✦be lovely. be you✦

The "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is a wiki being created by the mods of FANDOM. Not LGBTA Wiki- FANDOM, the site that hosts LGBTA Wiki. The creation of this Wiki was made alongside an announcement that every single LGBTQ+ focused wiki is being "merged" (deleted), with "common" identities being on this new wiki, and "uncommon" identities like xenogenders being put on the Ezgender Wiki.

First and foremost: This is not "merging." Do not let the admins make you think otherwise. This is deleting without consent, without a good reason. No mods on any wiki were informed of this, nor did they get a say in this whatsoever. Not LGBTA. Not Ezgender. Nobody. Many, many people have been furious on LGBTA Wiki over this new development, but FANDOM has supposedly already made up it's mind.

You might be asking- especially if you didn't like the LGBTA Wiki before- why is this a bad thing? Well, there's a lot to it...

1. It is without the consent of any creators involved.

Not only was LGBTA Wiki not informed, but neither was Ezgender or any other Wiki, such as the Nonbinary Wiki, Gender Wiki, or Kenochoric Wiki. It was made on the behalf of staff on FANDOM. This is an act of usurping creators and normal community members in order to force out a wiki that the site personally wanted. This is unacceptable behavior.

This not only undercuts creators, but admins as well, and everybody who has ever submitted and worked on pages for these wikis. People's hard effort was put into these pages, and now it is all being deleted for the sake of a wiki that is significantly worse.

2. It is blatantly against xenogenders and other microlabels.

This wiki will not be allowing xenogenders or any other "uncommon" identity, despite exactly 0 people liking this idea. Comments by the new admins on this topic have been rude and dismissive at best. Forcing this onto Ezgender Wiki, and making them be the one who holds all the microlabels, is creating so much sudden traffic and panic that nobody on that Wiki was prepared for.

It is also extremely concerning that random FANDOM admins believe they can distinguish what queer identities deserve to be on their Wiki and which ones do not, especially since not every member on this new team is queer (some are simply "allies.")

3. It is already parroting exclusionist content that would have never been acceptable on LGBTA.

Inclusivity is important in this community. However, on this new wiki, various entries are already very concerning, with much more exclusionary language than LGBTA had. For example, with lesbian:

LGBTA: "Lesbian is a term that defines queer attraction to women.", has extensive resources dating all the way back to Sappho, numerous community made flags, etc.

"LGBTQIA+": "A lesbian is most commonly defined as a woman who has enduring emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions toward other women.", far less sources, most of them being medical, less inclusive language/less inclusive of nonbinary people, various lesbian subcultures only being included under a "controversy" section, and only one flag.

4. It is forcing the deletion of an active, thriving community that has been active for years, just to promote a less inclusive wiki.

LGBTA Wiki is not new, inactive, or unable to be used. It is a thriving community with tons of terms being added daily (something not even allowed on this new wiki). The FANDOM mods are, in short, undercutting a very active community to promote their own, shittier community, which is tyrannical.

When people force a shut-down of a community-run site to make people use their own, it should be responded to accordingly.

5. It undercuts creators and lived experiences for "medical" explanations on sexualities/genders.

The admins have said they will only be adding things that are medically backed up onto this wiki. You will see proof of this, in that most of the mspec (bi, pan, ply, omni) pages have their first source being from WebMD, a medical site. While medical information is not inherently bad, it is extremely concerning for those who are, for instance, xenogender, non-dysphoric, or otherwise not perfectly defined by a medical system, to see a wiki near-exclusively prioritize that.

The entire point of the queer community is that it is not able to be contained in medical documents or perfect explanations. This paired with their decision to not allow any "micro" labels reeks of exclusionary behavior and reminds me a hell of a lot of transmedicalist rhetoric.

6. The Wiki is brand new, has not proved it will be well run, and is barely even created.

There are very few pages on this Wiki so far. We know no information about the mods, their beliefs, or their ability to run a Wiki. If you're going to force us to use a new platform, at least make a little more than 20 pages first. While more have been rapidly made, most are stubs with no flags or resources (which, ironically, is a critique LGBTA often gets).

The admins are consistently saying "the wiki isn't done yet," as they try to shut down an existing wiki that has been far beyond enough for years.

7. The LGBTA Wiki is a resource with massive impacts on the community.

Love it or hate it, you cannot deny the impact of the LGBTA Wiki. With these major resources gone, the community will be left in the dark for the sake of a wiki that will not allow replacement pages for a lot of these identities.

Queer people, especially young ones, will either have to rely on this new wiki which is much less inclusive, or look to the Ezgender Wiki, which is still relatively new, and is far from the first thing to show up in a Google search like LGBTA Wiki is.

It's cutting the line to one of our biggest gateway websites for the community. It's deleting terms that are not posted or archived on any other site. It's removing important resources that many people will find for the first time on the LGBTA Wiki. It's. Ridiculous.

8. It's forcing division between what is and is not "normal" in the community.

The "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is splitting off from itself and Ezgender, with the former hosting "common" identities (who decides what is common?) and Ezgender for... everything else.

Mods have already stated untrue census data about how many people are xenogender, claiming less than 2% of the community is xenogender, when in reality the census data showed that over 20% percent identify with xenogender. That is 10 times larger than what they claimed, and is just misinformation by that point.

[ID: A screenshot of one of the admins on LGBTQIA Wiki. It states, "Based on the results from the Gender census, an annual survey of nonbinary individuals, less than 2% of those survey respondents identified as xenogender. It can be assumed that for individual xenogender identities under that umbrella, that percentage is even smaller." End ID]

[ID: A screenshot from the xenogender carrd, which has a link to the gender census. It states, "In the results from the Gender Census of 2020, between 1,164-4,820 people (approx. 24.35%), out of 24,576 total results, were xenogender." End ID]

What is "normal" and "non-normal" is not a thing in the queer community. It is no more or less valid to be xenogender than it is to be a trans man. It is no more or less valid to be finsexual than it is to be a lesbian. Forcing this divide is further encouraging divide in the community, and will be alienating for many people.

... So, what can we do?

There are a few things:

1. Support the Ezgender Wiki. They already include "common" IDs; the "LGBTQIA+ Wiki" is not needed. If the LGBTA Wiki truly is no more, the Ezgender Wiki is your next best bet, and may benefit from additions from the LGBTA Wiki before it goes down.

2. Support the new LGBTA Wiki, which is planned to be hosted on Miraheze. Not much is known about this port yet, but keep an eye on it!

3. Do not support the new wiki, and preferably boycott FANDOM as a platform. FANDOM runs off of monetary support from ads, and refusing to use their platform speaks volumes. Show the site that this behavior is not okay.

The thing is, I don’t know why I feel like a man.  I was teased and bullied for it a lot when I was little.  I’ve never had stereotypically American male interests.  I never cared about sports or cars or guns.  I was more interested in music and cooking and the arts.  I’ve always been emotionally in tune and sensitive, even when I did my best to suppress my emotions to survive a childhood of abuse from other children.

It’s not physical either.  I don’t feel like a man because I have a penis or a beard.  If you put my brain in a robot body or any other body, my essence would still feel male (I assume).  I literally can’t imagine what being any other gender would feel like, since I feel so acutely male.

I think that’s why the concept of being transgender always made sense to me.  I’m a man.  I don’t have any bloody clue why I feel like a man, but I don’t feel that it’s tied to my body or my interests or the way that I’ve been treated.  I feel like a man because of something beyond that.  Something ephemeral.  So, why couldn’t others feel the same?  Why couldn’t a person who’s been misidentified as a girl feel like a boy for the exact same nebulous reasons that I do?

And, since gender really doesn’t make any sense to me anyway, why couldn’t there also be people who feel as if they don’t have one?  Or who flow across genders like a ship on a map?

Are there people out there whose sense of their own gender is inseparable from their physical form?  If you put those people into robot bodies or, simply, other physically different bodies, would their gender identity also swap?  If so, why?  Are they actually more lost in their gender identity than I am and they need to hone in on the physical in order to anchor themselves?

And I replied, “well, I could ask you the same thing.” And I moved on, continued, tried to explain why I feel the way that I do, but I don’t think he heard any of those things that I said afterward. 

Because six days later, we talked about it again, and this is what he told me: 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said last week. Because all my life I identified it as ‘these are the parts that I have, and so I am a man’. But you’re living proof that gender is not limited to what is attached to your body, so I asked myself, why am I a man? And all I can say is ‘because I have no idea what it feels like to be anything else’. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a woman. Or neither, or both, or any other gender. I have always been a man.”

And I replied, “that’s exactly what it feels like for me.”

My aroace experience has been loving my friends with all my heart, yes. But it’s also been loving my existence, loving where my feet take me when I go for long walks, loving my own presence, a steady and reliable calm.