Ettina's New Record

CW: colonialism, white supremacy, abuse, fetishization, transphobia, intersexism, racism, misogyny, ableism, fatphobia, censored racial slur




Ettina of Abnormaldiversity has a new record: she's made two trash posts in a row. This one contains uncensored racial slurs (and Ettina is white), compares being gay to fetishizing marginalized people and objectifying women, and defends "person-oriented fetishes". It's called Fetishization, Attraction to Personal Characteristics, and Privilege.






The idea of someone having a specific attraction to people of a certain ethnicity, disabled people, transgender, intersex or nonbinary people, or people of a certain weight tends to be controversial, with many people describing it as wrong.






Well gee, that could be because:

• Pornographic fetishization of intersex and trans/nb people has been used to promote the idea that we aren't really the genders we say we are, to dehumanize us, and to excuse violence against us (i.e. the false idea that a trans woman and a cis man having sex is gay or that the trans woman is being deceptive by not immediately telling him she's trans). I've also had cis lesbians fetishize me by equating my visibly nonbinary traits to cis butchness and act as if afab nonbinary people are cis women lite, and cishet men fetishize me and co-opt my oppression - on the axes of homophobia and transphobia simultaneously, at that - by acting as if I'm completely gender neutral and being attracted to a nonbinary person specifically because he's nonbinary automatically makes them bisexual when really identifying that way for being attracted to me just makes them a biphobe (well, more than usual - as straight people, cishet men are already socialized to be biphobic) and a chaser
• Sexualization of traits common or stereotypically associated with people of color, especially women of color, has historically been used to excuse white supremacist violence and dehumanization against them (i.e. slave women being raped by white plantation owners) and is also a major factor in sexual assault against women of color today.
• Fetishization of developmentally disabled and mentally ill women is rooted in ableist violence and psychiatric abuse involving us and our foremothers being taken advantage of by neurotypical caretakers. Even today, fetishization of autistic woman is used to rape and abuse us at far higher rates than neurotypical women.
• As for fat shaming? Look, currently there aren't any people of color on the team (so, LGBT PoC, if you're interested please sign up), which is why I felt okay writing about sexual racism - the other mods are no more qualified to do it than I am. And if someone on the team wasn't white, if Safia had been hired (when asked, she said she was too stressed out to take on something else) or Cosima was still here, I would defer to them. But unfortunately I don't have that choice right now.

Unlike sexual racism, we do have a mod who is more qualified to talk about fatphobia and the fetishization of fat people than I am: Mod Roman. At a size fourteen and roughly 170 pounds with visible rolls, stretch marks, thunder thighs, and sagging doughy flesh, I would be considered fat according to thin, abled, white American beauty standards. But I'm not as severely impacted by fatphobia as Mod Roman, who is bigger than I am. So because of that I want to take a step back and acknowledge my privilege over bigger fat people. And if they, especially fat wlw, think I'm fucking up here, then please let me know.




But I haven't always been this thin, so I'm speaking more from past experience as someone who has weighed in, at my heaviest, at 196. And yes, as a bisexual nonbinary woman who has never been and probably never will be skinny, I do prefer bigger women.




And I know, both as a fat sapphic woman, as a fat woman who used to be fatter, and as a fat nonbinary person whose fat frequently causes them physical dysphoria, that even I need to be careful about my attraction to fat women. Because very frequently, when someone is attracted to a fat person, especially a fat woman, who is larger than they are, it's not totally based in seeing that person as beautiful and desirable. When thin people, especially thin cishet men, are attracted to me - though this was amplified 30 pounds ago - it's not because they value me as a person, an equal, and a potential sexual and romantic partner who is deserving of pleasure.


It's because they want to sexualize the curves those extra pounds have given me, while expressing distaste when my stomach jiggles. It's because fatness is feminized and being attracted to a fat woman allows them to conveniently forget that said fat woman isn't wholly a woman. Because they think being attracted to a fat woman, especially a gender nonconforming, bisexual fat woman, means that I'm so desperate and sexually insatiable that I'll go for anything. Because I should feel lucky that they are attracted to me, as if I don't deserve anything better. Because being attracted to fat people is seen as something forbidden and they get off on that. It's dehumanizing.


Which doesn't mean, of course, that no thin person ever should be attracted to fat people. It means that when I'm attracted to fat people specifically because they're fat, it's based in shared experiences, genuinely seeing fat women as beautiful and worthy of love, and rejecting fatphobic beauty standards. When thin people are attracted to fat people specifically because we're fat, when they form a pattern of being attracted to fat people, when they fetishize us, they're not seeing us as fully human.


And that, really, is why person-oriented fetishes are wrong. The object of a person-oriented fetish is not seen as fully human.

However, there is one type of person-specific attraction that is widely accepted, and generally seen as normal - gender-specific attraction. So, what makes it different? Is it just that monosexuality is the majority?


First of all, monosexual (and any variant thereof) is a really fucked-up word for a number of reasons.


It's cissexist. Lesbians and straight men are both "monosexual", but they can both be attracted to me, because I'm woman-aligned. But I'm also nonbinary, so I'm not totally the same gender as a cis or binary trans woman. Therefore, it's inaccurate to say that "monosexuals" are only attracted to one gender, which is what the term implies.


It's also homophobic, because it groups gay and straight people together on the axis of sexuality - the same axis on which straight people oppress gay people. It implies that gay people are inherently oppressive and that lesbians oppress bi men.
Second, considering that sga people are so frequently fetishized, it's also really fucked-up that you, an aroace, are comparing being gay to objectifying and being sexually predatory to marginalized people. I don't know what kind of liberal MOGAI radikweer trip you're on, Ettina, but equating gay people to sexual predators is not revolutionary. It's something right out of a Red Scare propaganda video on 'the gay agenda'.


they only want them for sex, which in our sex-shaming amatonormative society is seen as automatically implying exploitation


Our society is not "amatonormative". It's heteronormative. LGBT people are punished for our attraction, therefore we don't benefit from society prioritizing m/w romance.


Well, I can tell you with confidence that there are heterosexual men who fit every one of these traits with regards to their approach to women. And yet, misogynistic straight men aren't generally used to argue that women should only date men if they're multisexual. (And of course, bi/pan/etc men can be misogynistic too.) Nor have I heard many people claim that a man being heterosexual instead of bisexual is inherently misogynist.


Yeah, I agree with the sentiment that straight men are often predatory as fuck.
But first of all, considering that bi/pan men are already used as fetishes by straight women and that you're not mga, you really need to leave them the fuck out of this. Bisexual people are not your pawns or your tokens.
Second, if straight women specifically sought out bi men to date exclusively, they would be homophobic because they would be fetishizing bisexuality and using it as an excuse to sexually objectify mlm.
Third, you said "monosexuality" but you're now talking about straight men exclusively. "Monosexual" is a category that, uselessly, groups gay and straight people together. Yet gay people's experiences with single-gender attraction are wildly different than straight people's. Even straight women's experiences with single-gender attraction are wildly different than straight men's. Somehow, miraculously, most "monosexuals" manage to not be predatory and disrespectful when seeking a partner. So maybe, just maybe, for straight male sexual predators and sexual harassers, the issue isn't that they're "monosexual"...it's that they're straight men hopped up on privilege that allows them to get away with creepy, predatory behavior because of rape culture, misogyny, and homophobia (i.e. when a straight person is sexually predatory, straight people as a whole do not have their sexuality put on trial. The same does not apply to gay people). Because, I mean, when I'm interested in a woman, I still manage to be respectful of her personhood and sexual agency, so it really seems like attraction to women, in itself, is not the problem. I could be wrong but like...food for thought.


Just as there are straight men who objectify and stereotype women and straight men who treat women with respect, people with attractions dependent on other personal characteristics can have the same range of attitudes towards the people they're attracted to. Any time you have a relationship between partners who have different degrees of privilege afforded them by society, the more privileged partner could wind up using their privilege in ways that hurt their partner. It's not limited to those who have selective attractions.


What...is your point? Just being attracted to someone with less privilege than you doesn't mean you're fetishizing them. The problem is when, outside of being attracted to people of a specific gender alignment, you make a habit of being attracted to people with marginalized traits that you don't share, sexualizing them, harassing them, and generally treating them as subhuman.


Meanwhile, aromantic allosexual people can be respectful to their sexual partners, using clear boundaries and honest discussion of feelings to avoid implying a different kind of relationship than what they are truly seeking.


Wow, you'd think that having so much respect and affection for "allosexual" aros would mean you'd respect their boundaries by not calling them allosexual. Guess not.




So the problems with person-directed fetishes aren't due to the fetish. They're due to racism, ableism, transphobia, fatphobia, and other types of discrimination. Prejudice doesn't cause person-directed fetishes, and having and acting on a person-directed fetish doesn't necessarily mean you're prejudiced.


The thing is, though, treating marginalized people as fetishes and sex objects is automatically discrimination. So yeah, "person-directed fetishes" are inherently problems.




And like anyone else, some people who are targets of person-directed fetishes will be prejudiced against fetishists.


Golly gosh, Ettina, why would I have prejudice against people who not only have privilege over me, but also dehumanize me and see me as a sex object, effectively perpetuating my oppression? It's not as if, because I'm a bi trans disabled person, there's virtually a 100% chance that I will be abused or sexually assaulted at some point and that fetishization of wlw, trans/nb people, and disabled people only heightens this probability.


In addition, having close ties of any kind to a stigmatized group can result in some of the stigma falling on you (eg "n*gger lovers").


In your original post, Ettina, the N-word hadn't been censored. Considering that you apparently think black men are uniquely sexually predatory (because why else would you point out the race of a black boy who had sexually harassed you, an innocent helpless white woman, when his blackness had nothing to do with it?), I really shouldn't be surprised.


Second...sure, being an ally to marginalized people can be hard sometimes. But when I'm confronted by homophobia and transphobia, I feel much safer letting people think I'm a cishet or cis aroace woman than coming out as bi or nonbinary.


Sure, other non-LGBT people might give someone like that shit for being an ally against homophobia and transphobia, but at the end of the day? Homophobia and transphobia will not harm that person. At the end of the day, they are able to shed that allyship, to stop talking about LGBT liberation, and they will not be negatively impacted in any way. At the end of the day, a cishet woman is able to leave Pride and go home to her cishet boyfriend and live her happy little cishet life, because it's not her humanity, freedom, and civil rights that have been put up for debate. Other cishet women will not sexually harass her or avoid her in locker rooms for being an ally. She won't lose her job for being an ally. She's not more likely to be abused or sexually assaulted for being an ally. She'll still be able to have her wedding in whatever venue she wants. She'll still be able to use public bathrooms without fearing for her safety. Her family won't disown her for being an ally. She might be teased, but she will still be straight and she will still be cis. At the end of the day, that's what people care about.


And maybe that cishet boyfriend isn't cishet. Maybe people tell her to "get a real man". Maybe people tell her that her bi/pan boyfriend will leave her. Maybe she can't get married because her trans boyfriend has an F on his ID. Maybe someone mistakes her for bi or pan because her partner is nonbinary. All of this might hurt her feelings, but she is still able to leave that relationship because it's not about her. She can cut all ties to the LGBT community and be just fine, but her partner will be oppressed for their entire life.


Or if a cishet man is dating me, he might be razzed a bit because his datemate looks too androgynous and uses they/he pronouns and is bisexual and because he has a datemate instead of a girlfriend, but it's not about him. He could break up with me, date a woman who is closer to what his cishet peers expect of him. I can't escape the stigma associated with being bi and nonbinary, no matter who I'm dating.


So given that, am I supposed to...what? Be happy when cishet men think it's hot that I'm nonbinary? Fawn at their feet when they think dating me is going to be like something out of a m/f/f threesome porn video? Be awed that he would deign to fuck a disabled fat woman? Allow myself to be reduced to inspiration porn? Am I supposed to feel sorry for them, that they're willing to date someone so stigmatized?




What about when I'm on the other side of that, when I'm the one in the position of privilege being ostracized for speaking positively about #BlackLivesMatter or supporting hijabis or advocating for the poor? When I'm having uncomfortable but necessary conversations about privilege with other middle-class white people? I might be momentarily inconvenienced and angered by their racism and classism, but after I walk away from that conversation, I become just another white person from a privileged, middle-class background, who is very easily able to be quiet about racial and class justice because I'm not the one being oppressed. I'm not the one whose safety is at risk from police brutality and white supremacy.


So no, I don't really give a shit about privileged kinksters who "have some of the stigma falling on them because they maintain close ties to an oppressed group" because of their fetishization of LGBT people, or people of color, or disabled people, or fat people, or intersex people. That stigma will go away for them. They are able to make it go away, while the rest of us are screwed for the rest of our lives.

Really? Again, Ettina?

CW: rape, abuse, guns, mass shooting, serophobia, violence, transphobia, ableism, racism, homophobia, biphobia, bimisogyny, lesbophobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, ableism, rape culture, fetishization, sexual harassment

I'd been planning to take a hiatus for a few months to handle some personal issues, but Abnormaldiversity has decided to piss me off again and I'm not going to put up with anyone acting like being LGBT is a privilege - even if that person is LGBT themselves (she's recently revealed that she's probably nonbinary, and uses she/her pronouns).

I'm not going to link and give her a platform, but the post is called Better or Worse? and it's about how for LGBT people homophobia and transphobia apparently lessen as we age, while for acomm cishets and cis aroaces aphobia increases.

Here we go. Buckle the fuck up, kids. We're in for a wild ride.

And for many, this is true. LGB adults have more freedom to seek romantic partners regardless of gender, and less likely to depend on homophobic people in order to survive.

Tell that to bi women who are trapped in abusive relationships with cishet men.

Tell it to closeted people.

To people who can't access sexual healthcare or whose sex education was mostly applicable to straight cis people.

To trans/nb mlm and wlw who can be denied hormones and surgery if it's revealed they're not straight, on top of dealing with fetishization and oversexualization from cis people both inside and outside of the LGBT community.

To people in conservative towns, worship communities, and political climates.

To college students who lose their scholarships based on their sexualities.

To people who have lost their jobs because of their sexualities.

To people who are assumed to be inherently pedophilic because of their sexualities.

To LGB sex workers.

To LGB adults who still live with their parents because it's either that or starvation and homelessness.

To mentally ill LGB people who get the drugs they need in order to stay relatively stable from homophobic therapists.

To disabled LGB people who use aides, interpreters, and caretakers and face homophobia from the people who provide them with accessibility.

To bisexuals who frequently deal with gay and straight people refusing to date us because they think we'll cheat or we're not radical enough - and to bisexuals who are fetishized by straight people who think a bi partner means they'll get threesomes. To gay people who put up with lateral homophobia from bi people who believe in monosexual privilege.

To lesbians whose boundaries are violated by trans men who think being trans means they're less misogynistic. To trans mlm who are fetishized by cis lesbians and rejected by cis gay men, and to trans wlw who are fetishized by cis gay men and rejected by cis lesbians. To trans/nb gay men and lesbians who are erased by cis bisexuals who believe that gay people are more transphobic than they are. To trans/nb mga people who deal with cis gay people thinking they oppress them or are inherently liberal.

To mlm of color who look at a white man's Grindr profile only to see that he's only interested in white men. To wlw of color who deal with white feminism in every sapphic space they share with white women.

To Muslim, Sikh, and Jewish LGB people who constantly hear that their religions are inherently more homophobic than Christianity. To LGB pagans and polytheists who don't know if we'll ever find a relationship where we're not expected to hide our religious beliefs in order to make our partners comfortable.

Tell it to Lisa Trubnikova, who was killed for being a lesbian. Tell it to Matthew Shepard. To everyone shot at Pulse, and to the two gay men whose love angered Omar Mateen so much that he killed dozens of people. To every gay and bisexual man in Chechnya. To Amber Heard. To survivors of corrective rape. To the 61% of bi women and 43% of lesbians who have experienced domestic violence. To LGBT people who lived during the AIDS crisis. To the LGBT people who didn't survive it.

Transgender adults are more likely to have access to tools of medical transition, as well as less likely to depend on transphobic people.

First of all, most of the above - about losing jobs, being fetishized, being abused, facing increased accessibility hurdles - also applies to trans and nonbinary people. It's often more likely to apply to us, actually.

Second, not all trans people want to medically transition.

Third, that increased access doesn't apply to:

• LGB trans people
• Gender nonconforming trans people
• Nonbinary people whose primary pronouns aren't he/him or she/her
• Neurodivergent and mentally ill trans people
• Poor trans people
• People with culturally specific genders
• Intersex trans people
• Trans people living in Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.
• Trans people who didn't always know they were trans
• Trans people in abusive relationships

And even being able to transition isn't always a privilege, considering that trans women of color are one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.

Not to mention that what you're failing to consider here is that even in the best of cases, EVERY LGBT person depends, or has depended, on homophobes and transphobes to survive. Transphobia and homophobia are ingrained in everyone by society from infancy. Sure, not every cishet is Mike Pence, but to some degree all cis people are transphobic and all non-sga people are homophobic, and they need to spend their entire lives unlearning that. And even when they do, every cis person who isn't sga still oppresses everyone who is LGBT.

That's how oppression WORKS. Institutionally and systemically, people with privilege are socialized to dominate those they oppress. White people are given beauty standards and racist stereotypes that teach us we're superior. Men are taught that women are inherently submissive, weak, and exist for their pleasure. Abled people are taught that disability is weakness and that weakness is to be eradicated. Cishets and cis aroaces are taught that LGBT people are sinful, predatory deviants who go against nature, and cis LGB people are taught all of that about trans/nb people as well.

These realities are built into our society. They lead to dehumanization, harassment, violence, unequal access, abuse, criminal profiling, rape, hate crimes, poverty, oppressive laws, and genocide, and none of us can totally escape that.

I'm not like you, Ettina. I don't escape oppression for my sexuality when I go offline. And I know better than to think that being trans will get easier for me as I get older.

In our teens, we're often seen as "just a late bloomer" or "not ready yet"

Because that's what frequently happens! Teenagers are still growing and developing. Their bodies and hormones are still changing, so it's unreasonable to expect them - children who are as young as thirteen, still in middle school - to feel the same level of sexual attraction as an adult.

And a lot of teenagers don't feel emotionally ready for sex or dating. Or they have body image issues. Or they just want to put it off until life isn't so stressful, because being a teenager is hard enough as it is. 

That doesn't make them aro or ace. It makes them kids, and kids should be allowed to just be kids. They don't need some twentysomething stranger on the internet telling them that their lack of interest in sex or romance is abnormal for their age and scaring them into thinking they're oppressed for it.

As I got visibly more adult in appearance, straight cis guys have gotten pusher about their advances.

Have you ever heard of a little thing called rape culture, perchance? Misogyny? Sexism? Patriarchy? Male entitlement? Hypermasculinity? The virgin/wh*re dichotomy? Sex shaming?

Aro/ace women are seen as having less of an 'excuse' - we're not taken, and we're not gay.

Asexual and aromantic lesbians exist, first of all. So some acomm women are gay, but in order to acknowledge them you'd have to acknowledge that acomm people can also be straight. That aces and aros aren't oppressed. That allo privilege isn't real.

And that just won't do.

Second...since when do men universally take "I'm a lesbian" as a valid reason not to sleep with them? Because it's often more like "I can fix that", or "Can I watch?", or "Well that's because you haven't had sex with me yet." Sometimes it goes beyond that. Sometimes it ends in the lesbian being raped or killed.

Third, the same can be said of non-acomm straight and bi women who are celibate, sex-repulsed, or who just don't particularly feel like being hit on by annoying men all the time. But straight women aren't oppressed for their sexualities, and bi women are oppressed for being attracted to women and discriminated against for being attracted to multiple genders - not specifically for being attracted to men.

Besides that, one group of women being uniquely affected by something doesn't necessarily mean that other women in that group are privileged over them. For example, just because Roman and I aren't impacted the exact same way by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia as an agender femme lesbian and genderfluid tomcat bisexual, respectively, doesn't mean either of us is privileged over the other.

Differences in privilege do exist between women, i.e. white privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, class privilege, abled privilege, dyadic privilege. I'm not saying they don't.

But there are also cases where a woman will be impacted in a specific way by patriarchy, and then will mistakenly assume that every woman who isn't has privilege over her.

For every man who disrespects that you aren't and will never be interested in sex and romance and pushes your boundaries, there's a man who thinks that women who do like sex are dirty, tainted sluts who are "asking for it".

And in any m/w relationship, there is going to be a power imbalance - though this gets a lot more complicated when the relationship contains, say, a bisexual black man and a straight white woman. So while they're just as homophobic as their male counterparts, straight women's desire to exclusively date men, especially if they're not white, abled, dyadic, and/or cis, doesn't give them the ability to oppress you or any other woman who isn't sapphic.

From what I've heard, this is especially true for aro/ace women of color

That's called racialized misogyny. And it impacts all women of color, not just ace and aro ones.

Besides that, a lot of people of color, women, and LGBT people have actually stopped identifying with the acomm because rampant unchecked racism, misogyny, homophobia, and/or transphobia made them feel unsafe in that community. They're not ace or aro (so in your eyes they're "allo"), they're just people who don't want sex or don't want romance. And yet their experiences with oppression haven't changed for better or worse because of it.

Tell me again how this makes them privileged? And as long as we're discussing racialized misogyny...tell me how a woman of color who doesn't identify as acomm is privileged over a white man who does.

For male-presenting aros and aces, the pressure often comes from other men

That's called toxic masculinity. Men are supposed to be dominant toward women (especially in relationships), and aren't seen as properly fulfilling their role in the patriarchy if they're not. And ace and aro men are not really any more harmed by this than:

• gnc/feminine men
• male kinksters who are submissive
• men in polyandrous relationships
• celibate men
• men who cry easily or are soft-spoken

None of those men are oppressed either.

Societal pressure makes it harder for new partners to discuss sexual compatibility

That's a result of sex-negativity and purity culture, which harms everyone.

One of the most common contexts for asexual corrective rape is being raped by a romantic partner, especially for female-presenting aces involved with men.

Ace women are not the only ones harmed by rape culture, misogyny, abuse, and violence - nor are they uniquely harmed by it or more harmed by it than other women. The same goes for aces feeling obligated to have sex with a romantic partner.

Rape is always traumatizing and tragic, but this is not an example of aphobic oppression and it is not corrective rape.

I'm not going to directly quote the rest because it basically amounts to "aros are oppressed because they're lonely" phrased with entirely too many words. And uh...no.

Anyway, Ettina, your post is homophobic, transphobic trash and so are you.

Just a Rant

CW: bimisogyny, transphobia, abuse, sexual assault, homophobia, anti-LGBT slurs (used by someone who can reclaim them)

While I've been into guys before, this is the first time it's happened as an adult and I have Feelings about it.

Let's just temporarily ignore the fact that there's approximately a 90% chance that Danny and I will never actually date because reasons and go from there.

Prometheia (Hellenic summer solstice) is coming up and for me, that means veiling. And I'm actually just...weirdly self-conscious about veiling in public right now.

I only started veiling last winter and I'm lucky that I live in one of the only places in Michigan where being visibly a religious minority won't put you in danger and my college has had shit like a witchcraft course, a teacher who practices curanderismo, and that one girl from like 2015 who tried to found a school coven. Like I get that I personally am not going to be as materially harmed under Christian supremacy or put in danger for covering my hair the way that, say, a hijabi would be.

But at the same time, I rarely feel more pressure to be discreet about my paganism than when I'm attracted to a Christian - which Danny apparently is.

It's irrational, self-hating bullshit, I know. I would be okay dating someone who straight-up didn't at all believe in the Theoi or in magic, as long as they were supportive of my right to do so. But that doesn't mean religion wouldn't be an issue for me at all. I wouldn't date a Christian who expected me to go to church with them or thought premarital sex was a sin, for example. And like, what if that relationship turned more serious? Am I supposed to refrain from veiling on festival days if their parents are coming to visit? What if I want an altar or shrine and they have a problem with that when we move in together? What about marriage - how am I as an Aphrodite devotee supposed to get married if I can't incorporate religion into the ceremony? What if we have kids together, and they have their heart set on raising their kids in their family's religion?

That actually sounds really creepy and obsessive and actually kind of juvenile. I've never even dated and I'm already thinking about marriage and kids? But it's not a literal these-are-serious-plans thing. I'm not even sure if I want marriage or kids, and since I'd rather adopt an older foster kid they'll probably have their own beliefs when they arrive.

It's just a practical concern because as a member of a relatively uncommon religion, odds are that most of my relationships are going to be interfaith and I need to consider how I'm going to make that work - especially when there's a power imbalance involved. If I'm dating a Christian, how comfortable will I be with someone whose religion is privileged over mine - especially if that someone is a cis man? If I'm dating, say, a Jewish person, how am I going to navigate being a good ally to my partner without compromising my own beliefs for the sake of our relationship?

Also...odds are, any relationship I'm in is going to involve one of us being privileged over the other in some way - what am I going to do, only date other non-cis, woman-aligned/non-man-aligned, sga, disabled religious minorities? Because there's so many of those, right? And even if I were going to do that, I could actually be the one with more privilege. I could date a trans woman, a Jewish person, a sex worker, or a person of color, and they might not be interested in dating someone who is a non-transfeminine, civilian white gentile.

Or I'd be dealing with lateral aggression: biphobia and bimisogyny from a lesbian partner, nbphobia from a trans partner, anti-Hellenic sentiment from a pagan partner, lateral ableism from a disabled partner, misogyny from a non-aligned nb partner.

Back to the veil dilemma. I don't know if this is a common experience among pagans or religious minorities in general who veil, but I feel really self-conscious doing it in front of a Christian that I'm attracted to. Which I know is bullshit, because if I can't even bring myself to be open and honest about my religion around this guy then clearly I shouldn't be dating him.

If it explains anything, I should mention that my medication has pretty much entirely stopped working. I have a doctor's appointment on the 30th but until then, I'll be relying pretty heavily on Mountain Dew and Starbucks for the stimulants my brain needs to remain semi-functional.

But like...this whole thing, this self-consciousness around veiling, brought me to another train of thought about how it intersects with gender and sexuality, how being able to pass as your own oppressor (I.e. being bisexual in a m/w relationship, being a cisgender femme lesbian who is read as straight when she's not with her girlfriend, being a trans person who passes as cis, being a closeted trans woman who is read as a man, being a "mildly" disabled person, being a pagan who appears to be Christian to those who don't know better) can be life-saving sometimes. I am way less likely to experience street harassment and to have my relationship disrespected and fetishized if I'm dating someone who is read as a cis man than if I'm dating someone who is, or is read as, a woman.

But it also tends to put you in proximity to your actual oppressors, who constantly expect to be accommodated at your expense. It forces you to constantly prove how radical you are - and the emotional exhaustion of doing that deters you from actually being radical, antifascist, or leftist. And it can exacerbate internalized self-hate resulting from oppression and deny you the resources you do still need - though I admit that experiencing increased externalized violence is probably worse and also puts you in danger. I may be denied space in the trans community more often due to nbphobia, but a non-passing trans woman is going to need those resources more than I do AND is just as capable of having internalized transphobia.

I digress. Not to pull any "LG vs. BT" shit, but the main way I conceptualize this is by thinking of the common experiences between how I'm treated, inside and outside of the LGBT community, as a nonbinary person and a bisexual woman.

Constantly being infantilized - I often feel like people see TME woman-aligned nonbinary people as silly girls who are going through a phase and don't actually know what it is to be trans, but they humor us at their leisure. And I feel like gay/lesbian people, straight people, and bi men see bi women as naive, giggling, perpetual children who are playing at loving women before we inevitably end up with men and live heterosexually ever after.

I often feel pressured to "pick a side" in terms of both my gender and sexuality, especially when I'm around cis women. And actually, especially with cis wlw, there's so much pressure to hide my gender fluidity and passively accept when they completely ignore and disrespect it, to be a woman and a wlw first and a nonbinary person second, to make my gender fluidity a mere afterthought. It's inconvenient to cis women, to have to respect nonbinary wlw.

And I can't put up with that. My womanhood is inseparable from my gender fluidity is inseparable from my bisexuality. I cannot feel safe in feminist spaces that don't include nonbinary people. I can't feel safe in bisexual spaces that don't prioritize bi trans people. I can't feel safe in trans spaces that are misogynistic.

Constantly being fetishized and oversexualized. Dealing with cis sga people who think they can't fetishize me because they're not straight either, with bi men who guilt wlw into fucking them, with gay and lesbian people who accuse me of being a "hasbian" or a tainted party girl who is faking it for attention because I'm a young bi woman who has never been with a woman before and is currently attracted to a man, with cis people who assume my gender fluidity is a paraphilia.

Constantly being seen as "not enough", by gold star gays, by truscum, by TERFs, by people who think their transphobia and homophobia against me is somehow radical leftist praxis or helpful to trans women and lesbians.

Constantly being seen as Not Enough, because it's not really homophobia if I also like men. Because when lesbians are demonized in the media, I'm not allowed to talk about how this negatively affects me, but with shows like Chasing Life - where Greer is portrayed fairly but Brenna is depicted as a slutty, indecisive stereotype who refused to call herself bisexual for the entire first season, or in The Fosters, where two lesbians are the heroes who get a happy marriage and kids while Monty, a bi woman, is constantly fucked over and deceived and also apparently has no respect for boundaries and rarely gets a smidgen of happiness or any healthy depiction of her attraction to women - I'd better just shut up about bimisogyny and be happy that wlw are being positively represented at all, because bi women are supposed to smile and be happy and accept whatever treatment we get and cut off little bits of ourselves, one and two at a time, in order to make ourselves palatable enough for the consumption of everyone except ourselves. How did we taste? Did you enjoy eating us alive? Here, let me give you another piece - would you like a finger? An eye? Or maybe something that's easier to sexualize, like a breast, because clearly sex is all anyone thinks bi women are good for. I should keep my mouth shut unless I'm using it to please you.

But no, wait, I stand corrected. Sex isn't all bi women are good for. When we marry men, we're useful as conservative tokens because we've been "fixed" and had our attraction to women sucked out of us by Prince Charming - even if Prince Charming is abusive, as cishet men so frequently are to their bisexual girlfriends and wives.

We're useful as liberal tokens as well. We're fluid and open-minded, unrapeable bodies available to anyone who wants us. We're useful as tokens to acomm people who aren't sga, because what do you mean those dirty allo bihets will always have more right to LGBT spaces than some cishet guy who calls himself lamvanosexual because he can't be bothered to pleasure his girlfriend but thinks she's useless unless she's willing to suck him off?

We're useful as pawns to straight women, for them to manipulate and groom into liberal feminism, guilt away from learning about LGBT leftism, and pit against lesbians because it's easier for straight people when we're fighting with our natural allies rather than banding together with them in order to achieve equity and liberation.

We're useful to straight men. We're useful as their punching bags, their sick fetishes, their toys, their way of fulfilling some disgusting fantasy about fucking a wlw and they often don't particularly care whether we consent. And when we're not useful as sex objects, we're useful as dirty, sinful queers for them to inflict violence on.

And queers...that word. We're useful because it's expected we won't be traumatized by it. Because we can't take pride in bisexual and sapphic, only queer. Only a slur. We're the "libqueers" you love to hate, to conflate with liberal publications that shove that word down our throats as if bisexual is too dirty, too tainted, too sexual, to dare say out loud - and we so often internalize those beliefs. I was useful yesterday, when a cishet woman called me that, assuming it was her place to reclaim. I was useful until my glare made her uncomfortable because don't you fucking dare use that word for me. I'm useful, as a nonbinary bisexual woman. I'm a token. A pawn, a fetish, a toy, an object.

And sure, I gain superficial, conditional benefits while in a relationship that's read as straight. But being perceived as fluid, open-minded, flexible, whether for my bisexuality or my gender fluidity or my paganism, isn't a privilege.

It mostly just means I'm denied the right to having boundaries.

My First Pride

As it says in the title.

So here's what happened:

Last night I found out through Facebook that an old friend of mine from high school who came out as bi last year was thinking of going to Motor City (that's Detroit, to those of you who don't live in Michigan) Pride today.

And I, being the visually impaired hot mess of a human that I am, don't have a driver's license. For this reason I'd always figured my chances of going to any Pride that wasn't within walking or biking distance of me were pretty much nil, because Michigan public transportation kind of sucks ass and there aren't many people around here who I'm out to and who would be both willing and able to drive me.

So, since my parents are out of town this weekend and probably assume I spent the day yarn shopping or at a coffee shop downtown, I was just holy shit here's my chance and messaged her, thinking of saying that Pride sounded like a lot of fun and then slowly working around to convincing her to drive me in exchange for me buying us both food. Which sounds like a date, but I'd never felt that way about her and I'd graduated by the time she came out (she was a grade behind me) so I don't know if she was, or is, attracted to me. I was planning for us to just go as friends.

Unfortunately that plan didn't work out, since she didn't message me back. I'm hoping she just didn't see it but honestly my intentions were probably really transparent. We also hadn't talked in a while, what with school and work and life in general, so why would she drive me to Detroit when she wasn't even sure if she was going?

Then there was Plan B: ridesharing.

I've had alcohol twice before, but I've never been drunk and I've never been the one driving anyone home. I'm also an introvert and a homebody and I was really sheltered and didn't go to a lot of parties in high school, so most of the places I go are close enough to bike to. So never in my nineteen years and seven months have I had occasion to use any kind of rideshare program.

And I have to admit, this plan was incredibly half-assed because I'd made it on impulse. But anyway. I went to the Uber app and discovered that I couldn't pay in cash, which is why I decided to wake up early enough today that I could go to the bank, deposit my paycheck and VA money, go to Panera, buy a smoothie, go to Kroger, buy an American Express gift card, and link that to my Uber account.

And it wouldn't take it. So I decided to link it to PayPal instead and then link PayPal to Uber. Which eventually worked but I didn't know that at the time, so I had to walk a mile in the hot sun back to the bank and link my bank account to PayPal.

What I didn't know is that in order to do that, I needed to set up a PIN so I could do my banking online.

At this point, I was frustrated, hungry, sweaty, unmedicated, sore, and tired. This, combined with my low empathy, short fuse, and default emotional state of vaguely Impatient, Bored, and/or Pissed Off, was a very bad thing.

 And the two bank employees who were trying to assist me didn't seem to do be able to do anything and from my viewpoint at the time they were idiots who were wasting my time and deserved to be fired. I tried to at least be polite, if only for selfish reasons, but they could tell I wasn't happy.

So then I did something I'm not proud of. I started crying.

Look, you already know how I was feeling. And I was looking forward to this, okay? I hadn't had a ton of good experiences with GSAs (the one I was in briefly during my first semester of college turned out to be transphobic), I've never had a girlfriend, and I'm too young to get into a gay bar. So outside of social media, I don't have much experience interacting with other LGBT people specifically for that purpose. It was my first Pride, a place where I could introduce myself as Ari, and I wanted a sense of community and a way to connect with my cultural history as a bi trans person.

I'm also under constant stress. Three college classes, two jobs, learning a new language, being new to adulthood, gender dysphoria, being mostly closeted, and dealing with an ear infection and insomnia would be a lot for anyone to handle. But when you consider the fact that I'm doing all of that while disabled, while trying to live up to abled standards, it's a wonder I hadn't broken down before then.

Before I went to Pride, I could scarcely remember the last time I did anything fun, completely and purely because I wanted to. I either never had the time or never had energy.

I'd also accidentally pushed myself into sensory overload in the whole process of this little journey, and I hadn't had a chance to stim or get somewhere private the entire day.

So don't tell me it's stupid to break down under that level of stress, that I have nothing to cry about, that I was blowing things out of proportion.

Anyway. Crying. I tried to hide it until I was alone, but it was pretty obvious.

And I stayed like that for awhile before I could work out a new plan. I wasn't entirely sure about it, since I knew that I would be completely crushed if this one didn't work out.

But it worked out, even if I didn't get there when it opened like I'd planned. Which is why I have to say: Lyft is better than Uber. If you ever need to use rideshare, Lyft is the way to go.

And then I cleaned up and got ready to meet my driver. Her name was Mae, by the way. She was a trans woman, probably in her late twenties, who was thrilled when I told her it was my first Pride. Also, she liked the temporary tattoos I'd drawn on my arm in Sharpie: a beating heart on my inner wrist for Pulse, a violet on the back of my hand for sapphic love, a pair of bisexual moons near my celadon, and a nonbinary symbol on my inner bicep.

And she dropped me off at Hart Plaza, where the festival was, and explained that when I was ready to go, I should let the app know and someone would come find me.

And then I got into line, nervous at how long it was and ticked when people began to cut in front of me. But I just stepped in front of them. I'd worked hard to get here and damn it, I intended to have a fabulous time.

Not, of course, that I didn't panic a little every time someone walked past and saw me in the line. After all, the first anniversary of Pulse is on Monday, so it's been on my mind a lot - how dangerous it can be to be openly LGBT in any kind of public space.

But that didn't happen today. What did happen was that I saw my old crush from high school - wearing an ace pride flag, of course - with some friends, just as she was leaving. We talked for a bit, she introduced me to her friends, and then we went our separate ways.

So I walked around for a bit, checking out all the booths but hesitant to buy anything in case I needed money to get home. Besides that, most of the merchandise was either things I could easily make on my own, or had obviously come from Pride. And the fact that I had been to Pride wasn't something I wanted to announce to the world.

I checked out the drag show and took a few pictures before putting on the baseball cap I'd brought to prevent heat exhaustion and heading over to a large fountain where people were playing in the water. I set my backpack down, took off my socks and shoes, and joined in, then put my shoes on again and explored some more.

At one point I ended up briefly in the alcohol corner before realizing I couldn't legally drink anything there (as declared by my pink wristband that said I was underage) and I also didn't want to drink on an empty stomach. Which made me realize I was hungry, so I ate the granola bar I'd brought with me and checked out the stalls again.

After that I went to a photo station that was giving away free newspapers called Between the Lines and got my picture taken.

I walked around for maybe half an hour before deciding I wanted to try the roasted cauliflower and peach soda I'd seen on a food truck menu. After I was done with that, I sat down in the shade for awhile, took a few more pictures, and around six I informed Lyft that I wanted a pickup.

And...that's it. I went to Pride, used Lyft, went to Detroit on my own. Pretty big day, and now I'm home with a sunburn that should really be treated, and I had fun but I have homework to do and I'm also exhausted. So yeah.

This is the last post I'll be making for awhile. It's about a big event in my life that made me happier than I have been in awhile (when Danny isn't present, that is) and I hope you like it.