LGBTAitp 27: Of Shoes, and Ships, and Sealing Wax

[Arachu]

*Also hugs Lixie~*

On FB: I just keep a sort of... Phantom account? That's probably a misnomer, but it sounds neat so I'm keeping it.

Anyway, I just use my real first name (read: my chosen one :P), a made-up last name and absolutely no personal information whatsoever aside from stuff I have no choice but to have (and those are neither public nor even slightly detailed). There's one picture of me, but it's... Very unlikely that anyone I know would find it, especially considering how vague my location is and my avoidance of friending family members (the ones I tell totally understand).

Hello, all.

I'm the queer part of the alphabet soup. Even though I've known I have a nonstandard gender for a number of years now, I'm not real sure how to go about processing it.

Despite being an active internet-goer, I'm not really a part of any of the 'net support groups. I find it hard to get comfortable in them. It seems like people either push for you to identify (which I'm not keen on), or they're so sure in themselves that coming in as someone who's still working it all out is daunting.

So, I figured I'd come here, since I'm already comfortable on GitP. Um, yeah. Hi.

Hi~ *Welcomehugs*

It's not censorship. Allowing only one group of people to use a certain word is censorship. It is inherently disallowing any other group those words.

No, I'm talking about equal consequence. The word "tranny" offends me. It doesn't matter if the person saying it is trans and I appear not to be. I will ask politely not to throw it around. I will then tell them to stop. And then, if they continue to spite me and I'm in a bad mood I will act on it. It doesn't matter what the word is or who says it. Asking for special dispensation because you're gay/straight/black/white/trans/Cis/curious/religious/agnostic is fine, because it's a request. People are allowed to make requests. Creating a price large for yourself and forcing it on other people is not fine. Even If that privilege is being able to refer to yourself via slurs by changing the 'Eric' at the end to an 'a'.

Good point... *Hugs*

As a momentary break from 80% of the thread worshipping Lix like a god, I came out to my dad today.

It actually went extremely well. I can't go into detail about what was said because of board rules concerning certain things, but he took it extremely well.

Yay~ ^_^

I see now that while I didn't miss out on any greetings, I forgot to comment on the whole "men can't control their urges"-topic. I was going to do it now but I got distracted by other things while writing this and it's late now. >.>

Gah, there are so many reasons I hate that stereotype. *Hugs*

Just a story about stereotypes I thought was worth sharing since I haven't chimed in, in a while.

In my last year of high school there was one girl who I didn't know at all of sudden she became really friendly, and started to make conversation etc.

Later on that year she admitted she had heard from someone that I was gay, and was just trying to become friends so we could go on shopping trips together.

Oh the power of stereotypes. *Facepalm*

I tend to get similar assumptions when I come out as trans... I mean, I'm totally into makeup and dresses but I know nothing of fashion! Also, it's pretty assumptive.

*Hugs*

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Is it wrong that I think the rape focus lets entirely too many people off the hook here?

Let's reiterate what happened without the emotive shock word. A student was violently assaulted, developed PTSD, and when they finally sought help, was abused more by the supposed support services than they were by the initial attacker.

This isn't meant to trivialize the initial rape. (Like I said, violent assault and PTSD are pretty nontrivial, with the sex part being the icing on a turd cake.) But focusing on the "rape is bad" part overlooks the part where support systems in general are a mess that needs to be overhauled.

Because honestly, what we need more than medieval punishments for rapists and a lot of hand wringing is to make sure that there are solid support structures in place to help the victims recover their equilibrium. It's a conspicuously absent point from most discussions on the topic.

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Indeed. It's seriously messed-up how obsessed most cultures are with punishment. Like that somehow fixes the wrong or at least diminishes it (while also never being excessive or unnecessary)... Sometimes I wonder how common it would be if more people understood consent properly, if the energy directed and telling people not to rape were used to tell them how not to. Not to say that would stop it all, admittedly. :/

I've come out to seven girls so far aside from my sister (most of my friends are guys, surprise surprise), and without exception their first reaction (after the usual battery of "how did you know" etc. questions) was "So...you want to go shopping sometime?"

My standard answer to this was to raise one eyebrow, spread my arms out to draw attention to my outfit (funny geeky T-shirt, cargo shorts with pockets full of stuff, plain white crew socks, and sneakers) and respond, "Would you really want to go shopping with someone who considers this to be the height of fashion?" They generally got the hint.

I used to take my sister and her friends shopping before she or they had a car, by which I mean I would drive them to the mall and read in the bookstore until they were done 6+ hours later, and started not-so-subtly bugging me to allow her to update my wardrobe at an early age. After I came out to her, mentioned the above reactions, and said with a completely straight face "And it's true, you know, all gays love shopping. Does this Saturday work for you?" she burst out laughing for a good five minutes or so and had intermittent fits of the giggles for the rest of the day.

I've heard of Queer Eye but I've never actually seen it, so I don't know anything about the Fab 5 except for a few impressions of them by comedians. That does remind me of another anecdote, though: I was talking with my roommates one weekend last year after I'd come out, and the subject of one roommate's girlfriend toiletries came up while we were cleaning the house. We had limited shower space, and one of my roommates (roommate 1) was complaining that the other roommate (roommate 2)'s girlfriend always left her stuff in the shower between visits and took up too much space.

After a bit of evasive mumbling, roommate 2 admitted that they were his toiletries, not his girlfriend's, at which point he got some ribbing for using "girly" products and roommate 1 said "Wait. So you're telling me we have one guy living here who's gay...and we have one guy living here who uses Ocean Breeze shampoo, Strawberry Cream conditioner, floral soap, a moisturizing skin cream, and like three kinds of loofah...and they're not the same person!? Come on, [Dice], you're letting your team down!" I promised I'd ask roommate 2 for tips sometime, then went over to the whiteboard we used for to-do lists and scheduling and wrote down "Saturday afternoon, time TBD: Episode #1, Straight Eye for the Queer Guy." Much amusement was had by all.

A few hours later our friends from next door came over to join us for dinner, and one of them (a very ~fabulous~ bi guy) saw the writing on the board and asked about it. I explained the context, he said "Oh please, [roommate 2] has no taste at all, don't listen to a thing he tells you!" and he went over and underneath the first message wrote "Saturday afternoon, ASAP: Episode #1, Queer Eye for the Queer Guy." He then joked that for the sake of completeness we needed a session of Straight Eye for the Straight Guy, so roommate 2 came out of the kitchen, looked around, gave everyone a thumbs-up and said "Yep, y'all are fine," and went back to cooking dinner.

Hehe~ X3

Welp, I seem to be on my way back towards male. Mixed feelings - I'm going home this weekend and next, so not feeling awkward being male will be useful, OTOH I was kinda hoping to let my family see me in girl mode for the first time.

*Hugs and also wishes you luck~*

I've met a gay man who looked through clothing catalogues suing his breaks a work. Due to something unrelated I asked if he was gay, and his response was "duh, why did you think I liked fashion?" so even some gay men believe it.

Sure he wasn't being silly?


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In other news, my mom smelled my nail polish the other day. She never uses it, though, so I was able to play dumb. That did make her a little... Twitchy, though (yesterday she smelled something that I couldn't and accused me of doing drugs, shortly before asking me if I was growing my nails out to be "a Dracula" (note that I've grown them out since I was in grade school, I just wasn't able to take good enough care of them to get them this long until somewhat recently)). o.O


~Bianca