Concrete, 100% effective way to tell if someone doesn’t belong in a LGBT+/queer space:
They openly and actively hate/ want to hurt the people in that space
Controversial opinion here, I know, but just because you’re in a safe LGBT+/Queer space doesn’t mean you have to disclose their identity to everyone there. And people are allowed to bring their partners, regardless of their orientation, to those same spaces.
Obviously there are certain spaces that are for specific people, but at the same time, y’all are so obsessed with micromanaging queer spaces. The only thing that should be a litmus for entry into those spaces is: “does this person want to hurt someone else in this space and I know that? Yes? Then they aren’t fucken welcome. Regardless of identity.”
I volunteered in ine of the biggest queer youth clubs as an educator / guide (there isnt a word in english for these stuff).
We had so many queer kids that brought cishet friends and some of them didnt come out later, some of them really were cishet and that is fine.
They did no harm to the queer atmosphere and when someone new joined for the first time we gave them a little tour of the club and invited them to a one on one talk with one of the volunteers.
Ive had many of these conversations with teens at the ages of 12-19 and everyone calmed down when we told them there is no criteria to being there that this is a safe space and after a short explanation and some questions where many of them just blurted out their stories.
The non queer identifying people came for years either because they just met some friends from different places along the country and it was their usual hangout or because they really needed a safe space with no judgment in their lives.
Cishet people also need safe spaces where there are no gendered expectations of them and they can play with makeup and dresses and just be calm and learn about safe sexuality and consent.
Why in the world would you kick people who need safe spaces and benefit from them out???
Queer people seeing cishet people in queer spaces not acting weird and for once seeing the atmosphere is queer and the cis person has to adapt does marvels to one’s sense of how real it feels, how you could bring this safe space outside and this culture to other friends.
Introduce some of the stuff you learned to your friends and family maybe to some willing coworker idk.
The point is that our way to smash the patriarchy, gender roles, rape culture and more shit is too bring it outside and allow allies to be there cus why the fuck not
Thanks for sharing! This really highlights a collection of reasons why it’s important to not create these arbitrary rules to who can and can’t come in.
Also?
When I was in college, I had a cishet friend who was Christian and quietly felt homosexuality was a sin. I never heard her say so out loud….
…..which is why it STUNNED me when last year, she admitted she felt that way in college. But, she said, spending time with me in what we called the LGBTQIA+ group, to support me through a time when I was on and off suicidal, she discovered that queer people were, well….people. Who just wanted to be allowed to live. That might sound like “wow, the bar was belowground and she was doing the limbo with Satan,” but you must understand: this was 2006 in a very tiny town. Our senator had just compared homosexuality to both bestiality and pedophilia and there was a concerted push going on to write “one man, one woman” into the Constitution. Allison’s position (“I feel a certain kind of way but I’m not going to say it aloud”) was actually KINDER than most of the people around me.
And just spending time in our spaces, being around queer people, she realized “hey, what I have been told my whole life is a lie. These people are just people. Telling terrible jokes, having cookouts, fighting for basic human dignity, arguing over whether or not face painting is an appropriate college activity. There is no difference between them and me.”
Without a welcome into queer spaces, Allison might still be part of a homophobic church. Instead she helped organize her town’s first Pride parade in 2019.
“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, need to stick together.” — Tim Miller, gay performance artist
Gatekeeping kills. STOP THAT.
Lest anyone think that this is pandering to straight allies, it’s not. Straight people can exist in spaces without making it all about them, as hard as it may be to believe at certain parts of your life (and if that feels profoundly fake to you, I beg you to know some different straight people since the ones around you aren’t helping you).
Having straight people around doesn’t make a queer safe any more or less safe either, since queer people can be just as violent and horrific towards each other on the personal level that straight people can be towards us.
And that was the point i was attempting to make, that violent bigotry isn’t exclusive to cis straights. If we compartmentalize violence we guarantee the invasion of said violence because we’ll ignore blatant trojan horses.
And once again, gay people have children, and those children are sometimes cishet. Those children grow up in queer spaces. Expelling them is a really shitty thing to do, especially for kids who have never been a part of any other community
I’ve been thinking about identity politics a lot these days, and perhaps in denial about how much it actually affects me. In a common struggle for representation for example, I am very aware of how necessary it is to highlight particular identities, because each groups has different needs. This is why multiculturalism didn’t exactly work in the early 2000s, because cultures couldn’t just “play nice” with one another, united in a shared struggle for representation.
But that’s not the layer of identity politics I’m referring to, that’s really only the surface. I’m thinking about what is at play when it comes to gatekeeping, safeguarding one’s culture.
Recently, in consulting job postings for academic positions, I’ve been observing an interesting pattern in which many schools call for francophone specialists of Africa or the Caribbean, without explicitly including Asia, as if France didn’t colonize Vietnam for almost a hundred years. At first put off because this precisely what I work on, I started to wonder about the ulterior motives of search committees, my suspicious nature fueled by years and years of being on the lookout for myself in this line of work. Then someone I know tells me others find his work unviable because he is not studying the culture of his own kind, but that of another oppressed people. I found this to be unfair and discriminatory, especially coming from a white professor who is basically saying you need to study your own culture. Here in this example, people are calling out identity politics as if it’s a bad thing. A later, unrelated moment, I think about how defensive I get when I see “Vietnamese” on food networks and magazines, simply because they add peanuts or fish sauce to their dish. I think if they’re going to do it, they should do it right.
And then I pause to wonder: have we taken it too far, this politics of identity? How contradictory it is for me to be upset about job postings who disguise their need to hire Black candidates through the language of “diversity” which they mean to exclude an Asian like me, or to find the professor’s observations discriminatory when I hold on so dearly to what I know of my culture, and feel so protective of it that I don’t want others, especially those from an historically oppressive community to label or title my food in a certain way? Is that hypocritical?
But maybe there isn’t a wholesale version of identity politics that we can just pocket and use to our advantage. Maybe my protection of my culture and my memory of it is different from a White man’s perspective of how he sees identity politics evolving, because it is likely threatening for him. Or maybe they are related - why do I feel possessive and protective, if not an inheritance of colonial trauma? Perhaps gatekeeping isn’t fair if it’s a way for me to justify and claim the Truth of my very flawed, subjective memories of a certain culture, and perhaps we don’t go anywhere by holding on to the past. And yet it’s hard to let go when that is the only thing you can claim as your own in this world.
My autistic ass is wondering if truscum realize medicalization and gatekeeping are the first two stops on the “How do we make people like this stop existing?” train.
nope, that’s actually incorrect!
medicalization allows for transsexual individuals to undergo transition specific surgeries and go on hormones without it being considered as cosmetic. if the transsexual condition was demedicalized, insurance would no longer cover it, which would mean many transsexual people would not be able to get the procedures they need in order to live a happier life. the goal of medicalization isn’t to make sure that trans people stop existing, it’s actually the exact opposite. only dysphoric people should be transitioning. people without dysphoria will of course feel uncomfortable in their transitioning bodies, because they were content with the bodies of their biolgical sex. i’ve heard stories of non dysphoric trans people (or cis people) lying to medical professionals in order to obtain hormones, and later regretting it. medicalization is one of the only ways we can prevent transition regret.
Context: Being transgender was demedicalized in 2013. I began hormone treatment in 2016. It was not considered cosmetic, and in fact it cost me zero dollars at the point of access to get my HRT prescription - because it was covered by insurance as a necessary medical procedure to treat my dysphoria.
Further context: Literally nowhere in the OP did anybody say anything about who should or should not transition, or about dysphoria.
Still further context: I am autistic. I have actually witnessed the straight line from “This is a Psychological Disorder” to “We are the only ones who can properly tell who has this condition and how to treat it (and we’ll use that to conveniently delegitimize anyone who disagrees with us)” to “What exactly causes this condition?” to “How do we make people like this stop existing?”
And to top it all off, you are literally telling me stories of how medicalization failed… as an argument for medicalization.
Now that you have at least some understanding of what’s going on here, would you like to try lecturing someone who has actually been through the gates about how they work again? Or would you perhaps like to try something less embarrassing?
That also presents an extraordinary burden on trans people to solve the problem of inaccessible healthcare, having the condition pathologised in order to oblige insurers to cover it, rather than actually improving the accessibility of healthcare. At the very least this should be argued as a flawed, pragmatic solution to the immediate problem—“no, being trans is not a medical condition, but there is immediate benefit to us having it recognised as one, despite the long term harm.”
Also, ‘cosmetic’ does not mean ‘insignificant’.
The funny thing is, “flawed, pragmatic solution to the immediate problem” is exactly where this entire line of argument came from.
Gather ‘round, kids, it’s time for a queer history lesson.
So first off: Remember seeing this image in trans history posts?
That’s Christine Jorgensen. She was a pioneer in trans rights and in transition, and deserves respect for that. See, she transitioned beginning in 1949 - not exactly an easy time for queer people of any description.
From what I can gather, it appears that she always intended to be an activist about this - she spent several years preparing a documentary she intended to bring to the US. And, sure enough, news about her spread, and by 1952 articles like these were circulating.
Two years later, she would have her vaginoplasty under a doctor by the name of Harry Benjamin.
Dr. Benjamin, too, was a huge pioneer for trans rights. The treatment regimen of hormones and surgery that we know today? He developed part of it, and formalized it as a single course of treatment.
But.
But Dr. Benjamin was also a cishet man, and an authority figure. And that meant that he was phenomenally bad at knowing what trans people need or… anything about women.
You know how trans folks occasionally joke about how The System wants you to be a 1950s housewife?
That’s because “1950s housewife” is literally the template.
As a result, there were very stringent conditions on what you had to look like to be considered a True Transsexual. You had to be socially transitioned, effectively passing, not getting enough relief from hormones, wanting surgery now, and if you weren’t Straighty McStraight that counted against you very strongly.
(Oh, as an aside, this cishet man who was considered one of the greatest authorities on human sexuality? Specifically classed asexual people as not “true and full-fledged transsexuals.”)
And a key point of Harry Benjamin’s model? The “true and full-fledged transsexual” feels nothing but revulsion for her body and an immediate desire for surgery.
Now obviously this model leaves a lot of trans people (particularly trans men, who Dr. Benjamin did not work with) out in the cold. But some of us could look like we fit, if we worked hard at it.
So trans women lied. We lied our asses off to literally anybody who looked too cis or het to trust with the truth. We said everything they wanted to hear, we shared tips about which lines worked with each other… fuck, we still do this. Meanwhile, among ourselves, we were playing around with the boundaries of gender, forming connections, developing terminology… if only hyperdysphoric feminine white het trans women were going to be considered “true transsexuals,” then screw it, the rest of us were transgender.
However, what the medical community saw? Was a whole lot of trans women smiling and nodding and going “Yep, you sure do understand us perfectly, Mr. Doctor Man!” So of course this theory continued basically unchallenged for a long-ass time.
In the meantime, North American trans history basically has a generation-long gap, populated by the occasional cis doctor writing about us. You can thank Janice Raymond for that one - her work was instrumental in getting trans health care classified as cosmetic, and thus dropped by insurers.
Fast forward to 2005. Raymond’s work was finally undone less than a decade ago, but… all that gatekeeping around turning trans women into 1950s housewives? It’s had all this time going unchallenged. By now, it’s just institutional knowledge that That’s What Trans Women Are Like.
So of course, we lie our asses off again. And we use this wonderful new Internet thing to help each other lie our asses off. Which means that, eventually, two groups of people find out about it and double down hard on screwing us.
The first is doctors, who see an opportunity to build stronger gates, and thus stronger positions of authority and respect.
The second is trans women who actually are described by Dr. Benjamin’s theory. There’s a ton of social capital and easing of transition available if you just vocally buy into oppression.
And of course, since this is the first either group was hearing about it, it looked like a sudden explosion of “fake” trans people lying their way into medical treatment that these poor women desperately needed.
And thus, Harry Benjamin Syndrome was born. Its proponents actively and violently distanced themselves from the rest of us (I’ve actually seen HBSers say things like “I have a medical condition, I’m not a fucking queer.”) and worked their asses off to strengthen the gates, on the theory that they could have their treatment quicker and easier and be taken more seriously if they just got all the “fakers” out.
Over the last 13 years, we’ve made a lot more progress in trans visibility and rights - but the HBS movement has over sixty years of institutional inertia behind it, as well as a shrinking-but-still-active core of vocal proponents. And HBSers aren’t just useful patsies for cis doctors, either. There’s another group that benefits strongly from painting the vast majority of trans women as predatory fakers who are just trying to shove their way into spaces they don’t belong.
TERFs, of course. The same group who have been using tumblr as a controlled environment to figure out exactly how to pass their ideology to people without getting caught.
And that, kiddos, is how you get regurgitated Harry Benjamin Syndrome bullshit on tumblr, spewed by someone who’s too young to even remember what HBS was, in this the year 5778.
I love that the internet saw people comparing women and other alienated groups of people and went, “they’re dating,” and, “they support each other.” We’re improving as a society.
Does anyone know who these artists are?? They’re brilliant and I’d like to credit them!!
THIS IS HOW TO TAKE A TRASH OPINION COMIC AND MAKE IT BETTER. THANK YOU.
The best genre to ever have existed
These improved my day
GAY RIGHTS
these are the only things in the world i find worth crying for becayse it’s so fcking cute and wholesome wtf
I WOULD LIKE TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE OG ARTIST GREW OUT OF THEIR I’M NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS PHASE
AND NOW THE GIRLS ARE CANON
The “guys I respect” artist also came out as non-binary, generally got more accepting. It’s growth.
Reasons why the “trans is a medical condition” narrative bugs me:
It implies that being cis is normal and that being trans is abnormal, or a defect.
It implies that transness is something to be cured, fixed, or endured, rather than a part of yourself to be proud of.
It implies that transness is defined by suffering or unhappiness, when in fact most of us are happier after we accept ourselves as trans, and many of us embrace it.
It implies that the main problem with being trans is transness itself, rather than living in a horribly transphobic society.
By treating transness as a private, individual issue instead of as a social phenomenon, it fails to hold transphobic people and transphobic culture accountable for why trans people suffer.
It implies that you need medical authorities and/or gatekeepers to verify that you’re actually trans, to “diagnose” you with it, and that you don’t have the right to identify as whatever is best for you. It takes power out of trans people’s hands and gives it to cis people.
It implies that cis people are better authorities on whether a person is trans, and what it means to be trans, than trans people are.
Requiring diagnosis/treatment from the medical establishment penalizes poor trans people, disabled or neurodivergent trans people, non-English-speaking trans people, and trans people of color.
It’s usually associated with the idea that you need body dysphoria to “prove” that you’re trans, which is exclusionary and harmful to a lot of trans people.
It’s connected to nasty ideas like “autogynephilia” which disproportionately pathologize trans women, police their identities, and make it harder for them to get support or transition.
It puts non-binary trans people in a difficult position, because the medical establishment has no idea how to deal with us, or transition routes besides FTM or MTF.
Now, I can definitely understand why gender dysphoria (especially body dysphoria) might be considered a medical condition. But even then, I think we should be cautious about how much of a person’s suffering we attribute to illness, and how much of it is caused by the society around them.
Also: It’s perfectly fine if you’re trans and you see your transness as a medical condition. If that model works for you, that’s great and I support that. I’m just saying that, when transness in general is conceptualized as a medical condition, or when that’s seen as the only way to be trans, it bothers me a lot.
I can’t believe I’m asking this (lmao) but can someone point me to an explanation of whymoving the goalpost in an argument is bad.
my own family unironically believes that if someone moves the goalpost after being shown evidence they’re wrong, that evidence “must not have been good enough” and it’s the other person’s fault for “not finding enough clear and indisputable evidence” and I’m starting to genuinely question my fucking sanity.
just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will
sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try
This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe “Actually I was wrong” option.
I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn’t ‘belong’ to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There’s so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is “But you do have to be right about this, you can’t back out once you’ve even asked the question.”
I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.
IDAHOBITA+ 2022: Der Tag, an dem Acefeindlichkeit unbeachtet bleibt
#IDAHOBITA2022: Der Tag, an dem Acefeindlichkeit unbeachtet bleibt. Weil #Asexualität ebenso Teil queerer Geschichte ist
Inhalts- und Triggerwarnungen: Queerfeindliche medizinische Gewalt, sexualisierte Gewalt, Acefeindlichkeit
Der 17.05.2022 markiert den Internationalen Tag gegen Homo-, Bi-, Inter-, Transfeindlichkeit (IDAHOBIT); ins Leben gerufen, um an die offizielle Depathologisierung von Homosexualität durch die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) am 17.05.1990 zu erinnern. Das vom WHO verwendete…
“Wer schützt mich vor Deutschland?//QUEER as in ‘I CARE ABOUT YOU AND FOR YOU!’”-Rede #do1906
“Wer schützt mich vor Deutschland?//QUEER as in ‘I CARE ABOUT YOU AND FOR YOU!'”-Rede #do1906
Rede vom 19.06.2021, Dortmund Hauptbahnhof, im Rahmen der “Pride Month is our Month – Queer Liberation now!”-Demonstration von TransAction Dortmund
Ich grüße Euch alle, hallo. Mein Name ist Pancake von Aces NRW und meine Pronomen sind x und xs. Gerne möchte ich einige Worte mit Euch teilen, die im Folgenden staatliche Gewalt, speziell Polizeigewalt, Rassismus und instutionelle Inter- und…
The whole #SheRa “debate” has shown that male nerds are gonna try to gatekeep EVERYTHING women do, no matter what. The new She-Ra was made by women for young girls, but men are the ones freaking out.
Make no mistake, this is performative. This is intentional. This is to gatekeep.
EVERY time a new property comes out that isn’t directed at them, they freak out. They always target women because they can’t stand the idea that geek culture isn’t being filtered through their male fantasy nostalgic lenses. I’d wager 99% of them never WATCHED She-Ra originally.
This is just another example of men trying to control the conversation to keep it focused on themselves. Well, let me tell YOU that your “hot takes” about what She-Ra looks like are not welcome here. She’s not being made for YOU. Your opinion does not matter.
Deal with it.
–
Also… She-Ra and He-Man were always meant to be 16 years old, even in the original properties. The fact that you want a 16 year old girl to look like she stepped out of a Frank Frazetta painting is pretty disgusting if you ask me.
I had to re-blog this just to comment on it since “my opinion doesn’t matter” apparently.
Firstly, we did watch. We watched He-Man, then when she came along we watched She-Ra too, which I guess nullifies your whole “new property” argument, but my “opinion” doesn’t matter so I can’t point out that fact.
I also can’t point out the fact that had the author of this post actually bothered to do what they accuse men of not doing and WATCHED the series, they’d see Adam (He-Man, you know, She-Ra’s TWIN brother) celebrate his 18th birthday in the first season of his original show, and then would know that the twins celebrate their birthday together (which just happens to be Christmas) in the Christmas Special. That’s at least 19 and going from memory but there might have been more birthdays specific to the twins along the way, so they weren’t at any point 16 “always meant to be 16 years old, even in the original properties”.
Meanwhile, creators who work on this show say while She-Ra hasn’t been assigned a specific age (people just assign 15-16 based on her design) they state that they think of her more as 19-20. Which is why a lot of us who actually did grow up playing with She-Ra toys (and kept talking about her and making websites and demanding the series on DVD making her relevant enough for this reboot to even happen) wonder why such a drastic redesign is needed for a character that’s supposed to be the same age as the original cartoon.
And for those who claim it’s because she’s “meant for young girls”. Then you’re obviously not aware of the reason She-Ra was created in the first place: To service the large number of young female He-Man fans. And it was for kids, it even had a talking broom. No one freaked out about She-Ra in a skirt then.
Next time you want to rant on men trying to ruin or “gatekeep” things that are supposed to be “for you”, then check your social message at the door, actually do the work it takes to present an informed opinion and remember that when you storm of on your latest tirade against whatever us evil men are doing next and trying to ruin something else in the name of “feminism” and “equality” us men who’s opinions don’t matter will be remembering the fond memories and the actually valuable social lessons we learned from cartoons we watched at kids like She-Ra and we’ll continue to appreciate those things for what they are, because we at least know that She-Ra’s physical appearance in her original incarnation (that version you hate so much) was beautiful because it was an outward reflection of her inner character. Beauty isn’t synonymous with sex, but I don’t really expect Tumblr to understand the complexities of beauty and sexuality, it never has in the past.
• “witches don’t like crowds”? tell that to my cousin, a witch, who lives in brooklyn and feels like her energy is depleted every time she leaves the city
• “death and supernatural things fascinate you”? tell that to my little sister, a witch, who passes out if she sees an animal hurt, let alone dead
• “you like to collect crystals, stones, seashells, etc”? how about my kitchen witch grandmother? the only crystals she cares about are sugar and salt
• “you love nature and feel a connection with it” etc. forest walks or “forest bathing” is a scientifically proven antidepressant. for all humans not just witches. and the moon and stars are for anyone who cares enough to notice them
• “you naturally prefer silver more than gold because silver is the color of the moon” what tf? tell that to my covenmate whose most precious magical tool is a gold statue her mother brought to america when she moved to america from brazil
• that shit about the elements is jut cozy internet culture. also not every witch works with the elements (for instance my cousin, the brooklyn witch from earlier, works with the spirits that inhabit the city more than with thunderstorms)
• “more energy when the moon shines” tell that to my best friend in the whole wide world as he, a satanist & witch, as he does his most powerful work under the black sky of a new moon
• “strong empathy” tell that to my catholic friend, who is the most capital E Empath i know, and also a staunch catholic and definitely NOT a witch (not that the two are mutually exclusive)
• “intense dreams” tell that to my best friend who gets pisssed when i discuss my crazy dreams because he, a witch, only dreams about shit like grocery shopping
• “YOURE INTERESTED IN WITCHCRAFT” this is the only one that matters
• “you just feel that you’re different” fuck that. it’s not about bEiNg DiFfErEnT it’s about practicing witchcraft.
i’ve been seeing posts like this float around social media and it’s so disheartening. the only thing you need to do to be a witch is practice witchcraft. what that means is up to you. YES you can check every box on this list and be a witch. you can also check literally none of them (except for being interested in witchcraft lol) and be a witch. stop fucking gatekeeping!!
there’s no such thing as a BoRn WiTcH!!! i have witches in my family, that doesn’t make ME a witch, just like my grandma being catholic doesn’t make ME catholic. i am a witch because i have CHOSEN THAT PATH.
i started practicing witchcraft when i was 13. i’m nearing 8 years of witchcraft under my belt (which is nothing compared to people who have been practicing for decades) but i do know that witchcraft doesn’t choose you, you choose witchcraft. your intention determines how powerful your craft is. the only wrong way to be a witch is believe that it doesn’t take real effort and work. what that work consists of is up to you.
✨This is a gatekeeper free zone✨
You all are valid and wonderful and your practice is valid and wonderful. Nobody can devalue your craft or try to take it from you.
To this day, I meet so many witches that practice in so many different ways and it’s beautiful.
I haunt various tags about it sometimes and it just…flabbergasts me that this thing is still alive after 5 years. Before you get all puffed up, I was the one who made the offering in question.
I did the Spongecake. I’ve been told Spongecake is my legacy and honestly it seems that way. Just some weird thing that the community still likes and celebrates, which is great.
It’s just horribly confusing to me, really, given it’s been so long and the internet usually buries things like this pretty quickly.
I guess I’ll give you some more background on the offering itself and the circumstances around it.
So, 2012 was just not a good year for us financially. We were living off of food donated from various food pantries, because my mother was supporting my brother and I on less than minimum wage in Southern California.
I got used to eating very little to make things stretch, or just not caring about what I ate, so long as there was SOMETHING.
My parents’ divorce had been finalized that year, or nearly was. The child support my father paid was abysmal; he always paid it but it was nowhere near enough. After months of feeding her youngest kids on fast food (enough that my brother and I started to get sick a lot, like puking and so on) she had begged him for more money to feed his kids.
He said no. So, food pantry stuff and fast food were staples.
We had one meal a day and the rest was snacks.
The sponge cakes themselves, therefore, were a rarity. Something that was a Want rather than a Need. So was the whipped cream and strawberries - we didn’t have a tone of fresh fruit for a while.
I wanted to eat all of them, fuck yeah I did, I have a sweet tooth the size of fucking Jupiter. But I decided to make an offering instead, and you all saw the picture, saw the original post on a blog that no longer exists (I’m sad about that, actually).
But I never went into food related issues surrounding the offering.
No I didn’t make it from scratch and no it wasn’t the best quality but we almost never had things like that around. The sponge cakes were never seen again after that.
The offering was made of rare, precious deeply loved things. Things I wanted, on instinct to hoard for myself. I was hungry. Trying not to be, but I was.
I couldn’t think of anything that might mean more to Loki, aside from the fact that it’s, well, cake. Come on. He loves His cake.
I never expected the blow up and I certainly never expected people to still be finding some kind of meaning in it now, but here’s a little more info on Sponge Cake Day, the stuff the posts from heathen and lokean blogs don’t know, because I never mentioned it until now.
Concrete, 100% effective way to tell if someone doesn’t belong in a LGBT+/queer space:
They openly and actively hate/ want to hurt the people in that space
Controversial opinion here, I know, but just because you’re in a safe LGBT+/Queer space doesn’t mean you have to disclose their identity to everyone there. And people are allowed to bring their partners, regardless of their orientation, to those same spaces.
Obviously there are certain spaces that are for specific people, but at the same time, y’all are so obsessed with micromanaging queer spaces. The only thing that should be a litmus for entry into those spaces is: “does this person want to hurt someone else in this space and I know that? Yes? Then they aren’t fucken welcome. Regardless of identity.”
I volunteered in ine of the biggest queer youth clubs as an educator / guide (there isnt a word in english for these stuff).
We had so many queer kids that brought cishet friends and some of them didnt come out later, some of them really were cishet and that is fine.
They did no harm to the queer atmosphere and when someone new joined for the first time we gave them a little tour of the club and invited them to a one on one talk with one of the volunteers.
Ive had many of these conversations with teens at the ages of 12-19 and everyone calmed down when we told them there is no criteria to being there that this is a safe space and after a short explanation and some questions where many of them just blurted out their stories.
The non queer identifying people came for years either because they just met some friends from different places along the country and it was their usual hangout or because they really needed a safe space with no judgment in their lives.
Cishet people also need safe spaces where there are no gendered expectations of them and they can play with makeup and dresses and just be calm and learn about safe sexuality and consent.
Why in the world would you kick people who need safe spaces and benefit from them out???
Queer people seeing cishet people in queer spaces not acting weird and for once seeing the atmosphere is queer and the cis person has to adapt does marvels to one’s sense of how real it feels, how you could bring this safe space outside and this culture to other friends.
Introduce some of the stuff you learned to your friends and family maybe to some willing coworker idk.
The point is that our way to smash the patriarchy, gender roles, rape culture and more shit is too bring it outside and allow allies to be there cus why the fuck not
Thanks for sharing! This really highlights a collection of reasons why it’s important to not create these arbitrary rules to who can and can’t come in.
Also?
When I was in college, I had a cishet friend who was Christian and quietly felt homosexuality was a sin. I never heard her say so out loud….
…..which is why it STUNNED me when last year, she admitted she felt that way in college. But, she said, spending time with me in what we called the LGBTQIA+ group, to support me through a time when I was on and off suicidal, she discovered that queer people were, well….people. Who just wanted to be allowed to live. That might sound like “wow, the bar was belowground and she was doing the limbo with Satan,” but you must understand: this was 2006 in a very tiny town. Our senator had just compared homosexuality to both bestiality and pedophilia and there was a concerted push going on to write “one man, one woman” into the Constitution. Allison’s position (“I feel a certain kind of way but I’m not going to say it aloud”) was actually KINDER than most of the people around me.
And just spending time in our spaces, being around queer people, she realized “hey, what I have been told my whole life is a lie. These people are just people. Telling terrible jokes, having cookouts, fighting for basic human dignity, arguing over whether or not face painting is an appropriate college activity. There is no difference between them and me.”
Without a welcome into queer spaces, Allison might still be part of a homophobic church. Instead she helped organize her town’s first Pride parade in 2019.
“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, need to stick together.” — Tim Miller, gay performance artist
hi sorry for this extremely long rant but i just have to finally be able to talk to someone because i am so?? tired??? of not being allowed to say literally fucking anything????? like there literally are so incredibly few words a-specs have permission to use on this website or else we have to face The Discourse Police and i’m so goddamn tired of it?
i can’t say that i’m ace, no matter the context, because ew that’s tmi nobody wants to know about my sex life, i need to learn my place and realize that my orientation is too filthy for decent people to discuss in public. i can’t say that i’m aro either because everyone knows all aros on earth are just misogynistic frat boys and why would i want to associate with that toxic community anyway? actually ace and aro are both useless labels, and also they’re homophobic and inherently bigoted and no good person would use them even if they felt ace or aro because the community is evil, so really it’s best never to use either word at all. if someone asks what my orientation is i’m supposed to just. fucking scream i guess.
i can’t say that i was raped for being ace (and can’t even THINK the words “corrective rape”), even though my rapist literally told me that was the reason and that he could fix me, because i guess i’m just too fucking stupid to understand the circumstances around my own abuse and need random internet strangers to explain my own experiences to me and what the REAL reason was, because my rape is just a talking point in the tumblr #ace discourse.
i can’t talk about my rape or other abuse at all actually, because if i do i’m either lying/exaggerating or i’m guilt tripping and being manipulative and trying to bully my way into the community by preying on people’s emotions. but if i DON’T talk about my abuse then it never happened and can never possibly happen to any a-spec ever because other people said so and, hello, where’s the proof that aces are ever abused?
i can’t talk about how my mother asked why i couldn’t have just been gay instead of aroace (“i can tell people my kid is gay, how am i supposed to explain that you just don’t love anyone? that’s soulless, they’re going to think i did something terrible to you to make you that way”), because that’s a disgusting lie and an anomaly and mentioning it or acknowledging that it was a real thing that actually happened to me is violently homophobic and gross, and it’s not like anyone ever asked me to talk about it or prove that it happened (except when they do) and i’m probably lying anyway.
i can’t say the word allo or people who don’t know what that word means will come crawling out of the woodwork to tell me how it is Bad and Homophobic and Wrong based on the incorrect definition they decided on, so i have to other myself by saying non-ace instead. BUT, sometimes someone will come along and remind me that i’m not supposed to say that either because wow, don’t i know that saying someone isn’t asexual is implying that they’re very sexual and their orientation is inherently sexual and i must think all those Dirty Allos™ are just thinking about sex all the time, why am i so goddamn homophobic?
i can’t use words created for me as an aro person like squish or qpr, even though i need them, because lol don’t i know those words are useless and stupid and just jokes because people who don’t need them decided they are? better not even think about saying them unless i want my post derailed into a joke fest by discoursers trying to play “how many csa survivors can i trigger and upset in one post”.
i can’t talk about how i knew that i was different and weird from as young as nine or ten, because gross don’t i know that only literal pedophiles believe someone can know they’re ace before they’re eighteen? i can’t even THINK about how little fifth grade me used to cry alone in my room wondering what was wrong with me and if i really was a freak or a baby like the other kids said i was because i’d never had a crush, or else i’m a fucking pedophile and also probably homophobic somehow.
i can’t make positivity posts, can’t tell members of my community that they’re great and valid and not broken because gross why am i enabling a horrible community like the ace one, and lol cishets don’t even need positivity? also no matter what the post is about and no matter how much i don’t mention being lgbt+ at all, it will still inevitably get derailed to “k but aces aren’t lgbt” so if it’s not a good mental health night i probably shouldn’t make a positivity post at all, because lol aces don’t deserve simple positivity or validation without Discourse attached.
i can’t talk about aphobia because it doesn’t exist, and i still haven’t learned my lesson re: internet strangers knowing my experiences better than i do i guess, but most importantly i can’t talk about aphobia happening in real life because i’m just lying or making shit up to guilt trip people, and if i happen to get caught saying that irl lgbt+ spaces are more inclusive than tumblr then somehow i’ve just admitted that aphobia doesn’t actually exist in any context and no one actually hates aces or aros, wow discourse is done, everyone can go home.
i can’t talk about the split attraction model at all unless i’m calling out how terrible and awful it is, because someone once had internalized homophobia and that is the fault of not only the model itself but also of every person who uses the model or finds it helpful, and Good Aces don’t condone the sam (even though without it i literally can’t exist in discourse land because ace and aro are both only modifiers, not orientations, so i guess i don’t have an orientation and am just a void with two modifiers both modifying nothing, but i can’t talk about that either unless i want to get called cishet and yelled at for tokenizing aro people, why does The Ace Community hate aros so much?).
i can’t say “gatekeeping”, can’t use the actuallyasexual tag, can’t say “space ace”, can’t use certain *literal memes* because every word an ace ever says is somehow stealing from someone or somehow homophobic or is just generally Bad in some vague way nobody ever fucking explains.
and i am just. tired. really, really goddamn fucking tired. it feels like that’s the only word that can describe how i feel about everything at this point, so i guess i should say it as much as i can now before someone comes along to take the word ‘tired’ away from my a-spec ass too.
“what do we do about people who fake disabilities to get ssi” we throw them a fucking party for pulling off the most difficult and unrewarding grift of all time. literally i don’t care
i wholeheartedly embrace the fuck-the-systemness solidarity of this and therefore have to make sure i understand both sides … so we’re saying ‘fakes’ do not hurt the ppl with true disabilities who have to fight tooth and nail for benefits?
sadly i have firsthand work experience in this area, via medical office with FT social worker, and i promise, the folks ‘faking’ would be the last people you’d want to party with…thankfully our docs were EXTREMELY rigid about identifying said grifters. honorable mentions, 100% real:
• 40 yo M: “can you just give me disability, i need time away from work to pursue acting career. they don’t give us FMLA or anything”
• mid-aged couple: sentenced to community service by local court, requesting SSID status to exempt them from having to fulfill. the task what assembling mailers
•45 yo F: “i just want the placard for better parking spots at work. can’t you just get the doctor to say i’m disabled?”
•50 yo M: orthopedic injuries presented to obtain opioids and SSID benefits, MD reviews all MRIs and CTs, clean. patient denied both requests. storms out of office, throwing his cervical collar down in waiting area on way out as limp magically disappears
i’ll open myself to critique here, suffice to say, i cannot help but think such characters have not contributed to the current screening state of this program. and anyone not getting what they actually need bc of it is anything short of infuriating for me. it’s super fucked, thinking about every single actually disabled person denied for every person faking that has been approved. not who that limited pool of collected public funds is for.
The grifters you have mentioned are painfullyeasy to identify. Many of the literally told you that they were faking it. They do not nearly justify the incredible difficulty involved in the process of actually getting approved.
You can be fully, provably disabled and you will get denied. People who judge your case often ignore evidence collected from everyone from family members to doctors to deny people. The reasons they give that you can keep working display a stunning amount of ignorance to how disabilities actually work or are intentionally attempting to deny people the tiny pittance of money given to people who desperately need it for basic survival.
The average approval time in my state is 21 months. Nearly two years going without what you desperately need to survive. If you try to earn some money in that time just to keep yourself alive it will be used as evidence against your case. No matter how damaging that work is or how unsustainable it is in the long term. For this reason many disabled people are forced into illegal and dangerous work simply because they cannot survive for two fucking years without any help, such as sex work. If they get caught trying to survive it will be used to deny the claim.
Now one might think that you could maybe save up before hand and make it through the process that way. Not so. With only a few exceptions, if you have at any time in the process more than 2000 dollars to your name it will be used as evidence against you. This 2000 limit will continue indefinitely as long as you are receiving benefits, and the government will monitor your bank account at all times so if it goes over your benefits will be canceled.
They will frequently demand for you to justify how you survived in the intervening period. How did you pay rent? How did you buy food? They will use your answer against you when they make your decision.
The amount of pointless, redundant, and difficult paperwork involved is another major barrier. Of course while they may take upwards of 6 to 9 months each step of the way, but you might receive a piece of mail that you have to respond to within days or it will be used against your case, or your case may be denied outright.
The form I had to initially fill out was 21 pages long. My wife and I both had to fill out another 14 page long document. I had to fill out details on the make and model of my car, because apparently people are worried that I might be driving a sports car. If you car is too nice they will use it against you. You are only allowed one car ever even if practically you really need two.
I attempted to apply for disability a few years ago. I messed up a couple questions because I did not understand them and it was used to deny my claim. I had to start from scratch, including resetting that 21 month waiting period.
The fact that I am a stay at home mom taking care of my daughter best I can is used against me.
The entire process is so strict and difficult to navigate that there are successful businesses called “disability advocates” that are practically required for a successful case. Fortunately their are laws that say they can only get paid if the claim is successful, and there is a cap on how much they cost so its nothing to lose. Of course this involves filling out even more paperwork, communicating with people, more work and more effort.
You need medical professionals to back up your claim or it will almost certainly be denied. Only Doctors are good enough. Mentally disabled and can’t afford several weeks of sessions? Physically disabled but you can’t afford a specialist doctor? Your chances of approval just dropped like a rock.
If at any time you act in such a way that isn’t stereotypically disabled there is a significant chance it will be used against you. The minimum capabilities required to go through the process are practically evidence against your case as well - for example, being capable of a coherent explanation of your symptoms and difficulties, Even if you broke down crying during the interview for a half hour because it is so difficult, is seen as proof that you are “capable of communication”, which was the exact reason given for my last denial. In the minds of the people making the determination I was capable of communication, which meant there had to be some job somewhere I was capable of performing.
If you have good days that fact will be used against you. If you go to an interview and don’t show glaringly obvious symptoms there is a good chance it will mean you will be denied.
The entire process is designed to discourage attempts. It is split into three stages. The first stage has only a 30% approval rate. The people you are talking about above never get far enough to even count against that approval rate. There is evidence in the form of leaked documents that people who do qualify are rejected instead simply to lengthen their approval process and discourage people to get them to drop out of their attempt. The first appeal has around a 10% approval rate. Only at the third stage, an actual court hearing with a judge, is there an approval rate in your favor at just over 50%. These three stages each may last between 6 and 9 months, which is why the approval process takes nearly two years.
At every step you will have to fill out more redundant paper work.
Those approval stats, by the way, are assuming you got one of those disability advocates. If you didn’t your chances drop significantly at every stage.
Almost all of these things are so strict in the name of “catching frauds” who may not absolutely need it.
The process is extremely difficult, humiliating, is difficult to survive, and is likely to fail. Almost no one gets approved their first time attempting the process, even if they plainly on the face of it absolutely need the benefits , because the process is so difficult. So a fraud would have to go through that entire painful process and succeed. So what do they get?
It will be around 700 to 800 dollars a month at most. Not enough to really live on, your going to be making hard choices between medicine, food, and shelter. You wont ever have nice things or live comfortably. And it comes with major restrictions that will force you into poverty and keep you there as long as you are part of the program. Any reasonable attempt you might make to better your own situation will be used to take your benefits away, you are not allowed to lift yourself out of a painful, difficult life of poverty. Many disabled individuals have to continue dangerous and illegal work, like sex work, in order to make ends meet.
By the way, if someone is doing sex work on the side and is caught, that will be reported as “fraudulent” abuse of the system. There are a good deal of other types of “fraud” claims used to deny benefits to people who need them and inflate the reported fraud numbers to justify these harsh screening methods.
This is what is meant by the original post. The screening process is so impossibly over the top and the benefits so little that the idea that fraud is a real problem on any scale is laughable. But it continues to be something people are obsessed over. Obviously we would not like actual frauds, but the entire structure of disability benefits is built around the obsessive attempt to prevent even one fraudulent case no matter how many actual disabled people suffer and die for it. “Fraud” is first and foremost an excuse to deny disabled people the tiny amount of help they desperate need just to survive.
So if somehow in some extremely rare case a person actually goes through that entire extremely difficult process just so they can live in poverty and pain with a pittance of survival money then I literally do not give a single fuck and neither should you. Stop obsessing over the minuscule chance of fraud and start recognizing that the insane screening process and laws in place are not due to supposed fraud attempts, it’s due to a desire from those who put those laws and screening process in place for us to just die because they see us as nothing but a drain on society.
Statistically speaking your “extremely rigid” docs are most likely denying tons of legitimate cases because they do not understand disabilities, which is extremelycommon (far more common than not), and using these honorable mention cases as justification for how good they are at clocking ‘fakes’. They are the reason we have to perform humiliating stereotypes of disability at every turn or be denied. They are virtually certainly one of the biggest parts of the problem.
Hate hate hate when exclusionists try to pass off their bigotry and lies as Enlightening Cutesy Fun Facts and “Teehee so here’s the truth!! ^^ This identity is trash and everyone attached to it should die.” Like it’s actually so fucking sickening. That y’all will just spread false info that feeds into the wants of our oppressors and cuts down your fellow gays and queers. Under this cutesy wutesy, “silly anon EVERYONE knows this identity is xphobic!! lol uwu” tone.
It just says a lot without saying the quiet part out loud. And I hate exclusionists, but I especially hate the ones who act like this. Just call all of us a slur like the bigots you are
Remember. If you’re a jerk, people won’t want to play against you. And if you have nobody to play against, Magic isn’t very fun. True, it’ll probably never get to the point where everyone knows your MTGO name, your LGS, etc, but why let it even start down that road at all?
You might not be able to please everyone, but you don’t (typically) need to be a jerk to anyone. Magic is a community. Don’t make your part of it toxic.
One of the most important parts of mastering a skill is learning how to teach it to others effectively.
That is an excellent example of the distinction between good and bad players.
I got into Magic way back in the dawn of time when it first started. I had poured way too much money into it, and when I finally got out, I sold my complete set of 1st edition, and Arabian Nights for a hefty sum and used that money to get the hell out of dodge and try to find myself in Florida (it didn’t work.)
When I finally came back to Magic, it’d been several years and may different iterations and expansions of the game had gone by. I was at the local game store, just kind of hanging out, when a group of people were trying to get a game of Emperor (I think that’s what it was called) going and they were looking for one final person. I said, sure, provided that they understand that a) It’d been at least five years since I last played and b) they’d have to provide me with a deck.
Everybody seemed to be on board with this so I sat down and proceeded to play. Things went okay for the first couple of turns, until I drew a card that had an ability that I didn’t recognize, and that wasn’t explained on the card. So I leaned over to my partner and asked him what the ability mean.
The leader of the other team (the Emperor?) just slams his fists on the table and just yells at me, face beet red, “NO KIBBUTZING AT THE TABLE!!!” I’m like, “Dude, chill I’m just trying to figure out what this card doe-” “NO KIBBUTZING!”
So I just quietly nod, reassemble the deck and give it back to the guy who lent it to me. I thank him for letting me play, give the finger to the dude with anger management issues, and I haven’t picked up a physical copy of the game since. Sure there’s good players out there, but sometimes all it takes is that one asshat to ruin it completely for you.
This is so important, and it applies to all hobbies and especially to all gaming, because of the social and community-driven nature of it. You can’t play MtG or D&D or even Monopoly without other people, and if you’re an asshole, then other people will not play with you. It takes so much less effort to share why you enjoy it, to help others understand and become equally invested and to foster growth in your hobby, and then you have so many more people to play with. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?
If you play Magic or Pathfinder or whatever, and you pride yourself on being 1) better than others at it, 2) heavy-handed with it, 3) a rules lawyer about it, and/or 4) judgmental about the innocent choices of others who want to enjoy your hobby, then the same thing will eventually happen to you that happens to all such people: Whatever community access you have will shrivel up away from you, and if there’s anyone left who’ll fuck with you, at all, it’ll be the same two or three stale people with the same bad attitude, bringing out the worst in each other more and more until one day y’all can’t stand the sight of whatever hobby it was that brought you together, in the first place.
When you ruin it for others, you’re ruining it for yourself. Don’t be a dick; share the game.
I know it’s only April, but I just saw such a rancid take on Tiktok (and the person blocked me, woo!) That I need to vent somewhere.
The argument went “bi/pan/queer people with cishet partners shouldn’t bring those partners into queer spaces/Pride because it makes those spaces unsafe for lgbt folks.”
Which is a frankly awful take for many reasons.
First of all “makes a space unsafe” is not an identity. It is a behavior. And ANYONE who is making those spaces unsafe, regardless of their identity, *shouldn’t be there.* Whether they are a cishet man or a lesbian, if you are making people unsafe, you shouldn’t be there.
Secondly, it’s blatantly unenforceable. You can’t clock someone’s identity at the door. You don’t know if they are bi or trans or nonbinary. And no one should have to out themselves to a bouncer.
As a caveat to this, you also don’t ever know *why* someone might bring their cishet partner to pride. Whether that’s because this is an important part of their life they want to share with their partner, or they are disabled and need help managing their meds or mobility aides, or the partner is a designated driver. You just don’t know. So even if you did know they were cishet, maybe they have a “good reason” for being there.
So between it not solving an actual problem to not being enforceable, all this discourse does is create an EXTREMELY hostile environment for, well, bi/pan/queer folks especially. Always. We always get targeted for this kind of stuff.
But also anyone who might worry that *they* aren’t queer enough or not look queer enough. Trans folks who haven’t socially transitioned, non-binary folks who aren’t androgynous enough, ace and aro folks, people who are newly out- they see this rhetoric and think “Oh no. What is someone sees me and thinks I’m cishet? What if someone tells me I can’t be there? What if I don’t really belong?”
So we aren’t doing it. It’s shitty snd hostile and biphobic and exclusionary.
Seeing the way controversial influencers and celebrities like Gabbie Hanna, who talk about their neurodivergence or mental illness does not give you the right to treat mentally ill, neurodivergent and disabled people like shit. And I want to talk about that.
I don’t know how to tell you but if you are using this as an opportunity to gatekeep and stigmatize the disabled community, then that’s just straight up ableist. No ifs and/or buts on this one. It’s just not okay to do this, to treat other disabled people with disrespect on the basis of their disability.
I’ve been seeing this happen a lot with influencers and creators who do bad things and are assholes, but are also open with the fact that they are mentally ill or disabled. It’s a problem, its an issue, stop doing it.
I know they spread misinformation, I know they can be ableist themselves, I know that they are wrong. But this doesn’t give you the right to dehumanize, harass, stigmatize and discriminate against other disabled people.
ADHD is already so stigmatized and so are many other disorders, stop fakeclaiming, stop with the true scotsman fallacy, stop treating other disabled people bad just because there’s one bad person that happens to be disabled, or neurodivergent, or mentally ill.
Please reblog this and please spread it. I can’t stand for this bullshit to happen, just because there’s one bad person out there doesn’t mean we are all bad. We are not a monolith, please treat people with respect regardless of their disability or identity, just as you would anyone else.
