#queer identity
I’ve noticed that a lot of queer people say tumblr is not a great place for queer people with less visible identities. But the aromantic community here is the only thriving queer community I’ve ever found that accepted me unconditionally. I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to talk about it some, as an aro that is a good bit older than most the tumblr community.
Connecting with people with similar queer identities to me as a teen in the 90s was a nearly impossible task. Nobody at the queer youth group at my high school had ever heard of someone like me. The internet was still in its infancy when I was a teen. Social media didn’t exist and online queer communities were very tiny. There was no place for me to go to find people like me. The labels “nonbinary” and “aromantic” didn’t even exist yet, much less all the terminology and models that are used in these communities today. The lack of peers, role models, or even language to describe my experience had a profoundly damaging effect on me, which you can read more about in an earlier post. I never met anyone going through the same things I am, or someone older who already had been through it, until I was already in my 30s. And even now, the LGBT centers where I live are pretty bad about recognizing the needs of the more marginalized queer demographics. So internet communities, especially tumblr and chat rooms, are where I get almost all of my support.
I internalized the fact that I was the only person like me, which you can read more about in my last post. It made sense at the time to extrapolate that if I had never met anyone like me well into adulthood, then I must be the only one. This kind of brutal, crushing isolation is hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. I spent most of my 20s in deep denial about all this, to the point that I convinced myself that some of my own feelings and experiences were not real. I was basically gaslighting myself when it came to being queer, when my partners weren’t already invalidating me. I’ve been out for a few years now as nonbinary and aromantic, and I’m still struggling to uncover all the toxic thought and behavior patterns I built earlier in my life.
Probably the most confusing part of living a closeted life was dating. I’m relatively romance-positive. I enjoy things like kissing and cuddling and being very sweet and affectionate. I experience sexual attraction. The hardest part of all this for me was that I saw little to no difference between my feelings for my closest friends and my feelings for my partners. I love my friends the same way I love my partners, so why not speak sweetly to them and act affectionately? Why not kiss or have sex if we both consent? I was always stumbling over boundaries and social expectations in this regard that I could not see, and accidentally offending or alienating people I cared about. While I understood that friendships and romantic relationships were very different, and I could even describe many of those differences in detail, I could not see any distinction in my own feelings and inner experiences. This disconnect between my inner and outer experiences was jarring and bewildering. I also did not understand repulsion at all. When I felt repulsed, I blamed my partner. Surely, I thought, they must have done something wrong if I feel so hurt or disgusted. This assumption is one of the greatest mistakes I have ever made.
I did not have the emotional or linguistic tools to process and communicate the experience of repulsion, so I did not learn a healthy way to deal with it until very recently. I still panic or lash out when I feel repulsed because I’m still trying to unlearn my previous behaviors. This problem can be extended to nearly everything about being queer for me. While I did develop good general interpersonal communication skills at an early age, I still could not communicate about my own queer experiences for a long time, partly because I didn’t have words to describe them, and partly because I didn’t believe they were real in the first place. The struggle is tremendous. Because I had so many experiences of being invalidated by multiple partners, I have a hard time trusting that someone new won’t do the same thing.
The progress I’ve made in the past year, thanks to the support and validation I get from the tumblr aromantic community, is difficult to overstate. Finding the aromantic community here has literally been a life-changing experience for me. I’m processing through decades of accumulated pain and repression at a rate I didn’t think was possible. I know I still have unforeseen hard times ahead, but honestly I had lost hope that I could even get to the point where I am now.
So to you youngins, I want to be the supportive and validating adult for you that I never had. Hopefully you won’t need to go through the traumatic decade of isolation and repression as an adult that I did. Seeing you have the hope that I didn’t at your age gives me hope now.
To those of you closer to my age, there’s a place for us in this community. I know that feeling alone for so long makes it hard to think beyond the solitary lives we’ve been forced into, that we’re used to feeling disconnected and unwelcome. But this community is growing, and we have a chance to escape into wide open acceptance, to connect, to belong, to heal. We can be a part of that for each other.
Since I’m having #wordnerd thoughts today, I was thinking about the etymology of the word transgender. The prefix trans- means “across from” or “on the opposite side of”, like in transferandtransmit, and we all know the meaning of (and problems that come with the meaning of) gender. So a lot of people use transgender to mean “the opposite gender”. But one of the alternate meanings of trans- is “beyond”, like in transnationalortranscend. Though it isn’t used like this in modern English any more, one of the meanings of the root word of genderis “category, kind, or character” which still exists in the words genreandgenus. So, as an agender person, I’m not transgender in the sense that I’m “the opposite gender” from what I was assigned, but I am transgender in the sense that I am beyond categorization when it comes to gender.
My Queer Identity in Songs
Asexuality: I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don’t Want to Die-Waterparks (x)
Aegosexuality: Sex in My Head—Moth Wings (x)
Aromanticism: D&D + Asexuality—Skull Puppies (x)
Agender: Cryptid (Mothman)—Ratwyfe (x)
Trans-Masc: IDK If I’m a Boy—Blue Foster (x)
(x) links are to the songs themselves while links on the identities are to pages explaining their definition.
Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, “Is this enough for me?”
— Ocean Vuong
Queer Undefined is short on definitions for soft butch. How would you define the word soft butch? How did you first hear the term used? Are all soft butches women or can any gender be soft butch?
Submit your definition using this form :D
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“queerbaiting in real life” you mean exploring self expression regardless of the outcome bc it’s good for you and not owing it to people to come out???
queerbaiting is a marketing technique real people aren’t products or your fictional blorbos even the mega celebrities are owed privacy jesus christ
[Image Description: The inside and outside of a pamphlet with a pink and purple color scheme entitled “The ‘Queer’ Question” laid out side-by-side. There is a summary, disclaimer, and helpful resources on the first half and sections titled “What is Queer,” “History of the Word,” and “Using it Respectfully” on the second. The text is small and blurry as it is only meant as a preview image to the resource described in this post]
The “Queer” Question - Pamphlet #8
In this pamphlet, you’ll find examples of what “queer” means, a brief rundown of the term’s history, and a suggestion on how to use it respectfully. As can be seen, the word is not censored and only the post is tagged as “q-slur” to hopefully avoid triggering individuals who have the word blocked on Tumblr.
This is probably the most subjective item on Queer Condensed and should be treated as such.
Click here to download this and any other resource Queer Condensed has to offer.
As always, this resource is free to use for noncommerical ventures as long as credit is given. The original Publisher files can be requested for modification through the ask box. If you download, a reblog or link to this post would be appreciated!
Also, links to Tumblr posts that talk about queer identity and the history of the term:
The text can be read below the readmore, formatted in the intended reading order.
Update to the newest addition to this blog. It already had an image description so I added the full text and made the links a bit bigger and easier to click on. One more day of these and then I’m on to writing the next material! Whatever that will be.
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AUREA’s Book Project Intersectionality Survey
AUREA’s book team would like to discuss how other identities intersect with #aromanticism, and we want to hear from you! To participate, indicate in this form which identities you’d like to answer questions on. Questions will be sent apart afterwards.
This is part of my research for AUREA’s book project. Would really appreciate you participating or sharing!
