Oh sinners come down, come gather 'round

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/switcheddieweek2025/works

There. That's my dating preferences.

Not (only) because of the physical resemblance but because of

Imagine you’re looking through a large window into a venue of some kind, where a social event is taking place. You can see the people, see them mingle and laugh and interact with each other, but they’re all too far away for you to properly make out their body language or see their facial expressions.

And even if you could, you can’t tell what they’re saying to each other so you can’t piece together what action gets which reaction.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves though. It seems like a nice thing to be indoors and together. You want that too.

So you straighten your back, tell yourself something that should be comforting and motivating, and you step inside. You run all the observations you made from the outside through your head on repeat, try your best to appear calm and confident and approachable, and like you belong, and observe everything and everyone until you’re able to mimic them. Repeat their mannerisms, use their words, tell their jokes. Commiserate on the right topics, make the right jokes, be the right kind of person. The kind of person that this event, this community, is meant for.

Now imagine that’s what you do every day, in every social situation big or small, your whole life. As a toddler with your family members, as a kid in school, as a teenager in friend groups, as an adult at work, in friendships and romantic relationships.

Over and over and over again you step in, steel yourself and pray to a god you don’t believe in that no one spots the imposter that you are: figures out that you’re faking it and that you’re not who you make yourself out to be.

Realizes that you aren’t really one of them at all.

(A way of avoiding that is to simply leave before it happens. Never settle in one place, or to simply not step inside at all.)

———

Sure, on a purely intellectual level I suppose I understand that all of this isn’t really true. But it’s still my reality and has always been, which makes it near impossible to challenge because I don’t even notice it happening until it’s too late.

Until I misstep: say the wrong thing, tell a joke that doesn’t land, misinterpret a persons intent, become too intense or needy and clingy. There’s a million and one ways you can fuck up, trust me.

And I can’t let myself do so. If I do, I’ve disqualified myself and must start over, at another place and with other people. I am not entitled to other people having to deal with my inability to be a normal person, an inconvenient and awkward alien that they have to accommodate and appease by pretending to not clearly see exactly what I am.

It’s my own responsibility to learn the rules and to follow them, and if I can’t do that I should leave and not make others uncomfortable.

That’s how “being a human” works. Right?

Right.

———

I’m tired. And frustrated with myself. And a bit sad, to be entirely honest.

I’m mindful of this, and care a lot about trying to be both respectful and honest.

Take it for what it is, and correct me where I’m wrong.

—

The background

I have been using the term AFAB in dating profiles and similar texts, and I’ve been made aware that this lands as exclusionary and just straight up transphobic.

The intent

I was trying to express a dating preference, specifically: masc-presenting people but not cis men.

Simple enough in principle.

I didn’t want to write something like “trans men welcome” as an addendum because I thought it framed them as a special case: as saying “you’re not quite a man”. Like it’s putting an asterisk on them being a man.

(What I was missing is that “trans” isn’t a qualifier that subtracts, but describes a specific identity. The asterisk was in my own reading of the word.)

AFAB seemed to solve this. Here’s the reasoning I was doing:

• I have a preference for masc-presenting people.

• I had mistaken AFAB for a neutral way of distinguishing between assigned gender and actual gender. A tool for acknowledging that the two can differ, if you will.

• I’d seen it circulating in queer spaces but not seen any discourse regarding it, so it felt like accepted vocabulary.

The intent was inclusion and specificity, but the result turned out to be the exact opposite.

My understanding of the term and its connotations, take two:

AFAB (and AMAB) exist so that people can describe something specific about their own history: the gender they were assigned at birth, which may or may not match who they are.

Using them to describe anyone but yourself turns them into a label applied by other people, from the outside, based on birth assignment.

And in doing that, three separate things incorrectly get collapsed into one:

• Identity, who someone is.

• Presentation, how someone wants to be perceived.

• Anatomy.

In using the term AFAB or AMAB as a descriptor birth assignment, rather than the person it’s being applied to, ends up defining them:

• Trans men get included, but conditionally. “AFAB and masc” frames them as acceptable because they’re not-quite-men. Their inclusion is built on a category that doesn’t recognise them as men in the first place.

• Trans women get excluded not based on who they are, but based on what they were assigned at birth. A masc trans woman gets filtered out not by presentation, but by birth record.

• Non-binary people get sorted back into the binary they’ve stepped away from.

My takeaway

The word isn’t the problem: using it as a categorization of others (for example as a descriptor of dating preferences) is, because it makes birth records more load-bearing than identity.

___

Please note that this is not intended as a discussion on whether or not it’s ok to use the AFAB/AMAB terms in the way described.

I've been stuck on something for a while without being able to articulate it. Finally something has clicked, and I understand what's been so shrouded in mystery to me.

The general cultural script around dating and relationships goes something like this: casual is the entry level, committed is the graduation. You work your way up. Low stakes first, high stakes later, once you're "ready".

I've been trying to apply this to myself and it hasn't been working. I've also, unknowingly, brought this script with me into the BDSM and kink scene.

The committed, deeply involved version of things has always felt more imaginable to me than the casual, lighthearted version.

I've been operating on the assumption that casual for most other people means less involvement and therefore less cost and that's how it's "supposed to be".

But it's dawned on me that for me it means less involvement but more cognitive load. Every new person is a new set of unspoken rules to figure out. Every ambiguous, unspoken signal is expensive for me to process and decode.

And rejection hurts the same whether I'm emotionally invested or not, because RSD¹ doesn't care if you're counting apples or oranges.

Committed, on the other hand, means one person, deeply known, with negotiated structure and predictable patterns. That's not necessarily easier for me, but it is cheaper.

(I'm starting to wonder if it's never really been about easy vs. difficult, but expensive vs. cheap in terms of cognitive load?)

In any case, I wasn't failing at "the easy thing". I was trying to run the most expensive version of social contact on a system, mine, that's primed for something else entirely.

What's clicking now is that the BDSM community, and in particular the part of it that identifies as queer, has built a whole set of communication norms that happen to map almost perfectly with what I need:

● Explicit negotiations

● Clearly stated limits

● Check-ins and renegotiations

● Aftercare as a given, not a favor

● Direct language treated as a virtue, not a flaw

All the things that are hardest for me in vanilla social contexts; the subtexts, the guessing, the implicit scripts, are the exact things this community has long since built protocols against.

And the piece that's making me a little weepy right now (in the best way, from relief!) is this: I'm not the only one. I can't be: these structures exist because other people need them too. They are built by people who knew they needed it.

Belonging by inference, I guess.

I've been bracing for a version of playing and dating built for a nervous system I simply don't have.

What's in front of me is still equal parts exhilarating and terrifying; it still involves the possibility of rejection and real emotional exposure. But the cost of it is so much lower.

And I'm not a weirdo alien for needing that. (Or if I am, I'm at least not the only one. 😎)

---

¹ Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is extreme, sudden emotional pain caused by the perception of being rejected, criticized, or failing to meet high standards. Common in ADHD, this intense, often debilitating reaction feels like a physical "gut punch" or overwhelming rage/sadness that is disproportionate to the event. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24099-rejection

deprivation of physical contact, resulting in unmet neurological and emotional needs for touch.

-------------------------------------------------

Research consistently shows that physical touch lowers cortisol levels and increases oxytocin levels. People who receive more affectionate touch report less anxiety, less stress, and a greater sense of wellbeing. Touch is a biological input that helps regulate the nervous system, not just something that "feels nice".

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I am touch starved. I think I have been for most of my life, and that I'm only just now finally have reached a boiling point where I'm not longer as able to deal with it, replace it, ignore it.

Simply imagining being held, hugged, a hand on my shoulder, someone picking lint from my sweater as an afterthought, a hand held in mind makes me choke up. Makes me want to cry.

I'm not talking about romantic touch, or sexual intimacy. Just human touch. Simple affection. A physical reminder that I'm not a monad; an isolated entity without connections to the world around me. A reminder that I'm not repulsive, not wholly unwanted or invisible.

But when I do get that, when someone hugs me or maybe sits close to me, I automatically and without conscious thought reel myself in. Monitor my response. Make sure I don't react too much, don't hold on too long, don't let them see that this small, almost invisible, casual thing they're doing may very well be the most impactful thing that's happened to me in weeks. I keep my response proportional to what they're offering, not to what I actually want or feel or need.

It's like standing in front of a buffet, ravenously hungry but terrified to fill a plate. So I keep drinking water to fill myself up, and to only eat the leftovers, to keep the hunger to a level I can at least sustain myself on.

With whom, you ask?

The Solar E1.6AC Carbon Black Matte.

https://www.solar-guitars.com/product/e1-6ac-carbon-black-matte/