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!

Tags: asexual asexuality lgbt queer nonbinary genderqueer