Rebel Rebel

You’re definitely not wrong for saying that!

If someone isn’t out, it’s not right to assume or to publicly speculate about their identity. They’re keeping it private for a reason and it’s up them when they feel ready to share that info.

Even if that person does turn out to be gay, it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable to have people speculating about that before they’re ready.

Saying “let’s not assume” doesn’t mean you think it would be a bad thing to be gay. It just means you’re respecting the idol’s privacy and their right to share their identity on their terms.

Honey sweetie baby... why can’t *you* just be the adult and walk away from *them* if you don’t like them calling themselves queer instead of bothering them??

If it’s an imaginary problem then why are you getting mad at me lmao.

Like... if no one is saying you can’t use queer at pride... then why would me saying that you’re allowed to use queer at pride and no one can tell you not to.... be a problem??

If it’s not a thing that happens... then there’s no issue right?

Look anon, I’m not interested in arguing with you all night about this. I agree that people should get to be open about their trauma and triggers but our triggers don’t give us a right to walk over other peoples boundaries and autonomy.

That’s where you being responsible for yourself comes in. I get the feeling that you’re quite young and I’m sure you’ll learn this in time but it is important to remember that as much as we should all be respectful of each other’s mental health, trauma and triggers, there’s also such a thing as incompatible mental health needs.

Queer people deserve to be open about their queerness just as much as you deserve to have your trauma respected. There are going to be times when those two needs conflict. And at those times, you have to compromise to a degree.

right??? 

The whole reason I made that video was I had watched lots of videos about he/him lesbians by transmascs who were all claiming it was transphobic. I wanted to offer an alternative perspective that said “hey this actually doesn’t affect me and you should do whatever makes you comfortable.” 

And it’s amazing to me that the same person who goes “all the lesbians are leaving to identify as trans :(” would also be angry about me saying “hey lesbians who use he/him pronouns are still lesbians.”

Like.... make up your mind??

oh bloody hell. I know of Arielle. 

I didn’t say traumatised members shouldn’t take part in pride. 

I said if you have trauma around the word queer that doesn’t make it okay to force people who identify as queer to drop their identity at an event that is literally about having pride in LGBTQ identities. 

Imagine asking a gay person not to call themselves gay at a fucking pride event. It would be ridiculous. You don’t get to do that to queer people either.

People also have been using terms like the d slur and f@g on pride signs since pride marches have existed. Reclaimation is a huge part of our community. You don’t have to reclaim stuff if you dont want to... but you don’t get to tell us not to at our own damn pride march either. 

After a certain point, your triggers *are* your responsibility to manage. I have triggers with self-harm. Yes, people should provide content warnings if they’re going to talk about it but it’s my job to mute those terms. And if i meet someone in real life with cuts or scars... I do NOT get to demand they hide their own body for my comfort. 

Going ‘you dont have a dick your a biological women’ is dumb and transphobic, but is it correct to call those areas a dick if theyre... not? Outside of like, casual references, i mean in the more literal sense. this is all coming from a cis person whos only just learnt that this is a thing and thats why its throwing me off, i dont wanna sound like im coming from a ‘your wrong’ perspective! Im just not sure of the terminology, because a trans man who doesnt have a ‘growth’ or w/e would be a Man with a vagina, right, or would we say its a dick? I have no idea if this makes sense sorry

This ask is really old now (sorry about that! I read it at the time but just did not have it in me to answer after everything that went down on twitter) so I doubt you’ll even see this but I’ll give answering it a go anyway. 

So... when it comes to things like genitals, every trans person is gonna have a different way of dealing with that dysphoria (if they experience bottom dysphoria at all). Some trans guys are gonna call it a vagina and a clitoris, some are just gonna say “junk” to make it neutral and yeah, some are gonna say dick (and of course, any trans man who has had bottom surgery does indeed have a dick!)

Like you say, this happens often with “bottom growth” because one the clitoris grows on testosterone it can look and even function (since it will also harden or get erect when you’re aroused) much like a micro-penis. Is it exactly the same as a cis man’s penis? No, it’s not. Of course not. But... trans bodies don’t have to be the same as cis bodies. They’re still bodies. And technically, the clitoris is made from the exact same tissue as a penis. So, I would argue its perfectly correct to call it a dick if that’s how you view it and that’s what you wanna call it. 

Now I’m not saying that that means you should go label a clitoris “penis” on an anatomy chart. I’m just saying that while bottom growth isn’t biologically identical to a cis man’s penis, it’s also not biologically identical to a cis woman’s clitoris so... the lines are kind of blurred and you can call it whatever the fuck you wanna call it. 

Some people also use terms like babydick or dicklet to describe the fact that it’s obviously smaller and not exactly the same. Or words like T-dick to describe the fact that it’s growth from testosterone. 

As for if you’re not on T (like me)... then yeah it’s far more of a casual thing. I’m not an idiot I’m fully aware that I don’t actually have a penis. But I personally find it dysphoric to call my clitoris a clit, so I refer to it as my dick. Other than this one situation, this isn’t something I would usually ever speak about publically so this would just be between me and my long-term partner, who of course, has seen my junk and is aware of exactly what I have down there. It’s not misleading anyone or anything like that, it’s just a term that makes me more comfy. 

I’m perfectly happy saying that I am a man with a vagina. That is correct and true and fine. It’s just the clitoris word that spikes my dysphoria. I don’t know why, it just does. So yeah... when I’m talking with my partner, I say I have a vagina and a dick rather than a vagina and a clit. 

The whole situation on twitter started because someone jokingly tweeted about how giving a trans man a blow job (referring to bottom growth in this case) is a different skill set to giving a cis man a blow job. Some random cis guy came into the conversation to go off on one about how that wouldn’t count as a blow job so I basically told him “sucking dick is sucking dick, doesn’t matter if the dick is cis, a strap-on, bottom growth or whatever.” He proceeded to argue about whether it counted as a dick before finally saying that he’d googled pictures of it and now agreed that it was a dick.

So... I tweeted some screenshots and was like “hey cis people maybe don’t act like this... it’s kinda weird for you as a cis person to decide that it’s up to you what terms we’re allowed to use for our bodies.” Note that I was not saying that it’s the same as a cis penis! I was just saying you can it a dick or call oral a blow job if you want to! 

And for some reason... this really pissed people off. Lots of transmeds calling me a trender because “only a trender would go around saying they have a dick out of nowhere” which I find doubly frustrating because a). it wasn’t out of nowhere, some cis dude started it and b). i am 100% sure that if I called it a clit instead I’d be accused of being a trender for not being dysphoric enough. You just can’t win. 

Obviously lots of transphobes but also quite a few trans people. Who all wanted to make jokes about my body or how I have sex. Really nasty stuff, outright transphobia and bordering on sexual harassment. There was a lot of people who were attacking me for saying that a clitoris is a penis or because they thought I believed that it’s factual to say it’s identical to a cis penis. 

But... I never said any of that. All I said was that it can be a dick if you call it a dick (when it comes to stuff in the bedroom! Obviously medically speaking is a whole other issue). Because your sex life is your business. 

❝ Stop being scared all the time.❞ - I AM JONAS (2018) 

Thoughts: A lot of this film feels like a coming of age story/romance about growing up as a gay boy in the 90s and it does that extremely well. But it's also intermixed with the story of Jonas as an adult, 18 years later, and that makes it so much more than that. It's a story about grief and trauma and survivor's guilt.

Mostly it's about how trauma doesn't always look neat and tidy. In fact, for Jonas, trauma looks like a sex/dating app addiction, getting into fights and drinking problems. It isn't always easy to process - sometimes it takes 18 years - and you can seem relatively okay for a while only for it to crash down on you later.

The use of several recurring icons throughout - the news on the radio and the Gameboy in particular- really struck a chord with me and made the build-up to the reveal at the end all the more emotional. But most of all, I'm glad we got to see a queer exploration of trauma and the search for closure.