factory gates

if you are going to tell people not to vote for biden, and no one should have to as he is a genocidal cunt, then you should be prepared with something more than crickets when people ask you what the actionable thing to do is to keep the united states from being a fascist dictatorship and palestine being destroyed at the same time. has anyone even got anything that isn't just moral high-ground behavior and/or vague bold cry for freedom while sitting on your ass at home?

there aren't inherent gender personality traits or feelings or actions or anything that would ascend your own knowledge and how you interact with others and how they interact with you. you can change how you think and act according to how you believe you should in a gender performance of sorts, but it isn't something that enters you like the light of jesus christ on the day you accept you're trans or something.

it impacts how people perceive and treat one another where people are not people and instead they are (insert gender here). this is something historically people were trying to avoid, but it's seeped into every part of everything i see people talk about online and it's so stupid. gender is socially constructed and often you have to alter your behavior to some degree to pass, or maybe that's how you feel more comfortable being. some people alter and adapt their behavior to act in ways they perceive their gender should, whether that's good or bad. being trans is both active and passive. you are inherently so but you can adapt to what the popular perception of your gender is in the current moment or not. that's why we have trans women who are butch lesbians and trans men who are femme and crossdress.

but there is just not any kind of magic gender thing that any person has, cis or trans. gender isn't always tied to your biology, in fact, biologists know sex is a spectrum and most people don't even fall into a hard end of it. cis and trans people both behave how we learn to behave, or we behave how we want to in order to be perceived the way we want, and that is how social exchange works. i constantly see fellow trans people act like trans men come out and become a misogynist the second they declare they're a man. or trans women become demure and passive the second they declare they're a woman. like, the moment someone is aware they're trans, suddenly they are no longer the person that they were, they have no identity other than gender.

and as an agender person this is extremely ridiculous. when i declare i'm agender, the follow up is a demand of what genitals i was born with because that's the next best thing to having the magic essence of man or woman to determine someone's personality attributes. i think that's funny. i'm not a man or a woman. i'm not any gender. i don't have connotation, but people look for it anyway. if they can get a scrap of a binary to attribute to me, then they can perceive me in a way that involves gender. but i don't have one, so this is transphobic.

non-binary people are constantly subject to this kind of thing even though we fall outside the binary. just how man or woman are you? for those who aren't either, or are both equally, or whose gender changes, and those who have genders that don't fall under those descriptions, it's silly to think we can drum up some quantity of magic gender essence to present you with.

people will wonder if they have to be something other than straight/lesbian/gay to love a non-binary person unless they can know just how much gender essence falls under their quota of acceptable. a mere difference in labels between two non-binary people can make or break that. they may be the same in the way they present themselves, act, and their bodies, but if one has some more "woman gender essence" than the other in the form of being agender, they may be more appealing to a lesbian than the one who is bigender.

but the issue is that non-binary people are not part of the binary system of hetero/homo attraction. we fall outside of it, and therefore do not need to be factored into the equation. you can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or anything you want, and still love a non-binary person. there are endless non-binary identities. if you fall for one of us, you don't have to walk it back because we have a label that includes a bit of gender essence you're not a fan of.

it's arbitrary. it's silly. it's inane and ridiculous. if you want to change society and tear down gender barriers and patriarchy and bring equality to everyone, stop serving the idea of there being spiritual gender. even when that's a part of someone's religious beliefs, it's often used to subjugate. it's worse when you're not religious and you're caught up in the idea that there is something just inherently so about a gender.

regardless of how you feel about asexual or aromantic inclusion, it did mean ally. for like, a really long time. and it didn't mean they were like, considered lesbian, gay, bi, trans, or questioning (which was what the 'q' stood for in most places but sometimes paired with queer), it just meant they were there to stand by the community no matter what. it was for like, friends and families of lgbt people.

old wayback archived sites and articles, pamphlets for universities and businesses, and the like all had lgbtqia with the 'a' defined as ally up until aven started reaching out to people after discussions on their forums brought up the question of why they weren't included in the lgbt community. a lot of people said they didn't want to be. it was a very slow-going slide from about 2009 to 2012 for a decent amount to agree they wanted to be an adjacent part to the lgbt community.

not even aven's current website, the oldest asexual organization and the ones who popularized the 'a' meaning 'asexual', agree that asexuality is inherently queer, either. they also recognize that currently defined asexuality is a new concept and wasn't something historically there alongside other lgbt rights movements. they also make it a point to say heteroromantic asexuals are straight, just as homoromantic asexuals are gay/lesbian or biromantic asexuals are bi.

like not to defend tumblr but it's so ridiculous to me when someone says xyz person's blog got deleted, that staff hate xyz type of people. no, people who hate that person or whatever xyz they are mass reported them until their blog was automatically deleted by this site's extremely bad automod that it's had for ages now. there were whole articles about how the automod system was shit in 2018 and it's still shit now.

mass reporting is how people get flagged and deleted. if trans people get deleted or tags get blocked, it is because terfs reported those blogs or the content in the tags so often that this site's spaghetti code automated system was like 'ok this must be a bad thing since so many people are angry about it'. i'm convinced at this point their husk of an actual living person mod team that is meant to fix problems in post is just drowning to the point where there's no way they can even get to most appeals.

this also isn't anything to do with being "queer" or gender identity, at all. i see people going out of their way to act like there weren't several adult trans women on that callout talking about assaulting toddlers, and they aren't better than ezra, the trans man posting equally disgusting comments, or any other of the nasty adults, cis or trans or non-binary or what have you, and it has nothing to do with anyone's gender. gender identity doesn't make you have paraphilic disorders, nor does any specific sexual orientation, but none of them exclude you from having one, either. there is no link between these things. the "radqueer" movement is just people who are specifically not cishet who engage in this behavior, and cishet people very much do as well.

but this is a disturbing, horrible scenario. these people were encouraged to engage in "kink" (which, this is not even close to kink, this is rape/crime) in the name of being free and uncensored or liberated. this is going to be a fucking nightmare if it makes the news. if broader, people are arrested and this is sensationalized, the "radqueer" movement has endangered every lgbt person because people were too fucking scared to call out another gay or trans person for being obviously horrible (with slight plausible deniability) lest they be crucified on the internet. well, what will you do when this kind of thing is shown as proof that lgbt people need to go to permanent psychiatric "care" like ron desantis said?

i don't care. i think maybe it is time to gatekeep who stays in a community or not. we kick nazis out, the broader lgbt community shuns radfems, i think we should keep "radqueers" out of the lgbt community because they aren't radical, they need therapy and medication that they're refusing to get and not only does that make the lgbt community look bad, but those of us with mental health disorders who do get treatment to prevent things far less damaging than going out an molesting children or animals. not having access isn't an excuse, go get medicaid or something if you're in the usa, or do the right thing and throw your electronic devices out. read books or something and keep away from anyone you might victimize. if you can't do that, then you definitely need to be seeing a therapist. i don't even care if that's harsh. you don't get to hurt children.

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

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this is such an out of the blue thing to get asked and i have no clue where it came from. lmao. but ok. like i run a discourse-adjacent sideblog so i'll bite.

you are going by the presumption that everyone under a sexuality umbrella thinks the exact same way at all times which is ridiculous because humans have varied experiences and there isn't like a gay hivemind.

but beyond that the gay label, like all labels, is there to categorize a set of experiences in a taxonomical way, the very reason why we have any labels in the first place.

to be gay the main assumption is your own gender identity is man, of some kind (including those with man-adjacent gender identities), and then you must also be attracted to other men (or those with man-adjacent gender identities) solely, with your exemption being women.

in taxonomy that's what matters... now, humans are individual creatures, so their own personal attraction is going to be a factor in what they like, and that may be as simple as masculinity or femininity, or a hair color, a body type, et cetera.

so, one gay man might enjoy a display of femininity in their partner, maybe he likes makeup and flamboyant personalities, and then the next gay man you ask might solely be interested in a bearded, fat partner with red hair who spends his day in the woods chopping down trees.

and then the next gay man might like an everyman, or a businessman, or someone androgynous, and on and on.

because personal taste in attraction isn't coherent between everyone, the linking factor is that gay men are interested in other men or man-adjacent people, but naturally not every man or man-adjacent person is going to look the same, act the same, or be the same, because humans are individual.

a gay man mostly attracted to bears may be completely not attracted at all to a man with feminine gender expression, regardless of being attracted to men in general because it's not his thing.

i highly suspect you're coming at this from a gender critical "gotcha" perspective.

you mention homosexuality and heterosexuality in animals, but what you don't mention is that neither of these things are exclusive in the animal kingdom. animals who have homosexual encounters usually do not do so exclusively. most animals who engage in homosexual behavior also engage in heterosexual behavior and are, in fact, bisexual. and that is the vast, vast majority of the time.

but humans are capable of far higher thinking and are more discriminate than many other animals. there will be gay men who may never in their lives will stray outside of wanting someone who has a penis. however, a gay man regardless may never find himself attracted to a trans woman even if she has a penis because her gender expression may be far too feminine for him.

and a gay man may find the peak of masculinity in a trans man who has been on hrt but still has a vagina. and maybe it'd be a problem to him, or maybe it wouldn't. because humans in general are capable of that higher thinking. in a scientific sense some might consider that man to be bisexual if he pursues the trans man. but maybe he also doesn't at all consider a trans woman to be attractive because she's a woman to him, and he would never be attracted to a cis woman either. so, effectively, as someone who is only attracted to men and men-adjacent persons, he would be gay.

the thing is, you can put a billion hypothetical statements into play at all times. you can wax philosophical until the stars fall. but humans are individual even in groups. you will never feel the exact same as anyone else you know, not ever, for so many reasons.

that doesn't render 'gay' or 'lesbian' useless, nor does it imply that 'bisexual' is a default state. sexual attraction is fairly knee-jerk and not premeditated. you may find someone sexually attractive initially, only to fall out if they aren't what you expected them to be. If a gay man sees someone he thinks is a cute twink, but it's a woman with a short haircut, he is very likely to lose that attraction. but if a gay man sees a cute twink and he turns out to be transgender, some people can work through it, some people can't. it doesn't turn the man who can work past it bisexual just as much as it didn't turn the man who was attracted to the woman initially bisexual for simply being attracted to someone with a vagina for a minute. the initial attraction is there, if it works out between two people, some people will work past the genitalia thing. there's more to romance and sex than genitalia, and for some people there's more emphasis put on one thing or another. but if a gay man saw a cute twink who turned out to be a woman and was like, 'oh, well, she's fully a woman but you know, i kind of don't care?' it may be far more beneficial for himself to call himself bisexual, especially if he goes on to date more women.

it's just best to know that humans have labels to describe experiences. a gay man who dates a trans man may never date another trans man again after and marry a cis man who he falls in love with. or he may marry that trans man. either way his experiences are going to be predominantly those of a gay man, thus making that the correct label for him.

bisexuals can have gender preferences or not, but the main thing about bisexuals is that their attraction is not closed off to a gender. but a gay man wouldn't be a gay man if he also dated people who identified as women (cis or not), he'd be bisexual. his experiences would fall out of having a single-gender attraction just based on the fact that bisexuals are attracted to others regardless of gender. but bisexuals also still have further preferences for masculinity, femininity, hair colors, body types, personalities, etc. as human beings do.

but it just comes down to the fact that gay people aren't a hivemind who are all attracted to the same things. it just isn't practical or helpful to look at it that way. the way people live their lives varies so vastly, people even sometimes find they thought they were gay or straight their whole lives until they realize they're not, that they're the opposite, or even bisexual.

if someone is gay and that label suits their lived experiences and they adhere to the basic common understanding of the label (for gay men, that they are a man or man-adjacent, and they attracted to men or man-adjacent people solely), then that should be fine regardless of what traits they like in someone. but if they step outside of that common understanding in pursuing romance or sex with a woman or woman-adjacent person, then bisexual would be a better label for them if they are still also attracted to men and man-adjacent people. if they realize they weren't gay after all, but straight, then as a straight man the expectation is that you are solely attracted to women or woman-adjacent people.