Embrace the Strange

Part 1, what was taken.

and now mourning is political, too.

i'm so sorry, murry foust. i keep thinking about how tired you must have been. how tired all of us are. how humiliating it is that even when we die alone, people still laugh and debate whether we deserved to live a happy, dignified life at all.

there are trans kids online right now learning your name – and the names of juniper blessing, lucas redbeard knapp, aleanna belcher, and davonta curtis – through grief. through fear. through that horrible, familiar ache of "that could've been me." and i hate that this is part of our inheritance from one another. not just chosen family and resilience and beauty – but memorials. vigils. apology letters to ghosts.

We're getting scared about this, SO:

Anyone who donates $15+ can DM me + request a comfort character letter. No genAI trash, and written with great care by an actual person! It'll be about a page or so, you choose whatever (SFW!) topic you want.

You can choose:

Pretty much any of the bigger names from Supernatural

Any character from KPDH

The OG main cast from Teen Wolf

Main cast from The Dragon Prince

Stark, Rogers, Barnes from MCU

Barry Allen from The Flash

Any Hazbin main cast + Vees

Blitz Helluva

Any of the main cast from Animorphs

AND MORE. Take a look at our AO3 here, any POV character you see is fair game.

It's been a horrible year, this is the only incentive we've got the energy + strength to offer right now.

Thank you for taking a look, sharing, or any help. Our kofi link is here if you're feeling generous! We know times are fucking shit for everyone, so we appreciate any and all boosts.

By fictives, for... whoever wants 'em, comfort character letters are one of the few things we can offer right now for incentive. We just don't have the energy or health for anything else right now, but we wanted to offer something to make it worthwhile for folks. It helps us AND might make someone smile? Nice!

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM !!! PEER ABUSE !!!!! ISOLATION !!!!!!!! RACISM !!! SEXISM !!!!!! MEDICAL ABUSE !!!!!! NONCONSENSUAL SURGERY !!!! POVERTY !!!! SO MUCH MORE !!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

edit: i made this in a high school enduced rage and didnt expect it to blow up like this ?

anyway i love trans people i love intersex people i love people with personality disorsers i love aspec people okkk

It’s what the biphobia discourse was about, it’s what the aphobia discourse was about, it’s what the transandrophobia discourse is about, it’s what the AFAB trans fem/AMAB trans masc discourse is about. Some of y’all heard “nobody should be excluded because of their queerness” and turned it into “Some people should be excluded if they aren’t queer enough” and that’s a big problem. You shouldn’t be trying to get people to prove they’re queer enough. You shouldn’t be forced to out yourself in order to participate in community. “Well what if the cis straight guy gets in-“ well as long as he’s not doing anything wrong, then who gives a shit. You can’t tell who is going to do evil based on their identity. You can’t. It’s only through their actions that you can determine that. That should be the foundation of your belief structure.

happy pan visibility day!! 💗💛💙

anyone who identifies as pan in some way, on its own or in addition to other labels, all the time or only sometimes, for your attraction or gender, today is for you.

on days like this, i urge everyone to take the time to learn actual pansexual history. if you don’t know where to start doing so, check out my detailed (but non-exhaustive) timeline of pansexual history.

pan people deserve so much better. we deserve to be taken into account and included in things that concern us. we deserve to be treated with the same kind of respect that others get. we deserve support, understanding, love, and fair treatment.

Also hesitant to label myself as pan because bi has more of a history I’ve seen but maybe that’s not the case? I’d just thought I’d ask someone who’s pan and apologizes if you’ve already covered this on your blog

-💙

yeah, my pinned post and faq have pretty much all the resources you need to answer these questions. but none of these things are true.

bi is not "better," whatever that even means. no label is "better" than another.

bi has not always meant all genders.

anything that moves does not define bisexuality as all genders, nor does it even put forth any universal definition of bisexuality.

anything that moves/the bisexual manifesto and the bi community at large actually support other mspec labels.

even if bi was defined in the 1990s in anything that moves as all genders, that would not "erase pansexuality," because there is no rule against having more than one word to mean the same thing or something similar, and that's not even how or why queer identity labels exist in the first place.

pan has plenty of history as a sexual identity label, but please know that a label having more history than another doesn't make it any more valid or important.

lastly, the negative things random people say on the internet shouldn't determine how you identify or what language you feel comfortable and at home with.

If you’re “neutral” on ace/aro discourse, you’re on the side of ace/aro exclusionists.

If you’re “neutral” on trans and nonbinary discourse, you’re on the side of transmeds/truscum, TERFs, and other trans-exclusionary people.

If you’re “neutral” on pan discourse, you’re on the side of pan exclusionists.

If you’re “neutral” on queer discourse, you’re on the side of queer exclusionists.

If you’re “neutral” on any discourse about whether or not a gender identity, sexual orientation, or romantic orientation is real, valid, and part of the LGBTQ+ community, you’re on the side of the oppressor.

You either believe these identities are part of this community, which, historically-speaking, they are, or you don’t.

You can think and say discourse on these identities is “stupid” or “pointless” or whatever else all you want, but to the people who consistently have their identities debated, it’s not stupid. It’s not pointless. It matters to them, and it matters to those who support them. Thinking and saying stuff like that only further invalidates those people, tears them down and hurts them, and creates an even bigger divide in this community, in their community, in our community!!

It’s Pride Month! This is our time to celebrate our identities, to be proud of who we are as members of the LGBTQ+ community!! This is not the time to alienate and invalidate your fellow community members. By doing so, you’re blatantly denying queer history, our history. So please, keep your gatekeeping to yourself. Let us be proud of who we are! Our queer elders fought for our rights to be treated equally, to be seen, to be recognized, to be accepted, to be validated. They didn’t fight for y'all to go around hurting other members of this community because you refuse to accept them for their LGBTQ+ identities. By doing this, you’re basically slapping our queer elders in the face, and for that, you should be ashamed.

what better day to highlight the (very small pool of) research that specifically takes a look at pansexual people, identity, and experiences than pan visibility day?

specific to pansexuality:

Gonel, Ayisigi Hale. “Pansexual Identification in Online Communities A Queer Sociological Study on Sexual Identification.” Lund University, 2011. (pansexual author)

Gonel, Ayisigi Hale. “Pansexual Identification in Online Communities: Employing a Collaborative Queer Method to Study Pansexuality.” Graduate Journal of Social Science, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2013. (pansexual author)

Belous, Christopher K. and Melissa L. Bauman. “What’s in a Name? Exploring Pansexuality Online.” Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2016.

Green, Ashley. “‘By Definition They’re Not the Same Thing’: Analyzing Methods of Meaning Making for Pansexual Individuals.” Expanding the Rainbow: Exploring the Relationships of Bi+, Polyamorous, Kinky, Ace, Intersex, and Trans People edited by Brandy L. Simula, J.E. Sumerau, and Andrea Miller, 2019.

Hayfield, Nikki and Karolína Křížová. “It’s Like Bisexuality, but It Isn’t: Pansexual and Panromantic People’s Understandings of Their Identities and Experiences of Becoming Educated about Gender and Sexuality.” Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2021. (pansexual co-author)

Haylock, Charlotte. “‘Obviously People Haven’t Heard of Being Pansexual’ Pansexual Peoples’ Experiences of Pansexuality: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.” London Metropolitan University, 2021.

Peña, Brisa and Eman Tadros. “Exploring Clinicians’ Knowledge, Beliefs and Clinical Experiences Related to Pansexual Youth.” Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2021.

Pismenny, Arina. “Pansexuality: A Closer Look at Sexual Orientation.” Philosophies, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2023.

Harvey, Emily and Keely Abbott and Samuel Parker and Mariel Marcano-Olivier. “‘Context and Safety Are Everything’”: Exploring How Pansexual Individuals Mark and Express Their Identity.” Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2024. (pansexual lead author)

pansexuality in relation to or in conjunction with a single other identity, such as queer or bisexual:

Flanders, Corey E. and Marianne E. LeBreton and Margaret Robinson and Jing Bian and Jaime Alonso Caravaca-Morera. “Defining Bisexuality: Young Bisexual and Pansexual People’s Voices.” Journal of Bisexuality, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2016. (these pansexuals also identify as bi, as identifying as bi was part of the inclusion criteria)

Morandini, James S. and Alexander Blaszczynski and Ilan Dar-Nimrod. “Who Adopts Queer and Pansexual Sexual Identities?” The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 54, No. 7, 2016.

Greaves, Lara M. and Chris G. Sibley and Gloria Fraser and Fiona Kate Barlow. “Comparing Pansexual- and Bisexual-Identified Participants on Demographics, Psychological Well-Being, and Political Ideology in a New Zealand National Sample.” The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 56, No. 9, 2019.

Galupo, M. Paz. “Mental Health for Individuals with Pansexual and Queer Identities.” The Oxford Handbook of Sexual and Gender Minority Mental Health edited by Esther D. Rothblum. Oxford University Press, 2020.