♡ Mashael ♡

Inbox: 6 | Drafted: 1 | Queued: 0

Ever wanted to gain a better understanding of the radqueer community? Here, you can ask anything and it'll be answered authentically

Anyone, including other radqueers, can send in an ask to be answered by me and other radqueers! Feel free to add additional qualifiers to your ask (if you're only wanting to ask POC radqueers, for example)

Please be as respectful as possible when wording your questions

If you're wanting to join in with answering questions about being radqueer, you can do so through reblogs, comments, or submitting a post to the blog here - posts will be edited to add the links to answers as they come in, and links to follow-up questions too

Tagging Info

#FAQ - questions I hear a lot, check here before you send a question that you think may have already been answered!

#ask a radqueer - all questions and answers

#unanswered - unanswered questions, radqueers can look here for questions that really need their input! usually ones I'm not able to answer due to not being part of that demographic

#answered - answered questions, always open for more answers! it's always great to have a diversity of opinions

#agony radqueer - questions asking for advice of any kind

About the Blogger

I am Mashael, a queer disabled person with Jordanian and Palestinian heritage. I'm an anthropology and history graduate with a PHD in history, and in my studies I focused greatly on queer people and other groups largely forgotten about in history textbooks. I'm continuing this now, but also looking a lot at how historical anthropological research can help us to understand and tackle modern issues experienced by marginalised groups

How can I deal with hate as a radqueer and/or transID user online?

I think that as most radqueers and transID-users are marginalised in other areas, we already have an idea of the amount of hate we can receive for being public about who we are. The good thing about the radqueer and transID space is that it's so small and little-known in comparison to so many other communities

MOGAI and niche queer Tumblr makes it seem huge sometimes, but it isn't. Sometimes the easiest way to get away from it all if it's causing you problems is to get off that part of Tumblr, make a new account, or drop Tumblr entirely for a while until you're comfortable enough in yourself to handle it

I'm completely fine with encountering it because I'm confident that I know who I am and that I am well-researched. I know when to engage with a hate comment to make an example of it, and when doing that will only worsen the situation and hurt people. Overall, I enjoy debate and I enjoy being disagreed with, and hate just doesn't make me feel bad for being who I am anymore — that came with time.

If that isn't you, or isn't you yet, there's always the option of tag blocking, user blocking, having a seperate Tumblr account where you just engage with what you like outside of radqueer discourse, or just spending more time in protransid/rq-exclusive communal spaces like Tumblr communities or Discord servers. The right answer for you depends on how the hate is affecting you and how badly you need an escape from it

I need help, I'm struggling with a lot of guilt right now to the point it's severely affecting my mental health. I think I might be transintersex. I've heard that identifying in that way is intersexist, I don't want to harm intersex people. I experience dysphoria around not being intersex, and I've researched intersex variations almost obsessively because I believe so deep down that I was meant to be intersex. Is identifying as transintersex harmful? What should I do? If it is harmful to intersex people how do I stop feeling this way? I can't remember a moment in my life since I've known the term intersex that I haven't felt like I am intersex. How do I not harm real intersex people?

You're more than welcome!

It'll all be down to individual people's opinions, but I don't think an identity like this can be inherently discriminatory towards anyone

There is nothing about experiencing sex dysphoria around not being a form of intersex or not having a certain sex difference that is inherently prejudice or hateful towards me at all

I've seen people misusing the term intersex when they identify as transintersex, that can be informed by intersexist ideas and misinformation, but it doesn't mean that the identity is intersexist. It's all about being properly informed and using it with understanding of what being intersex is and why you feel as you do

I've actually done a whole post on transintersex (link) and a follow-up of some clarifications (link) which covers some problems I've seen with people misusing transintersex and/or intersex, and how the transid community can be better in this area

You shouldn't have to try and find a way to force what's more than likely a permanent feeling to 'stop' just because there are people who don't understand. It sucks that it's like that right now

If you'd even prefer a non-transid alternative, there might be some out there that may be more socially accepted in some MOGAI spaces (maybe Dissointersex exists?), but ultimately, those who truly want to understand shouldn't mind your preferred word

Inaccurate, low-effort, and most of all: a perfect example of how some people simply will not accept that others can have these sorts of identities and experiences and still cause no harm

If you truly cared about harm to children, you would spend the time you're currently wasting by sending these sorts of asks to internet strangers on advocacy for those struggling with urges to genuinely harm children to receive proper support, and on pushing for the criminal justice system to take harm done to children more seriously

To which end: StopItNow (UK-based) - helpline and resources for CSA/CSEM survivors, offenders, professionals, and struggling paraphiles. Plenty of ways to support them

Lucy Faithfull Foundation (UK-based) - similar to the above

Thorn (USA-based) - building innovative CSA/CSEM prevention technology

B4U-ACT (USA-based) - support for those experiencing minor attraction, focused on preventing offending and improving mental health

I often see BAH blogs using the term brainmade about headmates that they come up with (like not sourced from preexisting people, characters, things, whatever). to my knowledge brainmade means not an inroject, but a headmate sourced from a BAH post would be an introject

so I'm wondering if brainmade actually means something else, or if I'm misunderstanding what these blogs mean when they say it?

You’re not misunderstanding its meaning, I’m guessing BAH blogs just use the term brainmade because they’re designing alters that, if they formed naturally in a system as they are, would be brainmade

It’s a bit of a complicated one I guess haha, because yeah if someone actually tried to form those headmates they’d technically be an introject

It’s possible because you just told me so!

i think a lot about how the line between radqueer and not radqueer is as simple as whether someone claims that label or not. like personally, i don't consider myself a radqueer, but i've seen people who are radqueer and have the exact same opinions as me. i've also seen people who are anti-radqueer and have the same opinions as me. it's a really weird position to be in as someone who's in mostly anti-radqueer spaces. i wonder how many of the people i interact with would consider me radqueer enough to fit their DNI if they knew all of my opinions.

i don't really have a point here, i guess. thank you for running this blog. ❤️

It really is just down to whether or not you use the label a lot of the time. It's insane to me that the difference between mild harassment and extreme harassment can just be deciding to use a word on yourself.

It sucks that hateful people have turned the label of radqueer into a 'brand of person', as if being radqueer inherently encompasses not just your views on specific self-identities, but your behaviour, morals, ethical views, lifestyle, the lot.

Has anyone else noticed how binary pro vs anti radqueer discourse is?

Absolutely, and it's such a common thing that there's oodles of reading to do around binary opposition and how it's used to categorise people into groups and set them off on one another, creating a distracting division from the common goals and ideologies that the people involved otherwise share. It's present both systemically and socially, both large-scale and small-scale.

Nerdy aside for those interested but I read Beyond Good and Evil a few months back and it's relevant to this issue (though Nietzsche is definitely not in alignment with my morals or politics- he's a bit of a dick). We water morality down to just 'good' vs 'evil' and judge people and things based on that false dichotomy. We view those who we deem to be 'good' as the opposite of those who we deem to be 'evil', when they're not directly opposed at all.

In a radqueer context, people deem themselves to be good because they think their opinion is correct, and then proceed to deem disagreers to be evil. Boom! Anti-radqueer and pro-radqueer are now the words used to describe two opposing forces, and most people view one as good and the other as evil and fight about it, even though it's really not that simple or binary.

There's little need for an external force there at all, it's so easy to fall down this path of creating a binary opposition to live within, and it quickly becomes a toxic, argumentative, and unconstructive environment.

I really do hope that people recognise this more and decide to approach new things less with the intent to label their opinion as soon as possible, and more to discover what they think outside of the constructed 'opinion binary'. What their unique perspective is.

Some quotes I kept from Beyond Good and Evil to finish off with:

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster." -> Don't let your sense of morality deteriorate in the name of fighting against what you deem to be evil or the opposition

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” -> Commentary on groupthink and how groups can make irrational, 'mad' decisions so much more easily than individuals

“The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.” -> What makes someone truly weak-spirited is their inability to handle the truth of the matter

It's not a cult, it's not mogai, it's not in affiliation with the LGBTQIA+ community.

So what even is it?

Summarised answer: There's some variation when it comes to what radqueer inherently includes, but it always supports at least transids and paraphilias on top of other queer identities as per its recoin in 2022.

(links might not work, either sites are having issues at the moment or they're blocked in the UK after the new online safety act which I hate deeply sefodimgdrg).

Original definition and other sources that define it:

Here's the original definition, which outlined a much more specific ideology, but I rarely see it referred to especially because it's just easier to summarise it down to the recoin. It talks about these identities as inherently queer, and discusses supporting all queer identities, defining them as "whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, and the dominant." It also talks against calling things disorders and illnesses, which isn't touched on at all in the most used definition.

Bonus carrd that includes more than transids/paras under radqueer. I'd say most radqueers today would agree with this.

Even the LGBTQIA+ wiki gets the definition pretty close to correct. Only issue is lots of radqueers do not consider these identities to be LGBT+, or might consider them queer in a different sense. This is why usually don't trust super anti-radqueer sources to get it right; it's so often summarised down in bad faith to act like our community is doing a lot more 'LGBT community infiltration' or harm than we actually are

My extended rant:

There are some radqueers who would very much say we're affiliated with MOGAI/LGBTQ+, I'd say the community formed off of the failings of the MOGAI space to include certain marginalised identities that are aligned with queerness - that's why it was originally coined in the first place.

I like the way that @theproblematicnerd / @nonconformityhub puts it in this Notion which I've referred to a few times:

"The term has little to do with non-heterosexuality or non-cisgenderedness yet creates one of the biggest problems you can create for the queer community’s foundation - it questions how far they’re willing to take their core ideas by redefining ‘radical queerness’. Essentially, radqueer says that if gender is a social construct that we can define and experience in our individual ways regardless of what’s expected by society, then can this apply to other social identifiers? And if you shouldn’t be discriminated against for your innate sexual attraction, which attractions should be protected and destigmatised?"

Some radqueers may think about paraphilias a queerness expanded by sexuality, and transids as queerness expanded by transness - radqueer 'opens up' the idea of what queer is - but I've also met radqueers who do not like the idea of calling transids/paras queer at all, so it really depends.