self-isolating LGBTs of SPRING 2020

Um, thank you all so much for the posts. I don't want to wade too deep into the acrimony but I found much of Branwell's input enlightening.

"Theoretical" has an unintended connotation of "not valid"

This is a good point and I will be mindful of it in future. I *think* my wife and I have done a decent job of listening and communicating that we believe Skyler, that her voice is heard, and that whatever she's doing/not doing is valid in our eyes.

Even if we (privately) weren't quite sure what to think at first, we have been careful to stay away from "inauthentic, or phase-like" language in how we discuss it with her.

Stuff that happens online can be as Real as stuff that happens in a room.

That's something I'm learning! Daughter has long been Extremely Online. It's very different from my experience of adolescence, of course - pre-internet dating and sex were such a large part of my upbringing. I am doing my best to shift gears.

For many, many AFAB queers, Fluidity *is* the place of queerness.

This is a point that I will take to heart (though I am also listening closely to the resulting dialogue). In any case I *hope* we've made it clear that (1) she's being listened to, (2) the way she identifies is validated and embraced, and (3) the fact that it is evolving doesn't change how valid it is.

In the meantime, stuff to navigate:

Her current girlfriend (let's say "Cristina") is a childhood friend. As a result we know Cristina's parents socially (PTA, Girl Scouts, etc.). I don't think Cristina is out to her parents. So we know more about the situation than they do, but we also know it's not our place to tell them. Potentially awkward, but navigable.

We're trusting Skyler to manage her own outness as far as friends and family are concerned (unless she asks us to tell someone). Indeed, she's been pretty savvy about it! Her coming-out conversations have been strategic and granular. For example, she came out as enby to me but asked me to keep it from her mom for a while; then when she announced her name change she asked me to communicate it to her mom. In contrast, she had talked about being bi only to her mother (at first) but talked about being lesbian to both of us at once. I'm committed to trusting her judgment and respecting her wishes here.

She came out pretty casually to her paternal grandmother (my mother); on my side she's got very close cousins who are lesbian so Skyler's intuited that it's an accepting environment.

On the other hand, my wife's family is conservative/Trumpy. No idea how that's going to go - come Christmastime, it will get difficult to avoid, if only because of the name change. I'm sure it will be an... interesting experience. Advice on this is welcome.

yeah sorry for distracting from the greater conversation. <3 ymp, very psyched for skyler's continuing journey

trying to explain myself more calmly

maybe i'm selectively reading, but whenever branwell has brought up "assigned male at birth" and "assigned female at birth" as distinct experiences, it has always been in some subtle way to undermine the experiences of amab people. as i said upthread, i'm even straight up uncomfortable with these phrases and acronyms, probably because they place too much importance on the assignation itself, and because a lot of people then use this assignation to claim that trans women were "socialized male" and "experienced male privilege." i would just say that 1) it is soooooo much more complicated than that 2) it is... hard to say you've been socialized as a man when you're not a man. i.e. i didn't experience "male socialization," i experienced profound dissonance. it's also a really fuckin terfy argument and i hear it whispering beneath all of branwell's posts on the subject. i wish they would not post about it so much because otherwise their posts are fine

"enjoy your cock party" really sums it up though

Well, tbf the discussion began 28 minutes after the post "I just miss cock."

However, given the poster it could have been a truncation of "cocktails."

(jk, mad respect to Lord Alfred)

My takeaway from Branwell's statement was that they were actually speaking in solidarity with you, Brad.

Branwell expressed that AFAB-queerness is a typically more fluid affair, lacking definition-- that this lack of definition is often painted as being "less authentic".

Branwell expressed that AMAB-queerness typically has easier labels attached to more concrete identities ("gay", i.e.) Although it might not be Branwell's place to make such assertions about AMAB-queerness, I happen to agree with them on this point. I don't think it's a particularly controversial statement.

And furthermore, Branwell's statements are essentially expressing that there is validity in the fluidity of one's queerness. I felt as if the dichotomy that was expressed between version AMAB- and AFAB-queerness was merely topical, considering the discussion was concerning YMP's AFAB child. The statements they were making were also affirming the validity of your own fluidity.

If anything, Branwell's statement only served to highlight that AMAB-and-fluid queers face a particular struggle-- as most AMAB-queers do fall into more easily defined categories (gay! tw! enby!) it makes it even more difficult for AMAB-and-fluid queers to feel accepted and validated.

This thread is like 99% cis gays, talking about cock all day long, casually equating cock = man, etc. etc. and so on. And I don't ever see anyone challenging the bioessentialism of this? If I said something like "I don't miss women, but I sure miss vagina" - I'd have every trans activist in the district screaming at me that vagina doesn't equal women. But for cis gay men to say "I don't miss men but I sure miss cock" - this is completely unchallenged, normal, and... it's bad for me to point this out, but it's not bad for them to do it? How does that work?

You wanna talk profound dissonance? Being the only person of your kind, in a space which ~claims~ to be for "queers" but is repeatedly actively hostile towards you.

Being the only AFAB in an AMAB queer space is genuinely weird. It is... profoundly different from being in the predominantly AFAB and enby spaces I am usually in. But to even mention, "wow, this is really different, and more than slightly uncomfortable a lot of the time" - gets me screamed at, accused of wild shit based on ~assocations~ - stop projecting shit into what I say! I am not responsible for "whispers" that you project into my words. You are 'splaining basic 101 trans concepts to someone who was wrestling with gender dysphoria before you were even born, back before I even had words to explain what I was experiencing, and that's... gross. That's so insulting and patronising.

I am sorry you are uncomfortable with these terms, or that they have such bad associations for you, but we are running out of words to express difference. And when one has spent the vast majority of one's life being the only AFAB in rooms full of AMABs, and feeling the profound discomfort of that difference - I am sorry that you seem SO uncomfortable with other people expressing their own difference, and expressing the discomfort that difference has brought them. Apparently that's only OK when you do it.

I think, if you actually ever sat down and listened to my words, rather than your biased interpretations of my words, you might find that we had quite a lot of areas in common. Of being judged according to templates decided and set up by someone else - but you don't seem interested in finding that out. You want to scream at some straw terf of your own imagination, and I am not interested in your fantasies about me. And quite frankly, I am done with being screamed at.

x-posts, thanks YMP for understanding where the cock thing came from.

FGTI - exactly. 100% hard agree, thank you for understanding and interpreting the things I said, in the context of the conversation. That's precisely what I meant.

I'm really done with having other people's anger and own personal garbage dumped on me. It's deeply unpleasant.

Anyway, good luck to Skyler, and if I have any thoughts on how to handle Trumpy family at Xmas, I will come back to you, YMP, but right now I'm just feeling too bruised.

Many xps but I read it that way too, FGTI.

The important takeaway is not to dismiss or trivialize the reality of someone who is changing their presentation, changing how they identify, or changing how they talk about how they identify?

Of course there will always be people who knew they were Kinsey 6 as soon as they knew where their genitals were. And there will be people whose experiences are more fluid, including (!) people who "just" "experiment" while they're in college. That's why it's described as a spectrum.

Some (emphasis: _some_) of the discourse tends to respect the first group of people and belittle the second, but in an ideal world all of these experiences would be accepted and embraced as authentic. I think?

I missed a lot huh

Question: what is a good thread to ask about how to be a good parent to an LGBTQ teenager?

YMP I am such a parent though she is no longer a teenager as of a couple of weeks ago. I'd be happy to participate in such a thread, not sure this is the right one.

Thanks, Euler. I am open to redirection. I am on the parenting threads that discuss smaller ones, and less neurotypical ones.

That said, starting a thread like "Hey ilx please provide me with an instructional manual for a nonbinary tween" is so niche that it may as well be a vanity thread and I am not that into vanity threads.

my whole life is a vanity thread, it's something I'm actively working on about myself

yeah my daughter is binary-ish, sometimes reluctant to call herself a lesbian because she doesn't want to feel locked in, but has had a girlfriend for three years now. nobody in my family is neurotypical so I have no idea how to negotiate that aspect in any other way than we already do. she told us as soon as she recognized this aspect of her identity, we've spent lots of time with her girlfriend, none of our other kids are in relationships so I don't know how different it would be if she weren't queer. to me it's just parenting with the support you'd give them if they told you they wanted to be an engineer or a farmer or whatever, but that's because our society's already made so much progress on this, even if there's still a long way to go. happy to keep engaging as you like.

♥️❤️🤍

A farmer!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr i got into a fight with my only friend in the neighborhood. We made up. He is sweet, he’s a little douchey but i think he’s also a sweet guy. Sometimes we hook up and he’s pretty good at that admittedly.

Join me next week, for Tuesday Night Fairytales!

This thread is like 99% cis gays, talking about cock all day long, casually equating cock = man, etc. etc. and so on.

Not even remotely true, and also truly dismissive.

You might find some more allies here if you didn't characterize cis gays as a bunch of idiotic cock-chompers all the time.

I've been advocating for trans people for a long time. Trans women and trans men have been my lovers. And yet because I'm married to a guy, it's like none of the homophobia I've faced or psychological repercussions of hiding who I was for half my life count for anything.

Plain tired of it-- of course cis men have privilege. That doesn't negate the pain and utter horror some of us have lived through and dealt with due to society's homophobia.

And on the other side, that experience doesn't give cis gays any sort of bullshit authority to give litmus tests about gender or orientation and oppression. I do think yr right in a lot of what you say, Branwell, particularly in response to YMP's question.

But yr attitude seems to discount the possibility that maybe some of us AMAB were told that our desires and expressions of such were theoretical, or were just a phase, and we're something we'd grow out of...if we weren't told that those desires were wrong and shameful and needed to be beaten out of us.

So this shit has implications for us, too, and being dismissive of that is just nagl.

I just miss cock

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 July 2020 01:38 bookmarkflaglink

rather than men, yes xp

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 28 July 2020 01:49 bookmarkflaglink

^^^just so we're clear, that this is what I walked in during. And this is what I was referencing.

You have literally more cis heterosexual fathers of queer AFABs (and they pass into this thread and are accepted and tolerated and welcomed, and not exposed to the suspicion and accusations that I am) posting to this thread than you have queer AFABs, but the problem is ~my~ attitude. There are literally more trans lesbians posting to the No Boys thread than there are cis lesbians on the entirety of ILX. But the problem is ~my~ attitude.

If I even mention that queer AFABs might have different experiences than queer AMABs, I am screamed at, told to GTFO, that I'm not welcome, and accused of being a terf - trans-exclusionary - so let's be clear who has been excluded here - it has not been Brad. It has been me. If I mention that predominantly AMAB queer spaces can often be offputting and exclusionary to non-AMABs, I get screamed at that I must hate AMABs - let's be honest, that reads as a massive smoke screen to avoid ever having to look at or address the ways these spaces might be hateful towards AFABs?

That to mention or talk about systematic misogyny and how misogyny affects and warps homophobia and transphobia as they are directed towareds AFABs - is instantly turned around and twisted to mean I am somehow erasing or negating homophobia and transphobia directed at cis gay men and trans women and nonbinary AMABs?

But the problem is ~my~ attitude?

The problem here is not my atttitude. The problem here is that this is a space that (deliberately or otherwise) centres AMAB queerness, and in doing so treats AMAB as default, centre and norm. Having one single AFAB in here, makes that framework visible. It's uncomfortable for me to be here, because of that framework and the assumptions built around it. But having me here also makes things uncomfortable for you (plural) because my presence disrupts the presumed, unspoken centrality and normativity of AMABness, and throws it off centre. And rather than look about, and acknowledge the weirdness of that centrality, you project your discomfort onto me. It's *MY* fault, my AMAB-hating attitude to blame for the problems I have here, for coming in and going "wow, really kind heavily AMAB in here!" - rather than you lot ever looking at why that space was so AMAB in the first place?

To name a problem is to become the problem.

I'm sorry, Branwell.

Good conversations all around, I say. I have enjoyed reading/listening to them.

Thanks, Alfred.

I'm just going to be clear about one more thing, because I don't think people are getting it.

What I am NOT saying is "gay men are a bunch of cockmunching idiots" - that is a huge misrepresentation of where my problem lies with the joke.

What I AM saying is "this way that a couple of cis gay men are equating cock with manhood, even in a joke, is actually kinda transphobic and offputting." And I find it weird, that I have to explain that in a setting where the good queers would instantly recognise and problematise transphobia against AMAB trans and nonbinary people?

I'm taking any advice to YMP to email, because this has wandered so far off, and I think you want to get back to your regularly scheduled cocktails and (non-transphobic) cock jokes.

Branwell, fair enough. I guess maybe I don't see a cheeky exchange between two gay AMABs as part of a conspiracy to create an unsafe space for AFABs or trans people in this thread, but that's an opinion that's worth evaluating.

Thanks for the exchange.

And I really do say that in honesty and empathy. Sorry to cause grief.

I want to type a lot here but I'll just say that there is a lot of misplaced hostility directed toward Branwell in this thread today and yesterday-- and in general. Branwell, your perspectives are generous and valuable and I'm glad you're posting!

And tbf this thread might not me 99% gay men but it's at least 75% gay men (not to erase the non-gay men who post here) and the discourse is 60-75% related to cock-guzzling (not to erase the non-fellatio related posts, we do talk about anal as well, i.e.)

In that sense, these threads are most definitely ILX's gay bar.

This might be my cis gay male showing, but I did take the Alfred-Morbs joke exchange as not the opposite of transphobic, though only in the sense that joking that wanting men and wanting cocks are two separate things could be, well, very tricky to unpack.

i'm not sorry

my misanthropy is partially justified by the utter humorlessness of Poster X

"Humorless" is a charge leveled at trans people by people who greatly overestimate their own sense of humor.

Agreed with Eric, tbh— the charge is mostly leveled at women and trans people by straights and older gay men.

I indict myself in that comment, fwiw.

I admit to having more to learn, always.

I have more to learn but significantly less time than I did to learn it, is how I'd characterize it.

Sometimes hostility is directed at difficult people because they are difficult people, news at 11

Likewise...

I also fully admit to being a little mystified by certain discourses around gender. To me it seems pretty obvious that most people are enby, to one degree or another, as the gender binary is a false construct anyway... which doesn't invalidate the identity formation, fwiw, but just gives me pause as to *who and what the identity formation is for.*

A Black friend of mine shared that they are enby and many of their enby friends are also Black, seeing it as a method of resisting binaristic structures placed on Black bodies since chattel slavery. This makes sense to me.

But many of the people I saw on social media sharing their enby status were masc-presenting cis white dudes who are gay or sexually fluid, and many I've known in the past have been cis white women in heterosexual relationships and also with kids.

These things are complex and messy, at times, and I'm here for learning and thinking about it, and also trying my best to respect people while doing so. I am truly sorry for my shortcomings in this latter regard!

To me it seems pretty obvious that most people are enby, to one degree or another, as the gender binary is a false construct anyway... which doesn't invalidate the identity formation, fwiw, but just gives me pause as to *who and what the identity formation is for.*

As someone who has never considered themself to be enby, I find this point intriguing and worthy of more self-examination.

I would not at all be surprised to discover, thru therapy, that my cis identity is the result of targeted conditioning from male peers during my pre- and pubescent years.

I know that sounds naive and tardy, but I also know I'm basically the cl3m3nz4 of the gay threads.

a cheeky exchange

we do talk about anal as well

ISWYDT

My opinion about the origin of TERFwars is that ciswomen are being forced into accepting that "gender binary is a false construct" when many of them believe that this assertion should be the decision of ciswomen themselves-- historically oppressed for millennia by patriarchal structures; oppression is still ongoing. I'm not a TERF (at all) but I'm somewhat of a TERF-sympathizer-- this is to say, I think that discussion would be better than shouting "TERF!" at anybody with a divergent opinion. (Not so much because I think that people with TERFy views are right, but because responding to them with aggression is just going to further radicalize them.)

Re: "difficult people"-- consistently I see that certain people with a more generous posting style tend to get dissected and debated more readily and that the environment around them sours-- they are "difficult" because people make it impossible for them to be any other way. I don't see anything difficult having been expressed today or yesterday by Branwell, and see any "difficulty" that may have been generated as being the result of responses from other posters.

ok but narcissism does tend to suck the air out of the room

that isn't directed at anyone, just a generalization. i've appreciated following the discussion here and have nothing to add.

sorry (maybe not sorry) to divert from topic but, as mentioned in the "last x movies" thread, I think everyone who hasn't should watch the newly available 1977 doc "Word Is Out." It's remarkable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXfALa7YlU

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/wordisout

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives is a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women. It was directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Film Group. Peter Adair conceived and produced the film, and was one of the directors. The film premiered in November 1977 at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, and went into limited national release in 1978.

Word Is Out intercuts interviews with 26 people, who speak about their experiences as gay men and lesbians. The interviewees range in age from 18 to 77, in location from San Francisco to New Mexico to Boston, in type from bee-hived housewife to student to conservative businessman to sultry drag queen, and in race from Caucasian to Hispanic, African-American, and Asian. Writer Elsa Gidlow, professor Sally Gearhart, inventor John Burnside, civil rights leader Harry Hay, actress Pat Bond, and avant-garde filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky are among the interviewees. The interviewees describe their experiences of coming out; falling in and out of love; and struggling against prejudice, stereotypes, and discriminatory laws.

Have seen; it's very very good, tho I remember liking Before Stonewall a bit more for covering a wider range of landmark moments.