Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
I’m all for going about queerness with the goal of not being able to be understood by outsiders but like. you’ve GOT to be normal about aro & ace people if you do. you can’t go on about being confusing to cishets for fun and then complain about ace & aro people who go about sex and romance and attraction in ways that don’t make sense to you.
supporting queerness that confuses others should include queerness that confuses YOU too even if you’re queer yourself.
i had a meet n greet with the anaesthesiologist for my top surgery and he said it’s his favourite procedure to work on because everyone who wants it is just so truly happy to be there, and i can’t stop thinking about this career that is 99% attending to various sadnesses miseries and woes and 1% having funny little dudes in dangerfield buttonups throwing themselves on the operating table like YEEHAW LET’S GOOOO
i don’t normally add to people’s posts, but i’m an OR nurse who specializes in gender affirming surgery, and this is totally correct. when we bring the patient into the OR we always ask them what surgery they’re having (to make sure there are no oopsies) and more often than not, my top surgery patients will say “YOU’RE CUTTIN’ THESE BITCHES OFF” or “YOU’RE GONNA YEET THE TEATS” and i know i have the best job in the world.
thank you for the support, big dick wizard
don’t worry, @most-serene-froge, i do phalloplasty and mastectomies and breast augs and metoidioplasties and vaginoplasties and scrotoplasties, so i am in fact the big dick wizard in addition to the big titty wizard, the little dick wizard, the no titty wizard, and the phat nuts wizard.
anyway as a trans man with a horribly transphobic family, i owe everything i know about masculinity and being a man to queer women. the trans girl i dated in high school teaching me how to shave my face because my dad wouldn’t. to my butch friend giving me fashion tips and ways to look and act more masculine to ways to flirt with women without making them feel uncomfortable. to the queer women who helped me advocate for my name and pronouns in high school and college. to swapping clothing with a different trans woman friend in college. i wouldn’t be the man i am today without the queer women in my life so happy pride to queer women ily MWAH
Several of my friends who previously self-identified as bi are realizing they’ve lost interest in men, generally speaking
A friend of mine who’s identified as a lesbian her whole life fell in love with a very sweet and shy man
I lost interest in men a few years ago, fell in love with a non-binary person, and now I give them their T shots
Life and love are unpredictable
And “queer” is a great word that all of us like and self-identify with (along with our other, more specific labels), and I love that no matter what else happens, we’re still, always queer
i don’t mean this as a joke. i mean this as an expression of what queer means to me. this is the core of it: love, but radically. love, but in defiance. and i don’t mean “love is love” either; i mean love like militant solidarity between queer women and queer men and all other iterations and permutations of both and neither and something else. i mean love like trans self love. like decolonizing gender. i mean love like found families, like vows beyond and intentionally distinct from marriage. i mean love is a riot. i mean a love that transcends hunger. i mean love like disruption, like breaking concrete foundations like frost and thaw because to live otherwise is unthinkable or unlivable or simply and plainly unwanted
i mean queer like a shot-glass or a sledgehammer. something that shatters borders, that tears down walls and does not, cannot build them. i mean genderqueer queerplatonic we’re here we’re queer qpoc queer theory queer liberation queer Queer QUEER
They said it in the Queer Nation manifesto in 1990:
An army of lovers cannot lose.
how do i do that if i’m not a loud person though? people say to get angry about it, but I can’t do anger as a motivation
I’m a quiet queer with my quiet identity that’s definitely weird and out of place and yeah, I was punished by my peers like everyone else, but instead of fists I got a wall of backs and if I tried to fight back, I got in trouble for initiating fights. so I stayed quiet because it was easier than being ignored. if you don’t say anything, you can pretend that they aren’t talking to you because you aren’t saying anything, not because they hate you
how do i do militant solidarity without anger. how do I do disruption without being loud. it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that it goes against the very core of what it means to be me. and even if I tried, i literally cannot hold on to anger. it doesn’t work
You love people.
You love and accept the people that you see who seem vulnerable or different. You send memes and cat pictures to friends who are having a tough time with the Discourse. You encourage artists or writers or anyone else who’s finding ways to express who they are, what their queerness is. You find small ways to share who you are, and practice showing them to people. You practice not closing yourself up like a flower if someone wants to see you. By very small acts we define ourselves, let ourselves be seen, see others, and validate who they are.
Buy a drink at a gay bar. Take a book on LGBTQ+ history out of the library. Reblog an inclusionary post. Honk when you drive past a picket line. Smile at someone on the bus who has a rainbow pin. Bring a box of donuts to protesters at a rally. You don’t have to be in the middle of the fight to contribute to it.
Silence is an even more powerful tool against us than violence is, because we have a chance to win a violent confrontation. But silence chills us, like a blank Arctic landscape, and it takes incredible amounts of hope and courage to begin defining ourselves in its face.
Don’t focus on the backs turned away. Focus on the other people who are marginalized, and begin building communities with them, of love. We will know we are winning when our queerness brings us love and belonging instead of silence and isolation.
queer as in fuck you. queer as in i have always been here and i am not going away. queer as in community unity. queer as in i will not be made compliant. queer as in revolutionary acceptance. queer as in uncompromising pride. queer as in fuck you.
