Queers invade the White CisHet Male safe space

It was initially just an organic thing that happened without me trying, I found a couple of people to talk to and they introduced me to their favourites and it grew from there. I follow people in the furry community, leftists, and sex workers so it’s just way more likely that I’ll find queer people.

Once you got an initial seed of people it’s way easier because twitter will recommend you people. You may also notice the same people show up time and time again through retweets. It’s not a quick process but it works.

Also I added my twitter to my forum profile. Feel free to follow me if you think I’m interesting, I’m trashy though.

Okay I have an actual serious question as a (mostly) cis (mostly) het white guy that has been bouncing around my head for a while. While I identity -as- a man, I don’t often identity -with- most men. This has led me to in tabletop and other sorts of roleplay to predominantly have female characters. In media I am drawn more to female protagonists and in media with romantic themes I am more engaged by lesbian themes than straight e.g. I really love yuri manga. My problem is I am wondering if this is just low key fetishizing/objectifying/looking with a male gaze at the feminine and queer or if it’s just that I find those themes engaging despite being for the most part the opposite.

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I 100% relate and have wondered the same thing.

Speaking as someone pansexual and genderfluid, as long as you’re respectful to feminine spaces and queer people, and you listen and learn if you fuck up somehow, I don’t see the problem. If you’re roleplaying a woman in skimpy clothing and being subservient, then that’s probably fulfilling some male desires. Confer to someone with the right life experience to tell you whether you might be going astray.

When it comes to consuming content, if it’s made by queer/women creators then it’s harder to go wrong. Straight/male creators try but sometimes end up with weird fetishised/objectified stuff. If you haven’t lived as one of those groups it can be hard to tell what’s actually problematic or not. If in doubt, again someone with the relevant life experience can let you know about the authenticity.

I think really, you just don’t want to leech from queer and feminine culture while treating them like shit. If you want to play a woman but you think the wage gap is a myth, or you’re reading Yuri yet don’t support gay rights, that’s weird. Be respectful and it’ll lead you far.

Oh, and objectification isn’t always bad. I mean, if the Yuri you’re reading is particularly ero, that’s probably objectifying because it’s more about fulfilling those basic desires. I can’t quite put to words when it’s good or bad, but we’ve had decades of feminism and it turns out that porn can still be good despite how objectifying it is.

As is the case with these things, not everyone from marginalised groups is going to feel the same way as I expressed.

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Thank you for your openness Kate. Regardless of how safe you feel, I absolutely am glad you pushed yourself to write this, for yourself.

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Have you ever considered yourself a tomboy? It’s not really a gender and more of an aesthetic/lifestyle choice for women who aren’t comfortable with standard “feminine” attire.

I’m not sure why you feel you haven’t the right to consider yourself non-binary / gender fluid. Whatever those reasons are. You do seem to land somewhere on the genderqueer spectrum. Which may be enough to think of yourself as just that. Genderqueer.

There is a really cool podcast I’ve been listening to called Nancy. In one of their episodes, they interview Asia Kate Dillon who identifies as non-binary. I thought she explained the whole thing pretty well.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/nancy-podcast-asia-kate-dillon

http://www.wnyc.org/story/nancy-podcast-asia-kate-dillon/

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Someone on reddit accused me of setting a double standard in favor of my gender, and when I pointed that I’m male they said this so I guessed I’m queer now or something.

You have a female thought pattern. It doesn’t actually matter what gender you are, so long as you’re distinctly immasculine. As far as my arguments are concerned, I mean. Women can still be “your team” if you identify as an “ally” , apologist, feminist etc.

So I guess this is my last post in this thread.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think about my own gender pretty much at all. That is almost definitely a luxury of male privilege. The thing is, when I see people who strongly fit the stereotypical definition of “MEN”, I don’t feel like I am one of those. It is definitely a group that identifies in my brain as “other” to me. When I look at women, it’s even more other than men are. I just live my life without really mentally putting myself into any particular gender bucket. Of course, it’s easy to say this because my DNA and lifestyle are such that I suffer no gender discrimination whatsoever.

As far as sexuality is concerned I find people of all genders very attractive, or unattractive, as the case may be. I can see some men and recognize their hotness in my mind and heart as much as I can recognize the same hotness in women, or anyone else in-between or other. I also feel like I can form any kind of relationship with any human being of any classification. I can love anyone.

However, despite these feelings in my heart and mind, my penis seems to only be interested in vaginas and boobs and such. Even if I see a hot naked dude, and my brain is like “ooh hot!” my penis literally does not give a fuck. It has no interest in going anywhere near that. There’s not much I can do about that, and I don’t really have any interest in trying. It’s just how it is. I guess this just means I’m cis? OK, I guess.

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Being respectful is exactly what I am trying to do. As far as my RP characters, I have done a variety of characters but never a skimpily clad subservient, that’s definitely not my jam. As for content consumption, I have read and watched a variety of different things but I always found that the ones I liked best were ones with queer/women creators. I have seen exactly what you mean when a male creator attempts it and fails badly. And I am definitely not in the camp of being a hypocrite and consuming queer and feminine media while being misogynistic and bigoted. I will definitely keep in mind the advice to ask for someone with relevant experience.

(From, pls support)
https://twitter.com/riotcakes/status/911569339760988163!

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I definitely don’t think the gender (or whatever) of your roleplaying characters needs to have anything to do with you. I’ve been a GM for 25 years at this point, and I know some groups and some players are really into the roleplaying as some personal extension, and to each their own, but also it doesn’t have to be any more than “this is the character I felt like playing at the moment.” You “can” make it some big personal fantasy, but honestly it doesn’t have to be anything more than “this time I thought a female half-orc paladin would make this concept click for me.” Also sometimes the people that are so stuck in their own heads about “playing their character” miss the forest for the trees and violate rules of the table with other players or groups. Always keep in mind the objective, and at most tables the priority is going to be “having a fun time with my friends” at the top.

I am extremely surprised by this. I have always perceived you as absolutely womanly, though maybe that was an awesome pantomime (as you put it) in action. For what little it’s worth, if your pantomime is part of a fake-it-til-you-make-it type strategy, congrats, you made it.

Gaming, specially roleplaying, have a high degree of escapism. If I can be someone closer to what I would want to be, within the confides of the game, you’re damn right I will take that chance. Sure not everyone thinking from such a point of view and play, but as long as they don’t try to dictate what other players can’t or cannot do it’s fine. Because it’s not always just roleplaying.

And on that note:

I am so grateful that you wrote this entire post, it really means a lot to me that you put this down in words and posted it. Thank you. I identified a lot with what you described, so it really brought forth a lot of things I’ve kept buried for so long they’ve become near impossible to untangle.

I more or less remember it as an epiphany, the moment it “started,” although there was never a clear start. Idly replaying memories in my mind when it hit me that I would always always always remember myself as a girl, one that was both entirely me and not me at all. The person in my memories became a sort of avatar representing who I wanted to be. I remember the onset of puberty and feeling silent terror as the face in the mirror was becoming way more masculine than I wanted, farther from the person in my memories. As I grew up trying to fight my own expanding body I took refuge in any game with a character creator and 2000’s anime culture, with its (from an outsiders perspective) flamboyance which I took as an outlet for my more feminine behavior; but obviously that was eggshells all over, too many bombs dropped that were meant as harmless ribs but still dug their way home.

Everything boiled to a high point as I left for college and I tried to transition during my first year. Unfortunately, HRT would prove to be too risky and costly for me, so after too many long nights (lets skip over the drugs and alcohol that happened here) I abandoned the idea. It took all 6 years of university for me to be more at peace with my body, but even then I still feel like the uncomfortable rider of a vessel more so than the vessel itself. I truly am lucky that I can be who I want online, as the words I type are projected by a combination of a picture and a username that I have near full control over.

In a sense, my avatar has become more myself than my body is.

I’m glad queer culture has become so prevalent, giving me a place to be. Being cis passing, l will never be a part of the trans community. But I am not daft enough to not realize that there’s also an element of having privilege for it, and I hope I can use it to pull and help those who are much braver than I, when I can.

(I’ve been staring at this post for an hour now with the pretense of making edits, fuck it I’m posting it.)

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I feel like your self-description is roughly where I’m at right now, except that I’m still in the process of working a bunch of things out about myself so a lot is still up in the air for me. Overall, the only label I identify with to any particularly significant degree is “human”.

Having had a lot of trans women tell me they think I’m a woman, it has forced me to think about gender stuff.

I’m not quite at Scott’s level with it, though, so I wind up disagreeing with them. When someone refers to me as a male or uses he pronouns, I go “Yeah that’s me.” That part feels correct. When I look at my body I say “Yeah, this is my body like it’s supposed to be.” When someone says “And because you’re a man, you’re like this…” is when it breaks down for me. I totally get not identifying with other men. I act in a lot of ways people refer to as feminine. I do have many masculine traits as well, so I don’t feel strongly towards either stereotype. I tend to feel like I dislike being told that acting one way or another affects my gender, because I’ve never not felt like a boy. I was always teased and told that I should do one thing or another to be more of a boy…But I just never really cared and did my thing.

This is not to say that I dislike people who strongly identify with their gender stereotypes. Many trans people find it empowering to be very much like their gender, and that’s awesome. But that’s not my experience, and I don’t think that your personality is a for sure indicator of gender.

It’s so strange, I’m having conversations like this with my meatspace friends too. Much of what you say also rings true for me. Everyday, I have to crossdress, just like I have to brush my teeth. The name “no fun girl” is partly an oglaf reference, partly a jab at how people perceive me (taking me too seriously & as a “girl”).

Politically, I will identify as a woman because that’s too important right now, but that is different than personal. I find most femininity and everything maternal to be completely alien. There’s some expectation that I understand it or appreciate it, so I have this grimace that passes for a smile and some standard phrases I use. But it bewilders me when people try to connect with me on that level.

Kate, how do you feel about agender? What you describe to me sounds like you could be some form of genderfluid. Although maybe it depends on if you want to be a woman for you, or for everyone else. Like sonic said, you read as very womanly; I never had any idea it was performance.

Part of the reason I posted that certificate is that not feeling queer enough seems very common to the queer experience. Gender labels can feel too defined, and self volunteered gatekeepers can make it harder to pinpoint where society and gender roles end, and you begin. Or whether gender is a series of checkboxes (it is not imo). Genderqueer can be an umbrella in that way: you know something is up, but for a variety of reasons, you aren’t going to be more specific.

Man we are seriously queering this thread up :green_heart::green_heart::green_heart:

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Personally I don’t really “participate” much in society. I show up, I do my job, I go home, I do what I want.

My youngest brother has schizophrenia, which can be considered a “break from reality” kinda thing. Sometimes considered related, schizotypal PD is kinda a “break from reasoning”, like you see lots of non-sequiters and just bizarre logic and world views. I’m not diagnosed with anything, but I’d say I do fall squarely in the “schizoid” category which is more like split from society. But for it to be a personality disorder it would have to have some kind of negative effect on my life. So long as I can hold a job (easy enough) and I’m happy it’s not a “disorder”.

Nobody ever really says I’m feminine in any ways, nor masculine necessarily. I am assertive, and direct. Everywhere I go I get comments mostly related to my honesty and “authenticity.” Just yesterday a guy in my wow guild complimented me on how I cut through some social bullshit and just say things how they are. And, for me, it does feel good that people largely recognize me for my integrity and such.

But as such, I’m not really chasing after identities or titles. When I see a lot of these conversations where people are so worried these subjects I mostly feel like saying, “yes, and?” Which is part of a gaming philosophy, but also I think real-life applicable. So you want to identify as a robot, cool. Now let’s get on with things. More important shit to deal with. Yes, a bunch of society is dragging ass and prejudiced in myriad ways, but the more relaxed and fluid you are about it and the more you still persevere, the better.

When friends of mine come out as wanting to be the other gender, as one recently did, my reaction is pretty much “OK, but do you have your TPS reports done.”

On a related topic, with just how incredibly common the gender switching thing is becoming now, I’m surprised more people have not moved on to just dressing however they feel that day. Nothing wrong with dressing for the part you want to play that day. Reminds me of people that find cosplay lets them access certain social “armor” more or less. Do whatever is going to make things feel right. Fuck the rest of them. Personally I want to migrate my consciousness to my megaman-style chassis, but that’s not an option yet.

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I think we should refer to Felix dropping a bomb as him “using an racial epithet.”

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I think I watch too much Project Runway to be 100% cishet.

I make up for it with my enjoyment of tits, beer, and explosions.

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