Man it really, really fucking sucks being nonbinary right now.

Thanks for illustrating exactly what I'm talking about. There's this massive fucking wave of hate coming from every fucking direction at the moment. Regular ass cis people who haven't ever met anyone nonbinary are cracking these infantilizing snowflake-ass jokes like you just busted out. Shit about "sock" not being able to do the dishes. Painting nonbinary folks as weak, immature, hysterical whelps. Other trans people memetically degendering nonbinary folks left and right, straight up insulting people to their faces and insisting there isn't anything derogatory about it at all. Right wingers spreading incredibly violent rhetoric of a tone unique to targeting the very idea of "nonbinary" and it just flies under the radar because nobody cares but nonbinary folks. It's fucking exhausting. Our civilization is descending into a period of fascistic darkness, and even those in our community are turning against us without consideration.

This is addressed to the commenter, not to OP: Jesus fucking christ.

“Everyone in this demographic are lazy liars” do you hear yourself. (This is the conventional meaning of the dishes joke: The subject of the joke is a hypothetical nonbinary everyman who is pretending that doing the dishes is a demand of excess spoons / emotional labor / other abuses of therapyspeak. The other version of the joke is “Everyone in this demographic is mentally ill / disabled / neurodivergent” (false) (do you hear yourself) “and that is grounds for my behavior toward them” (false) (do you hear yourself))

The nonbinary people in your life are in (varying degrees of) goddamn danger right now. A demographic that isn’t in danger also shouldn’t be declared lazy / mentally ill / whatever! This is anti-bigotry 101. Shut Your Goddamn Mouth Next Time.

Cis people attempting to allies, you may have once thought this is the kind of good natured trans joke that cis allies get to make — you MAY have trans friends who do like these jokes and encourage you on them. Read the above again, understand what the jokes are. And then SHUT. YOUR MOUTH. And open it again next time someone says this to tell them to shut theirs.

Because oh my god, nonbinary people are in that same situation aspec/arospec people are often in wherein even asking not to be stereotyped negatively is seen as a confirmation of sensitivity and cringe.

I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

@kisstheashes

Oh don't worry, I didn't make it out of Evangelical Purity Culture thinking that girls had it peachy or anything. Our experiences are different, but both bad.

I have seen a lot of content about E.P.C. that very firmly centers the ways that purity culture dovetails with rape culture, the ways that women and women's bodies were held responsible for the actions of men, and the ways that their own sexuality was erased under the burden of being cast as the pure, moral, oppositional force to the depredations of male sexuality. This is in no way meant to diminish that.

It is meant to focus on a part of this dynamic I don't see commented on nearly as much though. In purity culture, men are perpetrators. A good man doesn't radiate goodness, it's more that he's managed to contain the inherently evil toxicity that is his sexuality and hasn't let it harm everyone around him as it naturally will if unchecked. When I look for other stories like mine, I already see stories by and for women, and a lot of them... haven't really challenged those core assumptions about men. Which means that I can't really find comfort and solidarity there.

The narrative I've run into a fair bit is "I was taught women were responsible for managing men's horrible, evil sexuality, but I've learned that we're not. Men are responsible for managing their own horrible, evil sexuality." I very rarely run into specific positivity for masculine sexuality when I'm in circles discussing purity culture, because frankly, there are plenty of people who feel that masculine sexuality isn't stigmatized enough.

So yeah. I was specific about gender for a reason. Not because I don't understand other people's positions, but because while I do, I don't see so much stuff addressing my specific situation. So I figured I'd make some of the positivity I myself need.

In short: Not dismissing the harm done to women by Evangelical Purity Culture, this one was just more about my experience as a dude.

This is a really important thing to talk about, and I'm going to add that this is a significant way in which TERFism and its attendant dogwhistles dovetail with Evangelical purity culture, ie: the idea that evil bad predatory behaviour is stored in the penis. TERFy fearmongering about trans women being fundamentally dangerous derives from exactly the same toxic, fucked-up view of male sexuality - and of male existence - espoused by Evangelism: that all men are biologically predisposed to predation, violence and other sexual evils, such that they can't ever really be trusted.

It's a difficult thing to talk about, because demonstrably, gender-based violence directed against women by men is a widespread problem! But it doesn't follow that a majority of men are bad by default; rather, it's that many have been trained to entitlement and bad behaviour by patriarchal systems and misogynist ways of thinking, which are both things we have the power to change.

Attemping to affect this change and bring about equality is the core conceit of feminism, and we can see, very demonstrably, that it works. So if you fall into the gender-essentialist trap of believing that men are bad fundamentally, whether because of Evil Biology or Original Sin, then you're not only saying that the long-term goal of feminism is impossible; you're functionally agreeing with every disgusting, sexist rape-apologist who brushes off assault and misogyny as "boys will be boys" and "men are just like that." You cannot hope to hold bad men accountable for their actions without acknowledging the existence of good men; that their misdeeds aren't synonymous with their masculinity, but are rather choices they specifically have made.

So while it's crucial to call out the ways in which women suffer from sexism and gender-based systems of violence and to name the misogyny inherent in their perpetuation, it's also important to show how these systems are unnatural: that, rather than representing some default state of cruelty to which all men naturally revert, misogyny is instead taught - and that the teaching itself, while offering contextual authority to men, can also be harmful to them.

I haven't been able to get this off my mind, even though I left my job years ago. As a queer woman, I got hired by a Christian organization to provide mental health counselling to a largely-Christian population. I thought I was there to help other LGBTQ+ people, but I also saw clients with other needs and concerns

and the straight cis men who were ashamed of their own desires haunt me

They bought wholeheartedly into the ideas that their sexual desires were inherently sinful and predatory and destined to doom their lives if they slipped up, in a way that forcibly reminded me of when I was trying to be a good Catholic girl and knew that the soft animal of my body absolutely could not be made to run in the correct direction of the treadmill my faith was yoked to

More than once I had to back up any specific discussion and just ask, "According to your conscience and faith, what would a healthy married relationship look like when it comes to sex? How would this desire factor into it?" Because it's totally an enormous question, but it also often produced the facial equivalent to a computer blue screen of death, because they'd been told so often that male desire was ontologically incompatible with a healthy marriage, except also, they were supposed to want sex so much they'd destroy their own marriages over it???

I have feminism and queer culture and Chappell Roan telling me that my desire is good and okay, and I'm slowly getting less ashamed about it. And I just can't help thinking: What about men? How sad would it be to be told your sexuality is inherently aggressive and predatory and exploitative? How do you feel like you're bringing something valuable to a relationship that way?

It's unfair and absolute crap.

two souls don't just meet by accident.

autumn road