I feel like everyone on tumblr needs a reminder that people’s gender and sexuality labels actually have like. Literally nothing to do with you whatsoever - and are almost solely for them, and them alone.

Like…. Not a single one of my labels I identify with is for anybody except me. They are all for me, to help me explain and understand my own presentation and attraction and relationship with gender and sexuality. They have nothing to do with anyone else.

And I’m only saying this because I saw a post earlier that was like, “If I was talking to someone transfem and they told me they were AFAB I would feel so hurt and betrayed”

Like ok but that has nothing to do with you. Their labels and presentation are not for you, they’re for themselves. And I honestly see this in a lot of queer discourse - where the biggest issue isn’t the label itself but is actually other, completely random strangers, feeling “betrayed” or “hurt” or “attacked” by somebody else’s presentation.

So this is your reminder that other people’s labels are not for you. They have nothing to do with you. You are a complete stranger and if someone else presenting with the same or a similar label as you, without sharing your exact experience, makes you feel betrayed - you need to go unpack why you feel so entitled to the personal experiences of strangers.

Nobody has to explain their label to you. Nobody has to explain why they relate to their label to you. And frankly it’s presumptuous as fuck to assume you know somebody’s relationship to their gender and sexuality better than they do.

“But why would you even WANT to identify as transfem if you’re AFAB?!”

Doesn’t matter, none of your business.

“How can you even BE a lesbian if you’re bi?!”

Doesn’t matter, none of your business

“Why would you wanna call yourself pansexual when we already have a term for being attracted to multiple genders?”

Doesn’t matter, none of your business.

I’m not sorry, none of this is any of your business.

People choose their labels based on a lot of things - their lived experiences, the history of the label and how they relate to it, the community around the label and how they relate to that.

And you can either welcome those people with open arms into your community, feeling overjoyed they found a place they feel like they could be accepted in. Or you can shun and ostracize and publicly mock them for having the audacity to seek a place where they feel welcome and understood.

But you can’t sit there and make assumptions about people, and then say you feel betrayed - when you’re the one making assumptions. You don’t get that right.

I feel like everyone on tumblr needs a reminder that people’s gender and sexuality labels actually have like. Literally nothing to do with you whatsoever - and are almost solely for them, and them alone.

Like…. Not a single one of my labels I identify with is for anybody except me. They are all for me, to help me explain and understand my own presentation and attraction and relationship with gender and sexuality. They have nothing to do with anyone else.

And I’m only saying this because I saw a post earlier that was like, “If I was talking to someone transfem and they told me they were AFAB I would feel so hurt and betrayed”

Like ok but that has nothing to do with you. Their labels and presentation are not for you, they’re for themselves. And I honestly see this in a lot of queer discourse - where the biggest issue isn’t the label itself but is actually other, completely random strangers, feeling “betrayed” or “hurt” or “attacked” by somebody else’s presentation.

So this is your reminder that other people’s labels are not for you. They have nothing to do with you. You are a complete stranger and if someone else presenting with the same or a similar label as you, without sharing your exact experience, makes you feel betrayed - you need to go unpack why you feel so entitled to the personal experiences of strangers.

Nobody has to explain their label to you. Nobody has to explain why they relate to their label to you. And frankly it’s presumptuous as fuck to assume you know somebody’s relationship to their gender and sexuality better than they do.

QUEER LABELS VALIDITY & REQUIREMENTS MASTERPOST

have you ever wondered "is it okay for me to call myself this label?" "can i identify as [this] if im also [that]?" "is this identity valid?" or various similar sentiments?

well look no further! this post is compiling a list of specifications for different identities along with why you can or cant use certain labels along with other ones, so youll be able to make an informed decision on choosing your labels! (and not call yourself something thats very problematic and harmful to other queers)

i love you weird queers. i love you neopronouns. i love you microlabels. i love you labels people deem confusing/contradictory. i love you label hoarders. i love you kinky asexuals. i care you loveless folks. i love you queerplatonic relationships. i love you attractions outside of just romantic and sexual. i love you vastness of the queer experience.

i love you queers who are unabashedly yourself no matter how strange people may find your identity, and embrace deconstructing the norm and supposed rules of identities.

happy pride to the weird queers <3 we are awesome as hell and i love how interesting and unique we and our identities all are

(mspec: short for multi-spectrum attraction, umbrella term for any sexualities for 2+ genders)

♡ also happy mspec lesbian visibility/awareness week!!! 🌙🌙🌸

love how many gay men and lesbians fucked around sexually with each other and wrote about it in history. what curiosity. what generosity. what magnificent exploratory spirit.

I mean good for them I guess but I see this kind of thing a lot and just want to say, why is it so hard to accept that there are some people for whom the words “gay” and “lesbian” mark an absolute boundary—a boundary that, in a heterosexist world, is constantly under siege—and that those people want a word to describe themselves that describes that absolute boundary?

Why is it so hard to accept that if that boundary is not absolute for you, you might be bisexual and not gay, because for some people, there is no fluidity or curiosity whatsoever? Isn’t it important that those people, who are vulnerable to social pressure that is intolerable to them, have a word that means “absolutely not”?

"Absolutely not" already means "absolutely not." If you need just one word, "no" is right there. "I don't date men and stop telling me I should" perfectly communicates your meaning to anyone bothering you about it. The problem isn't that other people don't understand your boundaries, it's that they don't respect them.

You think the solution to people not respecting your boundaries is to find a way to clarify that you--unlike other women--won't respond to social pressure to be with any men so they might as well not even try to apply that pressure. That makes you a traitor to other women (gay, straight, and bisexual), whose boundaries against men--generally or as individuals--you're positioning as possibly open to social pressure, not absolute "no"s, because they could change their minds or have exceptions if you just push hard enough, so there's no reason to give up immediately when they say no. And it makes you a fool, because as long as it's ok to apply social pressure against women's stated boundaries and desires for all but a small ("gay") group of women, it will always be convenient to question a woman's belonging in that group and find some reason to disbelieve her. So it's not even guaranteed to get you the respect you're looking for. Anyone who wants to pressure you to be with men can just question whether you personally fit the designation "gay," just as you're questioning it in others.

Anyway, I absolutely won't help you uphold any boundary between women who "can" and "can't" tolerate social pressure on their sexualities.

[saw something dumb on twitter] [is annoyed by LGBT+ identity discourse again] [is tempted by the devilish darkness to make a post about it]

If you center the entire lesbian identity on "nonmen loving nonmen", you kinda paradoxically have to define what a man even is. And as you might guess from the wave of anti-trans legislation sweeping several governments, this is both a question that's very easy to politicize, and also difficult to coherently answer.

So like, let's assume we take the gender-identity respecting, broadminded answer of "a man is someone who in good faith identifies as such".

For one thing, it's odd that we're applying this broad idea of self-identification to the idea of "man", but not the idea of "lesbian".

(Almost like these two ideas don't quite go together and people who promote the "nonman" idea might perhaps have a different idea of how to define gender as it relates to a rigid sexual binary...)

But for another thing, using this definition of "man" to create the opposite in "nonman" used in our definition of "lesbian"? It's kind of a mess with shoddy reasoning and ample edge cases.

Like, often people pushing the nonman definition will acknowledge that several transmasculine identities can be included in lesbian attraction, so long as everyone involved (the lesbian and transmasc both) are okay with labeling their feelings thus --

(Again, rather odd that this openness shows up here, but draws the line at the mere concept of men, almost as if this definition is at best a retread of lesbian separatism, and at worst, outright TERF rhetoric coached in enough plausible deniability that even people who believe transgender people exist are getting fooled into using it).

-- but sure, good for them, respect for nonbinary identities.

But like, how do we separate "transmasc identity" from "man". We've got overlapping, fuzzy concepts here, and this is supposed to be a formal definition.

I've seen at least one person who tried to word this distinction as the idea that lesbian attraction does not include people who are "in any way men".

I'm not sure this actually solves the confusion here, but it did lead me to realize a huge edge-case in this definition.

Imagine a genderfluid person, who on some days, considers themselves a man, and on others days considers themselves a woman. That's a fairly vanilla, platonic ideal of genderfluidity, I feel.

But you see the problem, right?

Either this person can only be a lesbian on certain days, or the fact that they're sometimes a man means they cannot be a lesbian at all. Either solution here is completely absurd. And the latter may be outright bigoted.

(Also, I invite you to think where you've heard the kind of gender framework where manhood is inherently corruptive, that sits like a stain on you even if you move away from being a man.

I'm not being subtle about this: this whole definition of lesbianism originates in transphobic movements).

If you've followed my chain of logic this far, your response to the genderfluid example might be that the answer should be between the two absurd conclusions. That it depends on the individuals involved, and their boundaries. Just like the transmasculine identities, some people would include this in their lesbianism, and some wouldn't.

And, uh, yes, that's exactly correct.

But that solution is also kind of antithetical to prescriptively defining lesbianism as something that has to be a certain way, rather than a broad category of things it often is.

Either you accept that things like "man", "transmasculine", or "nonbinary" are broad, vague categories that depend heavily on personal experience and expression.

Or you don't, and start echoing gender essentialist talking points.

mpsec lesbian symbols: sprite edition!

two alternate versions for the pixelated gradient! in order its mspec lesbian, bi lesbian, pan lesbian, poly lesbian, and omni lesbian! these are all 10 times the size of the normal sprites, so they show up more clear in post format.

feel free to use! 🌙🌙🌸 just dont claim u made them or anything of course lol

and here is all of them in their original size! (each sprite is 25x25 pixels)

i love you weird queers. i love you neopronouns. i love you microlabels. i love you labels people deem confusing/contradictory. i love you label hoarders. i love you kinky asexuals. i care you loveless folks. i love you queerplatonic relationships. i love you attractions outside of just romantic and sexual. i love you vastness of the queer experience.

i love you queers who are unabashedly yourself no matter how strange people may find your identity, and embrace deconstructing the norm and supposed rules of identities.