my heart is heavy

some of you might have noticed that I haven’t been here in the last few days. i honestly couldn’t, and I don’t really want to anymore. I wanted to leave before because this place had gotten really bad for my mental health, but then you know, druck happened and i had to obsess somewhere, and even though it was a struggle to make the fandom safe for me, I still felt like I eventually achieved that - and then it turned out that I didn’t, and that really hurt.

i had surrounded myself with a few selected blogs i trusted, i was participating in conversations about truly blessed headcanons and AUs, I felt safe and welcomed - and then I saw a post about ‘the q slur’ from those people I had come to trust and whole opinions I valued and just. wow. that hurt. it triggered some really shitty stuff for me and made me unable to come to tumblr, because what had felt safe and welcoming before, suddenly didn’t feel that way. 

and let me just say, i’m not here to attack the person who posted this, or the people who reblogged it. I absolutely believe you that you have valid reasons to not want to see this word, and the reason i’m not telling you directly or @ ing you is because this is not about you, and not against you. 

but the thing is this: I am so hurt by it. and that’s a valid feeling, because hey, that’s my identity, and so see it censored and called a slur is fucking upsetting. It’s not like I picked this label to harm anyone. I picked this label because I’ve been afraid and lonely, and I felt broken for so long, and then i found this word and everything fell into place. i’m from a country where this was never a slur, where this is used to describe not only people, but communities and places and movements and cinema and fields of study and everything that connects me to people like me. when I learned that elsewhere, this is a reclaimed word that others in the past have fought for, I rejoiced because their power, their fight had given me a word I was so grateful for. people used this word to make a change in politics, people used this word to make our voices heard in academia, people proudly yelled this word at pride events to claim their place in this world, and fuck, that makes me feel so connected to myself, my community and its history. there are so many words in this community that we’ve reclaimed - most of the words we used have this origin. And yet the word I use is the only one that gets policed over and over again, its history of reclaiming erased, its inclusiveness denied. People call themselves dykes and fags with pride, and they should!! And it’s good and amazing and inspiring! But I don’t get the same right, and why?

I do not want to hurt people who’ve been hurt by that word. These people and I, I think we’re on the same side - I hope we are. But I don’t understand why I should have to get hurt in the process? Like. “Lesbian” and “dyke” are both words that have been used against me in the past - used by straight people to hurt me, make me feel inferior, make me feel dirty and sinful and worthless. Coming from straight people, these words often still make me feel sick. But as a self identifier, I know how important these words are, and even though reading them still might trigger a negative response in me, I do not have the right to tell people not to use those, and I don’t want to. I have two options there: either i just block everyone who uses that word - but that doesn’t seem right, because those are the valued voices of many, many wlw that I don’t want to silence and whose experiences I want to learn from. Or I confront my own discomfort with those words, relearn their meanings as something others thrive from, as something they took the pain out of and wear with pride now, and I can shut up and listen to their experiences. Which I do, and yes it’s not easy because I have to confront myself with shit that has harmed me, but it’s worth it. 

With my identity, people do not show the same courtesy. I’m not asking you to not be harmed by it. I’m just asking not to be harassed or made feel dirty and wrong for the way I identify. If you can’t deal with that word, blacklist it and enable “don’t show why the post was blocked”. There, you never have to see that word again. If you want to learn though why and how people have reclaimed this word, if you want the dreadful feeling you associate with it to go away, then listen and learn to those who have reclaimed it, and those who use it. 

“Reclaiming” does not mean that this word can never hurt anyone again. “Reclaiming” means that, within a community, these words connect us and make us strong, so that when we get attacked by them from the outside, we already stand together in power, while the word has lost some of its bite because it’s ours now. 

Now here I am, writing this whole post about my identity, too afraid to use the word that describes me, and that hurts. And I’m unwilling to do that, and right now, it’s impossible for me to imagine that people here could be willing to learn to accept my identity. so i go. which is more a defeat than anything else, because it feels like now, the straight people have won, and the gatekeepers have won, and the terfs and exclusionists and everyone who keeps on pushing the idea that the way i’ve identified for eight years of my life, is a poison to my community.