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All Inclusive / Encompasing Straight/Heterosexual Flag

A flag for any and all straight people, or straight aligned people.

https://archive.is/j6CEx

And fat liberation says "It's okay to be fat!" and fat people say "I'm happy being fat and I don't try to become skinny!"

And it scares people that that is an option. It scares people to think that they have sunk so much time, so much effort, so much misery into avoiding being fat. And this person in front of them is just... not even trying. Rejecting the game. Saying You Don't Have To Do That.

If they accept that they didn't have to do that... then they made themselves so unhappy, for so long, for no reason.

They want their effort, their unhappiness, to have been worth it. To have meant something.

you still think aspec representation is a loss for queer representation.

you still can’t see a character with no romantic or sexual interests and interact with them without shipping them.

you still don’t accept people who are aplatonic, afamial, or any other kind of nonrose anattractional.

you still don’t accept alloaces and alloaros, people who are oriented aroace, people who are cupidosexual or cupioromantic, etc.

you still don’t accept hetero aspecs.

you still associate asexuality and aromanticism with whiteness, thinness, conformity, etc.

you still think of arormanticism as something that only occurs in tandem with asexuality.

you still think of aspec adults as lesser than allo adults, infantilize them, etc.

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.

sorry but this is maybe THE most annoying response i see to discussion of anti-transmasculinity and exorsexism in trans spaces.

i hate to use "sides" in this context because things are not that binary and they are not that uniform. but like. i need to fucking remind everyone that one ""side"" created the term transunity specifically to call for less infighting and for transfeminist theory that integrates all kinds of trans experiences, and the ""other side"" immediately began insisting the people behind it must hate trans women.

its so fucking infuriating. like jesus fucking christ you do not need to condescend to us about how this infighting shit is gonna get people killed!!!!! WE KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! & its ESPECIALLY fucking gross when you type this shit on a post about intercommunity bigotry, as if the people being anti-transmasc or exorsexist and the people talking about how that is bad are equally contributing to infighting.

this discourse is not actually pointless or meaningless i'm sorry. there is real shit, real rotten fetid wounds in our community, that we have never properly addressed (& that goes for the anti-transmasculinity, the exorsexism, the transmisogyny, the biphobia, the misogyny, the aphobia, the racism, the classism, everything). we cannot just "stop fighting" because the REASON there is so much fighting is because people - bi people, aspec people, transmascs & nonbinary people, queer people of color - keep saying "hey this shit is hurting us, can we talk about it & stop doing it?" and then other people react to that like its a personal attack on them to have somebody question their emotional support lateral violence. and then because the internet is built to incentivize outrage over productive solutions & meaningful community-building, it becomes something huge and messy and shitty, and the core problem struggles to ever get actually properly addressed.

most of the time, at best, you get what happened post-ace discourse, where the community goes "fine okay the A can stay" but never actually grapples with the acephobia and arophobia or amatonormativity, never grapples with the extent of the hostility towards aspec people, and everyone just pretends it was silly terminally online teen arguments that had nothing to do with real life, and we return to a slightly modified status quo. and that is not fucking improvement.

"bomb that kills all-" "I just don't get bi women bringing their-" "pansexuality isn't a real thing-" "all lesbians-" "trans men really are the men of the-" "theyfabs-" "pfft aroace people are cringe-" "nonbinary people are actually all-" Instant block. Goodbye. Not listening. It's for both solidarity with your fellow queers AND to protect yourself, because once a person is convinced to hate one group for their immutable traits they can be convinced fairly easily to hate another too, and thus I do not trust them.

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes of amatonormative culture, we aren't doing anything. Adults are supposed to do things. That's how you become a member of society.