Blog Announcement

For those of you who haven't been with us since the beginning, I'm going to go over the history of This Is The A-Team.

This blog was originally created in June of 2014, when I, at age sixteen, identified as a bisexual Christian cis girl. It was called We Are The Rainbow, and it was spawned from my own anger after I left the Bronte Chix - not entirely willingly.

I was closeted at the time, out to only one person, but hoping to come out to my family soon. Unfortunately, some of them had made their "opinions" on LGBT people - on me, they don't get to separate me from those other LGBT people just because it's more comfortable for them to pretend that they can hate them without hating me too - and I realized I probably wouldn't be safe doing so.

So I tried to take baby steps by writing pro-LGBT posts on my first blog, The Bronte Chix, which I ran with the help of three of my cousins and two friends (both of whom are queer, by the way), one of whom had been my best friend for fourteen years. I've had a lot to say about my cousins before, and to be honest, I almost pity them. But I'm fucking done. I've expended too much energy on hating them - or Ella and LiLi, at least; Abby hasn't been as bad - and it left me feeling burned out and hollow. My love for myself and my community is more important than my anger at them, even if that anger was borne from love for the former.

Needless to say, my plan failed. After LiLi threatened to kick me off, I basically said "fuck you" to her and her sister and left on my own, creating my own blog that soon became more popular than our old one had ever been. They didn't understand why I wanted to leave and couldn't just stay and put up with their homophobia and transphobia, and I tried to be polite about it as possible (I did not, in fact, say "fuck you" or use any profanity - but I should have), but they still sent me multiple emails - loaded with homophobia, of fucking course - pleading with me to come back. I refused and continued blogging here under the guise of a REEEAAAALLY supportive and understanding cishet ally.

I'm not sure how nobody figured out I lied about that until I actually told them, because it was actually pretty obvious and I really didn't even lie - everyone just assumed I was straight and I didn't correct them. I once even managed to describe a femslash fanfiction I wrote to Ella without her knowing it was femslash (I had an OC named Quinn and I just switched the she/her pronouns for he/him) and she said it sounded really good. Plus, everything I know about m/w relationships comes from romance novels or listening to straight people, so whenever I try to write them it's always really sexualized and awkward (I once picked up the phrase "his stiff manhood" from a book I found at a garage sale for fifty cents when I was eleven and soon proceeded to use it for one of my couples - during a kissing scene). That, or the characters acted just like quasiplatonic partners with the titles of boyfriend and girlfriend because, growing up, that's what I assumed dating was like for everyone.

This is why I should stick to writing femslash.

Anyway, staying closeted was so tiring. Besides, by the time I made my first coming-out post I was already out to a few of my friends anyway, so I'd had some practice with coming out and predicting how a given person would react. I figured I'd probably be safe, and I was right.

I suspect part of that was because I had the Internet behind me. I was quickly becoming popular, even gaining loyal fans. Which meant that if anyone reacted negatively to my sexuality, I could post about it online. Where their friends, their families, and their co-workers could see it. If they were someone I knew personally, I was fully capable of revealing everything I knew about them to a very wide audience and just devious enough to actually pull it off. I'd planned my coming-out as bisexual for weeks in advance and I'd taken note of all of this - but none of the homophobes who, for some reason, still apparently read my blog, had done the same.

And yes, this is manipulative as hell. But you know what? When you're homophobic, you're not only hurting me. You're hurting everyone who is attracted to their same gender. You're hurting my community, my second family. You do not get to hurt them and get away with it. And if loving them and trying to protect them is wrong, I really don't give a shit.

So once I was out as bi, I could be open about a lot more. I was honest about it when I was questioning if I still wanted to be Christian and shared those beliefs, honest about it when I became pagan.

I spoke openly about feminist issues, something I hadn't been able to do before because drawing attention to my feminism would make people wonder about my sexuality - because my fucked-up society thinks that women can't care about and love other women without seeing them as competition for straight men's attention. And if we do? Well, there's something wrong with us, because being sapphic is wrong. Loving a woman and loving yourself without trying to cater to men's desires first? Well, that obviously means that you hate men, especially if you don't immediately pacify them at their first cries of your supposed misandry.

 And how dare a woman put herself or other women before men. How dare she not put everyone else's whims and desires - even regarding her own life, her own body, her own sexuality - before her own needs. How dare she display  anger about any of this, because it's just the way things are and if we try to change them, bad things might happen. Like - gasp - gender equality.

So that tangent is over. Anyway, even though being out as bi allowed me to be open about a lot more than that, the fact that I was still closeted as nonbinary - an identity that I'd only come to terms with during the previous summer, after learning about nonbinary people and realizing that I identified with a lot of their feelings about gender - was making me increasingly uncomfortable. So I came out over New Year's and, upon discovering that the term for my discomfort with my body was called gender dysphoria, began to look into getting a binder.

(Side note: I still don't have one, but I've been looking into nonbinary-friendly programs that give out free or low-cost binders and trying to figure out how I can get ahold of one without outing myself - something that wouldn't be a good idea right now. I've also tried to make my own, using tips gathered from trans men on Google - and quickly discovered that those tips were meant for skinny, small-chested people and stopped using them.)

After I came out as nonbinary to my family and close friends, life continued pretty much as usual. Since I can almost always tolerate she/her pronouns and don't hate my name - now that I have Ari as my second, chosen, more masculine alternative name at least - I wasn't doing too badly on that front. Sure, I was and am still regularly dealing with dysphoria, getting transphobic microaggressions from people who don't know about my gender and sometimes from people who do, dealing with the knowledge that trans people in the US have an average lifespan of 35 years due to hate crime and poverty, and facing a heightened risk of employment discrimination now that I'm looking for work (I almost got an interview, but had to turn it down because it was too far away). But I'd be okay eventually, right?

I know, I know, but I have to hold on to some hope.

As I got continually busier with school and trying to find a job and scholarships, I decided to find another mod to help me out around here. This was after I realized I was aro and initially assumed I was ace, so I decided I wanted someone A-spec.

That's how I found Freyja, whom you know as TotallyFancyGoatee or Mod Frey. They're also nonbinary, as well as asexual and currently questioning their romantic orientation (I've checked their Tumblr and it says aromantic, so I'll assume they're aro until they tell me otherwise).

But even the two of us weren't enough, and after we decided to move our URL I suggested the idea of finding a third mod. We needed to diversify the team anyway, since both Freyja and I are able-bodied, white, DFAB, and (as far as we know) dyadic. We're so much alike demographically, and it didn't feel right that even though we talk about race (which we should), we didn't have any mods of color.

We decided to spread a message that we were looking for aces of color to be mods of a social justice blog. Eventually, we discovered Cosima, aka Nova. She's agender, asexual, pan, arospec, black, and neurodivergent. I used my authority as blog administrator to "hire" her and she made her introductory post soon after.

Shortly after Cosima joined the A-Team, I realized that I wasn't actually ace, though I was still aro. So I made a post about that and decided to open up mod positions to aros who weren't ace.

Along the way, I eventually realized that I also wasn't bi, I was gay. But that's not what this post is about.

While we've made plenty of posts about asexuality and aromanticism, that's never been what our blog is about mainly - especially considering the sheer number of non-SGA aros and aces who think I'm aphobic for calling out homophobes in the A-spec community. Which I don't understand at all - is calling out homophobia somehow an attack on your identity or are you just conveniently forgetting that I'm aro as well as gay?

 Unlike The Thinking Aro or A Carnival of Aces, whose writers incorporate their aro and/or ace identities into virtually every post and theme their blogs around that, The A-Team and its writers deal with a multitude of feminist issues, including sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia (a post that I now regret making, due to its lesbophobia), ableism, classism, wh*rephobia, and intersexism. We've talked about everything from media representation to social deviance to the pro-forced birth movement (they call themselves "pro-life" and I'm not sure why. I think pro-forced birth or anti-choice fits them better) and beyond, and much of it has nothing to do with our being ace and/or aro. It has to do with our being decent human beings and wanting to help others.

But, specifically, almost all of it has to do with gender and sexuality.

For that reason, I'm making an executive decision to open up mod positions agaim - this time to all LGBT and aroace people. I'm willing to hire up to seven mods.

Mod Requirements:

• You must be at least thirteen years old.
• You must identify as a feminist, social justice activist, feminist ally, or womanist.
• You must believe that racism is real, is not directed at white people, and that white people are privileged over people of color.
• You must believe that sexism is real and is not used systematically against men (it can be misdirected against men sometimes, however)
• You must believe that men have privilege over women and non-men
• You must believe that straight cis people don't belong in the LGBT community
• You must believe that abled/non-disabled people have privilege over disabled people and that ableism is real
• You must believe that Christians in the west have privilege over non-Christians in the west and that Christian supremacy is real and harmful
• You must support #BlackLivesMatter
• You must be pro-choice
• You must believe that straight people have privilege over gay people, bi/pan/polysexual people, and aroace people
• You must believe that trans women are women and that trans men are men
• You must believe that nonbinary genders are real
• You must believe that cis people have privilege over nonbinary and trans people
• You must believe that dyadic people have privilege over intersex people
• You must believe that straight privilege is the only sexuality privilege that exists
• You must be anti-capitalist
• You must support sex workers
• You must be pro-accessibility and use the same rules of accessibility that I do for this blog (avoid text blocks and use image descriptions, content warnings, and audio transcripts)
• You must believe that upper- and middle-class people are privileged over poor people
• You must believe that thin people are privileged over fat people
• You must not believe in binary privilege (i.e. that binary trans people are privileged over nonbinary people by virtue of being binary)
• You must not believe that masculine/butch/GNC women are privileged for our gender presentations
• You must not believe in "theist privilege"
• You must be against Autism Speaks and all similar organizations
• You must fit at least one of the following criteria:
•      Attracted to your same gender
•      Attracted to multiple genders (being attracted only to women and woman-aligned nonbinary people or only to men and man-aligned nonbinary people does not count; however, being attracted to, say, women, woman-aligned nonbinary people, and nonbinary people who aren't woman-aligned does)
•     Not identifying strictly with the sex you were assigned at birth
•      Not being a woman who is exclusively attracted to men and man-aligned nonbinary people, or not being a man who is exclusively attracted to women and woman-aligned nonbinary people

Preference will be given to the following demographics:

•  Trans and nonbinary people, especially trans women and transfeminine nonbinary people
• Disabled people, especially physically disabled people
• Gender nonconforming women
• People of color, especially dark-skinned people of color
• Jewish people
• Muslims
• People with eating disorders or who have recovered from an eating disorder
• Drug addicts and alcoholics, both current and former
• Poor people
• Non-westerners
• Latino/Latina/Latinx people
• Intersex people
• Women who are attracted to women
• Fat people
• Rape and abuse survivors
• Sex workers
• People above the age of 50 (because this means that you were likely an adult during the AIDS crisis and may even remember Stonewall, and can offer a perspective on those eras that two twentysomethings and an eighteen year old cannot)

If you're interested in being a mod after reading the requirements, post a comment below with your name, email address (MUST be Gmail), and the following information:

Your race

Your gender (if you aren't nonbinary, you must state if you are transgender. If you are nonbinary and identify more with womanhood than manhood, you must state whether or not you are DFAB.)

Your sexuality

Your religion

Whether or not you are intersex

Your socioeconomic class

Whether or not you are fat

Whether you are Latinx, Jewish, or neither

Your gender expression

Whether or not you are or have ever been an addict or had an eating disorder

Whether or not you have ever been raped or abused

Whether or not you are a sex worker

Your nationality

Your age

Whether or not you are disabled, and if you are, which disability/ies do you have

By posting a comment requesting to be a mod, you certify that you have read and agree to the mod requirements