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  1. I was browsing Tumblr the other day when I came across this quote: It's a quote by a woman named Amy André, from a speech on bisexual health. I was reminded of it when this thread emerged in The Lounge, regarding olympic diver Tom Daley. Now, Tom Daley has said that he's in a relationship with another guy. Good for him. I think this is awesome. He also says he still fancies girls. As far as I'm concerned, this places him pretty firmly in the bisexual category as far as labels go. Yet, some seem to feel that this means he's 'undecided'. I tend to lean towards the masculine, but if I were to categorise my sexual orientation (personally I prefer to just call myself queer), I would probably call myself pansexual. If someone asks and I don't feel like explaining what that means, I will say bisexual, because that's easier. But I like guys, and I like girls, and I like girls who look like guys and guys who look like girls, and I like non-op transpersons and genderqueer people who feel no need to label their gender, and I don't believe in the gender binary. Neither to I believe in monosexuality as some kind of default. I've always been of the opinion that people fall in love with people. That there are tastes and preferences that tend to make us more attracted to one sex than another, but that the starting point, the default state if you will, is that you can go either way. Dispute me on this if you like, my word isn't gospel. I'm not saying that no one is gay or straight, and I'm not saying that sexual orientation isn't innate, I just mean that as a species we can go either way. I'm convinced that if 'alternative' sexualities were more accepted, far more straight people would identify as bisexual. As it is, many people, on both ends of the spectrum, don't even consider bisexuality to be a real sexual orientation. We're told that we're confused or greedy, that we should make up our minds. We're told that if we're in same-sex relationships we're gay and if we're in opposite-sex relationships we're straight. Mental health professionals don't take us seriously. We have a hard time finding lasting relationships because if our partners identify as completely gay or completely straight, they'll want us to identify that way as well, and they'll feel insecure and worry that we really want someone of the other sex if we refuse to. This is probably part of the reason why far more bisexual people are depressed or suicidal. I think we're something like twice as likely as gay people and four times as likely as straight people to suffer from severe depressions and suicidal thoughts. Some will try to tell us to just choose, some will try to convince us we're really either gay or straight, and gay people aren't a bit better with regard to this than straight people. I'm not confused. I'm perfectly comfortable with my sexual orientation. I know what I like and what I don't like. I've identified as bisexual for over a decade and I've never faltered in this. But it hasn't been easy when I've constantly been made to feel like my sexual orientation is invalid. The B in LGBT is being ignored, but we do exist, and we're not confused or greedy or undecided. We're real.
  2. I got a bit of a memory jog when people started talking about The O.C. the other day, because of the show's 10th anniversary. When that show came out, I was already a little done with the high school drama genre, and was moving on to anime, sci-fi, fantasy and horror themed tv-series. I used to watch Popular pretty regularly, and I even had time to, for a season or so, really like Dawson's Creek, though I was young at the time. But there was one high school drama type of series that stood out, and that was the Dawson's Creek spin-off Young Americans. Let me preface by saying that this is not an especially good show. It wasn't really surprising that the thing got cancelled after only 8 episodes. Most of the plot was passé and melodramatic, the writing was mediocre, as was most of the acting. With one major exception. The Jake and Hamilton story-line. I must have been about 12 when that show came out. I may have been as old as 13 when I started watching it, cause I don't know when it made it across the pond, but I wasn't old. The Jake and Hamilton arc was revolutionary for me. It was new and exciting and different, and it broke down everything that I thought I knew about gender and sexuality at the tender age of 12 or 13. One part of it was the fact that Jake had everyone fooled. Jake was really Jacqueline, played by the amazing and talented Katherine Moennig (who later went on to star in The L-Word). Jacqueline was a rich young girl with a mother who didn't pay attention to her. Her mum was an actress, and hardly ever home, and Jacqueline tried to do ever more extreme things to get her mother to notice her, to little avail. Finally, Jacqueline hacked into her mother's e-mail account, signed up for Rawley Academy for boys for summer school and became Jake, just to see if her mother would notice. She didn't. No one at Rawley believed for a second that Jake was anything other than a boy, including Hamilton. And here comes the best part, because even though he fully believed Jake to be a boy, Hamilton still fell in love with him. It was the first suggestion I had ever seen in popular culture of the idea that people fall in love with people, and that gender can be secondary or irrelevant, and it changed my entire perspective. It doesn't matter that Jake turned out to be a girl. For the first three episodes or so, Hamilton believed that he had turned gay. Even after Jake told him the truth, they still seemed most comfortable with each other when Jake was, well, Jake rather than Jacqueline. After a while, everyone started to think that Hamilton and Jake were gay, and what was so wonderful about that was how cool they all seemed with it. That was a world I wanted to live in. Jake was never trans. Jake was very comfortable about really being Jacqueline and did not mind being girly. I think, however, that if this show had been made today, the gender issue would have been a much bigger part of the story, and Jake's character would have been much more gender-fluid than it ultimately was. As it is, however, Young Americans helped break down the idea of the gender binary in my mind, it introduced the concept of 'alternate' sexualities to me, and made me feel so much less alone in a heteronormative television world.
  3. This came from an article about the 2005 book Born Gay, and was shared in a thread in the Tech and Science Geeks club a few days ago. In attempting to prove that being gay is genetic, the authors found it necessary to suggest that bisexuality does not exist. I can understand that. If people are genetically either gay or straight, phenomenons like bisexuality become hard to explain. Easier to just pretend they don’t exist and omit them from the equation so you can more easily prove what you’re trying to prove. Of course, that’s pretty shitty science. As for these ‘physiological studies’, they were clearly not performed on me or anyone I know, and the idea that bisexuals are just sluts with super high libidos who will fuck everything is not only utter bullshit, but deeply harmful in perpetuating stereotypes that we in the bisexual community have been trying really, really hard to get rid of. (Not that there’s anything at all wrong with being a slut who will fuck everything; you do you.) Is my attraction to men and women exactly equal? No, not all the time, and I’m attracted to different things in different genders as well. Women are in general more aestetically pleasing than men, in my opinion. But then I do also really like dick. (Yes, can I have a non-op mtf enby with a side of sexual dominance, please? Thanks!) None of this takes away from the fact that I am in fact attracted to both men and women, and to people who are both or neither. If you were to measure my arousal levels while watching gay, straight, lesbian, and transgender porn, assuming it’s good porn you’d get a pretty strong physiological response from all of it. Anyway, this isn’t really the point of this blogpost. I wrote a post five years ago on biphobia, monosexism, and pansexuality. The point is erasure. The point is that there are people, probably even people on this site, who don’t believe that I exist. I mean, that I, Thorn Wilde, writer and wacky weirdo, exist is indesputable (or is it? Maybe I’m a robot from the future). But my identity, the person I claim to be, is not real, according to some. I guess I’m either lying or crazy. I carry two labels that experience a great degree of erasure. I’m bisexual (or pansexual, in my case these are one and the same), and I’m gender non-binary or genderqueer, which falls under the T in LGBT. I currently consider myself to be trans masculine. I wrote about this not too long ago, too. The more I try to embrace these parts of myself, the more I feel like people try to erase me. I wish I could say that it was all straight people, but as evidenced by the beginning of this post, this is not the case. Both gay and straight people often do not want to acknowledge the existence of bisexuality. We’re just undecided and haven’t picked a team yet, or we are, as previously mentioned, sluts who fuck indiscriminately. Not saying some of us aren’t, just saying #NotAllBisexuals. As for being non-binary, it gets even more complicated. You’ve got your angry TERF lesbians saying that being butch or dressing like a man doesn’t make you not a woman (which is perfectly true, but they’ve missed the point), you’ve got the general population largely ignoring actual scientific proof by saying, ‘Only two genders!’, which is demonstrably false, and you’ve even got some trans people who feel that the rejection of gender as binary erases their gender identities (which it doesn’t; saying that gender isn’t binary isn’t the same as saying that the categories man and woman don’t exist). The more visible I become, the harder it gets. A few days ago I had some asshat on facebook tell me that nothing about me was masculine and that if I wanted to be a man I should act like a man. (I told him that if acting like a man meant being a reactionary fuckwad, I didn’t know a lot of men.) And even though I don’t require other people’s validation of my gender, it still hurts. Just like it hurt when people I thought were my friends said I only said I was genderqueer because I wanted attention. I wish I could say this shit is just annoying and doesn’t get to me, that I could just shake it off and move on, but the reality is that it’s painful. And it makes you question everything. Am I really non-binary? Is it really a thing? Am I actually trans? I don’t want to transition medically. Does that mean I’m just pretending? Am I allowed to think of myself as trans even though I’m genderfluid? Am I really bi? I’ve only ever had one girlfriend and I’ve only had sex with, like, two or three girls depending on your definition of sex, vs. four long term boyfriends and a handful of fuck-buddies and one-night-stands. Am I making this up? Am I a fraud? An impostor? And I can’t even tell my emotional brain and my rational brain apart here, because all this is new territory. There are a couple of things I do know: I know that I loved my ex-girlfriend and I’ve loved all my boyfriends, and I totally dug having sex with all of them. And I know that wearing my binder and men’s clothes and going out feeling like there are people who won’t look at me and immediately think ‘girl!’ feels amazing. And I know that being called ‘he’ makes me happy and makes me feel good about myself. These are my truths, and they’ll remain true no matter how much the world tries to erase me. Edited to add: There’s one more thing I feel like I ought to say as well. I wrote this post using my own lived experiences, but this isn’t really about me. It’s easy to say fuck those guys and they don’t matter; they don’t, not to my life. But there’s a bigger, wider problem here. A bigger picture. These attitudes are a problem. I’m thirty, and this shit upsets me like this. Imagine how it affects someone younger and more vulnerable, someone in their teens struggling to understand their own identity. Imagine how much it hurts to essentially be told that what they feel isn’t real. It eats away at the insecurities that are already there. I probably seem like I’m whining by harping on about this stuff, but as much as I feel these things myself, it’s not about me. I think these are conversations we need to be having, especially when it comes to bisexual and trans erasure within our own community, because that’s where it’s at its most destructive. We need to be aware and pay attention and comment when we see it rather than just letting it pass because we think, who cares what those assholes say? That’s why I keep writing about this. Not for sympathy or support (though I appreciate all of you deeply for giving me that as well), but because it’s a real problem, and it’s harmful
  4. No. You're right. It doesn't. I'm not trans masculine because I wear men's clothes. I wear men's clothes because I'm trans masculine. It's not because they're more comfortable (though they are), it's not because I don't like women's clothes (I do), it's because if people are going to recognise me as not a girl, I need to have a masculine gender expression, which starts with clothes. I wear men's clothes for the same reason most cis guys do. Whenever they talk about kids who are trans, this thing comes up. 'Yes, she always preferred wearing pink and sparkly clothes, even when she was a boy.' And then someone will go, 'Well, he's not a girl just because he wears pink!' First of all, she wasn't a boy. She was a girl. Secondly, most little kids prefer pink and sparkly things before they become socialised away from it (I've worked in daycare looking after one and two-year-olds; there were nine boys and one girl in the group, and the boys literally fought over who got to wear the princess dress). And thirdly, once she grew older, she wanted to wear what other girls were wearing, hence the pink. I don't get why this is so hard to understand. Gender and gender expression is not the same thing, but gender expression feels like it validates your gender. You can't tell someone's gender by the toys they play with or the clothes they wear, but they will often choose to play with the toys and wear the clothes that correspond with the gender expression of their gender. Trans women are criticised by some feminists for wearing super girly clothes and lots of make-up and taking on traditional feminine gender roles. There's a reason they do that, because if they don't they won't pass, and if they don't pass people won't recognise them as women. One of my friends who's transitioned had facial feminisation surgery, to make their face more feminine. Finally, they had the courage to cut their hair short and wear jeans and loose t-shirts and beanies and flannel shirts, and just in general dress like a 90s lesbian, because they would no longer be misgendered if they did. No need to constantly wear the girliest clothes imaginable in order to pass as not a man. I feel validated when I wear men's clothes. I feel comfortable. I feel like maybe one day I could pass, even if I have the girliest fucking face on the planet (and God, I hate that). One day, I want people to see me and think I'm male when I feel male. And if that's gonna happen, I can't wear girly clothes. I have to exhibit a masculine gender expression, because I am trans masculine.
  5. 'I don't understand why you want to hide your curves like that,' she said, while I adjusted my binder. 'You look wonderful just as you are.' And I thought, That's kind of hilarious, really, because you're always bugging me about losing weight. I told her, 'It's not about how I look. It's about how I feel.' 'No, I know. I understand.' No you don't. 'But wouldn't it be better if people were just happy with the bodies they have?' I sighed. 'Would be nice, yeah. But we don't live in that world. I'm not about to medically transition anyway.' 'No, I know that. I was pretty sure of that. But you always liked wearing pretty dresses and things.' 'Yeah. And I can still wear them, I'm sure I will again. Just not right now. Right now this feels better. Besides, getting dressed up like that and wearing lots of make-up, it's kind of like a costume. Like I'm performing. I'm not performing.' Is the measure of womanhood wearing pretty dresses? Can't boys wear dresses if they want? Aren't you a feminist? 'Well, whatever you do, you're my baby and I'll always love you. But I have to be allowed to state my opinion.' 'Sure, but my body and my gender are not up for debate.' 'I know. I'm not debating.' 'Sure feels like it.' I tied my boots. We left it at that. Wish I could have expressed it better, what I'm feeling right now. I talked to a trans guy over on another site. I told him how I don't really experience gender dysphoria. He said he didn't either, but he did have gender euphoria when he was in the right gender expression, and more and more as he transitioned. That's what this feeling is, I guess, when I put on the binder and go out in public and just feel good about it all. Gender euphoria. When it feels right.
  6. I'm sat here shivering. It's cold out, but I feel like it's not just that. I just feel really anxious. I went to my mum's today, to celebrate Finland's Independence Day. We had food and champagne and watched the broadcast from the gala at the presidential palace in Helsinki. It was nice. I had planned to talk to her about my gender. About the non-binary thing. About trans-masculinity. About how I feel about myself and my body and my brain right now. And I couldn't. It just didn't ... work, somehow. I want her to see me, but I don't know how to make that happen. When I've tried to raise the subject in the past, she's just kind of ignored it. Now it's much more serious than it has been before, and I can't handle that kind of reaction again. And I just got off the phone with my boyfriend. He's great. I love him a lot. He's moving here, to Norway, from England, to be with me. In like a month. 15th of January he'll be here. He'll look for a job, get a worker's permit, we'll live together ... It'll be wonderful. But he's straight. He sees me as a girl, I'm his girlfriend, and he doesn't really know how to see me any differently. We've talked a bit about it all. Months ago I asked him if he would still love me if I were a guy. If he would still want me if I had a different body. If, if, if ... And there's no real answer to those questions because you can't know until it happens. We talked about it just now, and he said he'll love me and support me no matter what, and that it's great that I want to live out my masculine side a little bit more. But I could tell from the way he was talking that he doesn't get it. He's currently, as I write this, selling all his things. All of them. He's giving up his flat. He's gonna stay with a friend for the last month he's there. It's scary as shit for him, and for me. But it just got scarier for me, because I don't fucking know what I am or what's going on with me or where I'm going with this. I don't know anything. I don't know how I'm gonna be able to stay in school. I don't know how I'm gonna be able to graduate. I don't know what my fucking gender is. I don't know. And I'm terrified that if I keep going in this direction, if I am a boy, fully and truly and actually 100% a boy, he won't want to be with me anymore. And he will have uprooted his life, moved here for me, and it'll end in tears. Everything feels like a potential mistake, because I'm not sure about anything. And it scares the fuck out of me. Wish someone could just hold me right now.
  7. Yesterday I was in the studio at school to record a jazz trio. Piano, drums and accordion, it was pretty weird and wonderful (I still have one of those songs stuck in my head...). I am the only one in my class who's not a cis man. Probably the only one who's queer. So hanging out with and working with these guys can feel kind of lonely, I guess. But after recording, my studio partner and I were packing down the equipment. Third guy had a concert he was mixing, so it was just the two of us, and via Christmas songs ('don we now our gay apparel'*) we got onto the subject of LGBTQ. I was wearing my binder yesterday and feeling pretty good about myself, and decided, fuck it. And I told him I was gender non-binary, and what that meant, and started talking about being trans masculine and social transition vs. medical transition and why I probably won't do the latter. And he listened, and asked questions, and was curious about how transitioning ftm was different from transitioning mtf, and we had a really nice conversation about it. Later I texted him and apologised for my complete lack of filter and just blurting out all this really personal stuff. He just said, 'Hey, don't worry about it. It was fun talking about something interesting and meaningful rather than just complaining about how other people coil cables.' I guess I wasn't really expecting any of these cis-het dudes I go to school with to get it, or be interested, or, you know, to not freak out at the whole idea. He surprised me, and honestly, I surprised myself by even talking about it to a person that I honestly don't even know that well. Later on I went to have dinner at a friend's house, cause my best friend and former flatmate is home from Dubai for a long weekend. I was still wearing my binder, and I felt like a boy, and I told my friends that I felt like a boy. Their acceptance wasn't a surprise; I was sitting around a table with a lesbian, an asexual, a bi dude who once wondered if maybe he was a woman, and a very friendly and accepting straight couple. But what did kind of surprise me was how validated I felt, especially when they asked me which pronoun they should use. I said I wasn't sure, and they said, 'Well, let us know and we'll adjust accordingly.' Aside from one half of the straight couple, these are people I've known since high school. The aforementioned bi dude and I talked a bit more at length while the rest of the party talked about other things. I told him about GA, and coming out to you all and how good that made me feel, especially with all the support I got. And then we all played Nintendo Switch, and that was that. No big drama. I've been trying to figure out how to talk to my mum about all this. She knows I'm non-binary, but she's never addressed it. She's very LGBTQ friendly, has lots of queer friends, talks at length about how hard it was for her gay best friend in the 70s, how sad it is that her American friend's transgender son can't get his legal gender changed, about name changes and how important it is to respect that, and has identified as bisexual for basically her entire life. (I came out to her as bi when I was fifteen or sixteen and she was like, 'So? I'm bi, too. I think almost everyone is.') But she scoffs at identity politics (which is basically just the notion that people should have the right to define themselves without experiencing prejudice), cause she finds it too individualistic and she's a marxist in everything but name. I've tried at length to explain to her how it's not about individualism, but actually about community and finding somewhere to fit in. I think if I were a straight up, gender dysphoric, want to definitely medically transition trans man, it would probably be easier for her. That's a box she can tick. But trying to make her accept me as primarily trans-masculine gender fluid is probably gonna be a little more difficult, and I don't even know where to begin. Given how she's never addressed the enby thing, and when I've tried to sort of bring it up she's seemed kind of dismissive, this is a conversation that we need to have. Just not sure how, or when. I'm gonna stop writing now, cause I'm basically rambling. TL;DR: conversations I had about my gender identity yesterday made me feel very happy and validated, but I don't know how to talk to my mum about it. * Interestingly, originally this part of Deck the Hall was 'fill the mead cup, drain the barrel'. It was changed during one temperance movement or another. The carroll itself is originally Welsh.
  8. Over the years I've been here, I've gotten the odd PM asking me whether I'm actually male or female. I have answered these questions truthfully. When I returned after my hiatus, I was really happy to find that there's now a non-binary option under gender, as there wasn't one before. I identify as genderqueer, gender fluid, or non-binary. When I first got here, I didn't. Or, that is, I lacked the language to. I was assigned female at birth, and I always thought I was comfortable that way. But now, I don't. At some point in late 2012 or early 2013, I chose a gender neutral pen name, as I started to write again. I was posting to Archive of Our Own then, and I wanted for my gender not to matter. I didn't know why that was so important to me at the time, though I do now. In April 2013, I discovered GA through a reader on AO3, and I came here. I never disclosed my gender, but people assumed. People assumed that I was a guy, and I loved it. I felt very comfortable, and free. Kind of like this was what I was supposed to be, most of the time. I say most of the time, because sometimes I'm perfectly happy being a girl. I put on a dress, I wear make-up and heels, and I'm cool with being called she. I'm fine with being called she most of the time, for the moment. In real life, pronouns aren't the most important thing to me, especially since I, well, shift. Most people IRL read me as female, so I'm not gonna force that conversation. But when I'm in here, I love being he, and I wish people would read me as he more often out there as well. For the longest time, I thought my feelings weren't legitimate, because I didn't suffer from body dysphoria. But a lot of my trans friends don't, either. At some point, trans people became 'we' and not 'they', to me. I recently switched meds, and the hormonal balance in my body's a little bit out of whack right now. When I discovered that I was growing actual facial hair, I felt overjoyed. The things that cis women pluck off the moment they see them, I looked at and felt like, finally! I have an honest to god moustache now, though it's super light so you can barely see it. I can feel it, though. There's a lot of it. A couple of weeks ago, I got a binder. Today, I wore it, put on a shirt I like, and I went out into the world and felt awesome. I felt like this is me. For the past few weeks, I've seriously been considering medically transitioning. The one thing holding me back is my singing voice. I'm a musician. I'm a singer. If I transition, my voice will change. It's a big risk. I mean, it's not like I could do it right now, anyway. It would probably take years before I could even start treatment. I dunno, I haven't really voiced these thoughts properly before, they're a bit of a mess at the moment. I don't want to click publish on this. I feel like if I do, you'll all treat me differently. Like I won't get to be me anymore. I kind of feel like an impostor, no matter which way I go. When I wear dresses and make-up, I often feel like I'm in drag. When I come here, and I'm me, Thorn Wilde, I feel like if people knew they'd stop seeing me as who I am. A couple of years ago, I found out that some people I thought were my friends had been talking behind my back, saying that I called myself genderqueer cause I just wanted attention. And constantly there's this fucked up voice in my head telling me that they're right, and I'm just pretending. I'm not. I know I'm not. I know that when I'm here, I'm Thorn Wilde and I belong. I don't want that feeling to go away. But today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. In the past year, 369 trans people have been murdered. Those are the reported ones, the ones where the victims weren't misgendered. My family is dying. The least I can do is be open about who I am. This is me, in my binder and my favourite shirt, being me today. Pronouns: He/him.
  9. I wanted to write something for trans day of visibility. Couldn’t quite figure out what to write. Maybe cause I can’t quite figure out what I am. I keep going back and forth between this joy at being able to be myself and this fear that this isn’t me at all. That I’m making it up. Hardcore impostor syndrome. I don’t have that story. I wasn’t a tomboy growing up. I was a girly girl who liked playing with dolls and dressing up like a princess. I don’t have body dysmorphia. I didn’t always feel like I wasn’t really a girl. Can’t recall ever even thinking about it growing up, one way or the other. Every time I claim this label, every time I call myself trans, in my head or out loud to somebody else, I’m scared that I don’t really have the right to claim it. That I’m playing pretend and I’ve just managed to convince myself that it’s real. That I’m stealing it away from someone else. I’m scared that it’s just a phase, and if it is, I’m scared that that is harmful and detrimental to everyone else in the trans community. I’m terrified. And writing this, I feel like I’m about to cry. Is it like people said about me when I started calling myself genderqueer? Is it just that I want to be special? Is it some kind of narcissism, or do I just want to be part of things? And what am I really doing, anyway? Wearing a binder and trying to dress like a boy every day while knowing that I could never pass without transitioning medically, which I don’t want to do, or don’t know if I want to do. Am I a boy or do I just wish I were a boy? And is there a difference? I dunno, this turned into a mess. I’m a mess. But even though I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or what the fuck I am, I needed to write it anyway. If you made it this far, then thanks. I love you. This community, right here, is my rock.
  10. Today a dude in my group presented a painting with a bunch of hearts, meant to represent how sharing in art therapy group had helped him and put him in touch with his emotions and stuff, which, good for him. He prefaces this by saying, 'So, a bunch of hearts... Boys don't really draw hearts, I guess that's a little feminine...' This is the guy who's previously complained about his boss being a woman, said he doesn't think a female therapist can understand a male patient, and made a whole bunch of sexist and heterosexist generalisations during group. I wanted to ask him why he thinks hearts are feminine. I wanted to ask him why it matters if they are, and why that means boys 'don't' draw them. I didn't. My painting this week related to the absurdity of the gender binary and my struggles with understanding why being born with one set of genitalia and not the other should somehow say anything about who I am as a person. Why all these binaries? Boy - girl, masculine - feminine, skirt - trousers. Why can't we be/have both? And why should we be squeezed into these absurd and restrictive gender roles based on which sex we're assigned at birth? Another dude in group commented with his experiences working with trans and genderqueer people in LLH, a Norwegian LGBTQ organisation, how some people feel like they're born in the wrong body, how some feel like they don't belong to either gender, etc., and how that's okay. I like him, he's nice. But 'boys don't draw hearts'-guy was like, 'But you don't struggle with gender roles, do you?' I wanted to laugh in his face, but that might have been frowned upon. When we open the floor for questions and comments about our art, all questions are permitted. So I told him that of course I do. I don't understand why I should be restricted by some social construct. I don't understand why something as arbitrary as society's expectations should dictate what interests I should have, what colours I should like, how I should dress, what kind of jobs I'm better suited to. A genetic accident determines what kind of junk we're born with. Why should that matter any more than what colour eyes we have or whether our toes are hairy? Gender roles and expectations restrict us as individuals, and they restrict society as a whole.
  11. Our community is so much bigger and more diverse than many of us believe. With a lot of new-ish terms and labels out there detailing identities some may not be aware of, I figured a brief list of definitions might be helpful for someone somewhere. I shall begin with the four letters everyone knows. If you're here, you already know what these mean, but I'm including them anyway. L: lesbian - a woman who is exclusively attracted to other women G: gay - a person who is exclusively attracted to people of the same gender or sex; often used to refer specifically to gay men B: bisexual/bi - a person who is attracted to people of two or more genders (we'll get to the 'or more' later) T: trans/transgender - people whose gender does not match the sex they were assigned at birth Now for the 'new' letters you often see added on at the end of the acronym these days (LGBTQIA), whose definitions you may be unfamiliar with or a bit fuzzy on. Q: queer - used as an umbrella term for everyone who belongs to a sexual or gender minority (*) also: questioning - people questioning their sexuality and/or gender identity in one way or another I: intersex - people who are born with ambiguous sex characteristics or sex characteristics that don't match their chromosomes. This includes ambiguous genitalia, sex chromosomes other than XX or XY (such as XXY, XYY, or simply X), and androgen insensitivity syndrome, to mention a few. Some people with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) also consider themselves to be intersex. Many intersex people also identify as transgender. A: asexual - a person who does not experience sexual attraction toward anyone at all; sometimes also called ace also: aromantic - a person who does not experience romantic attraction toward anyone at all; sometimes also called aro Some asexual people are also aromantic, but far from all. An asexual person can also be gay, for instance, if they experience romantic attraction towards people of the same gender or sex, even if they have no sexual attraction. The words homoromantic, heteroromantic, biromantic, and panromantic are often used to describe the romantic preferences of asexual people. Now for terms that aren't in the acronym, starting with those related to sexuality: pansexual - a person who is pansexual is attracted to people regardless of gender. This differs from bisexuality in that, as previously stated, bisexuality is attraction to two or more genders, while for a pansexual person, gender is completely irrelevant to sexual attraction. omnisexual - a person who is attracted to practically everybody demisexual - a person who experiences sexual attraction only to people they have a strong emotional connection with grey asexual - a person who normally does not experience sexual attraction but who may very rarely do so under certain circumstances Gender identities (these words generally exist under the trans umbrella): non-binary - someone who is non-binary has a gender identity that does not adhere to the binary male/female model of gender; colloquially also called enby, derived from NB genderfluid - someone whose gender identity shifts on a spectrum between the masculine and the feminine agender - someone who does not identify with any gender bi-gender - someone who identifies as both male and female genderqueer - someone whose gender identity does not adhere to ideas of traditional gender; sometimes used interchangeably with non-binary And a few more gender-related terms: cisgender - someone whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth; anyone who is not trans AFAB - assigned female at birth AMAB - assigned male at birth transman - someone who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male; sometimes referred to as ftm (female-to-male) transwoman - someone who was assigned male at birth but identifies as female; sometimes referred to as mtf (male-to-female) trans masculine/trans masc - someone who was assigned female at birth but whose identity lies somewhere in the masculine end of the gender spectrum trans feminine/trans femme - someone who was assigned male at birth but whose identity lies somewhere in the feminine end of the gender spectrum gender dysphoria - physical discomfort and mental distress from having a body that does not conform to one's gender (note: not all trans people have gender dysphoria) gender euphoria - the feeling of joy experienced by trans people when they 'pass' as their gender or feel comfortable in their gender expression HRT - hormone replacement therapy; causes people assigned male at birth to go through a female puberty where they grow breasts, fat and muscle is redistributed, body hair growth is diminished, and the quality of the skin changes, among other things. T - testosterone; causes people assigned female at birth to go through a male puberty where their voices drop, they grow more body and facial hair, fat and muscle is redistributed, and the clitoris grows top surgery - removal of breast tissue in order to create a male-looking chest on a person assigned female at birth bottom surgery - changing of the genitalia through plastic surgery; for people assigned male at birth, vaginoplasty; for people assigned female at birth, either phalloplasty or metoidioplasty I hope this has been helpful. A note of caution: the purpose of these terms and labels is not for you to label others, but for everyone to label themselves as they see fit. It is nobody's place to tell anyone else what or who they are. We all have the right to self-identification. If you're an author and you use some of the less common terms listed here in your stories, feel free to copy the definitions for your author or story notes, or link back to this blog entry, if you're worried that people won't understand them. * I recognise that some people are uncomfortable with the reclaiming of the word queer, which has been used as a homophobic slur for a long time. We who use it in no way mean to cause offence. Its usage within the community has grown over time and is especially useful for people who belong to more than one sexual or gender minority; instead of saying that I am trans, non-binary and bisexual, I can simply say that I'm queer and be done with it.
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