non-binary Archives | Page 8 of 25 | Queer As Cat

Gender[queer], Japan[ese], Q&A, Queer[ness]

Q&A: “I’m planning to apply for the JET Programme and I’m not sure what I should do with the “gender” section…”

January 4, 2017 / No Comments

anonymous said: Hiya there, fellow Japanese-speaking asexual non-binary person! I’m planning to apply for the JET Programme in two years and I’m not sure what I should do with the “gender” section of the application. Should I select 女 (my DGAB) or is it possible to get an X in that section somehow? How did you approach this? Thanks in advance! hello, anon. 🙂 when i applied to JET i had no means of understanding my gender let alone communicating it to someone else, so i was still defaulting to my DGAB at the time. that was 10 years ago (unbelievable how time flies), but i imagine that that part of the application process hasn’t changed since then, unfortunately. speaking only for myself and what i’d probably do if i were to apply again today, i’d probably err on the side of caution and put my DGAB on the application…

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Vesper H.

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#2016BestNine: Last Minute Selfie Positivity

December 30, 2016 / No Comments

with only one day left in 2016, it’s time for the annual end-of-the-year stuff zzz… having had memory issues for forever, i’ve been journaling / archiving / etc stuff online since, well… 2002 when i created my livejournal account, i guess. New Year’s specific stuff started in 2007 with a questionnaire-type meme that i have done every year since to recap the outgoing year, followed years later by a year-end “photo dump” to summarize a year’s worth of photos in one place. this post is a more recent tradition courtesy of Instagram, but i don’t want to post this on IG, so here we are! again. while i feel like 2016 hasn’t been a overly bad year for me personally, i also feel like the past two months have been such that they overshadow whatever else i am able to recall of 2016… sigh. it’s nice to have photographic proof that…

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Vesper H.

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“”two genders””

December 30, 2016 / No Comments

it’s incredibly ironic (and by “ironic” i mean “funny as hell”) that the very same people who call non-binary people “special snowflakes” with the implication that we are attention seekers are the very same people who go out of their way to actively seek out people like me to send these random cries for attention to. sometimes i literally get essay-length messages that amount to nothing more than “LOOK AT ME! LISTEN TO ME! STROKE MY EGO BY ACKNOWLEDGING ME!” and like… it never ceases to amaze me how oblivious these people are to the irony of their actions.

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Vesper H.

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Q&A: “Can I be agender and maverique?”

December 29, 2016 / No Comments

anonymous said: Can I be agender and maverique? Like “I’m an agender maverique” is that a thing? I’m so confused halp. ;^; you are whatever you are, anon, and if that happens to be an agender maverique then you’re an agender maverique. it’s not a matter of something being a thing or not, it’s simply a matter of who you feel yourself to be. you know who you are and how you feel better than anyone else, so i encourage you to trust yourself no matter what others may say. your feelings of being agender and maverique are proof enough that yes, being an agender maverique is a thing because you are ‘a thing’. you exist and your feelings / experiences are valid, as are the words that you feel describes them best. having said that, you may find it encouraging to know that you would not be alone in being…

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Vesper H.

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hats. hats. hats.

December 26, 2016 / No Comments

queerascat: …you know you have a problem when 3 out of the 4 hats that you own are exactly the same hat in exactly the same colors (black / gray / white) just in different patterns / materials. to be fair, though, the latest (solid black) one was half the price of the others despite being the same brand and everything, so of course i’m going to buy it. i mean, solid black is my thing– if anything, you’d have thought it’d have been the first hat i’d have bought, right? hmph. ;( more random thoughts about hats because i’m exceptionally longwinded tonight, apparently. …is it odd that i only got into hats once my hair started falling into “wow, your hair’s long feminine!” category in people’s eyes? like, before that i never even really gave hats any thought. now it’s almost like i feel a need to wear a hat…

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Vesper H.

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Farewell, Saint Harridan. Thank you for everything.

December 17, 2016 / No Comments

Saint Harridan, an Oakland based clothing company born from a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 with the aim of creating clothing that helped masculine women and gender diverse people express their authentic selves, officially closes its doors for the last time today… in a tear-jerking farewell message, owner Mary Going shared the above video saying:e We hope that our contribution will lend itself to the next wave of the un-doing of the gender binary and the dismantling of the narrow boxes into which we have previously been crammed. We have been so very proud to reflect and serve this community. Collectively, we have all contributed to this revolutionary momentum. At Saint Harridan, we have had the privilege to hear your stories and share your life’s milestones: weddings, job interviews, college tours, proms, high school graduations and even burials. You showed up looking like you felt, dressed in a way that lent…

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Vesper H.

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aventuroj elŝrinkiĝante ktp esperante

December 17, 2016 / No Comments

back in October i was contacted by an esperantist from Madagascar who’d just come to my city for a year as part of a scholarship program. we arranged to meetup at a restaurant and ended up talking about random shit for literally 4 hours, which was great because it’d been a while since my not-that-social ass had talked to anyone in Esperanto offline, but damn. she is so talkative and i’m… not the most talkative person. anyway, i never intended to come out to her or anything, but i also had no intention of actively avoiding it either and yeah. how it ended up happening and how things have gone so far has been vaguely interesting, so commence word vomit. (ĉi tiu blogaĵo estas anglalingva, sed mi esperantigos ĝin se iu tion deziras.) that night when we’d met at the restaurant i randomly mentioned at some point that i had…

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Vesper H.

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めんどくささレベル5強

December 11, 2016 / 1 Comment

one of my least favorite things to do is attempt to explain in Japanese to a (usually LGB) cisgender Japanese person that: 1. no, セクシャリティー / “”sexuality”“ is not the same thing as gender. they usually get it once i explain it, but it’s still ugh because that inevitably spills over into: 2. no, オネエ / “onee” and / or ニューハーフ / “newhalf” is not synonymous with “transgender” and then when i use the word トランスジェンダー / lit. “transgender” from English– because i refuse to use any of the other Japanese words available– the person i’m talking to automatically thinks of ニューハーフ / “newhalf” (if i’m lucky) even when i’m not talking specifically about women who happen to be trans. i hate how bothトランスジェンダー / transgender and 性同一性障害者 / people with gender identity disorder– the most common way to refer to trans people in general– seemingly always make people think…

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Vesper H.

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Q&A: “…does anything else about how gender is discussed estrange you?”

December 6, 2016 / No Comments

anonymous said: Branching off of your Cis-Trans binary video, does anything else about how gender is discussed estrange you? For me, settling on quoigender hasn’t been a comfortable experience, as it doesn’t provide the luxury or comfort of certainty. Coupled with ableism, aro- and acephobia, being quoigender and thus “see, not a real girl(TM) after all” makes gender itself alienating. I can’t “celebrate my gender identity” when I not convinced that I even have one, and suggesting that I should is insulting. ( re: this video / blog post ) there’s quite a lot surrounding gender and how it’s often discussed that bothers and / or alienates me, including the assumption that everyone knows their gender or even has one at all. that said, as someone who does have a gender, knows what it is and is comfortable in it, i admit that i am privileged in that regard and thus am…

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Vesper H.

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on perpetual exhaustion

December 4, 2016 / 2 Comments

that feel when someone asks you how you are and you respond saying that you’re “tired”, knowing full well that they’ll take what you said differently from how you meant it. but that’s okay. because you’re fucking tired. you don’t have the energy to do anything about their understanding of the word anyway. hell, you yourself may not even know what kind of tired you are that day. are you depressed tired? are you anemic tired? are you queer tired? are you gaslighted tired? are you black tired? are you expat tired? are you anxious tired? are you one of the Many Other Kinds of tired? are you All Of The Above And More tired? ah yes, that’s right. you are a unique concoction of All The Above And More tired, further compounded upon by having to persevere through life as if you aren’t actually tired at all. when life…

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Vesper H.

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