welcome to my fandom hodgepodge

Like I try to be nice about this but I have seen SO many fucking people being like "lol yeah ace/aro discourse was one thing" and that is deliberate erasure of real and important queer history in service of dodging blame on the parties that did this who, for the most part, never fucking apologized or owned up to it, or, in the case of a few blogs I still see going around, clearly still stand by all of it and just hope you don't point that out, and ofc, no one ever fucking does.

I can't offer forgiveness or absolution to everyone, but you don't need me to forgive you to forgive yourself and move on, and I do think most of the people who got caught up in it have more than earned moving on.

However, what I want is for everyone to stop downplaying it. Don't call it stupid infighting, don't go "ace stuff was one thing but this with trans men is too far" don't claim it didn't leave tumblr or the internet, own how bad it was. If you were there you know, and your history is valuable, so even when it sucks please be honest about what happened. This part of queer history should not be forgotten, and especially not for the people who never really changed and have an interest in making sure everyone thinks this was just some silly infighting.

That's what I ask, do right by us, don't let us be erased again.

Especially because when you forget, when you downplay it, you downplay what's happened with truscum shit, with biphobia, and now with trans masc exclusion. You downplay it and you disguise that it's the same people saying the same things about a new group. I found out about the rise in trans man/masc exclusion because I saw someone saying that trans men are collateral damage secondary to the real targets of transphobia, trans women, and I immediately knew the person saying it was a shithead I should NEVER trust because that is exactly what they said about bi and ace and aro people. Word for word.

You do those who were hurt a disservice when you downplay what happened, but you also make our spaces less safe because if we pretend what happened didn't we can't stop it when it starts again.

So many of the same concepts are being used. I remember the vitriol against anyone who said that people were sexually assaulted for being asexual. Or faced any issues whatsoever. It was misdirected misogyny or homophobia, never about being ace or aro. People were seen as privileged, as basically straight. It was assumed that being asexual meant that you were cishet and trying to be special, trying to invade spaces that weren't yours. If you were aromantic? Well everyone brought up the hypothetical aromantic man who used it as an excuse to be misogynistic and use women for sex

Everything was picked apart. The split attraction model was useless, because being gay and ace? Well being gay is all that mattered. To insist otherwise was being homophobic by hypersexualizing gay people. The term "aspec"? Oh that was obviously stolen from autistic people, despite the fact that I've still never seen actual proof that it was in any sort of widespread use.

Even telling people that you were asexual was a problem. It was seen as telling people that you didn't want to have sex, and unnecessary. The term allo? Oh that was another issue. It both hypersexualized queer people and grouped them with cishets. No matter what aspec people did it was wrong in some way. Even if you one of the "good ones" and didn't say that you were queer or even lgbtq.

Every single specific label was mocked. Grey-ace? That was just normal people trying to be special. Demi? Implied that everyone else (aka queer people) only cared about sex. Every single fucking thing that aspec people did was seen as cishet people trying to infiltrate/attack the community.

MELANIN BEAM CHALLENGE: Deltarune

@creatingblackcharacters

They make your hands cold. They give you little asshole pucker wrinkles around your mouth. They kill you so fucking slow. Make it so your lungs hurt all the time. They make every cold a chest cold that takes months to go away. They suck your money out bit by bit, every day forever. Just be a little bit more poor forever until they kill you in fifty years. They kill you for fifty years. Just a little shorter of breath, just a little colder, heart beating a little too fast. And the longer you go, the harder it is to quit.

especially when they are fat. especially when they are Black or Native or Asian or any racial/ethnic group that isn't white. especially when they are tall and broad and have a deep voice and a beard, and especially when they like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering. especially when they have gone on E and T blockers and have gotten facial feminization and vaginoplasty and have DD tits and like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering (even when people think they should be grateful for it, even when it feels like the lesser of two evils). especially when they transition in ways people see as "only halfway" and dress androgynous and use contradictory labels and call themselves femboys in the same breathe they do tgirls and they like themselves clockable as fuck and still are hurt by transphobia and exorsexism.

it was one of the more degrading moments of my life. to have to hold my own sexual trauma out in front of a cis man who had determined the movement built to give me rights was no longer needed, to have to sully myself with exposing my trauma to someone who felt comfortable enough to explain to me why i was not oppressed. i vowed after that to never do that again. no matter what i would not use my personal experiences to convince someone why the fight for my rights and equality is vitally necessary.

do you see where i am going with this? 

i see trans men and transmasculine people daily, ripping out their own traumas and pain and holding them up to people who deny our oppression in an effort to get them to care. and this is my encouragement to all of you to stop. you are debasing yourself for people who do not see you as human like they are. your pain is not registering to them. you are likely hurting yourself in the process. it will not make things better. you do not have to do this. your well being matters more than the off chance of getting through to someone. you matter even in the face of someone who does not believe you do.

"oh ryland. only you would cry over a bunch of rocks."

stupid shitty grace rocky pride comic