kristenique:

I will never be sorry when I get frustrated when another character is put forth/confirmed as straight when they could easily have been made queer.  If that frustration is off-putting to you that is your problem and you need to deal with it.  It is not like you don’t get exposed to multitudes of characters and relationships that are similar to you/yours at EVERY POINT OF YOUR LIFE.  You got to see relationships and people that looked like you when you were young in media that was meant for you. 

I didn’t realize I was queer until I was 15 and huge reason why I realized it then was because I got see stuff like Haruka and Michiru and Willow and Tara and have everything click that yes, my liking girls and not feeling attraction to boys was a thing that did exist in people outside of me.  It isn’t hard for me to hazard that a lot of the confusion that I felt leading up to that could have been saved had I seen representations of queer people in stuff like Disney and Don Bluth films that I watched when I grew up.   So just think about that.

If it really bothers you that people read characters (particularly young characters) as queer but not when people read characters as straight you should re-evaluate your thoughts and ask yourself just why that bothers you, and why you have to try and make queer people feel guilty for fully valid frustration with extent that heteronormativity is pushed in everything everywhere along with the complete dearth of representation of queer people in everything.

That is something you should feel uncomfortable about.

emphasis mine

kristenique:

Also Queerness =/= sex.  Some queer people like and have sex.  Some queer people don’t.  But the fact that you still hold that gay people are all about sex as reason to keep children from know about the existence of queer people is offensive on so many levels.  On the one hand because queer kids under the age of 12 do in fact exist, and the knowledge that queer people exist is not harmful at all to children, and b because it totally erases and ignores asexuals and demisexuals.  

So really just stop it.

T H I S .

theoceanandthesky:

gcvsa:

genderbitch:

All of you do it.

Not one of you, even the people I am following (minus the trans folk, obviously) have avoided messing up on this. It is subtle, it is small and every time you do it you hammer the nails into our feet a little deeper.

Every time you equate penis with sexism, erasing those women and nonbinaries with penises.

Every time you equate childbirth with motherhood and women, erasing those men and nonbinaries who give birth

Every time you evoke vaginal wording to describe sisterhood or womanhood, whether it’s “cunt power”, “sisterhood of the clit” whatever, you stab every woman who has no vagina, no cunt, no clit, no vulva, no uterus, no nothing of that sort in the back and toss us out of the sisterhood that we have as much right to as you.

Every time you wonder if society got rid of social gender, would trans people stop existing, you walk on our faces.

Every time you say transwoman and transman, as though we’re not really women or men but a merged concept, you erase our genders.

Every time you sum up gender as a binary, or even just a spectrum between poles, you erase every single person with a gender that doesn’t fit that zone (and there are many)

Every time you say women and trans women or women, men and transgender, you tell us that our genders are not valid, not as real as yours.

Every time you do these things, you don’t see it. You’re feminists. You’re anarchists. You’re vegans. You’re anti racists and anti Islamophobia advocates. You’re advocates of birthing rights and socialists, anti capitalists, multiculturalists. You’re disability advocates and womanists. Fat positive, anti body policing, anti rape, social activists and writers. You’re friends and family, lovers and colleagues.

And you all do it. Every cis person I know.

Every. Last. One.

Yes.

Even you.

You don’t see it. But we do. We feel the knife go in. We watch the painful hypocrisy of people who make it their career, their life’s work to fight privilege and make people see through its fog, to fight white supremacy, or sexism or ableism or fatphobia or millions of other horrific systems of supremacy and dominance and control exerted against people, exercising their cissupremacy, the boot firmly planted on our necks and they don’t even see it.

But we feel it.

Next time you talk about childbirth, remember not everyone who gives birth is a mother. Next time you talk about how many women are raped, remember that a significant group of those women, of us, don’t have vaginas. Next time you talk about sisterhood, try to remember that you have nonbinary siblings and brothers with the organs you use to label your sisterhood and sisters who lack them. Try to remember that penis is not the enemy because women have them too. Try to remember that theorizing about gender isn’t very helpful when you don’t know shit about the people who experience it most directly, most vividly, most painfully.

Try to remember to look past your cis privilege and maybe take that damn boot off our necks once in a while instead of looking into the distance and ignoring the choking.

Because I’d like to be able to breathe.

Just a bit.

Something Cathy Brennan needs to read. If she’s up to collecting quotes of my Facebook comments from conversations that she wasn’t even a part of, then I’m sure she reads my Tumblr, or someone will tell her about it.

we need to do better (to say the fuckin least).

theoceanandthesky:

whatfreshhellisthis:

Cis women are not being specifically targeted by the anti-choice, anti-reproductive rights lobby.

For cis women to be specifically targeted by the anti-choice lobby, they would have to allow that non-cis men, non-men and non-cis women exist.

And. they. do. not.

You seem to think that in this shoot-out you’re being aimed at, and we’re just being hit coincidentally.

That is not what’s happening.

What is happening is that they are aiming at all of us but only calling us by your name.

They are only allowing for your existence, assimilating us into you because of our biology.

They are actively denying our existence by simply calling us you. They are counting our dead under your name.

And you know what happens when you only acknowledge yourselves?

You don’t even count our dead at all.

YES.

YES.

YES GOOD YES.

THANK YOU.

bobies:

hey if you care about trans* issue

could you maybe not refer to birth control and abortion as “women’s struggles”

i know cis women are generally the people considered by the cis male population who are in opposition of abortion but

it would be nice for people to acknowlegde that trans* people exist and that some men get pregnant and that not every woman has a uterus

owldee:

isaia:

atla-confession-box:

“I don’t understand how any of the characters can be “Asian” or “African” or “Native American.” They come from a different world. there is no Asia, Africa, or America.”

There’s no Europe either, yo.

^THIS.

^

badass-bolts-n-arrows:

atla-confession-box:

“I think it’s stupid that people are already claiming Korra’s a lesbian because she’s a tough, strong woman. There are plenty of straight women out there who have those qualities too. I mean, look at Toph!”

… Toph… I mean, we haven’t exactly seen her kissing guys either xDDDD

> asserts that Korra is not queer

> backs up assertion using arguably one of the queerest ladies in the original series 

okay

i mean, god. I’ve already asserted my opinion on people typing Korra as lesbian based on her appearance alone, but there’s still nothing wrong with her being queer!!!? it’s not something you have to defend her from?!?

also, you guys DO all know that bisexuality/pansexuality are things, right………………?

scarlettshazam:

omgrocketships:

omgrocketships:

Yes. It is okay. Why? The short answer is: Because queer people are still oppressed for their orientation and identity, and heterosexuals are not.
Heterosexuals get all the representation in they could ever want or need in media. It’s the norm. It’s acceptable across the board, world wide.

Queer people do not. And often when queer people do get representation in media, they get very poor representation. Both poor representation and lack of representation are equally damaging.

By interpreting a queer character as straight, you are erasing their identity. Erasure is more damaging than a lot of people realize. Even in fanwork. On top of being erasing/oppressive in itself,  It reads as “they are not good enough because they are queer, so I will make them straight” which is very hurtful to us queer folk on a personal level.

By writing a straight character as queer, however, you’re not being erasing, because straight people are not an oppressed group.

It’s fine to write about straight folks. It’s also fine to write about gay folks.

Also feel, that if you do it delicately enough, you can write a queer character in a functionally heterosexual relationship, without having to erase their identity. After all, sexuality is a fluid thing, and people have exceptions. But what you really shouldn’t be doing under any circumstances, is erasing a character’s preferences and identity and queer history if you write about/depict them in a functionally heterosexual relationship.

You also brought up gender identity into this, which I have to make sure you realize is NOT the same thing as sexuality. At all. But the same principles apply, just substitute “heterosexual” with “cisgender”. Well. Mostly the same principles apply. There is no way in hell you can delicately write a trans/non binary character as cisgender and not be doing something terribly wrong. Just don’t do that. At all. Ever.

I probably skipped some major points but I tried to be as concise as possible. I’d be happy to clarify anything that needs clarifying though.

Reblogging for Scarlett!

 Thank you! This is what I was talking about. Said much better than I did.

more coherent breakdown of what I was talking about a few days ago.

meggannn:

“big deal out of people’s skin color”

“over-analyzing”

“be a true fan by accepting it”

(Source: atla-confession-box)

autumn-and-eve:

Most every feminist on Tumblr is a white cis woman, so they have never experienced erasure within the feminist community, because feminism has always been about white cis women. Right now, I am going to address the erasure I face as a trans woman in the feminist community in the form of a list of points you should follow to not be a shitty person.

1. Abortion is not about a woman’s right to choose. It is about a person’s right to choose. Recently, with the “Let Women Die” bill (thank you cis feminists for branding it as that!) there has been even more talk of abortion. And a proportionate rise in the amount of cisnormativity. Trans men and non-binary identified people get pregnant, can’t get abortions, and die just like women do. When you perpetuate cisnormative language, you continue to erase these people.
2. Equating a woman with a vagina is not good for a multitude of reasons; I’m speaking of posts where the writer will talk about “vagina power” or shit like that. It’s pointless and all you’re doing is further alienating me from the feminist movement, which coincidentally has alienated us trans women since the [non]-issue of being transgender came up in feminist circles.
3. Realize intersectionality in general. 90% of Tumblr feminists are really privileged women (and I would say that they are practically all white and cis). You call yourself a third-wave feminist, but do you know what that even means? The third-wave came about when people started to realize that the “Universal Female Identity” complex of the second wave didn’t work, because that “Universal Female Identity” was really the “White, Cis Female Identity”. You can’t just call yourself a third-wave feminist and be done with it, you have to actually show that you are of the third-wave.