this may be a gross over-generalization on my part, but generally speaking, there is a lot of silence when it comes to talking about questioning one's identity, changing it or anything else that...
One-third of my life. That's how much of my life I've lived outside of America. My so-called "home country."
the following post was written for the May 2018 Carnival of Aces on the subject of “Nuance & Complexity“. it may or may not be cleaned up and cross-posted to the YouTube channel Queer As Cat in the future. —— some feel that people in (English-speaking, anglophone) ace communities are “overthinking” things. that the amount of words and identities (also referred to as “microlabels”) which have been coined in such communities is not only “overdoing it,” but even potentially harmful. i’d hope that this would go without saying (but understand that it doesn’t), that i disagree with the former and vehemently reject the latter. regardless of whether i or you or that random person over there petting the stray cat that’s out in the street right now feel such terminology to be useful to us personally, the fact remains that others do and there is immense value in that.
so i finally got to see Black Panther again ( #WAKANDAFOREVER AHHHHHH–) and am now at a Starbucks basking in the afterglow of the movie, about to attempt to herd my thoughts into a more coherent cacophony of words than exists in my head at present. wish me luck.
note: this post has been ported over as-is from Tumblr for my own future reference. anonymous submitted: (i had a long question, so, i hope it’s ok to use submit instead of sending multiple asks.) as a disclaimer, i ask this as an ace person who usually just ids as queer ace or grey ace. i’m not asking to be combative or make anyone feel bad.
i’ve said this before on Tumblr, but it’s time to make it “official” on YouTube: i don’t identify as biromantic or panromantic anymore. in fact, i don’t identify as “-romantic” anything anymore. after years of quietly questioning my experience of so-called “romantic” attraction, all the while trying to navigate spaces which obviously didn’t have someone like me– someone who neither felt comfortable being assumed “[allo]romantic” nor “aromantic”– in mind, i finally opted to discard romantic orientations (for myself) all together. rather, i identify as a bi ace. as a pan ace. although if i’m being honest, more often than not as a queer ace or more simply as “queer”. but what exactly is the difference between “biromantic ace” and “bi ace”? after over a year of having identified as the latter, it seems to me that thanks to amatonormativity and the general normalization of romantic orientations in ace communities, people don’t see…
that feel when you finally have a use for relationship terminology, but none of it makes sense to you because all of it is predicated on the assumption that you subscribe to the dichotomy of “romantic” vs “[queer]platonic”– not to even mention the equally taxing concept that is “alterous”.
…so i took some photos while visiting Hitachi Seaside Park (Ibaraki, Japan) this past weekend and decided to plaster text all over them because i was feeling artsy fartsy and shit and if you reblog this post without this caption i will hunt you down and kancho you. 以上です。
anonymous said: This is probably a complex issue, so apologies in advance if I have to send multiple asks, but I’m white l, and recently I have been identifying as Maverique, it is the best way I’ve found to describe my gender and it sits very well for me, but I had someone who was a POC tell me it was appropriative of POC cultures and was basically just ‘white people taking it and making it okay to id as a third gender’ and, while I disagreed with them and it was very upsetting, (pt 1) I know it is not my place to argue with them over what is and isn’t cultural appropriation. I’m not really sure what to do, because they told me it would be racist of me to continue id’ing as maverique and that I should use neutrois or something similar instead, but neutral terms aren’t…
anonymous said: hey there! i just came across this blog, so im unsure where to look or search. how would a person go about separating gender identity and presentation? i personally when i first learned about feminism, i immediately understood no actions, feelings, way of dressing/presenting signified anything about gender. though it’s maybe left me a bit lost now (currently i recently started using the label neutrois lesbian, and only feeling “feminine” or “womanness” when i thought of my attraction to women)? hi anon, i feel like it’s worth pointing out that not everyone does view their gender as being separate or independent of how they present or express themself. and that’s okay. some people do feel like how they present / express themself is reflective of their gender or vice versa. there is a push now to draw a clear line between these two things, but not everyone feels…
