I’m a lesbian and somehow I manage to walk down the street and not ogle women I find attractive, or cat call or degrade them, or touch them without permission, or interrupt their daily lives, it’s almost as if I’m treating them like human beings despite my attraction to them. What an insane concept.
omg same
We were arguing about dress code in a meeting at work. And while my department knows I’m queer the other departments did not. As people (men) were saying that women showing skin and wearing tight clothes was distracting. I spoke up finally and said.
“I’m attracted to women.”
Everyone turned and looked at me and I was like “uhhh” so I finished.
“I’m attracted to women and I can still do my job. Regardless of what someone in my class is wearing. I can still teach. So why can’t you?”
Patricia Cronin, Memorial to a Marriage, carrara marble (installed at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY), 2002
In Memorial to a Marriage, Patricia Cronin disrupts the cemetery. Installed ‘for eternity’ in New York’s necropolis, Cronin and her partner lie entwined upon a modern mattress among the memorials to the partners in and products of state sanctioned heterosexuality. By taking anticipatory revenge, Cronin out-manouevres the reality that she and her partner, Deborah Kass, could not be recognized as a family in the eyes of the American state at the time the work was made. “If I can’t have it in life,” says Cronin, “I’m going to have it in death.”
The Bachelor: Vietnam – Contestant confesses to another contestant
I made this to highlight Minh Thu’s bravery and that it happened at all, whatever the result, and I know a LOT of people had things to say, about how it was faked or how it was ruined for them when they found out Truc Nhu continued on the show.
Y’all are some of the most disingenuous motherfuckers. I am exhausted. And I am really done with this trauma argument.
A confession: I have been harassed and verbally abused with it/its pronouns before.
I don’t fully understand why some trans people choose to use it pronouns for themselves, and I don’t follow anyone who does anymore because seeing someone referred to as “it” upsets me.
However, I do not shame or belittle trans folks who use it/its pronouns in a reclaiming fashion because it’s none of my business and I am not a piece of obnoxious shit.
If you have trauma associated with the word queer, then you need to respect me and yourself enough to not interact with my blog.
This blog literally has QUEER in its url, name, and description. Every other post on this blog contains the word QUEER. This blog is about QUEER people, for QUEER people, by a QUEER person.
No one is forcing you to interact with this blog. No one is forcing you to interact with the QUEER community. No one is forcing you to apply the word QUEER to your own identity.
Block blogs that have queer in their url. Add the word QUEER to your Tumblr tag blacklist. Download one of the many different apps and browser extensions that exist and use it to hide posts with the word QUEER in them.
Try taking at least some responsibility for your own mental health.
You aren’t queer? You don’t like the word? That’s fine. Your feelings and your trauma are valid.
But hear this: y’all need to leave QUEER people the FUCK alone.
Stop adding “queer is a slur” to our posts.
Stop inviting yourselves onto our posts to whine about the phrase “queer community”.
Don’t reblog our posts if you’re going to tag them with “#q slur”.
Stop making discourse of our genders and sexualities.
Stop trying to create rules over who is allowed to call themselves queer when you yourself are not queer.
Stop sending us invasive messages demanding to know “how” we’re queer or if we’re “really lgbt”.
Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.
Let QUEER people live.
god yes OP
“Stop trying to make the queer community responsible for your personal baggage, as if we aren’t surviving with our own.”
the most succinct explanation of why some lesbians use they/them or he/him pronouns is that pronouns are very much like names, in that they are culturally established signifiers we use to refer to someone else, and almost always those signifiers are gendered.
You’ll see a lot of lesbians start to go by androgynous or masculine names (or nicknames) to feel more comfortable. Sam, Pat, Chris, Jay, Moe, etc. are all really common chosen names among lesbians for that reason.
I also knew an older butch– my parents’ age– who went by Otter (& her femme partner went by Kitty) because they decided to just depart from standard names entirely– and I see younger lesbians using neo-pronouns in very similar ways for very similar reasons.
A lesbian who was raised with the name Christina and the pronouns she/her/hers deciding he’s more comfortable with the name Chris and he/him/his pronouns to reflect his complex relationship to womanhood is not a huge confusing leap, it’s pretty normal depending on what circles you’re in.
Gender is complex, and gender nonconforming lesbians, butches, and femmes have often navigated gender on their own terms to find ways of being comfortable in their bodies, relationships, and lives.
Question of Smoke 