New LGBDropTheT flag, symbolizing the rejection of everyone trying to ride the LGB's coattails

HelloMomo · 2022-10-12T19:26:54+00:00

Swallowtail flag, nice

HelloMomo · 2022-09-11T04:18:34+00:00

If he legit isn't attracted to straight men, good for him! If only we could all be immune to the charms of straight people who will never reciprocate

HelloMomo · 2022-09-02T01:00:50+00:00

Same-sex attracted children aren't exactly a thing. We talk about proto-gay kids, or kids who will grow up to be gay, but we don't talk about kids being clearly, definitively gay yet.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-27T05:52:38+00:00

I think you're taking something different from the quote than I did. The person who wrote it was a TRA who's trying to argue that like... homophobia is actually just misdirected transphobia or something? I don't even know. It was written by a goofball and that clearly still bleeds through, even in short form.

The reason I quoted that section, though, is because anecdote rang true to me. It doesn't strike me like a made-up, inconceivable situation. That's not to say that men holding hands with their boyfriends don't also face street harassment! I'm not saying anything about that. When I say that his anecdote sounds believable, I mean only is that his anecdote sounds believable.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-26T19:32:35+00:00

I do think there's some truth to this passage:

Prejudice against homosexuals is about cross-gender behaviors. [...] On the occasions when guys have screamed “FAGGOT!” out of their car windows at me, it wasn’t because I was hand in hand or making out with my boyfriend (or theirs!) It was because I was walking. I was just walking, and there was something about my walk, my clothes, my hair, who knows, which they processed as inappropriately unmasculine.

Earlier this week I watched an interview with Helen Joyce where she said the same thing: https://youtu.be/OygT20clGfM?t=3380

What people used to know — and have almost deliberately forgotten — is that gay people are highly gender non-conforming. Every homophobe in the world knows this. Like every dad who wants his son not to grow up gay, knows very, very well that if he looks at the three-year-old who's borrowing his big sister's tutu and saying, "I want to do ballet," he thinks, "Shit, I've got a gay son." And like, we're somehow meant to pretend that's not the case.

The correlation isn't 100%, but it is strong enough to be statically noteworthy. For a while people have been kinda trying to pretend it's not the case, and I don't think that's yielded anything useful. I do feel like subculture that we in this group are are part of doesn't quite now what to do with gender nonconformity? Like, we say it's fine, everyone should be themselves, etc. And that's great. But what we don't do is contextualize it, or say it means anything, or give it a social framework. And this conceptualization of gender non-conformity as basically a superfluous random detail... I mean, I think it works for some people, but I think there are other people who find that lacking.

A year or two ago, I was reading ''Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold'', a historical book about the lesbian community in Buffalo New York from the 40s to the 60s. For them, the butch/femme culture was absolutely foundational. In the 70s, it fell away, and a more an androgynous version of lesbian social life, this one influenced by feminism which at the time often critiqued butch/femme subculture. I was thinking about how in butch/femme days, I doubt gender ideology would've made made any headway. There was already something else there to give lesbians a way to conceptualize gender expression. Like, the niche was already filled. But once that was gone, this new androgynous version of lesbian social life didn't last. A few decades later, young lesbians were once again reaching for a way to talk about gender expression and contextualize it socially, and now we've got this.

Even now, long after most of the butch/femme subculture has been left behind, the word "butch" has remained part of the vernacular. It's useful. It helps people make sense of things, and contextualize them within society. And every time Kai makes a post about how it's such a struggle to be a really gender non-conforming gay man, I think that the fact that gay men don't have any butch counterpart may be to their detriment.

I don't know. I think attaching meaning to gendered behavior is messy and iffy, but I also feel like basically we've already tried not doing it, we've run that experiment, and the results are in, and they're not very promising.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-20T21:29:13+00:00

I think PP banks very heavily on having a near monopoly on it's field. If there was any other widespread chain that did low-cost contraception, who they actually had to compete with, they'd probably really have to clean up their act.

As soon as I started to look into it, apparently PP is getting caught for being sketchy all the time, like not reporting sex traffickers, not reporting underage girls impregnated by grown men (in places where that's statutory rape and is supposed to be reported), that kind of stuff. But because they have this very successful brand narrative, it's really hard get them really penalized for any of it. People are reluctant to penalize them for anything, because the thinking goes that they're necessary, so even if they do some bad stuff that basically has to be overlooked. And they really lean into this narrative, claiming that services like mammograms (which the vast majority of their locations don't do) are one of the essential services they offer and a key reason why they need to keep getting government funding.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-20T20:58:34+00:00

I just read Louise Perry's The Case Against The Sexual Revolution which is about, more than anything, the asymmetry between men and women in heterosexuality. Particularly, two major things are: the desire for causal sex, and the threshold for sexual disgust. Men are consistently and cross-culturally higher in desire for causal sex, and lower in the threshold for sexual disgust. (Although arousal lowers the threshold for sexual disgust in everyone. Like, someone else getting their spit on you is normally gross. But when people are turned on, this can be overlooked.)

I'm not sure what features of physiology cause this, but if hormone levels are a central factor... then I could see how a bisexual woman with her natural hormones might find it easier to find commandability with another woman, and then if she goes on T an her sex drive changes, then she might find men more sexually compatible to her. I think this is more or less what detransitioner and bi woman Sinead Watson describes happening to her: T cranked up her sex drive and she was super horny all the time, and it awakened her dormant bisexuality. Although she doesn't say she's only into men now: she says she's bi. Which sounds like a very normal-person take on it, and adds to my idea that people who don't are saying so because they have a yaoi fetish or something.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-11T02:08:42+00:00

Haha I purposely don't have those filled out

Same

HelloMomo · 2022-08-11T02:07:49+00:00

I know at one point Rebekah Wershbale was Keira Bell's girlfriend. I wonder if they're still together. I hope they're both doing well, regardless.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-03T06:38:03+00:00

I usually don't cum from head

Is that a stereotype? My knowledge on the topic is minimal and I'd like to to stay that way. But like... I have never heard a word about any category of men by orientation who don't like blowjobs.

HelloMomo · 2022-08-03T06:30:49+00:00

After looking into them some more, it seems like it's endorsed by Arielle Scarcella, and run by other people like her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl_SSkZqz3M Not to be dramatic and off-topic, but the founder, Jaimee Michell, is kinda hot

HelloMomo · 2022-07-31T20:32:20+00:00

I guess I just find it hard to imagine that there are many landlords like that. In the field of capitalism, the fact that someone has money and is willing to pay usually outweighs personal moral quandaries. In order for this issue to actually hurt people's ability to live in an area, it would have to be a majority of landlords doing this, not just one or two. Like, if homophobia was more powerful than capitalism? I could respect that after some fashion. But I don't think that's the world we live in. While I know personal incredulity is not a real argument, that just seems unlikely to me.

HelloMomo · 2022-07-31T03:12:53+00:00

Would it be too much to guess that these new clinics will vary a lot, unlike the centralized, standardized Tavistock? That some will be good and other bad?

HelloMomo · 2022-07-31T00:41:24+00:00

Legal to discriminate on the basis of same-sex attraction: housing, workplace

People mention this from time to time, and I always wonder... if that was illegal, and then homophobic landlords were forced to have gay/bi tenants, would that actually be a good situation for anyone? If the landlord really feels that strongly about it, wouldn't it be better for the tenants to just live somewhere else?

HelloMomo · 2022-06-23T00:50:42+00:00

I don't know much about Chris Chan, but I do know he's autistic or severally mentally ill or something, and that complicates matters.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-20T14:51:18+00:00

“When you’re doing experimental treatment, you take literally every single scrap of data you can get and you analyse it. You don’t just ignore it.”

Another phrasing of the same thing Helen Joyce said.

The lack of decent research and misrepresentation of findings mean gender affirmation cannot even be described as a risky experiment on children, since "experiment" implies someone, somewhere, is tracking outcomes and comparing them with other options.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-20T05:55:18+00:00

there are also people who probably feel pressure to seem "masculine" or "feminine" and adhere to those stereotypes out of some combination of pressure and beliefs about what a "normal" man/woman, or a "normal" gay man/woman,

People who make themselves into a caricature of gay stereotypes right after coming out is a thing.

But I feel like that's very different than the 6-year-old tomboys and femboys who will eventually grow up to be gay but don't yet know it. I've heard stories of people who's gender non-conformity preceded their first crush, so they certainly weren't trying to fit any stereotypes of homosexuality.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-17T19:21:02+00:00

Yes, there are personality traits that are considered feminine or masculine. But (at least in my experience) when people are talking about whether a person is generally feminine or masculine, aesthetics are weighted much more heavily than personality. So I'm a little skeptical of Idea #1.

But when I brought that up, I was kinda going off on a tangent. Preferences of masculinity/femininity in other was kinda secondary; I was moreso talking about preferences for masculinity/femininity in oneself. I personally experience both femininity and masculinity as largely random grab-bags of traits, I'm very pick-and-choose with both. For example: I like both sewing and woodworking. I think I'm interested in the both for the same reason: an interest in making stuff. I see these two interests as alike. But one's coded as masculine and one as feminine, and I see that as very arbitrary. I'm then perplexed by people who have an interest in wholesale masculinity or femininity. Like... do your own innate tastes really line up so closely with this random prepackaged collection? But to hear some butch women and very feminine gay men talk about their childhoods, it really looks like for some people, the answer is yes.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-14T23:56:57+00:00

It's been years, and I'm still waiting for the coherent logical explanation of why incest (and also polyamory/polygamy) is necessarily wrong. I think people just have a gut ick reaction. I've heard people say "inherently abusive", but I've never got a full explanation as to why or how it is. If someone claimed that such relationships have statically lower rates of working out well, that sounds very likely. I would easily believe that. But the government having to sign off on the assertion that your relationship is a good idea is really invasive. For most other topics, there's a difference between weird/messy/ill-advised, and criminal.

I do think there's a decent chance the plural marriage thing might become a public debate at some point, but I doubt incest will, just because it's such a fringe issue. The number of people who are in love with close relatives is so low that I really doubt they'll ever have the necessary mass to make people pay attention.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-13T19:09:34+00:00

After trying for months, and 3 rounds of submitting it and having it rejected, I finally got a wikipedia page for Nolan Investigates up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Investigates They were so infuriating along the way that I almost gave up, but if I gave up they would win so I persevered even when tehy really testing my patience. It's a small thing, but this is my little fight, and I made it happen.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-11T02:41:12+00:00

Around the start of covid, my relationship with my bestfriend since childhood ended. I do think it was unconditional on my end (although I guess not her end). But through that, I realized that unconditional love really has virtually nothing to person in question. If nothing they could do would change anything, it becomes very divorced from them. And then doesn't really have much to do with them anymore; its not about them at that point. And I think that makes it less meaningful.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-09T19:35:08+00:00

Pour one out for them

HelloMomo · 2022-06-09T19:05:31+00:00

In places and times that have specific cultural roles for hyper-feminine gay men (for example, the fa'afafine) so they could present themselves with many of the cultural trapping of women, but had no medical transition. Who did those guys date? Are their husbands GAMP-type bi men, or more typical bi or gay men?

One of the things about the whole trans thing that I find oddest is that it really does appear that some people do have a very strong seemingly innate and inborn preference for masculinity or femininity. And it dating, it seems like some people have a very strong preference for masculinity/femininity in others. And I'm just really perplexed by how someone could have such an innate reaction to something that is culturally constructed.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-09T06:28:17+00:00

Clearly they're technically bi. Like, they meet the definition of bisexuality: they're attracted to women and also men. But it seems that these guys, and the sort of guys that you typically think of upon hearing the phrase "bi guys", are two somewhat distinct groups.

My next big question is How feminine is feminine enough for these kind of men? Is it all about presentation? Or is it related to the medically-feminized thing?

I became curious about this today because of a video where Shape Shifter (HSTS detransitioner) talks about how now that he's back on testosterone, he's is going to physically masculinize in the next few months. Someone said that his fiancé is straight, and will leave him when that happens. And while Shape Shifter was outwardly denying this, it was clear that he thought this was plausible enough that talking about it scared him. He was crying thinking about it. Some people were leaving comforting comments like, "don't worry, if he's with you in the first place he's not straight." I wanted to say that too, but I realized I know almost nothing about the kind of men who date HSTS guys. I didn't want to say that and spread false hope if it wasn't true.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-08T05:09:45+00:00

And of course most people on AGB are defending this.

In the archived link I looked at, it looked like about 1/3 of the commenters were objecting to it

HelloMomo · 2022-06-05T22:46:05+00:00

Everyone's familiar with the thinking-you're-bi-before-realizing-you're-gay pathway. But thinking-you're-asexual-before-realizing-you're-gay is my story, and I've heard a few other people who had that experience as well. It's a much less talked about pathway, less common, but it does happen. Particularly for women, I think. (From what I've heard, it's a lot harder to be oblivious to your sexuality when you're running on testosterone.)

Is this a silly, cringey phase that she's in now? Of course. I think it's entirely plausible that this is just a confused baby lesbian still figuring herself out. "If I was to get into a relationship it would be with a woman," I mean, that sounds like she hasn't had her first girlfriend yet, but knows that she would like to have one.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-05T00:35:37+00:00

As a very general rule of thumb, I would agree with you, but it's certainly not a hard-and-fast rule, and there are plenty of counter-examples.

HelloMomo · 2022-06-02T20:54:06+00:00

My only internet friend who I know is a terf but who I did not meet through GC stuff — I met her through Cersei-centric fanfic XD

HelloMomo · 2022-05-31T21:11:38+00:00

There are so many holidays that I thought it was already over by now

HelloMomo · 2022-05-31T15:47:27+00:00

Back in the day, when I was like 15 or 16, I was reading the books and also mostly-believed gender identity theory, I remember this line standing out to me as interesting.

"I'm not his [the Hound's] stupid son!" said Arya furiously. That was even worse than being taken for a boy.

Arya is intentionally crossdressing but still doesn't like being misgendered. This was when I still thought misgendering was a thing, and took TRAs at their word when they said cis people don't like it either, and this struck me as an interesting example of that premise in action.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-30T00:11:51+00:00

While I suspect there will probably always be some low-level squabbles, but at the end of the day I think the genuine attraction between homosexuals and bisexuals will always keep both groups coming back XD

HelloMomo · 2022-05-29T03:29:30+00:00

In the library at my woke university, the bathrooms on the left side of the building are a men's room and a women's room, and the ones on the right side are "gender inclusive". It's clearly not a universal solation, but in the context of a large building that's already going to have multiple bathrooms, I think it makes sense.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-27T22:58:15+00:00

This is supposed to be fearmongering, I suppose, but actually I find it comforting. Yeah, we could all go our own ways—and that's a good thing! That means it's not a forced teaming. The alliance is a choice. We don't owe each other. If one group started hurting others, anyone could leave and they would be justified in doing so.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-27T22:43:27+00:00

Years ago, my at-the-time best friend read that book aloud to me. I didn't think much of it, but my friend-at-the-time had just come out then, and something about the book's chorus of gay predecessors watching over the youth of today really spoke to her.

This was long enough ago that I do remember side-eyeing the trans thing, but didn't really dwell on it too much.

What I very much remember about that plotline is how young the characters came across. At some point partway though the book, I think one of them drives a car, and my friend and I suddenly realized that that Ryan and Avery were actually supposed to be several years older than we'd thought they were. If I recall they're actually like 16, but we thought they were 13.

My friend flipped back through the book and figured out that in the scene where they first meet, they're looking across the room, over the head of this 13-year-old kid. She concluded that somehow we had gotten mixed up on that line, and had thought that the 13-year-olds were them, not some other kid at the dance.

I thought we maybe just thought of them as young teens because they just seem like young teens. One has pink hair and the other has blue hair. There's the trans thing, which even back then I associated with a middle school phase. And their relationship is very chaste, taking things slow. (I think it's a first relationship for both of them, though don't quote me on that.) It's not that any of these things are conspicuously out of place for 16-years-olds, but they're equally believable for 13-year-olds.

So I dunno, I find it moderately funny that the arrested development that comes with trans identity shone show clearly through this book, event though it presumably wasn't what the author was going for.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-26T04:07:03+00:00

I would be curious to run a poll here with the question: "Did you at one point believe (even just vaguely or tacitly) in this shit?"

I remember being like 13 and on tumblr, and when I first heard of NB I thought it was kinda ridiculous. On some level I knew it was bullshit from the beginning, even as dumb kid. And yet despite that, I still kinda went along with it, tacitly believed it, for almost a decade more before consciously recognizing at 21 or so, "Absolutely not, this is bunk."

And I don't think my story is unusual. A lot of people believed it, at least a little. That's why we talk about "peaking".

I often have moments when I think how could anyone believe something so obviously stupid and baseless. And if a person does believe this, then how can I possibly trust or respect them in any other field? And in moments like that, I think it's good to remember that I too got caught up in this for a time.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-25T02:13:47+00:00

I go by an androgynous nickname. At my university, when I explain it's just a shortened form of my given name, and that calling me by my given name is totally fine too, people often seem a bit surprised.

I hate it, but I do get it. A young woman in her early 20s, who may or may not ping your gaydar a little bit, and who's going by an androgynous nickname? To assume it's some NB shtick is a bit personally offensive (or maybe exhausting is a better word for it), but it's certainly not not demographically unreasonable.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-18T04:08:33+00:00

I don't think making up your own ceiling name is really how it works (the other two are terms created by TRAs) because the word "ceiling" itself is part of a "break though the ceiling" idiom.

That being said, bisexuals being treated like a communal sexual resource is certainly a problem.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-16T02:54:52+00:00

I'm really not. I get that you don't like the social trapping of marriage or something, and in your heard they're tied up with the word "marriage", and you think that rebranding is the way to solve that. There are midst of so many political words game messes already pending. I feel like this idea has already been tested, and — from what I've seen of other cases of it — it's an absolute mess.

If you think trading out old words for new clean words without any baggage, could you name an example of this that you think went well? One that you'd like to model your proposed word change after?

HelloMomo · 2022-05-15T19:06:48+00:00

What is there to be gained from calling a spade a "digging implement" instead of a "spade", if it means the same thing? Do you actually think that would meaningfully change the way people think about it?

HelloMomo · 2022-05-14T03:53:22+00:00

That's a... weird and narrow defection, and I'm not sure where you got it from. While the details very, something that is recognizable as marriage is a cross-cultural universal.

Secondly, if it's just a semantic difference to you, why do you think the distraction is important?

HelloMomo · 2022-05-13T02:48:51+00:00

I want marriage as a concept stripped out of our government foundations entirely. Marriage is a religious event, everything legal-wise should be civil unions which should be open to all consenting adults regardless of sexual preference.

How are marriage and civil unions different, legally?

HelloMomo · 2022-05-12T22:09:52+00:00

English has a lot of Germanic (original Old English) vs Latin (by way of French) etymology leading to having different connotations for words that are technically the same meaning!

Like "smell" (Germanic) vs "odor" (Latin). Or "cow" (English, because they spoke English out in the fields) vs "beef" (because they spoke French in the castle where it was prepared all fancy).

HelloMomo · 2022-05-12T18:01:16+00:00

If I recall, there's a bit in Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold about how in like lesbian community in Buffalo, New York, in the 30s or 40s they used the term "intimacy" to mean sex, and only in the 40s or 50s did they start using the word "sex"

HelloMomo · 2022-05-11T05:14:28+00:00

Then what was the word for sexual activity in that time? Or was there not really a clinical term for it before, and it was mostly spoken of with flowery language, vulgar words, and euphemisms?

HelloMomo · 2022-05-10T21:37:26+00:00

I can't cite this, so grain of salt, but I once heard someone claim that "gender" was a term coined by the Victorians as a euphemism for "sex", because "sex" sounded too sexual.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-10T20:48:51+00:00

Only a few years ago, when I was looking for for underwear of the covers-my-entire-butt variety, I remember looking at TomboyX, and I don't remember any gender woo at the time. I didn't buy anything because of cost, but I remember thinking their products looked pretty good. This woowoo thing is evolving fast. (Although back then, it wouldn't have stood out to me if they did, so it possible I'm just not remembering.)

HelloMomo · 2022-05-10T17:46:58+00:00

I tried wearing boys jeans for a while in high school. The pockets were great, but yeah, they never fit right in the hips.

HelloMomo · 2022-05-10T17:45:39+00:00

I might tentatively recommend Helen Joyce's work: I think she's whip-smart and knows how to lay out her arguments

HelloMomo · 2022-05-04T03:29:06+00:00

How does the dead brother factor into this?

HelloMomo · 2022-04-08T13:58:48+00:00

This is a really interesting video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlkkG6mKTCk

One thing I found interesting: This channel, Kiana Docherty, has covered 2 different "non-binary" doctors who are into Health at Every Size: Lindo Bacon and Asher Larmie. The overlap in scientifically bogus feel-good ideologies seems to be there.

HelloMomo · 2022-04-07T16:07:29+00:00

Teens and young adults are always looking for ways to shock their elders, right? But what happens when their elders are, well... pretty open-minded? Even comfortable with what used to be the counterculture?

That's one of the ideas that Abigail Shrier briefly mentions in her book. She muses that what if these ROGD moms had pretended to be scandalized or outraged at some phase their daughters went through before this—even if they weren't really? Could that have allowed their daughters to achieve the developmental milestone of rebelling against one's parents, and then left them free to move on to other things?

HelloMomo · 2022-04-03T17:01:01+00:00

This. What individual character of trans-identified people is not the issue. It's about whether their ideology is coherent and defensible, and whether it infringes on the rights of other people.

This he/him chick could be the nicest person in the world, and still be wrong. But "wrong" as in "factually incorrect," not "immoral."

HelloMomo · 2022-04-01T04:36:50+00:00

My first ever date was with a girl from Her. That was only a few years ago. A year before covid hit, I think?

Her opening line (and to this day, the best pickup line I've ever heard) was something along the lines of "for a second I thought I'd matched with Luna Lovegood" (I have long blond hair, and my profile pick was a good hair photo). This was back before motioning Harry Potter was a hot button issue.

Things sure change fast.

HelloMomo · 2022-04-01T04:33:08+00:00

[TRAs] don't want to date eachother.

I'm not sure that's a problem. The thing about the dating apps is that, if someone successfully finds a relationship via your app, they're likely to delete your app. So that means they're are incentived to make users like using their app, but they're not really incentived to make their app effective at creating pairings.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-31T01:36:04+00:00

Part of this is just counterculture...

Question: As a young person, I don't really know: To what extent were countercultures of the past political? I know they were at least a little bit, but how much so? How does it compare to now?

HelloMomo · 2022-03-29T02:30:24+00:00

...you have heard of blind people, right?

HelloMomo · 2022-03-29T02:28:51+00:00

People have a soft spot for forbidden love stories.

The Dr Mengele thing is a much harder sell.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-26T06:08:50+00:00

I think a lot of women (and gay men perhaps) internalize their inability to get sex.

I suspect just about everyone feels that way sometimes. Everyone is lonely and horny sometimes. Everyone is exhausted and frustrated with dating sometimes. Just that women and gay men are more sympathetic figures, and they're allowed to complain about it in a way that straight men aren't. Which I suspect harms them too — if they could be openly frustrated on occasion without that being vilified, maybe there'd be a few less incels.

How to be frustrated without feeling entailed — I'm not quite sure where to cut the line. For me personally, I tend to feel like fate owns me a better plotline, rather than feeling that my positional love interests owe me anything.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-26T05:47:48+00:00

I remeber writing a text at 15 I think about how menstruation made me feel horrible, as if my body was betraying me

Yeah; that's how most teenage girls feel.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-26T05:44:15+00:00

Pegging is a thing. Even straight men should do it safely if they enjoy it. At least they can enjoy it. Or is this, again, gonna be the "men would stay manly dude bros and not try anything cough cough remotely female-role-like"?

I was about to say I thought straight men were starting to come around on pegging. Then I realized my conception of this is based entirely what straight and bi women write on the internet, and probably based more on what they'd like to be true than what's actually true.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-26T05:38:50+00:00

The basic options I see are:

Ghost
Make up a polite excuse for why not
Say no. You don't have to really spell out why, but something like, "No thanks, I'm not really interested in hanging out, thanks."

HelloMomo · 2022-03-16T00:28:20+00:00

The fact that Hogwart's didn't have a program that provided free wands for students, forcing Ron to deal with a malfunctioning wand in one of the books, was indicative of the fact that J.K. Rowling believes schools should not provide aid to the poor

Except they do. This scene is when Dumbledore visiting Tom Riddle at his orphanage to give him his Hogwarts letter:

When he had finished, he [Tom] turned to Dumbledore and said baldly, “I haven’t got any money.”

“That is easily remedied,” said Dumbledore, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. “There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes. You might have to buy some of your spellbooks and so on secondhand, but—”

What's going on with Ron is something else. Ron broke his wand in the flying-to-school-in-his-dad's-car episode, something his parents were really angry at him for. He tells Harry that if he asked for a new wand, his mother would say no, because it was his own fault he broke the old one. It's all made a bit weird by the fact that Ron didn't actually ask them, he's just assuming. But still, I think the main way to read this is as a parent making a child live with the consequences of their actions in order to teach them as lesson.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-15T19:47:28+00:00

Most restaurants have a sign hanging somewhere that says, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." If bakeries don't have that, that seems very weird to me.

HelloMomo · 2022-03-05T21:18:53+00:00

That first half kinda aligns with something I've sometimes thought. The term bi is really broad. Way broader than any other sexuality. It includes people of both sexes, with varying ratios of attraction, who have various primary relationships in their life. So I'd be curious to hear from a bi person: do you feel like other bi people in general are... meaningfully similar to you, I guess? Or are the people who you feel like are like you a smaller subset of bi people?

HelloMomo · 2022-03-01T06:20:23+00:00

Someone who knows that little boys who are extremely feminine from a very early age are statistically more-likely-than-not to be gay men in adulthood. This is a finding that's very consistently verified by studies — although I suspect Kai's parents knew this from not from studies, but from anecdotal evidence.

HelloMomo · 2022-02-28T21:08:19+00:00

The whole "existence" thing is so weird. It's a word they reach for so often. Everything is a threat to their very existence!

Like... even with their logic, how is this "making your existence about HIM"? He never so much as asked her not to transition. He literally just had his own feelings about it.

HelloMomo · 2022-02-23T00:17:47+00:00

The video was on Feb 20, 2022, and he said it should be up in 7 to 14 days.

HelloMomo · 2022-02-20T04:06:44+00:00

I think this actually kind of illustrates the limits of the "only consent matters" model. Because clearly animals do mate (with each other) and do have ways of signaling that they're interested and whatnot.

It's like statutory rape. It seems odd to say that someone "can't consent" when they did consent. Like, doesn't that very clearly demonstrate that consent is not actually thought to be the only relevant factor at play?

I think that the problem is, within the "only consent matters" model, the word "consent" has been inflated to mean more than just "agreed to it". I think there's 2 pillars to what we consider "proper consent". The first one is straight-up agreeing to it. The second one is a little hard to put into words, but I think I would best term it as something like "being on the same page." A sort of understanding of where the other person is coming from, and what they want out of this. And when the parties are so different, that's impossible.

Teenagers can consent to sex with other teenagers, and dogs can consent to sex with other dogs, but neither can consent to sex with a grown-ass man. So within that framework, the issue is not that they can't consent _period_—it's not that they fundamentally lack that ability. The issue is that the scenario with the grown-ass man is uneven a very fundamental way, and that some level of parity between the parties is also considered to be important.

So I think it would both clearer and more honest if we just said, "Hey, some level of parity between the parties is also important," rather than sticking to the narrative of "consent is the one and only thing."

HelloMomo · 2022-02-19T20:58:30+00:00

I haven't seen it; are the ones talking wholesome gay boys?

HelloMomo · 2022-02-19T17:09:45+00:00

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that if real gay men, could somehow date straight men—if somehow straight men would be interested in them—a lot of them would go for it.

(If any gay men have feedback on this theory, I'd like to hear it.)

HelloMomo · 2022-02-12T20:53:48+00:00

Out of macabre curiosity, what actually is the typical range?

HelloMomo · 2022-02-12T20:40:03+00:00

I'm most disturbed by the commenter suggesting various violent emojis

HelloMomo · 2022-02-11T04:39:01+00:00

How is gender expression policed?

...does anyone do that? I mean, stepping away from trans bullshit for a moment, that would mean, like... shitting on feminine guys, right? Is that an issue?

HelloMomo · 2022-02-11T04:34:39+00:00

I just take the existence of this model as a lot of spicy straight girls or closeted gay/bi people's way of rationalizing why they are queer (or are queer but not exactly fully gay or bi).

I've heard 2 different stories of lesbians that go like this: She's trying to convince herself she's bi, and using the split attraction model to justify why — even though she knows in their gut that she's not really as attracted to her boyfriend as she should be — that it's ok, or normal, or to be expected from them.

HelloMomo · 2022-02-10T04:19:18+00:00

Even back when I was identifying as aro ace as a teenager, I sort of thought the split-attraction model didn't make much sense. But I just shrugged it off, thinking that as an "aro" I just couldn't understand "romantic attraction".

SAME!!! I used the terminology, cuz I had to, but I always kinda thought it was bullshit. I also had this sorta truscum mentality, like aro aces like me are the real deal. Everyone else, they're just weak-ass fakers. (Although I guess I still think that; I just don't think I'm one anymore.)

HelloMomo · 2022-02-10T04:12:29+00:00

I'll be willing to revisit the concept when someone can actually give me a clear explanation of what romantic attraction is, and how's its different from friendship.

It reminds me of the gender identity thing, is that they want to keep the like... social scaffolding of the thing, for lack of a better term, while removing the foundation. So you're left with basically stereotypes, unmoored from anything, and then people start asking, "wait, what was this supposed to be again?"

HelloMomo · 2022-02-10T04:08:54+00:00

you're referring to this? https://saidit.net/s/LGBmemes/comments/8k6g/the_letters_of_lgbtqia/

HelloMomo · 2022-02-08T16:59:45+00:00

While I absolutely think it's kinda a dick thing to say, I do think there's a certain realism to, "If X has a problem with Y, then it's X's job to deal with Y." Like, if you're a cat-lover who's really upset about cats getting declawed, you're probably gonna have to campaign for that yourself. Regardless of whether dog-lovers should care about that issue, the fact is, most of them are probably aren't super interested or invested in this issue.

I do think men and women should care about each other's issues, just because we're all humans and we're all stuck on this planet together. But from logistical, planning standpoint... I mean, yeah, it kinda is up to women. Counting on men to help out with this seems overly optimistic to me.

HelloMomo · 2022-02-06T03:40:07+00:00

Broadly speaking, the idea that homosexuality and other traits might be linked is not baseless. For example, homosexuality and gender non-conformity seem to be linked.

But homosexuals of one sex, and heterosexuals of the other sex, are not the same demographic. They're not linked.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-31T21:34:06+00:00

"We want to drop the T because there's a 'men can get pregnant emoji' " doesn't demonstrate what's happening to LGB

That's the key line here, I think I get it.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-31T21:31:16+00:00

Do we think this is:

an entirely fictional story
a bi guy
a straight guy trying out a new dating strategy

Cuz at some point, surely some wiley straight man is gonna realize that desperate gaydens are a really easy dating market, if you're willing to lie. And there are plenty of straight men willing to lie in order to have sex with women.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-31T21:23:20+00:00

"making it a huge part of my personality" and "i’ve aligned myself so tightly to the lesbian label i don’t know who i am without it." What gay, bi, or lesbian person thinks like this?

I mean... some 18-year-olds. Especially an 18-year-old who might really be more like 16, in a life experiences way, because the last 2 years have been so weird.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-31T21:18:39+00:00

...are they saying bisexuals are cheaters?

HelloMomo · 2022-01-28T21:20:33+00:00

Straight guys already seem to have this underlying fear that pegging is gay. If people keeping telling them it is, they'll probably stop doing it.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-27T19:11:29+00:00

I thought straight guys were just barely starting to stop thinking of pegging as gay. And now that's being rolled back, by the very women who would've benefitted from it.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-25T06:57:07+00:00

Seeing all these redditors waxing poetic about men, I don't get it at all, but I'm happy for them, I'm smiling and laughing reading it.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-24T21:53:56+00:00

When I was in elementary school, I got in trouble a couple times for kicking classmates, mostly boys. Not fights; not two-way things. Just unreciprocated kicking. Namely this one boy, who'd keep coming over to us at recess because he was a simp for my friend (which I kinda was too, to be fair).

I remember my mom sitting me down after one of the times I got in trouble, and saying something along the lines of "You are female, and also the second shortest kid in your class. If you keep this behavior up, someone is going to beat the shit out of you someday." I didn't give her words a second thought. By middle school I had grown out of that behavior anyways, and so it never really became an issue.

But I remember her words now, reading this.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-20T17:30:25+00:00

If you take out the queer theory aspect, this is basically a conversation about endonyms (names people apply to themselves) vs exonyms (names others apply to them).

For example: Deutschland is an endonym. Germany is an exonym.

Exonyms aren't defacto offensive, but they're often considered less respectful than endonyms.

We're talking about a specific subset of exonyms here: words that don't refer to a specific group of people, but refer to everyone except us. It's not about what someone is, it's about what someone is not. Maybe there's a term for such words, but I can't think of it right now, so I'm gonna call it a "complement" (as in set theory). Examples of such words include: "gentile" (not Jewish), "gadjo" (not Romani), "hearing" (not Deaf). Hearing people tend not to call themselves hearing, or think of themselves as hearing. But it is a relevant term for deaf people to use among themselves. Arguably, "straight" is such a word too—I don't think most straight people really think of themselves as such, but it can be a useful term for us.

I think the real difference between cis and those words is that "cis" isn't defined as "not trans". It's defined as "identifying with your real sex and its gender stereotypes" or whatever. If it just meant "not trans" I wouldn't mind much.

Would they still use it derogatory in jokes sometimes? Yes. But I'll be the first to admit I've made a few jokes about straight people in my time, and it was just a joke, I didn't actually mean it.

What really bothers me about cis is that they presume to know how we think or understand ourselves, and refuse to listen when we say "actually no one thinks like that."

HelloMomo · 2022-01-18T23:06:03+00:00

I think the main thing is to take a kid's proclamation of orientation the same way you might take a kid's proclamation of a crush. Not as entirely baseless, but also not as equivalent to what that same statement would mean coming from an adult.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-18T18:49:58+00:00

The concept of “deadnaming” and the need to scrub and re-write history is one of the most on-the-nose concepts pulled straight out of George Orwell’s 1984.

It brings to mind the photoshopped images in the Soviet Union where people have been deleted

HelloMomo · 2022-01-15T05:36:39+00:00

Broadly speaking, I think that because TRAs have been telling everyone "shut up, it's not that bad, get over it" for so long, I think everyone is primed to react to any defensiveness with anger and hostility. I get the anger, the sentiment of, "No! I'm right to be angry!" And it is righteous anger, more or less.

But somehow, people take the step from there to actively feeding the anger. For example, I think that being angry at the actions of TRAs is enough. But some people want to drum up their anger even further by attributing malicious intent to them. The TRAs are bad enough as they are. There's absolutely no need to extrapolate, or draw conjecture you have no real evidence for.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-15T05:08:47+00:00

Gay, Lesbian, and Bi are descriptors, not labels

god, yes. "What if we stopped using ~~labels~~(adjectives)?" Like, what if we just stopped using language to describe the world and talk about our experiences of it?

HelloMomo · 2022-01-14T05:43:49+00:00

For all that they rage against people categorically rejecting them for being trans, this is the alternative, isn't it? People who can sustain the idea that they might be attracted to them, they keep that open mind — until they're naked in the bedroom, and then they can't sustain that maybe anymore and change their minds.

If it were me, I'd rather be rejected up front. I think that to be lead on and then rejected at the 11th hour would hurt significantly more.

HelloMomo · 2022-01-11T21:14:41+00:00

If you're a teenager, who has no real identity to speak of, it's not surprising that kids latch onto this. When it's just a transient phase, I'm not sure it's even that personally harmful. Politically harmful, yes, but personally harmful? Going through cringey phases as a teenager is a normal development milestone.

But for this behavior and worldview to persist into adulthood is seriously worrying.

HelloMomo