Trans-inclusive language in religious texts is SO IMPORTANT. There is nothing in some young people’s lives that can either validate or dehumanize them so quickly as how they see themselves represented in the words of their religion.
The Nib ( @thenib ) is doing a whole month of queer comics and I was honored to contribute this one! You can read all of the other comics I’ve done for them here, and here is my comic from last year’s Pride Month. You can find more of my comics, including my Genderqueer series, on instagram and you can support me on patreon or on ko-fi if you’d like to help me keep making this work 🙂
this started as a joke but then i started actually thinking about it and now im really annoyed that IDs have this one letter that doesnt mean anything for cis people and is a huge pain in the ass for trans people when we could instead have literally lifesaving information so emergency medical services could just check ur wallet to see which blood to give you so you dont die or whatever But No
i love experiencing how my classmates work to avoid misgendering me. for instance, today one classmate greeted the rest of our small group: “All right ladies and gentlemen — and Avery”
another time a classmate went: “Pardon me, ma’am — uh, sir, uh….esteemed one”
and, my absolute fave: “Hey ladies! — and gentleThem”
i love these moments both because they’re humorous and because they show how hard these folks are trying! it’s not about getting it right every time at first, but consistently correcting yourself!
It’s not about getting it right every time at first, but consistently correcting yourself!
Gender roles in a nutshell: the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang entrances in The Goblet of Fire.
also, to my knowledge neither of those schools were sex-segregated in the books
That bothered me more than the Dumbledore yelling, actually.
Nicolas Flamel was an alum of Beauxbatons.
The first headteacher of Durmstrang was a witch.
Bam.
In the books, it even says that there were boys and girls from each school. Thanks Hollywood for making Durmstrang buff and all athletic men and Beauxbatons all feminine and dainty.
Just imagine what it would have meant for every kid watching, seeing girls walking beside the guys in Durmstrang being “manly” and boys walking with Beuxbaton being flirty and feminine.
It would have shown that girls and boys can be however they want.
It also suggested that the only way a female could have be selected to participate was if she was not up against any male competition. In the books Fleur is chosen as the best candidate for her school from a selection of female AND male students. And she was the best PERSON. Not the best GIRL.
all men are Russian and all Women are French.
Select your gender: 🔳 Russian 🔳 French
ah yes my gender is French and my pronouns are oui/baguette please respect that merci beaucoup
also I have had straight female friends, totally divorced from any kind of queer culture at all, literally describe dysphoria to me without having the language or framework to name it. a straight friend and I once agreed in high school- when I wasn’t even calling myself a lesbian let alone understanding dysphoric feelings!- that our lives would be so much better and our happiness so much more achievable if we were just sexless, no breasts, no hips, no genitals. illegible and unknowable. it’s not that all of us are Non Women, it’s that womanhood is by its nature traumatic and alienating. why would your gender feel coherent with your body when your body is literally not yours, by definition
I get a lot of asks from people who are scared to call themselves aspec because they aren’t sure if they’re ace or aro enough. So if you’re going through this right now, I want you to know this:
It’s never about you being ace/aro enough. It’s about whether you find the labels useful. If you find calling yourself ace, aro, aroace useful then that’s all you need.
ok see, THIS is what I’ve loved about the aspec community since i met it. This, above, is true of all labels, and I almost never hear it. I think the only other place I’ve heard it like this was in the multiple community, years ago.
Ideas like “it’s OK if your sexual orientation, or your understanding of it, changes; it doesn’t make your experience before, or now, less valid,” and “labels are about whether they’re useful to you, not whether someone out there has a yardstick you measure up to,” are so fucking true and important.
And we NEED them, in the community as a whole. We’re pushed so hard to think we’re not whatever enough, and that we have to get our gender and orientation right, right away.
We’re pushed like that because society benefits from making our communities as small and broken-up as possible.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need aspecs in the queer community. They contribute really important culture and experience and ideas, that enrich the larger community in ways it desperately needs.
Labels change, and that’s okay.
At first, I assumed I was “normal*”
Then I started dating boys, around 12 or 13, because that was what girls did.
Then at 15 or 16, a boy convinced me to join him and his girlfriend in a threesome. She and I realized we liked each other more than him. So I thought “Hm, maybe I’m bisexual.”
Then in my 30s, I dated a trans man and wondered if that changed my labels. I figured “Maybe I’m pansexual.”
But through it all, as much as I enjoyed spending time with and sharing my life with some of these people (pretty much the ones I didn’t marry – the ones I did marry all demanded sex, whether I wanted it or not), the sexual part of our relationships was uniformly “fake it till you make it.” And I never made it.
But I kept faking it, because I thought I was pansexual or bisexual, which – to me – meant I like some people – so maybe it was just a matter of finding the right person, no matter their gender.
I wasn’t 40 until I heard the word “asexual” applied to a human and not a single-celled organism, and I thought “Oh my god, that’s me!” But even then, my fear and denial drove me to think I was demisexual or gray-ace, because “asexual” felt binary. Complete. Broken.
Seven years later, I’m learning to accept that asexual doesn’t equal broken. Asexual – specifically autochorissexual – equals me, and accepting that is the most wonderful thing I could do for myself.
So now it’s time to figure out this whole romance thing. Right now, I like “wtfromantic” as a label, because it covers the whole “might be aro” thing while expressing that I don’t fully understand aromanticism.
And if that’s not complicated enough, my wife and I – ages 50 and 47 respectfully – are both trying to figure out our genders. I’ve been content to use she/her all my life out of habit, but it’s never felt right. And I never imagined how much more settled in my body I feel now that I’ve had a hysterectomy, especially since I shouldn’t be able to “feel” the aftermath (beyond lack of periods) but I do. I feel like my body is closer to what it should be. And if I could have top surgery without the pain and cost, I’d jump at the chance in a heartbeat.
So what are my labels? Fuck if I know. Autochorissexual wtfromantic gender-questioning is pretty cumbersome, so right now, I prefer queer. And for Pride, I dyed Bucky’s tail in ace colors so people might know which direction my particular “queer” label takes, in a broad sense.
*I hate the word “normal” now. It’s not a label; it’s a prison.
wupacing 