TW: Slavery, rape, sexual assault, hate crimes, nationalism, online harassment
Before I start this post, I apologize if the last one I made and subsequently deleted was offensive. I was probably writing way too early in the morning and wasn't really thinking about what I was saying. I'll probably write what I was trying to say in a better and less hurtful manner in the future.
Anyway. Onwards.
This post probably doesn't apply unless you live in America. I do and I'm just ranting about some people's attitudes towards "democracy."
"America stands for democracy! Justice! Liberty!"
I'm so tired of hearing people spout nonstop patriotism and statements like that. Liberty and Justice with Capital Letters aren't "American." They're concepts. Unrealistic ideals that America claims to uphold. Except it's not America claiming anything-- it's a country.
The idea the founding fathers were some bastion of Freedom is... just wrong. Yeah, there was religious freedom and freedom of speech. Mostly. For some people.
But they were slave owners. They were slave owners. I have to repeat that to get it to sink in because when espousing the virtues of slave owners and rapists. Yeah.
America isn't associated with Liberty and Justice except in our own collective imagination. 'Patriotism' is often just a nice way of saying nationalism. Why did people vote for Trump? He was talking about taking 'our' country back, but he never said who 'we' included.
America isn't a country for people of color. It's not a country for immigrants. Unless those immigrants are white and European, whose intent is to colonize a land that was already inhabited. It's not a country for disabled and neurodivergent people. It's not a country for LGBT folk. It's not a country for women and especially not a country for people who are multiple of those things at once. Etc.
Only some people deserve freedom, apparently. 'Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses' or whatever the exact wording of that is. It's an ideal. You can't go on AND on and on and on about the ideal of 'hope.' Just define the ideal and talk about how someone can actually help.
We shouldn't fight to be included in the idea of America. We should be fighting to remove the idea of 'a great America.' Don't make the country great 'again.' Make the idea of a country only mean who makes the laws in what area.
Justice is a lie. Who gets justice when people are bleeding from hate crimes? Not the victims. Justice is for people who can write speeches and who can pay the richest lawyers.
Freedom of speech only applies if you're speaking up against meanie liberals, don't you know? It doesn't mean anything if you tell someone they're being a jerk. Telling someone they're racist is worse than calling them the n word, clearly.
Yeah, there's an issue of free speech.
It's an issue when someone starts a kickstarter for an innocent video series and is spammed death threats. It's an issue when that person who's being spammed death threats is 'censoring' others.
Like that even means anything to them. Like a video series on YouTube is somehow equivalent to people getting murdered for speaking up against a dictatorial regime.
They can't stop using the struggles of LGBT people across the globe as an excuse for racism and Islamophobia. Those people don't even care about us. They just care about any reason to be cruel.
Aren't minorities human too? Don't we deserve justice and freedom? The 'American' dream? It was never meant for us.
If you make a single mistake, if you show that you're human? You don't deserve justice for all the wrongs people have done you. Apparently to be American, to be patriotic, you have to be white, cishet, able bodied, male-- did I mention white yet?
Let's forget about slavery. Let's forget about the Japanese internment camps. Let's forget about the mass genocide and rape of indigenous tribes. Let's forget about the parts of history that don't sound like the uphold Justice Democracy and Freedom. Let's forget about the times the government has sloppily tried to force a leader onto other people.
Let's forget about all that. America means something greater than all of that! Obviously.
And THIS here is sarcasm because America means nothing. If you go back in time a thousand years and tell someone 'America,' they'll have no idea what you mean. Because America independent of the sociopolitical implications that give it meaning is NOTHING.
I'm not a patriot because America means nothing. Maybe you fight for social justice because of some ideal that you apply to 'our' country. And that's fine. But I'll fight for it because I want to protect the people that coincidentally live here. Or don't live here and want to because we're relatively safer than where they live right now.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Holy Fuck (Pun Intended)
For those of you who didn't know, I'm in a college sociology class. Our topic of the day was religion.
So then there was at some point talk about converting to another religion and what that was like and how you can go from one religion to another, and at one point a woman mentioned being pagan (I think she's eclectic but I don't know what faiths her beliefs come from - like, religio romana? Kemetism? Rodnovery? Asatru? Was she polytheist, and if so was she devoted to a specific deity?) who'd been raised Christian because that was relevant and we were talking converting from one religion to another (the teacher's sister was raised Hindu but converted to Christianity) and what it was like to suddenly be the only person of your religion in your family. Like, how she (the pagan woman) doesn't go to church with her Christian sister because there's nothing for her there, it contradicts what she believes in.
So then another woman revealed that she was also a pagan (Wiccan) who had been raised Christian.
And seeing that no one was mocking them, I decided to take a risk and say I was also a pagan. Which was nerve-wracking by the way. But then...
The teacher was saying how in most religions, only male entities are worshipped but that's not always the case, so she showed us a picture of one of her goddesses as an example.
And, since today was the first time she'd ever heard the word pagan, she asked us what pagans worship (I don't think she knows paganism is actually an umbrella term for several different religions either, even though among the three pagans in class, religious beliefs varied greatly).
So the Wiccan woman explained how her religion is duotheistic, how pagans believe in a mother goddess and father god but some focus more on the mother and some focus more on the father.
Which, whatever. For her, that's accurate. She's pagan and that's what she believes, therefore it's a pagan belief.
My issue came from the fact that she didn't say that's what Wiccans believe, she said that's what pagans believe. Which, honey, no. That's nothing like my religion. Don't act like all pagans worship the same way unless you want me to start acting like being pagan automatically makes you an Aphrodite devotee.
Not that I would, of course, because that's inaccurate and disrespectful. But I digress.
So I was just, nope. Fuck that. Nothing against Wiccans, but don't misinform people about my religion.
I said, "What she just said about pagan worship is actually more specific to Wicca. I'm actually more Hellenic, Greek polytheist. I worship Aphrodite, and unless you include Zeus and Hera there's really no mother and father in Hellenism. And not all of us worship them anyway."
And yeah my voice may have gotten louder and higher-pitched, which I think made me sound kind of pretentious and know-it-all-ish or like I was saying my religion was better than hers, but the truth was I was just nervous.
After all, saying I was pagan was...slightly innocuous when most of the class had no idea what the fuck that really meant.
But we're a group of millennials, mostly 18-25 years old, and most people in that age group, at least in America, have at least vaguely heard of a major part of pop culture that has a very distorted version of Greek mythology that yeah, I actually do happen to be a fan of, but is not at all representative of actual Hellenic polytheism and is so, so glamorized and removed from reality.
That meant exactly one thing: in the space of a two-hour class, not only had I told like thirty people I was pagan, something I rarely tell anyone offline, but I'd also told them something that was likely to lead at best to annoying questions and at the worst to harassment, bullying, and stalking.
I'd accidentally convinced my entire sociology class that I worship Piper McLean's mom from Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus.
Which, no disrespect to actual pop culture pagans. You do your thing, I do mine. As long as nobody gets hurt, who gives a shit? It's just that your thing is not my thing. I don't worship a fictional character, I worship an ancient goddess.
But I knew when I said the names of my gods, ancient powerful deities would not be the first thing that crossed their minds. No, if not Percy Jackson, it would be who actually worships the Greek gods anymore? It would be, is this some kind of cult? (Which would be virtually impossible, as Hellenics are too loosely organized to actually establish a cult even if we wanted one.) It wouldn't be reality.
Most people who aren't reconstructionist or revivalist polytheists think of us as an absurd foreign concept (as in "well it's not like anyone actually worships Thor/Zeus/etc anymore"), maybe as an interesting character in a fantasy novel. We don't get to be just people who, compared to what you're probably expecting, are actually pretty boring.
The truth is, being a Hellenic revivalist isn't any more interesting, mystical, mysterious, outrageous, or exciting than any other religion. We just have more gods than some of them.
I hope someday, people are going to realize that.
So then there was at some point talk about converting to another religion and what that was like and how you can go from one religion to another, and at one point a woman mentioned being pagan (I think she's eclectic but I don't know what faiths her beliefs come from - like, religio romana? Kemetism? Rodnovery? Asatru? Was she polytheist, and if so was she devoted to a specific deity?) who'd been raised Christian because that was relevant and we were talking converting from one religion to another (the teacher's sister was raised Hindu but converted to Christianity) and what it was like to suddenly be the only person of your religion in your family. Like, how she (the pagan woman) doesn't go to church with her Christian sister because there's nothing for her there, it contradicts what she believes in.
So then another woman revealed that she was also a pagan (Wiccan) who had been raised Christian.
And seeing that no one was mocking them, I decided to take a risk and say I was also a pagan. Which was nerve-wracking by the way. But then...
The teacher was saying how in most religions, only male entities are worshipped but that's not always the case, so she showed us a picture of one of her goddesses as an example.
And, since today was the first time she'd ever heard the word pagan, she asked us what pagans worship (I don't think she knows paganism is actually an umbrella term for several different religions either, even though among the three pagans in class, religious beliefs varied greatly).
So the Wiccan woman explained how her religion is duotheistic, how pagans believe in a mother goddess and father god but some focus more on the mother and some focus more on the father.
Which, whatever. For her, that's accurate. She's pagan and that's what she believes, therefore it's a pagan belief.
My issue came from the fact that she didn't say that's what Wiccans believe, she said that's what pagans believe. Which, honey, no. That's nothing like my religion. Don't act like all pagans worship the same way unless you want me to start acting like being pagan automatically makes you an Aphrodite devotee.
Not that I would, of course, because that's inaccurate and disrespectful. But I digress.
So I was just, nope. Fuck that. Nothing against Wiccans, but don't misinform people about my religion.
I said, "What she just said about pagan worship is actually more specific to Wicca. I'm actually more Hellenic, Greek polytheist. I worship Aphrodite, and unless you include Zeus and Hera there's really no mother and father in Hellenism. And not all of us worship them anyway."
And yeah my voice may have gotten louder and higher-pitched, which I think made me sound kind of pretentious and know-it-all-ish or like I was saying my religion was better than hers, but the truth was I was just nervous.
After all, saying I was pagan was...slightly innocuous when most of the class had no idea what the fuck that really meant.
But we're a group of millennials, mostly 18-25 years old, and most people in that age group, at least in America, have at least vaguely heard of a major part of pop culture that has a very distorted version of Greek mythology that yeah, I actually do happen to be a fan of, but is not at all representative of actual Hellenic polytheism and is so, so glamorized and removed from reality.
That meant exactly one thing: in the space of a two-hour class, not only had I told like thirty people I was pagan, something I rarely tell anyone offline, but I'd also told them something that was likely to lead at best to annoying questions and at the worst to harassment, bullying, and stalking.
I'd accidentally convinced my entire sociology class that I worship Piper McLean's mom from Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus.
Which, no disrespect to actual pop culture pagans. You do your thing, I do mine. As long as nobody gets hurt, who gives a shit? It's just that your thing is not my thing. I don't worship a fictional character, I worship an ancient goddess.
But I knew when I said the names of my gods, ancient powerful deities would not be the first thing that crossed their minds. No, if not Percy Jackson, it would be who actually worships the Greek gods anymore? It would be, is this some kind of cult? (Which would be virtually impossible, as Hellenics are too loosely organized to actually establish a cult even if we wanted one.) It wouldn't be reality.
Most people who aren't reconstructionist or revivalist polytheists think of us as an absurd foreign concept (as in "well it's not like anyone actually worships Thor/Zeus/etc anymore"), maybe as an interesting character in a fantasy novel. We don't get to be just people who, compared to what you're probably expecting, are actually pretty boring.
The truth is, being a Hellenic revivalist isn't any more interesting, mystical, mysterious, outrageous, or exciting than any other religion. We just have more gods than some of them.
I hope someday, people are going to realize that.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Why I Don't Believe in AFAB Privilege
CW: transmisogyny, intersexism, q slur, transphobia
If you spend a lot of time in trans/nonbinary circles, you'll probably hear a lot about something called afab privilege, which is essentially the idea that trans/nonbinary/non-cis people who were assigned female at birth can oppress our counterparts who were assigned male at birth.
If you spend a lot of time in trans/nonbinary circles, you'll probably hear a lot about something called afab privilege, which is essentially the idea that trans/nonbinary/non-cis people who were assigned female at birth can oppress our counterparts who were assigned male at birth.
Now, in my case, that's actually kind of true. Even though I'm nonbinary, even though I use he/they pronouns and a gender neutral name and bind and am visibly gender variant, people don't usually guess that I'm trans.
Part of that is cissexism. Part of it is that, as a woman-aligned nonbinary person, I'm not always 100% uncomfortable being perceived as a woman. Part of it - and part of the reason that I'm not always uncomfortable being perceived as a woman, I'm almost 20 years old and have known I wasn't cis since I was five and honestly I'm just kind of quietly resigned to the unfortunate reality that most people will never take any facet of my gender seriously - is that I'm closeted as trans.
In any case, my assigned-male-at-birth counterpart would be transfeminine nonbinary. And assuming everything else about them was the same as it was with me? Closeted, butch but kind of flowery and effeminate, white, questioning between lesbian and bisexual, using he/they pronouns?
Like...they'd internalize the same messages about gender and sexuality as I would, but would likely have an even harder time coming out and being accepted into the LGBT community because trans women and transfems are incredibly hypervisible both in and out of the LGBT community, thanks to transmisogynistic tropes/jokes like "man in a dress" and "trap queen" and cishet men waking up comically horrified to discover that the woman they slept with has a penis. They're more likely to be murdered than I am because of how those jokes and stereotypes and portrayals influence people to act (though this mostly applies to trans women of color). They're also more often targeted by TERFs than I am and have a harder time accessing women's resources and LGBT resources that they might need.
That's a lot to be confronted with, and on top of it? For a sapphic transfeminine person, coming out as trans and coming out as sapphic are a package deal. When I first came out as sapphic, I was able to hide my gender. And while my sexuality was actually used to discredit me when I came out as trans (i.e. "you already like women, why can't you just be a butch lesbian?"), it wouldn't be used to stop me from medically transitioning - depending on how I phrase it, that is (I would have to use an informed consent hormone clinic if I were going to describe myself as sapphic, since most cis doctors either don't understand or don't respect nonbinary people, but just saying "I like women"? That wouldn't stop a doctor from giving me hormones, and if it did it wouldn't be based on my assigned sex).
But even my ability to benefit from transmisogyny is conditional. Like, I know that most cis people think afab nonbinary women are just quirky cis teenage girls playing a game, but I actually feel as much common ground with trans women as I do with cis women. Like, we both are affected by TERFs and truscum, we're both considered sinners and deviants for our gender by evangelicals, we're both stereotyped by cis women as misogynistic sexually predatory crossdressers who don't know anything about womanhood, and we're both fetishized and harassed based on our gender performance and expression and have a complicated relationship with womanhood, femininity, sexuality, and our bodies and dysphoria.
Also, if I ever actually get a chance to come out and transition, chances are I'll be perceived much the same way many trans women are, since my body won't look as "feminine" and I'll likely have a flat chest, but I'll still be identifying as woman-aligned, wlw, and sapphic. And transphobes aren't going to make absolutely sure of my assigned sex before harassing and committing violence against someone who is visibly trans and identifies as such, who says he isn't a man, whose body doesn't look like how they expect a woman's body to look, but who calls himself terms that are culturally coded as gender neutral or as feminine.
The reason I don't believe in AFAB privilege, though, isn't because of that. It's because the concept states that I benefit from the oppression of all trans and nonbinary people who are assigned male at birth, not just transfeminine people, specifically because they're assigned male at birth, which I think is bullshit.
Like, I'm a visibly gender nonconforming, gender variant, and nonbinary person, which can put me in danger of harassment and physical violence. And not all nonbinary people present that way.
This means there can be amab nonbinary people who are read as men who perform masculinity, and are relatively okay with that. There are amab nonbinary people who are men or male-aligned. There are amab nonbinary people who aren't sga and whose relationships are not incorrectly read as such.
This puts them in less danger than, and often gives them privilege over, me. Sorry to burst the bubble of every ignorant fuck who thinks that "AFAB masculine-of-center genderqueers", as a lot of you will call us, are apparently a monolith and also the most privileged people in the nonbinary community and, like, practically cis or whatever, but as a nonbinary butch (butch being a gender expression and experience exclusive to gnc wlw), I have no privilege over a straight amab demiboy.
My body is also stigmatized and policed due to misogyny in a way that theirs isn't. Yes, amab trans people can also be stigmatized for their bodies, but that mostly results from cissexism (something I experience), ableism, intersexism, and racism (things not all nonbinary people experience), and also mostly affects trans women. And unless they're woman-aligned or perceived as such, misogyny doesn't directly affect or materially harm amab nonbinary people at all, but even after coming out, afab trans people often face challenges regarding reproductive justice, pressure to cover themselves, and stigmatization of periods.
It's not directed misogyny and nonwomen have no place speaking over women or inserting themselves into woman-specific spaces and discussions about patriarchy and misogyny, but that also applies if you're assigned male at birth. Don't act like experiencing misdirected transmisogyny makes all afab nonbinary people your oppressors.
The final reason that AFAB privilege is fucked up as a concept is that there are intersex variations that result in someone being assigned female at birth, like Complete Androgen Insensitivity. And a lot of intersex people are assigned at female birth because doctors mutilated their newborn bodies, then decided assigning them female at birth was "easier". Why not cut off part of someone's phallus if doing so makes them look like a "normal" dyadic cis girl? Who gives a fuck about intersex people's bodily autonomy or women's right to sexual pleasure anyway? What do doctors care if that baby ends up not even being a girl, or only partially being one?
And dyadic people have the fucking nerve to say that intersex nonbinary people are privileged if they're assigned female at birth? Right. Sure. Not intersexist at all.
So I mean. Feel free to completely disregard this as the ramblings of a nasty AFAB Masculine Of Center Genderqueer^(TM). Feel free to still believe that I have no idea what I'm talking about and that afab privilege still exists. Just know you're throwing a lot of vulnerable trans/nb people under the bus in the process.
Like...they'd internalize the same messages about gender and sexuality as I would, but would likely have an even harder time coming out and being accepted into the LGBT community because trans women and transfems are incredibly hypervisible both in and out of the LGBT community, thanks to transmisogynistic tropes/jokes like "man in a dress" and "trap queen" and cishet men waking up comically horrified to discover that the woman they slept with has a penis. They're more likely to be murdered than I am because of how those jokes and stereotypes and portrayals influence people to act (though this mostly applies to trans women of color). They're also more often targeted by TERFs than I am and have a harder time accessing women's resources and LGBT resources that they might need.
That's a lot to be confronted with, and on top of it? For a sapphic transfeminine person, coming out as trans and coming out as sapphic are a package deal. When I first came out as sapphic, I was able to hide my gender. And while my sexuality was actually used to discredit me when I came out as trans (i.e. "you already like women, why can't you just be a butch lesbian?"), it wouldn't be used to stop me from medically transitioning - depending on how I phrase it, that is (I would have to use an informed consent hormone clinic if I were going to describe myself as sapphic, since most cis doctors either don't understand or don't respect nonbinary people, but just saying "I like women"? That wouldn't stop a doctor from giving me hormones, and if it did it wouldn't be based on my assigned sex).
But even my ability to benefit from transmisogyny is conditional. Like, I know that most cis people think afab nonbinary women are just quirky cis teenage girls playing a game, but I actually feel as much common ground with trans women as I do with cis women. Like, we both are affected by TERFs and truscum, we're both considered sinners and deviants for our gender by evangelicals, we're both stereotyped by cis women as misogynistic sexually predatory crossdressers who don't know anything about womanhood, and we're both fetishized and harassed based on our gender performance and expression and have a complicated relationship with womanhood, femininity, sexuality, and our bodies and dysphoria.
Also, if I ever actually get a chance to come out and transition, chances are I'll be perceived much the same way many trans women are, since my body won't look as "feminine" and I'll likely have a flat chest, but I'll still be identifying as woman-aligned, wlw, and sapphic. And transphobes aren't going to make absolutely sure of my assigned sex before harassing and committing violence against someone who is visibly trans and identifies as such, who says he isn't a man, whose body doesn't look like how they expect a woman's body to look, but who calls himself terms that are culturally coded as gender neutral or as feminine.
The reason I don't believe in AFAB privilege, though, isn't because of that. It's because the concept states that I benefit from the oppression of all trans and nonbinary people who are assigned male at birth, not just transfeminine people, specifically because they're assigned male at birth, which I think is bullshit.
Like, I'm a visibly gender nonconforming, gender variant, and nonbinary person, which can put me in danger of harassment and physical violence. And not all nonbinary people present that way.
This means there can be amab nonbinary people who are read as men who perform masculinity, and are relatively okay with that. There are amab nonbinary people who are men or male-aligned. There are amab nonbinary people who aren't sga and whose relationships are not incorrectly read as such.
This puts them in less danger than, and often gives them privilege over, me. Sorry to burst the bubble of every ignorant fuck who thinks that "AFAB masculine-of-center genderqueers", as a lot of you will call us, are apparently a monolith and also the most privileged people in the nonbinary community and, like, practically cis or whatever, but as a nonbinary butch (butch being a gender expression and experience exclusive to gnc wlw), I have no privilege over a straight amab demiboy.
My body is also stigmatized and policed due to misogyny in a way that theirs isn't. Yes, amab trans people can also be stigmatized for their bodies, but that mostly results from cissexism (something I experience), ableism, intersexism, and racism (things not all nonbinary people experience), and also mostly affects trans women. And unless they're woman-aligned or perceived as such, misogyny doesn't directly affect or materially harm amab nonbinary people at all, but even after coming out, afab trans people often face challenges regarding reproductive justice, pressure to cover themselves, and stigmatization of periods.
It's not directed misogyny and nonwomen have no place speaking over women or inserting themselves into woman-specific spaces and discussions about patriarchy and misogyny, but that also applies if you're assigned male at birth. Don't act like experiencing misdirected transmisogyny makes all afab nonbinary people your oppressors.
The final reason that AFAB privilege is fucked up as a concept is that there are intersex variations that result in someone being assigned female at birth, like Complete Androgen Insensitivity. And a lot of intersex people are assigned at female birth because doctors mutilated their newborn bodies, then decided assigning them female at birth was "easier". Why not cut off part of someone's phallus if doing so makes them look like a "normal" dyadic cis girl? Who gives a fuck about intersex people's bodily autonomy or women's right to sexual pleasure anyway? What do doctors care if that baby ends up not even being a girl, or only partially being one?
And dyadic people have the fucking nerve to say that intersex nonbinary people are privileged if they're assigned female at birth? Right. Sure. Not intersexist at all.
So I mean. Feel free to completely disregard this as the ramblings of a nasty AFAB Masculine Of Center Genderqueer^(TM). Feel free to still believe that I have no idea what I'm talking about and that afab privilege still exists. Just know you're throwing a lot of vulnerable trans/nb people under the bus in the process.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Question To Mod Lex
I recently found out that I was accepted to a work-study program that starts next month. With that in addition to my regular job and classes and just trying to maintain some sense of normalcy and wellbeing in my life especially under the rise of a fascist kakistocracy, I'll be able to write maybe two posts during May, June, and July. Not to mention, all three of us are neurodivergent and that can make it hard to write sometimes.
So in order to keep a steady flow of content going, I'm thinking of hiring more mods. The thing is, the two people I'm asking are a cis lesbian (Safia) and a gay trans man (Isaac). Roman is okay with Safia, but is wary of Isaac. That said, it trusts my judgment, and I think they'll both behave and stay in their respective lanes.
But I also wanted to get your approval before asking either of them to join. I know you're partly man-aligned, but since you're also woman-aligned you're not really going to benefit from the privileges of that and you might not be okay with having a man who doesn't also identify with womanhood on the mod team. Not to mention a cis person. So, are you okay working with Safia and Isaac?
So in order to keep a steady flow of content going, I'm thinking of hiring more mods. The thing is, the two people I'm asking are a cis lesbian (Safia) and a gay trans man (Isaac). Roman is okay with Safia, but is wary of Isaac. That said, it trusts my judgment, and I think they'll both behave and stay in their respective lanes.
But I also wanted to get your approval before asking either of them to join. I know you're partly man-aligned, but since you're also woman-aligned you're not really going to benefit from the privileges of that and you might not be okay with having a man who doesn't also identify with womanhood on the mod team. Not to mention a cis person. So, are you okay working with Safia and Isaac?
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Can Abnormaldiversity Just Not?
-
2. Don't say h*m*sexual. you're not a gay man or lesbian, it's not yours to reclaim.
3. there actually is a lot of furor over lesbian identified women dating trans men, and rightfully so because trans men are men and if you call yourself a lesbian while knowingly dating a trans man you're a transphobe and lesbophobe -
4. the Kinsey scale is outdated and homophobic.
5. the split attraction model should only be used in the ace/aro communities (I.e. my own identity as a quoiromantic sapphic, or a friend of mine's as a bi gray-ace) and can lead to internalized homophobia and biphobia when used in ways like "biromantic h*m*sexual" because it leads to gay people (especially teenage lesbians, gay trans boys/men, and questioning people who are mentally ill and/or survivors) trying to force themselves to feel m/w attraction, and it sexualizes bi/pan identities because the word "biromantic" leads to assumptions that anyone who identifies as bisexual is talking specifically about their sexual attraction -
6. a "biromantic h*m*sexual" or "h*m*romantic bisexual" woman is just...a bisexual woman, and therefore not a lesbian. It doesn't matter whether her attraction to men is romantic, sexual, or both. It just matters that she DOES feel both attraction to men and women.
If she only wants to be with women/doesn't ever want to be with men and man aligned people, despite feeling attraction to men, she can identify as a lesbian if she wants. But you can't be both bi and gay.
7. there are lesbians who struggle with coercive heterosexuality or unwanted attraction to men, or who realized they were gay while dating a man and are now unable to leave that relationship, but you can't be genuinely attracted to and happily dating a man while identifying a lesbian because lesbian identity inherently rejects men. -
8. a cishet man who feels the need to have casual sex with cis women because he thinks being with a woman who has a penis is gay is a transmisogynist and is likely emotionally abusing his trans girlfriend.
9. if your brother's (apparently cis) friend would date cis women, trans men, and afab nonbinary people, but not cis men, trans women, or amab nonbinary people, he's a transphobe and doesn't respect his trans partners' identities or see trans women as real women.
10. As an afab nonbinary wlw, my sapphic identity has NOTHING to do with the fact that I have a vagina. It has to do with the fact that I identify with womanhood and this is true of all other nonbinary wlw and nonbinary mlm.
You cannot identify as, say, a lesbian demiboy just because you're afab, because lesbians and wlw cannot be man aligned and this identity is not only lesbophobic and sapphobic, but also transphobic to trans wlw because it validates the (terfy) assumption that lesbianism is attraction to vaginas, afab nonbinary wlw because it implies that our sexualities are based only in our assigned sex and that we're actually cis women and that our nonbinary-ness doesn't need to be taken seriously, and trans men because it implies that they're actually women and that their attraction to women is gay and that their attraction to men is not.
11. Trans men who identify as lesbians are wrong and are homophobic and transphobic for the same reasons. Trans men are men. Lesbians are women (or woman aligned nonbinary people).
12. Don't call anyone FTM or MTF unless you know they're okay with it, especially if you're cis, because it implies that trans men and women weren't always men or women (respectively) and many trans people feel that this is not the case for them. It's also used by TERFs and chasers to misgender and fetishize trans people.
13. as someone who would be considered an "afab demigirl", I do not "fit between cis and gender neutral". I'm not cis, I'm just a nonbinary person who isn't completely gender neutral.
14. Also, by implying that all nonbinary sapphics are afab, you're erasing transfeminine nonbinary wlw and implying they're not really wlw.
15. "It's important to remember that mga people have a better track record for accepting trans and nonbinary people than gays and lesbians do"
first of all, many trans and nonbinary people have said not to group us with bi/pan people for the purpose of pitting us against gay men and lesbians because this erases the fact that cis mga people are just as transphobic as any other cis person, makes it seem like gay people are oppressive for being gay, pressures trans/nb people into prioritizing cis mga people, and erases and misgenders gay trans men, lesbian trans women, and gay nonbinary people.
second, don't call gay people "gays" if you're not gay. It's dehumanizing.
There is absolutely nothing good about this post and I have absolutely no idea why you wrote it, besides the fact that you have already proven yourself to be homophobic and transphobic.
In any case, I figure you're going to delete this comment. After all, it was made by a nasty queer aphobe (though I'm arospec myself and nothing I've ever said has demonstrated a hatred or even dislike of ace people, just anger with cis non sga people who don't stay in their lane) who won't check their allosexual privilege. So before that happens, you should know that I'm going to copy and paste this comment and, if it's deleted, I'll turn it into a post on my own blog.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Dear Christian Witches...
CW: Christianity, anti-pagan discrimination
Around Easter time, there's always a pretty big fight in the pagan and witchcraft communities. Namely, about whether Easter was stolen from the pagan holiday Ostara.
It wasn't, by the way, though a lot of Christian holiday traditions were inspired by pagan religions, often Germanic, Norse, Brythonic, Slavic, or Gaelic polytheism specifically.
But I'm not making this post to debate that. I'm making this post because, around the same time, Christian (specifically in countries where Christianity is already the dominant religion) witches get a big fucking chip on their shoulder and decide that pagans are oppressing them.
I've seen Christian witches sneeringly refer to us (meaning pagans) as "those weeby pagans" or snicker about our supposed martyr complex. I mean, Christians have a bigger martyr complex than any other religious group I've ever come across, but okay I guess.
Therefore...
Around Easter time, there's always a pretty big fight in the pagan and witchcraft communities. Namely, about whether Easter was stolen from the pagan holiday Ostara.
It wasn't, by the way, though a lot of Christian holiday traditions were inspired by pagan religions, often Germanic, Norse, Brythonic, Slavic, or Gaelic polytheism specifically.
But I'm not making this post to debate that. I'm making this post because, around the same time, Christian (specifically in countries where Christianity is already the dominant religion) witches get a big fucking chip on their shoulder and decide that pagans are oppressing them.
I've seen Christian witches sneeringly refer to us (meaning pagans) as "those weeby pagans" or snicker about our supposed martyr complex. I mean, Christians have a bigger martyr complex than any other religious group I've ever come across, but okay I guess.
Therefore...
- pagans are not here to be your punching bag
- the fact that witchcraft is often associated with paganism does not mean that pagans are oppressing you
- it just means that pagan witches are far more hypervisible than you, which often means more danger
- most anti-witch sentiment is actually anti-pagan sentiment, because most people seem to think witchcraft is inherently pagan
- you're also very easily able to throw pagan witches under the bus when reassuring other Christians that practicing witchcraft doesn't make you less Christian, i.e. "No, see, I'm a good Christian! Being a witch doesn't make me a depraved sinner doomed to hell!"
- most pagans in America are women and/or LGBT people who have had traumatic or coercive experiences with Christianity
- As a pagan who has had to actively lie about my religion and pretend to be Christian in order to protect myself but was, while being for all intents and purposes a Christian witch, able to broadcast my Christianity without a care in the world (even to the point of making people uncomfortable), I'm pretty sure I can verify that Christians are in fact privileged over pagans
- Yes, a lot of the "Christians stole our holidays!" types are ignorant about history...but the fact that you're able to learn about your religion's history and easily access that information with older members of your faith explaining it to you is just one of the ways Christians hold power over pagans.
- many of us actually do face violence for being pagan, especially in the South, in small rural towns, or in conservative families.
- Yes, Christian witches are valid, but witchcraft is one of the only spaces in which pagans can openly be ourselves and practice our religions.
- Therefore, if a pagan witch doesn't want non-pagans in their coven or whatever, just shut the fuck up about it. Not everything needs to be about you.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Femme But Not Femme
[[TW: short mention of dieting and eating disorders]]
Mod Venus here, finally getting to writing an actual post. I've been busy getting a job and being depressed, on top of not having my own laptop.
Lately, I've found myself more and more annoyed by the nonstop onslaught of people saying femme without meaning femme. Aka, basically anything labeled femme.
I am, unshockingly to anyone who's seen me, a femme. Next week I'm getting a tattoo of a teacup full of crystals, which I aim to get done in pink and purple, and in early May I'm getting my hair dyed pink again after taking it out years ago because I finally have a job where I'm allowed to have unnatural hair colors. I loathe pants thanks to sensory issues (and the good old fat bitch problem of wore down crotches!), I even am a fan of the traditional sharp as a knife, would use vantablack winged eyeliner!
The difference? I'm actually a lesbian, who does all of this to be notice by women, with a strong interest in lesbian history, a complicated relationship to gender and femininity, who recognizes that being hated for presenting feminine is an issue of misogyny, and that those attacking me likely hate butch & gnc women just as much if not more for not doing these things.
That sounds a bit... arrogant, probably. Which I can get! Femme is a word with a lot of connotations. Unfortunately, almost all of them are misinfo at best and lies at worst. And that's where my annoyance comes from.
Femme today, in common usage, refers to feminine presenting people. This, at a glance, makes a lot of sense. Femme is French for woman, and looks like shorthand for feminine. In a deeper sense, though, I honestly cannot understand this.
I first heard femme when I was 14, probably. I realized I was a lesbian in November, and around May I made a tumblr. I made mine because that was the height of my eating disorder, but that's another discussion all together.
From my year or so interacting with the lolita fashion (not nymphette, the cute not at all pedophilia related ridiculously priced Japanese street fashion lolita) and becoming Wiccan, I had a basic understanding of choice based feminism. So when I found all the feminist blogs on tumblr run by bi women, I was super excited! Other girls who liked girls! Talking about feminism and media! It excited me and I quickly became involved in it, following people like geekandmisandry, teaandfeminism, and fandomsandfeminism. I also quickly learned MOGAI politics and proghet ideals- being non straight is good, unless you're a lesbian. Lesbians are great! Until they're real and we can't ship them with men. Queer is great! Call yourself queer even if you feel uncomfortable and like it erases your actual identity!
That's also when I first saw femme. I knew a bit about femme and butch from watching lesbian youtubers, but I didn't know the history. I just knew that I couldn't relate to bi women talking about how queer and femme they were for fucking their boyfriends. And somehow, I felt bad for that.
One moment that I honestly to this day wish I had proof of because it sounds like such a strawman is I noticed a blog and went to check it out! I became viscerally uncomfortable though, when I saw a poem the woman had wrote about being a femme and a pillow princess. A poem about fucking her boyfriend.
I didn't think of femme as a lesbian or sapphic term at this point, but I knew what stone and pillow princess meant. And I knew it was wrong to use it in the context of straight sex. I don't even think this girl was bi. She just felt entitled to sapphic history.
Femme is used to mean feminine. Someone who dresses in a traditionally feminine matter. Femmes aren't masculine or androgynous! They're feminine!
I'm agender. I even lean a bit to calling myself androgyne, but feel agender captures it more. I don't have a real gender- my womanhood is a bit like a projection. Take a movie theater screen- it's white, just fabric, until the projector turns on and it becomes a screen for the light of a projector to show a movie. That's my gender.
Femme, however, is my presentation. I don't see myself as feminine- my clothes may be, but as a fat non cis lesbian I don't feel included in that word. I present for other women, butches and gnc women specifically in my case, to be found attractive. I do it because of my lesbianism, I do it because of my complicated feelings about my gender.
Femme is all about being sapphic, being around women, relating to women, loving women, kissing women, fucking women. There is no room for men, no room to talk about men. No room to talk about an experience of femininity that isn't centralized by sapphism. Femme is femininity with a rejection of men.
Because of that, I don't see how it can be understand by non sapphic women, especially non women. Further, I don't see why non lesbians have any desire to claim it. Femme and butch were developed before mga experiences were acknowledged- yes, mga women were involved, but if they weren't with a woman or seeking women at the time they likely weren't involved in the community.
I'm not gonna viciously search down non lesbians using femme unless they're straight women or non women altogether, but I'm also not going to pretend that washing femme down to femininity isn't doing lesbians a great disservice.
Mod Venus
NOTE- if you bring up ball culture, unless you're actually involved in it, I'm just gonna laugh because I, a white lesbian, am pretty obviously not talking about that!
Mod Venus here, finally getting to writing an actual post. I've been busy getting a job and being depressed, on top of not having my own laptop.
Lately, I've found myself more and more annoyed by the nonstop onslaught of people saying femme without meaning femme. Aka, basically anything labeled femme.
I am, unshockingly to anyone who's seen me, a femme. Next week I'm getting a tattoo of a teacup full of crystals, which I aim to get done in pink and purple, and in early May I'm getting my hair dyed pink again after taking it out years ago because I finally have a job where I'm allowed to have unnatural hair colors. I loathe pants thanks to sensory issues (and the good old fat bitch problem of wore down crotches!), I even am a fan of the traditional sharp as a knife, would use vantablack winged eyeliner!
The difference? I'm actually a lesbian, who does all of this to be notice by women, with a strong interest in lesbian history, a complicated relationship to gender and femininity, who recognizes that being hated for presenting feminine is an issue of misogyny, and that those attacking me likely hate butch & gnc women just as much if not more for not doing these things.
That sounds a bit... arrogant, probably. Which I can get! Femme is a word with a lot of connotations. Unfortunately, almost all of them are misinfo at best and lies at worst. And that's where my annoyance comes from.
Femme today, in common usage, refers to feminine presenting people. This, at a glance, makes a lot of sense. Femme is French for woman, and looks like shorthand for feminine. In a deeper sense, though, I honestly cannot understand this.
I first heard femme when I was 14, probably. I realized I was a lesbian in November, and around May I made a tumblr. I made mine because that was the height of my eating disorder, but that's another discussion all together.
From my year or so interacting with the lolita fashion (not nymphette, the cute not at all pedophilia related ridiculously priced Japanese street fashion lolita) and becoming Wiccan, I had a basic understanding of choice based feminism. So when I found all the feminist blogs on tumblr run by bi women, I was super excited! Other girls who liked girls! Talking about feminism and media! It excited me and I quickly became involved in it, following people like geekandmisandry, teaandfeminism, and fandomsandfeminism. I also quickly learned MOGAI politics and proghet ideals- being non straight is good, unless you're a lesbian. Lesbians are great! Until they're real and we can't ship them with men. Queer is great! Call yourself queer even if you feel uncomfortable and like it erases your actual identity!
That's also when I first saw femme. I knew a bit about femme and butch from watching lesbian youtubers, but I didn't know the history. I just knew that I couldn't relate to bi women talking about how queer and femme they were for fucking their boyfriends. And somehow, I felt bad for that.
One moment that I honestly to this day wish I had proof of because it sounds like such a strawman is I noticed a blog and went to check it out! I became viscerally uncomfortable though, when I saw a poem the woman had wrote about being a femme and a pillow princess. A poem about fucking her boyfriend.
I didn't think of femme as a lesbian or sapphic term at this point, but I knew what stone and pillow princess meant. And I knew it was wrong to use it in the context of straight sex. I don't even think this girl was bi. She just felt entitled to sapphic history.
Femme is used to mean feminine. Someone who dresses in a traditionally feminine matter. Femmes aren't masculine or androgynous! They're feminine!
I'm agender. I even lean a bit to calling myself androgyne, but feel agender captures it more. I don't have a real gender- my womanhood is a bit like a projection. Take a movie theater screen- it's white, just fabric, until the projector turns on and it becomes a screen for the light of a projector to show a movie. That's my gender.
Femme, however, is my presentation. I don't see myself as feminine- my clothes may be, but as a fat non cis lesbian I don't feel included in that word. I present for other women, butches and gnc women specifically in my case, to be found attractive. I do it because of my lesbianism, I do it because of my complicated feelings about my gender.
Femme is all about being sapphic, being around women, relating to women, loving women, kissing women, fucking women. There is no room for men, no room to talk about men. No room to talk about an experience of femininity that isn't centralized by sapphism. Femme is femininity with a rejection of men.
Because of that, I don't see how it can be understand by non sapphic women, especially non women. Further, I don't see why non lesbians have any desire to claim it. Femme and butch were developed before mga experiences were acknowledged- yes, mga women were involved, but if they weren't with a woman or seeking women at the time they likely weren't involved in the community.
I'm not gonna viciously search down non lesbians using femme unless they're straight women or non women altogether, but I'm also not going to pretend that washing femme down to femininity isn't doing lesbians a great disservice.
Mod Venus
NOTE- if you bring up ball culture, unless you're actually involved in it, I'm just gonna laugh because I, a white lesbian, am pretty obviously not talking about that!
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Performative Paganism
There are two main stereotypes about pagans:
- The Fluff Bunny
- hippie
- usually white with dreadlocks
- usually Wiccan or neopagan
- believe in the Rede and force that belief on everyone else
- liberal
- appropriates concepts from closed religions that they don't belong to (i.e. spirit animal, chakras)
- the Dark Lord
- angry
- use "dark magic"
- usually a Satanist or recon-oriented polytheist
- hates Wiccans
- thinks christophobia is a thing in the west
- arrogant
- amoral
- mean-spirited
- pretentious
- rude
- ableist
And sure, there are a lot of pagans of both archetypes who fit the stereotypes, but their existence is causing a lot of infighting among pagans and...can we not?
Just stop throwing other pagans under the bus in order to lift yourself up and make yourself seem better! It's nothing but respectability politics and can only end badly for pagans and anyone who is technically under the pagan umbrella but would rather not identify that way.
I promise, as someone who has been lumped into both stereotypes in the two and a half years or so since I converted, that we're not doing shit to help anyone. And the infighting only harms vulnerable pagans, especially new converts: teenagers in Christian households who are still exploring their newfound faith, LGBT people who find healing in polytheist religions with lore involving gender transcendence or gay love, women who begin to love themselves through goddess worship and escaping a religion that uses sex as a weapon against them, and pagan converts of color who are just happy to be away from the religion that was likely forced on their ancestors through colonialism and to have found a faith that they're more comfortable in.
They also pressure pagans to perform their religion to a degree that they no longer find joy in it. Like...it took me a really long time to genuinely see my gods as loving, as someone who fits into three of the above categories of vulnerable pagan converts, and the reason why is that, as an impressionable high schooler who was unsure how to navigate my faith, I was constantly faced with pretentious, cynical adult pagans who wouldn't shut up about how brutal their gods could be and who couldn't be bothered with offering patient, compassionate guidance to a scared kid, and with liberal hippies, mostly cis white women, who were angry that I wasn't constantly filled with rainbows and puppies and wasn't particularly interested in cis/heteronormative ideologies like "the polarity of masculine and feminine energies" and "the rain is semen pouring into the fertile womb of the earth".
I had to fight for my paganism. I left a religion that was causing me harm and took a huge risk in finding a new one. And now that I've found that new religion, damn right I'm going to find joy in it.
We have better things to do, as a religious community, than fight each other over petty things and constantly try to be more pagan than thou - if I wanted that, I'd just go back to Christianity completely.
What we should be doing is fighting racism, fascism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia among our own communities.
Fighting for the liberation of all pagans and the abolition of Christian supremacy and religious oppression while also acknowledging that white, non-Muslim gentile pagans are in a position of privilege over Jewish and Muslim people, as well as non-pagans of color, and that privilege is conditional or even non-existent for many Christians: LGBT Christians, Christian women, Christians of color, non-western Christians, syncretic Christians (i.e. christopagans and Christians who combine Christianity with ancestral folk beliefs, something that is present among many Christians in Appalachia, Latin America, and rural parts of Europe, not to mention indigenous, black, and Rromani Christians all over the world), and even Christian witches.
What paganism means to me isn't just my personal faith, but also radical, leftist, spiritual revolution, anti-capitalism, sexual liberation, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism (usually, anyway...unfortunately), respect for the environment, sharing of resources, anger for the right reasons, social justice rooted in love and compassion rather than a self-righteous desire to make yourself look good, and justice for all marginalized people. I think that's what it means to a lot of young converts, especially to young trans people and LGBT women.
Fuck performative paganism. Fuck fascist paganism. Fuck liberalism. Fuck infighting. I want that feeling back. So let's make it happen.
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1. as a cis non mga person, bi and pan people's attraction to nonbinary people is literally none of your business.