muck

You DO deserve a community that uplifts you. You DO deserve to experience trans joy. You DO deserve to have your voices heard and your struggles recognized. Wanting the bare minimum of solidarity is NOT "making everything about trans men".

oh, your name is bug, you like big eyeliner and dyed hair, kandi, and use he/they? you're too trans, you're embarrassing the community.

you're stealth? you exclusively want to dress and present male? you don't want anyone to know your trans? what are you, ashamed of yourself? do you hate other queers? you need to out yourself to make fem people feel safe!

you're a trans boy but you like pink, frills and dresses, your hair is long and you don't bind? faker. you're making the whole community look bad. you are not actually trans.

you want to take testosterone, get jacked, shave your head and grow a beard? you are making women uncomfortable, you can't call yourself a trans man anymore bcs you pass too well, you aren't welcomed in this community.

Pretend that we’re back when there was NO LGBTQ representation in media. As in, you could think of literally example of a queer character if asked. (I know LGBTQ rep is still scarce, but not as scarce as it used to be, so just pretend it is that super rare).

Lets say that there is a canonically sapphic character in a show you like, let’s say she’s a girl. You get so excited because there’s literally NO rep in any other shows you can find. Excited, you go on the internet to look for stuff about her. However, when you get onto your social media of choice, all you see is fan content shipping her with a male character.

On the surface, this is completely fine. After all, the show doesn’t exactly specify her identity, she could be bi, pan, etc. Sapphic women can like men. But, you find it odd how the only ship art is with her and a man. She had chemistry with tons of female characters, after all. Why not ship her with them? It seems telling that most people ignore her queerness and just say “sapphic women can still date men” to excuse it, despite that being true.

When you post about how frustrating it is, people start getting mad, saying that you’re gatekeeping queerness. People ignore your points and just say “but queer people can be in straight relationships” even though you know that’s true. People say that “its just fan content, let them have fun.” Most people doing the shipping aren’t even sapphic themselves.

To you, it feels like the only piece of canon representation you have is being ignored completely. You know queer people can have straight relationships, you have no issue with that. It’s the fact that people are basically treating her like a straight character and ignoring her queerness that bothers you.

This is how it feels to see people shipping aro character. I know aro people can date. I’m aro and I hope to be in a relationship someday. Some of my closest friends are aspec and are dating other aspecs. But that’s not the point.

The point is that when aspec characters become canon, which is UNBELIEVABLY RARE, so many people choose to ship them anyways. Not only this, but people’s just treat them as if they were allo, just using “aspecs can date” as a cover for completely ignoring the character’s identity. Aspec relationships have nuance. They sometimes don’t look like a “normal” allo relationship.

You can ship aspec characters respectfully. You can:

Put them in a queerplatonic relationship

Put them in a romantic relationship that doesnt involve sex (if they’re allo-ace)

Put them in a sexual relationship that doesnt involve romance (if theyre aro-allo)

Put them in a relationship that’s sexual and romantic, but acknowledge that the relationship might be different than a one between allo people

Handle the ships with nuance and understand that even in a relationship, the character still isnt allo

And most importantly, listen to aspec people when they tell you something you’re doing is inaccurate or harmful.

You never see anyone talking about lesbians being like “Oh some lesbians can be attracted to men too!!1!1!1!1” You’d look at them like they’re fucking crazy but for some reason we loveee to excuse this when it happens to aros and aces.

People throw fucking fits (and rightfully so) when people erase queer aspects of characters or make them straight (Like a man shipping himself with a lesbian or a woman shipping herself with a gay man) but they just loveee to do it to characters who are aroace and get pissed off at YOU for calling it out.

what if I don’t even bite you. what if I throw you into the cursed fire. what if I shove your face in a tank gun’s barrel. what if I turn your dreams into waking nightmares. what if I sacrifice you to not even Satan’s prostitution club, but the slaughterhouse. what if I didn’t give a shit about what you think. what if I vaporized your soul whenever you were close to even thinking of shipping an aspec character.