xkcd

by **Bassoon** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:56 am UTC

I had my first major panic attack ever tonight and I've decided that I have to tell my family that I'm gay. I think I might be depressed, or manic-depressive, or something of the sort, and I can't continue on how I've been going for much longer without some serious issues popping up. I'm just so fucking scared.

fuck pagetoppers.

by **felltir** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:10 am UTC

I'm fed up of my "friends" mocking me for liking girls. I used to identify as gay. I now like people who aren't male. So?

Spoiler:

by **PM 2Ring** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:21 am UTC

felltir wrote:I'm fed up of my "friends" mocking me for liking girls. I used to identify as gay. I now like people who aren't male. So?

* hugs *

Sadly, not being straight doesn't stop some people from being closed-minded or opinionated. Sorry I don't have any constructive suggestions. I used to try and reason with such people, trying to promote solidarity and unity through diversity, etc; these days I just minimize my contact with them.

by **Amie** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:10 am UTC

felltir wrote:I'm fed up of my "friends" mocking me for liking girls. I used to identify as gay. I now like people who aren't male. So?

Spoiler:
Sending me messages saying "you're so fucking straight" and "I'm pretty disappointed you stopped playing for the exciting team" is so not okay

What the absolute fuck? *hugs* to you. Tell them to get fucked. One of the things that I hate the most is when people from within the community are non-supportive of each other for stupid reasons.

by **sambot5** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:25 pm UTC

[deleted for IRL safety reasons]

by **Jessica** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:37 pm UTC

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/properly-supressing-your-gender-dysphoria/

I am sorry for saying those things, felltir. I was really just joking when I implied you "switched sides".

Spoiler'd problematic statements.

Spoiler:

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:47 pm UTC

Jessica wrote:Though, I am sad when someone who identified as gay/lesbian/trans stop identifying as such.

Why? That's exactly the same as saying "I am sad when someone who identifies as straight stops identifying as such". Which is very offensive and unacceptable.
It's entirely down to that person and how they feel. Why should your views matter?

It's almost as if you feel that a part of being gay/lesbian/trans is a rebellious thing and turning your back on that side of yourself is being done because it's what society expects of you. I'm sure that's not the case with Felltir, but it's how what you just posted sounds...

by **Jessica** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:00 pm UTC

My views don't matter. Doesn't change my feelings. I'm simply stating my emotional reaction, not as a reason, not as a "you should too" but as a means to be true to my emotions. I can't force my emotions to conform to how you say I should feel, or even how logically I know I should feel. I can work on them, I can question them, but I can't change them on a dime.

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:05 pm UTC

Wow. If someone said "a friend of mine who I knew to be straight decided they were gay and this made me sad" on this forum - they would never hear the end of it.
Emotions or not, I think that's wrong.

by **Jessica** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:22 pm UTC

roband wrote:Wow. If someone said "a friend of mine who I knew to be straight decided they were gay and this made me sad" on this forum - they would never hear the end of it.
Emotions or not, I think that's wrong.

And it would be? Because even if you can role reverse this, it isn't quite the same?

I'm sorry, felltir for anything I've said that bothers you.

by **meridian** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:25 pm UTC

Um. felltir prefers the lack of capitalization.

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:29 pm UTC

Can you explain your emotions in any way? Like, what the basis of the sadness is.

I'm not pushing this to be a dick, nor was I looking for you to apologise to felltir again. I genuinely want to understand why it makes you sad.

by **Jessica** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:47 pm UTC

Why do I feel sad...
Part of me sees other gay and lesbian people as closer than just allies. It feels to me that (in most ways, but not all) that we're like a community, or a very distantly related family. We have our problems, we're all different, and some of us hate others within the group, but for the most part, we understand and support others who are like us, against those who dislike us. Having a queer identity does cause problems for those who express them in the general population, and it's something that can bring us together.

There are caveats of course. Especially when I bring in gender identity and gender expression, and also when I think about bisexuality (and other similar orientations). Lots of caveats. But, on a deep level I identify more with those who consider themselves to be Gay or Lesbian, than those who consider themselves to be straight. When someone who identifies as gay stops identifying that way, it feels like part of that identification I felt for them is diminished. It's silly, because they haven't changed. It's also silly in this instance because it's not like felltir is saying "I WAS NEVAR GAY TWAS A PHASE AND THEY ARE THE GROSS NOW!" But, still it feels like some of the connection is lost.

It's weird. Because it's silly. I shouldn't just assume that because someone has a queer identity, they care about me, or identify with me, or consider me family. In fact there are many who actively hate me for who I am. But, it's still a strange little feeling I get.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure.

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:58 pm UTC

i can see your angle and I clearly misunderstood where you were coming from. I seriously wasn't trying to cause trouble. Thanks for answering.

by **podbaydoor** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:01 pm UTC

@Jessica: On one hand, I know what you're talking about. I don't think it's strange. On the other hand, it probably wasn't diplomatic to express that in the Safespace thread. As a bi person, I had to draw back a moment because what you said made me feel unwelcome, too.

*bi fives with felltir*

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:05 pm UTC

It's like their sexuality is an aspect of their personality which you find appealing. And when that part goes, you miss that it, that's why it's an emotional thing, I guess.

I've never thought of someone's sexuality as part of their personality. Just more something that 'is' about them.

by **meridian** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:25 pm UTC

I would like to say that while sexuality can be a part of a person's personality, the title - the self or other attributed title - can change and be redefined at any time without a person 'losing' anything.

by **roband** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:28 pm UTC

goes/changes, I guess? Anyway, I see Jessica's point now.

by **Vaniver** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:20 pm UTC

roband wrote:I genuinely want to understand why it makes you sad.

Here are motivations I can think of (but don't cause me to feel sad), written before I read Jessica's post (and looking at what she wrote after I wrote what's below, they appear to be pretty different).

Spoiler:

I can think of two main issues. The first is simple politics: The fewer LGBT folks there are, the less impetus there is for positive change for LGBTs. For illustration, flip over to race- if someone who is 7/8ths white and 1/8th black identifies as black, they increase the amount of political pull that blacks have and then diversity-related benefits that go to blacks. If they identify as white, they don't significantly increase the amount of political pull that whites have, and there are no diversity-related benefits keyed off the percentage of whites (and the more whites, the less benefits for minorities). Regardless of how they identify, they have the same racial admixture- but their identification has real external impacts.

The situation isn't the same for LGBT, but one of the main similarities is that a person's support for LGBT rights is highly related to the number of LGBT folks they know- and so the more LGBT folks are out there, the more LGBT folks there are to know.

The second is the implications of what a change means. People don't start off identifying as LGBT- they have to choose to identify. To then choose to not identify as that anymore suggests that it's not an immutable characteristic they discovered, but either that it was temporary or that they were mistaken. Either of those alter how it should / will be treated. Suppose some subset of people are "gaight"- they're gay from puberty to, say, their early twenties, then they're straight afterwards. If you can't tell them apart until they're older, then coming out as gay is no longer "this is the real me, cope with it" but "this is the real me, maybe, but you can hold out hope that the straight me will be back."

When I came out as gay, I expected to hear a lot of "it's a phase," but I was surprised by the number of people that told me "it's a phase that I went through," which is relevant information that decreased my expectation that I was going to be gay for all of my life (it's still above 95% that that's the case, but it's less than 100%.).

(This is even worse for transfolk- if gender dysphoria goes away on its own for X% of people that have it, how will that impact the treatment for all people with gender dysphoria?)

by **podbaydoor** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:50 pm UTC

The thing is, though, felltir wasn't even going from gay to straight. Gay to bi. Which means he is still attracted to men. Which is still included in the LGBTQ alphabet soup. Jessica's remarks felt, to me, like she felt that bi people "don't count" in the community.

Edit: Which is not to say that Jessica shouldn't feel this way. As she said, feelings are feelings and don't play according to logic. That's fine, I get that. I've felt the same way regarding other communities, when someone "leaves" or changes, it feels like a loss. I just don't think that it was appropriate to say that to felltir's face in a Safespace that is intended to support bi people too.

by **Virtual_Aardvark** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 7:27 pm UTC

Ignoring all the above posts. Nothing here directed at anyone.

@felltir: I can totally sympathize. Coming out as Not A Lesbian really sucked. A lot of people see gay as this super definitive, immutable thing and get confused when someone's orientation isn't tied down. I still get shit for sleeping with men. I also miss being able to call myself lesbian instead of some nebulous sort of queerness. There's a certain power in having a strong, simple identity that I miss. The worst part was that some of my friends who had been the most supportive when I came out as gay treated me like shit when I developed an interest in men. I'm not recanting anything. I still like women. I still say that I WAS a lesbian. I don't really get why that's up for debate.

I think a lot of gay people feel threatened by this idea of mutable sexuality. I went from lesbian to queer. I'll even entertain the theory that I was traumatized out of my sexual attraction towards men. But saying that not only has my orientation changed but that outside influences are what changed it doesn't sit well with most LGBT people. Like it's not ...Hold on, I think I swallowed a gerbil. Okay. What was I saying? or something to have my identity.

by **Jessica** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:04 pm UTC

I'm sorry again. I really am.

Today has been a bad trans day for me. Friends are being attacked by transphobic radfems, and I'm putting my foot in my mouth about people's sexuality.

I probably should leave, and not come back for a while.

by **Virtual_Aardvark** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:59 pm UTC

No one's saying that. I was very specifically not responding to you, but just expressing my experience as someone with a "fluid" sexuality.

Everyone says dumb things sometimes. Speaking only for myself I don't have an issue with you. While you've sometimes said hurtful things, I've never known you not to apologize, or even to examine your beliefs. As far as I'm concerned you're good people and I don't want to push you out.

by **Black Dynamite** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:38 pm UTC

This isn't in reply to anyone. These are simply my thoughts as I read this page. I'm pretty sure it doesn't make any sense.

Spoiler:

A year ago I spent a decent amount of time on a website that was sort of a forum/blog for LGBT people. While I was there I started to notice the separation between the letters in that acronym. The lesbian people had their clique; the gay people had their clique; the bisexual and transgender people had their cliques as well. I identify as bisexual and a trans girl, and the community on this website didn't seem to understand. The gay and lesbian population greatly outnumbered both of the others combined, and it was clear how black and white the attitude was about sexuality. As a bisexual person, I felt I couldn't participate at all within the community because of their attitude.

I see a clear "us against them" attitude in the LGBT community I am apart of in real life. It is us against the world of bigoted, hetero-normative, conservative, fundamentalist people who hate us. This makes me incredibly sad. I see this attitude as extremely self destructive. When a community of people who have been on the receiving end of so much abuse take those feelings of hurt and turn it back on the world, it is hypocritical. When the community that tries to teach love instead of hate, hates everyone who isn't a part of the community, it is ironic. It is self destructive. It makes me feel like we are no better than our oppressors.

And then I see this attitude of "us against them" surfacing between the L and the G and the B and the T. And that makes me not want to live on this planet anymore.

I have come to understand the idea of life as an infinite number of different possibilities, none being exactly the same. Each person's opinions come from their life experiences; and nobody experiences life the same way. It is ridiculous to try to fit other people into definitions, into molds, into opinions of who they are or how they should be. No one is exactly the same, so why be so hurt when people don't match your definitions?

There should be no feeling of "us against them". We are all together.

Of course what I have to say doesn't change what people do, and I'm deeply empathetic for anyone who undergoes hate, ridicule, and discrimination.

by **Brace** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:31 am UTC

The idea that other people can change is scary because it suggests that you might change. Although I'm pretty sure change, when it does happen, isn't arbitrary, but that we as human beings are just sort of very bad at keeping track of things in regards to our mind and tracing them to their source. For instance, one of the only people I ever know who claims to have gotten over being trans is pretty heavily into experimenting with drugs, yet swears that they definitely got over being trans by sheer force of will. Which, to me, just seems naive (and hopefully this particular example doesn't come across as me trying to paint everyone with that brush). Like there was that rugby player who had a stroke and turned gay. Again, example used for salience and not to suggest that anything that extreme is needed for change. The brain is a delicate thing, so why shouldn't identity and sexuality be delicate as well?

by **poxic** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:34 am UTC

Rambling about tolerance and such like.

Spoiler:

by **Black Dynamite** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:21 am UTC

That's well said, Poxic. I see what you're saying, and I agree.

Just makes me more frustrated with human nature, though.

by **felltir** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:55 pm UTC

Felltir still has a queer identity, and felltir likes to have his name capitalised as if it was a verb.

Spoiler:

by **Boris Veganofsky** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:25 pm UTC

I kinda want to come out to my friend but it is so very stressful.

LGBTIQQA THREAD LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH!

by **poxic** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:47 pm UTC

Spoiler:

by **Boris Veganofsky** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:00 pm UTC

The cat is out of the bag.

The cat is actually a unicorn. And the bag is made of rainbows.

by **poxic** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:04 pm UTC

Spoiler:

by **Hyphe** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:27 pm UTC

Boris Veganofsky wrote:I kinda want to come out to my friend but it is so very stressful.

LGBTIQQA THREAD LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH!

Good luck!

by **DaBigCheez** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:47 pm UTC

Boris Veganofsky wrote:I kinda want to come out to my friend but it is so very stressful.

LGBTIQQA THREAD LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH!

Queer powers combine! Form of: Pan!

Spoiler:

(Now I want to see a Captain Planet remake with the kids representing various sexualities/gender identities, combining to form, I don't know, Captain Alphabet?)

by **Boris Veganofsky** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:12 pm UTC

Thank you everyone but I'm ok now I enlisted the help of this fellow:

Spoiler:

by **Azrael001** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:39 am UTC

So I was on HRT for about four months, before I got the nerve up to update my parents about my conclusions. They have asked me to talk to more specialists because they've constructed a special reference class in such a way as to contain only me, and I've agreed to pause the hormones so that we can have time to do so.

Spoiler:

I knew that after seeing a positive effect on the hormones, the next best diagnostic is to stop, and see how you feel. Which in my case is fuzzy headed, distracted, dysphoric (which wants to auto-correct to phosphoric), irritable, aggressive, manic, aggravated, stressed, etc. This at least is another layer of confirmation, if not a comfortable one. Bleeeeeeeeeeh.

by **Jessica** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:57 pm UTC

*hugs* for Azrael001. I'm sorry you had to give up hormones. If someone made me give up hormones, I would probably cry a lot. A lot.

Thanks everyone. I really just needed some time to get my net defenses up. Honestly, it's not the forum that's been bad, it's everything else. I can't open facebook without seeing more attacks on trans women by political lesbian separatists and radical feminists. My mind has been on overdrive, trying to think of ways to counter the lies and slander. I want to come up with the sure fire argument to stop them in their tracks. Of course, that argument doesn't exist, because people don't argue to try and change their views (most of the time, especially when they aren't arguing in good faith). So much stress over that. Which is stupid, because it's not like it's new. It's just the latest attack.

I <3 you all.

by **Brace** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:49 am UTC

It's much more fun when you just give up and decide to troll those people. Especially since they implicitly broadcast all of their weaknesses and insecurities.

by **Azrael001** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:00 am UTC

Thanks Jessica. The didn't make me, but they did ask me, which, despite living on my own for five or six years, and having the pills right here, is like making me. Though I'm going to start up the anti-androgens again, just so that I can think straight. And there was much crying. I'm not yet used to emotions, they're weird.

by **Brace** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:24 pm UTC

Yes they are

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