5 years and counting…
it just occurred to me (while porting over more old posts) that Queer As Cat, the YouTube channel, has been a thing for 5 years now as of May 11th. hmm……
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word vomit: escaping womanhood
time to word vomit a continuous stream of thoughts that have been going around in my head for a while now. will probably run with this more later. cw: slurs the binarist society(/ies) we live in fucks over everyone– be they trans or not– with its enforcement of binary gender roles, among other things. sometimes i’ll come across an article, blog post, whatever talking about this. to a point. sometimes it will be pointed out that how and to what extent society polices and enforces gender roles differs based on the assumed gender at birth of the person in question, among other things. that in American society, for example, people deemed to be females at birth are afforded a certain amount of leeway that people who are deemed to be male at birth are not.
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Huffpost: “When The World Doesn’t Know You Exist: Coming Out As Non-Binary”
Life would be easier if it came with a guidebook. If it did, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me 27 years to realise that I didn’t actually have to subscribe to society’s assertion that everyone is either male or female. At the very least, ripping the book to shreds in a fit of rage would have made for great stress relief. Then again, had there been such a book I probably wouldn’t have grown up to be the person that I am today and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Hello, my name’s Vesper. I’m a 31 year old non-binary person who’s here today to tell you that gender is a much more beautifully complex thing than society would have you believe. That some people, such as myself, are neither male nor female but a different gender(s) entirely […] the blog post that i wrote for Ditch The Label…
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“Gender is a Much More Beautifully Complex Thing Than Society Would Have You Believe”- Ditch the Label
Life would be easier if it came with a guidebook. If it did, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me 27 years to realize that I didn’t actually have to subscribe to society’s assertion that everyone is either male or female. At the very least, ripping the book to shreds in a fit of rage would have made for great stress relief. Then again, had there been such a book I probably wouldn’t have grown up to be the person that I am today and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Hello, my name’s Vesper. I’m a 31 year old non-binary person who’s here today to tell you that gender is a much more beautifully complex thing than society would have you believe. That some people, such as myself, are neither male nor female but a different gender(s) entirely. […] when @ditchthelabel, an international anti-bullying charity, approached me about writing…
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Feedback: “Thank you so much for your “let’s talk” post because these are things…”
anonymous said: Thank you so much for your “let’s talk” post because these are things I definitely have never thought about that way and you opened my eyes to that and I will try to keep all of it in mind. I also wanted to specifically thank you for writing it out in a post as well as having the youtube video because for me that’s a major accessibility thing and I never would have been able to comprehend it the same way by watching/listening to a video. (re: this post) no problem, anon! thank you for the feedback. 🙂 i’m trying to be more mindful of accessibility by adding captions to my videos (going to caption the latest video tonight or tomorrow), but at the same time i’m aware that even with captions a video can still be inaccessible or less accessible to people… plus some people just prefer…
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that time i did nothing: assumed consent & retraction thereof
content warning: non-graphic description of a questionable consent situation; non-graphic talk of sex, rape & trauma; self-gaslighting. this is the third and final post in a series of posts in which i’m writing about my personal experiences with sexual abuse / violence and consent issues. the first post on sexual abuse / violence can be found here. the second post on consent issues and asexuality can be found here. this post is about something that happened during a past relationship in which consent is / was questionable and the ramifications of it. consent. not a topic that i’m at all well informed about, but about which i’m writing a lot at the moment as i attempt to unpack and navigate things from my past that i have up until this point avoided doing. as i mentioned in my previous post, i’ve been in two long-term relationships spanning 9 years in total, 5…
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reflecting back on years of consent without information about asexuality
content warning: mentions of sex and abuse; talk of consent issues. this is the second of what has now become three posts that i’m writing about my personal experiences with sexual abuse / violence and consent issues, the first of which can be found here. this post focuses on how my ability to consent may or may not have been affected by not knowing about the existence of asexuality prior to consenting to sex in past relationships. even though there are those who insist that consent is as simple as “yes” or “no,” that there is no gray area involved– you either consented or you didn’t– for lots of people consent can be more complicated than that. in my time on Tumblr, various posts have come across my dashboard on the topic of consent and/or agency, specifically in the context of being asexual. sometimes when i read one of those posts, some…
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the trauma i never knew i had: navigating childhood trauma 29 years after the fact
content warning: explicit talk of childhood sexual abuse & religous trauma without going into detail; explicit mentions of acephobia, biphobia, homophobia this is one of two posts that i’m going to (hopefully) post on the topic of sexual abuse / violence and consent issues. this specific post is a submission to @resourcesforacesurvivors‘ series on Intersectional Ace Survivor Stories and pertains to navigating childhood trauma and religious family as a not-so-young-anymore black, non-binary, bi / pan asexual. while i have talked briefly about the topic of this post in a video, for the most part the experiences discussed in both posts are ones that i’m only just now sitting down and thinking about. please bear with me as i try to put things into words. i’ll be honest with you. i’m extremely hesitant about posting this or drawing any kind of connection between myself and sexual abuse. why? well, for one, my online…
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…limitations of intersectionality
…so earlier today i was interviewed for an upcoming podcast for queer people of color. it was great! i spilled my guts all over the place in a rather embarrassing way and it’ll be available for your amusement in the near future! but now i feel a need to unload some disjointed, messy feels about intersectionality. tl;dr: it’d be nice if intersectionality could happen on more than just two (occasionally three) axes at a time, but that’s unlikely to ever happen.
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non-binary gender norms & (a)sexuality: yeah, no.
the following post was originally a vlog that was submitted for the March 2016 Carnival of Aces based on the theme “Gender Norms and Asexuality.” check out The Asexual Agenda’s Carnival of Aces Masterpost for more information. a lot of people feel like there is a connection between one’s gender and sexuality, be it in the form of gender roles, “gender presentation”, sexual attraction (or lack thereof) et cetera ad infinitum. having said that, i’m not going to lie… i really don’t get it.
