Tag: lgbtquiA

transmaskopi:

It’s important to remember our past. Marsha P Johnson was born in 1945. She was a trans and aids-activist and a well known drag queen in New York’s Greenwich Village. During the so called Stonewall riots (riots which broke out after the police had once again raided the lgbtq bar Stonewall Inn) in 1969, she was one of the first to begin resisting the police. These riots led to the first pride parades. In 1979, she and her friend Sylvia Rivera started an organisation for supporting lgbtq-people. The organisation was called STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). They bought a property, called it STAR-house and used it to shelter lgbt youths. During the aids-epidemic, Marsha was involved in ACT-UP: an organisation which worked for better treatment of and medication for people with aids. In 1992 Marsha was found dead in the Hudson River. Police initially ruled her death a suicide, but the case was reopened as a suspected murder after witnesses claimed that they had seen her being harassed near where her body was found. There were also claims made by the people who found her and saw her body being pulled out of the river that there was a large wound on her head. Her case has now been cold for 25 years. But we still remember Marsha P Johnson.

dearbluetravelers:

lavellanlove:

gehayi:

vaspider:

thedoorisstuck:

geekandmisandry:

darlingzenyatta:

hi as pride month draws near for june reminder that cishet aces/aros are not LGBT and don’t belong in our spaces

And like, just a reminder that people like op are the people I don’t want to share my spaces with.

Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile they’re like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best. 

And that’s fair- it’s not like people that age can’t have opinions or be right, they’re people.

But when I think about how long it took me to work out my own damn sexuality, gender, and all that crap, and how gently I stepped once I realised I was queer, and how much listening to people I did to see who the hell was out there…how much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiences…

…it feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community. 

Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.

Like…being confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, I’m happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.

But… telling other people they’re not queer enough to be in ‘your’ space?

Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.

I’m over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyone’s perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I know…and all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like it’s all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.

Mmmm. No. Just… have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.

You haven’t lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I don’t mean this as an ageist insult, I just really think that this kind of shit deserves TIME- hell I know it deserves time and thought because I am STILL unlearning bad assumptions and behaviours, and STILL meeting people who define themselves outside of the frame that I was once taught meant ‘LGBT’.

And you, a teen raised in a world that’s still pretty fucking homophobic and doesn’t recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?

Because you’re online?

While you’re here, read some posts where ace people talk about how they’re treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences.

I’m online too, I have been for some time. Doesn’t make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who aren’t quite like me, that is, in trying to understand how I am similar, instead of trying to figure out how they do not belong. In how people rework things, figure out how they can be less harmful, more inclusive, more representative of all those who are marginalised.

See, Q is queer but also often Questioning. It’s still important to let people be Questioning, there is an astounding amount of queerphobia in the world and we are NOT done working out the labels. We may never be.

Not so long ago, the T in lgbt was under question. Bisexuals are still being excluded. 

So I’m being told I don’t matter by people who weren’t even born yet when I realised I wasn’t straight. They’re skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion. 

Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope that’s real for everyone some day.

But we’re not there yet, yanno? And I resent being told that after all these years of soul-searching and careful, very careful questioning of whether I belong and how I can be a good member of the community, people arrive so 100% certain of their claim to being LGBT that the first thing they do is try to kick others out.

tl;dr I was here first and I’m not amused.

My general feeling when These Kids start yelling about who does or doesn’t Belong in the collection of the broken, hurt and strange that is the queer community:

Pride month is an especially shitty time to tell queer people that they’re not queer enough and that they’re not welcome.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any exclusionists following me to kindly eff off (and also unfollow me while you’re at it 🙂 Happy Pride!  

[ID: a picture of Mr. Rogers smiling, beside the caption “You are not acting like the person Mr. Rogers knew you could be.”]

khaleesi:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

aphony-cree:

sp8b8:

class-isnt-the-only-oppression:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

Happy Pride Month Eleanor Roosevelt was queer, the Little Mermaid is a gay love story, James Dean liked men, Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, Nikola Tesla was asexual, Freddie Mercury was bisexual & British Indian, and black trans women pioneered the gay rights movement.

Florence Nightingale was a lesbian, Leonardo da Vinci was gay, Michelangelo too, Jane Austen liked women, Hatshepsut was not cisgender, and Alexander the Great was a power bottom

Honestly just reblogging for that last one

Probably not historically backed but fuck yes

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote love letters to Lorena Hickok

Love letters Hans Christian Anderson wrote to Edvard Collin contain elements that appeared in The Little Mermaid, which he was writing at the same time

Several people who knew James Dean have talked about his relationships with men 

Letters and poems allude to a romance between Emily Dickinson and at least two women 

Nikola Tesla was adverse to touch. He said he fell in love with one women but never touched her and didn’t want to get married 

Freddie Mercury is well known for his attraction to men but was also linked to several women, including Barbara Valentin whom he lived with shortly before he died. Friends have talked about being invited into their bed and walking in on them having sex (documentary Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender) 

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are two of the best-known activists who fought in the Stonewall riots

Florence Nightingale refused 4 marriage proposals and her letters and memoir suggest a love for women 

Leonardo da Vinci never married or fathered children, was once brought up on sodomy charges, and a sketch in one of his notebooks is 2 penises walking toward a hole labeled with the nickname of his apprentice 

Condivi said that Michelangelo often spoke exclusively of masculine love

Jane Austin never married and wrote about sharing a bed with women (Jane Austen At Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley)

Hatshepsut took the male title Pharaoh (instead of Queen Regent) and is depicted in art from the time the same way a male Pharaoh would have been

“Alexander was only defeated once…and that was by Hephaestion’s thighs.” is a 2,000 year old quote

I want to hire you to follow me around and defend my honor with meticulous research

Jane Austen was probably bisexual! She def had very close relationships with women (ahem, suggestive eyebrows) but she was also in love with a man who ultimately could not marry her, but named his daughter Jane.

iwantthatbelstaffanditsoccupant:

aphobephobe:

preoccupiedpepper:

vaspider:

holybikinisbatman:

lestermygaard:

excessively-english-little-b:

I just… wanna remind people that asexuality was classed as a mental disorder by the DSM all the way up until 2013…. Because I feel like people don’t know this or like to ignore it because it doesn’t fit into their “asexual people don’t face discrimination” rhetoric.

Asexuality was only removed from the DSM in 2013. Please, know this and remember it.

asexuality is STILL in the DSM they still have a disorder that’s literally the definition of asexuality called “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” which is what they’ve always classified asexuality as. they just added a clause that said “if the patient IDs as ace it’s fine” but it’s not like the general population knows what asexuality is and people want to complain about how visibility is such a high priority for us jesus christ

thats a very good point. i knew about that distinction, but it bears repeating for people that see this post and arent aware of it

And that’s why we need the queer community to be like ‘no really we exist and it isn’t hurtful it’s quite fine they belong here with us, the other queers, who were just de-pathologized.’ 

*bang gavel*

I was going to college and grad school when the fight over this diagnosis being included in the DSM-V was going on. 

If I remember correctly, the big push to keep it in the DSM came from the pharmaceutical companies who need this diagnosis to exist so that they can market a drug they are currently working on to treat “female sexual interest/arousal disorder”. 

This diagnosis is so fucked up. It not only pathologizes Asexuals, it also pathologizes non-asexual women for having less interest in sex than men. This disorder literally used to be called “Frigidity” and feminist psychologists had to fight like hell to get the DSM to clarify that simply having a lower sex drive than one’s husband was not sufficient for a diagnosis. 

The APA throws in that little disclaimer about being a “self-identified asexual” and the diagnostic criteria of distress, but they did the same thing before they removed homosexuality from the DSM. 

A lot of people think that psychologists stopped considering homosexuality a disorder in the 1970s, but that’s not entirely true. They kept it in the DSM with a slightly changed name and a criteria that the person experience distress about being gay. This was used to justify “reparative therapy” for decades. 

This diagnosis is just one part of the APA’s long history of pathologizing human sexuality, especially women’s sexuality. Women who deviate even slightly from the prescribed amount of sexual interest will find themselves labeled as either borderline or frigid. 

Continued reminder that asexuality is still only listed in the desk version of DSM-V, and that many countries either use the ICD or an outdated version of the DSM. 

Yes, some people experience this issue due to medication or to depression– as a side effect. That’s not how this has been used. I know this because I received this diagnosis and treatment for a couple of years. A couple of years being told I was broken, without even the merest hint that I was simply different.

When I was allowed to just *be*(actually when I gave up on therapy and started writing fic and doing it on my own) I found my own interest in sexual things, at my own level, on my own terms, and not rooted in desire. Never managed to develop that supposedly essential thing to make me “healthy” and “human”.this should sound damn familiar to those who are aware how homosexuality was viewed in therapy.

If you still think aces don’t face discrimination which is, of course, different in style from others in the queer community because everyone’s experience is different (the issue is about being treated a certain way because of not being what society defines as “ correct ”, het, cis, convenient libido ), I’m wondering what you’d call that, if not queer.

rubyfruitgirl:

I know a lot of lesbians that used to identify as bi who worried that coming out as a lesbian would contribute to invalidating bisexuality in some way, by making it seem like a “stepping stone” to coming out as gay. I’ve also known bi women who identified as lesbians and changed their labels later, and worried that they were contributing to some kind of idea about how men can ~turn lesbians. I just wanted to say that it’s no individual lesbian or bi women’s responsibility to fix straight people’s perception of us. Like, it’s not your duty to serve as a political symbol! It’s your duty to find happiness even if that means changing ur label at some points.

Thank you! I was really worried about coming out as bi, even after I was married to my husband. I had run gay groups, put on pride events, etc for years. Sexuality can be fluid or one’s understanding of it can deepen. 

This pride month here is a reminder of my story: I identified as a lesbian for probably a decade. Even after getting together with my husband I thought he was just a unique individual and somehow genitalia didn’t matter. Turns out I now have the words and deeper understanding of sexuality and gender to articulate that I’m demisexual and at the time I identified as a lesbian I only had deep enough relationships with women to experience sexual attraction to them. Once I formed deeper relationships with men when I was in college, I determined that I was occasionally attracted men, but that pansexual was a better word for my attraction, since a person’s body is something I grow to be attracted to, enjoy, and find pleasure with only after only after the deep spiritual/friendship connection is forged. I had adopted the language of attraction, saying people were hot when I found them aesthetically pleasing, etc, because I thought everyone was exaggerating their “attraction” to celebrities and even people they knew.  Now I am poly and actively in relationships with men and women, but I should not serve as a represenation of pansexuality. Many, many pan and bi individuals are successfully monogamous and the “greedy” or “slut” archetype dismisses/hurts a lot of people

iwilleatyourenglish:

millettown:

not that my input really matters, but i don’t know much of lgbt history other than bits and pieces of stonewall, a little bit of the aids crisis, and the legalization of gay marriage; i’m an actual child and nobody here (kentucky) educates anyone/gets educated on it

how about instead of shaming people—especially young people—for not knowing our history, we provide them with credible resources?

here’s a long list of LGBT+ historical events worth googling and learning about. i’m not sure if all the dates and details are spot on, but, again, this is really just a guide for what to research on your own. to warn you, a lot of this history is ugly, including things like the conflation of pedophilia and LGBT+ people, genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia, nazis, and wide scale persecution.

Free Resources:

an interactive timeline of LGBT+ world history

The 1950s and the Roots of LGBT Politics (American-centric)

Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (warning: this documentary was made in the 80s and is dated in a lot of respects as a result; it also features quotes from Allen Ginsberg, who we now know was a pedophile, but it’s still very informative in terms of history)

a brief history of the bisexual movement from the 1960s-early 2000s (American-centric)

Bisexual.org has a TON of resources on bi (and often pan) history, historical figures, research, and media

“Here’s A History Of Bisexuality, From Ancient Egypt To Stonewall”

a brief timeline of trans history, beginning in the 1890s (European and American-centric)

“Gender Variance Around the World Over Time”

Some Purchasable Resources:

(most of these can be bought used online for pretty cheap and some can be found in libraries)

Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context by Vern L Bullough (it’s a bit dated, but still informative)

A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World by R. Parkinson

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women (Intersections) by Leila J. Rupp

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Blacks in the Diaspora) by A.B. Christa Schwarz

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal Ortiz

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution by Susan Stryker

Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory by Qwo-Li Driskill

IT IS TEMPTING TO FORGET

thepuppyclub:

2006. Twenty-five years of AIDS.

It is tempting to forget the morning rituals, when you inspected your body for lesions that might have appeared during the night and signal that it had started.

It is tempting to forget that when you asked, “Does this spot look purple to you?” you didn’t need to say anything else for everyone around you to know just what was on your mind, if not on your skin, and how fast your heart was racing as you uttered the words as casually as you could because sounding casual seemed to increase the chances of a reassuring response.

It is tempting to forget that there was a time when gay men were hoping not to lose weight, that plump meant healthy and healthy reassuring. And reassuring, in a turnabout so shocking for us then, meant sexy.

It is tempting to forget that people were dropping like flies, that many gay men in cities like New York or San Francisco were crossing out name after name from their address books, and it is tempting to forget that many gay men who had long left their families behind in favor of friendships were now left only with mere acquaintances, no one close still living.

It is tempting to forget how parents who had once expelled their faggot son now rushed to his bedside to keep te lovers and friends away, to contest the will, and to snatch the spoils of a life lived far from the tender bosom of the family.

It is tempting to forget that women never “got” AIDS but somehow died of it by the thousands.

It is tempting to forget that the truth could only be whispered or screamed but seldom simply told.

It is tempting to forget that kids were chased out of schools by their friends’ parents and by their friends and that their houses were burned to the ground.

It is tempting to forget that Ryan White was once described as a “homophiliac” in a newspaper.

It is tempting to forget the frightened medics and undertakers and the cop’s face masks and latex gloves, as they arrested dying young men and women fighting for their lives.

It is tempting to forget ACT UP’s unforgettable chant, “They’ll see you on the news; your gloves don’t match your shoes!”

It is tempting to forget angry queers screaming bloody murder and spitting out hosts in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

It is tempting to forget the pictures of Dorian Gray on TV and on the pages of magazines, the emaciated faces covered with lesions, the hollow stares, and the feeling that one might as well have been looking at a charred and contorted body hanging from a tree, like Billie Holiday’s strange fruit, as the crowd cheered.

It is tempting to forget gay-related immune deficiency and the gay cancer and the 4-H club — homosexual, heroin addict, hemophiliac, Haitian — and all the conspiracy theories and miracle cures that we knew were bullshit yet couldn’t help but consider just in case, because madness could make sense.

It is tempting to forget the promise of a vaccine in about five years and that it felt like such an eternity that researchers sounded almost apologetic when explaining that retroviruses are particularly treacherous foes.

It is tempting to forget the calls for quarantine camps and tattoos and mass expulsions, “solutions” whose pros and cons were discussed with the sort of equanimity now applied to the debate on torture.

It is tempting to forget that nobody gave a shit.

It is tempting to forget that all this is still happening far, far away from here.

It is tempting to forget and it is easy.

pp. 9-10, The Nearness of Others: Searching for Tact and Contact in the Age of HIV, David Caron. 

I’M DOING AN EXPERIMENT

highwarlockofhogsmeade:

not-my-daddy:

ultimatefuckup-jpg:

acatsatan:

the-asexual-reaper:

insaneprotecter:

n0t-a-bad-dream:

viisivarvaslaiskiainen:

prsphny:

sjw-hitgirl:

sylveonagainstddlg:

genderfluid-coyote-starrk:

too-easily-obsessed:

ladyofthegeneral:

spacexualkids:

entertainingfaith:

To prove something to a friend, please

REBLOG IF YOU THINK ASEXUALS BELONG IN LGBTQ+ SPACES

LIKE IF YOU THINK ASEXUALS DON’T BELONG IN LGBTQ+ SPACES

🙂

REBLOGGING SO HARD.

YOU BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE IM REBLOGGING WTF

GET 👏🏼 RID 👏🏼 OF 👏🏼 ACE/AROPHOBIA 👏🏼

im gonna reblog this everytime i see it ,,

REBLOG THIS ALREADY!

I have never ignored a like button in my entire exsistance on this blue/teal whatever y’all colour it website tungle dot com!

As an ace myself, the amount of likes on this post doesn’t go well with me.

☝️My thoughts exactly. I don’t like it.

guys please

Liked out of habit

Immediately unliked and reblogged

REBLOG PLS

I take my like back. Ace people belong

Please ignore my like as well. I clicked the wrong button

@ about 21k people: don’t interact now or ever