A fun thing about being queer is that if you try not-very-hard and believe in yourself, you can find queer stuff everywhere, like these candles at Target
hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!
hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.
If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too!
Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!
Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!
–BB
MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.
REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS
For any religious followers 🙂 – Mod Jem
This is super important guys, please please reblog and read if you have religious guilt ♥️
hey so in case it isn’t already clear enough, in light of today’s news I just want to state unequivocally that I support trans people. trans women are women, trans men are men, nonbinary folks are people, and every last one of them deserves to live authentically and without fear.
if you live in the US and you also support trans people, at this point there’s not a lot your legislators can do about the proposal just yet, but you should absolutely contact them anyway to register your opposition. they need to know–and they need to know now–that you don’t accept this, and if they care even a little bit about trans people too, they need to make an immediate statement.
if you’re a cis queer like me and you somehow think trans people are an acceptable sacrifice, that if you don’t make waves about this then they’ll leave you alone–well, I hope no one reading this is that selfish or that naive. but if you don’t care about trans people as fellow human beings, then at least show some enlightened self-interest and recognize that this is only where it starts. even this proposal isn’t only about trans people; it’s part of the ongoing HHS argument that discrimination on the basis of sex was never meant to refer to gender identity or sexual orientation. let them come for your trans siblings and they will come for you too, sooner or later.
[Image Description: Screenshots of a series of tweets by a user named @valeriehalla that read
ok: i’m scared to exist online right now, even in what we should be able to consider safe spaces for queer folks
i’m scared because we are all watching continually as more and more of us are violently picked off and destroyed
by other queer folks, and by people who claim to be sympathetic to us, utilizing the same rhetoric that should be helping and empowering us
the word “discourse”, at this point, is only ever used sarcastically and with a kind of quiet dread by my friends
we joke about being problematic, but me, my peers and maybe you too, live in a state of constant low anxiety
over the fact that we don’t get second chances to make mistakes. if you’re a queer person of any kind of visibility, it’s one and done
the well of patience and compassion runs deep for our cis/straight allies, and we reserve NOTHING for ourselves
this is assuming you even make a mistake. we target each other for complete bullshit just as often
weeks ago i was chased off twitter for using the word “queer”, before that i was getting death threats over fabricated purity politics
friends of mine have been targeted with callout posts over things they didn’t do or for weird fandom drama with zero material impact
i’m not trying to absolve any of us of guilt. we’ve all done and will do wrong things, we’ll hurt each other, again and again
it’s easy, because we’re all a little bit fucked up over here. we’re carrying wounds we’re weird, we’re not always presentable
but that’s exactly why we need patience and compassion for each other more than anything else
because those wounds make it so easy for us to destroy eachother, and some of y’all may be tempted
it’s easier. when it’s some 20-something queer artist struggling to meet half the poverty line, it’s easy to run them off for hurting you
i GET why it’s tempting for some folks, because this is power that you can exert, a situation you can change
when we’re all so tired and so used to being powerless
but please understand that the folks you’re targeting may not come back from it. they may not ever come back. it’s happened, it will happen
when you mark someone as unsaveable and irredeemable in the only space they have to exist in, they can’t exist anymore
End of tweets.]
Just to make something about this crystal clear, and this is something that I think many people will recognize about these tweets, the situations that valeriehalla is describing aren’t just the result of people punishing honest mistakes. Some of these things are straight up authoritarian bullshit perpetrated by people who are trying to create power structures in the LGBTQ+ community.
This is what it means to be a TERF, a transmedicalist/truscum, or an ace exclusionist. This is the environment they’re trying to build, one where other people in the LGBTQ+ community have to live with fear and anxiety of the kind of authoritarian bullying that these people try to create.
It’s really important to push back on this stuff anytime we see it, because authoritarians actively work to spread their malfeasant ideology. They lie and manipulate in order to spread their message because they honestly believe that anything, no matter how immoral, is justified in pursuit of their core goals. And their core goals always involve hurting us, all of us. They only see three types of people; those that agree with them and are allies, those that don’t agree with them and are enemies, and those people who they hate and will only ever attack.
We fight them by not letting them get away with it. We fight them by educating people about their tactics and their evil. We fight them by protecting those of us who are young enough or immature enough to still be vulnerable to their recruitment tactics. And we win by never giving them an inch, ever.
In a fight where one side believes only in the oppression and eventual destruction of the other, there’s no middle ground to be found, they are wholly wrong in their beliefs and they’re willing to hurt people in service to them.
You’re more than just dysphoria and a target of transphobia (img source)
this is why I’m against the narrative of “being LGBT is defined by suffering, if you don’t suffer you don’t belong to LGBT or Pride”. it’s incredibly damaging to queer people, especially queer kids who are just figuring out how their sexuality or gender identity figures into their overall identity. this narrative shoves them back into the closet if they don’t suffer “enough”, and how much one must suffer is completely arbitrary
also hey most young folks dont have super diverse experiences under their belt yet due to being, like, young. there are only a few narratives of queer suffering out there, and thus the definition of queer suffering and what that looks/feels like is very narrow and doesn’t always apply to a lot of queer youth.
so, like, promoting the concept of “LGBTQ = suffering” means queer kids may not recognize when something they’re going through is because of their queerness, and disregard that and themselves even if it is.
also pressures queer kids to come out for the sake of suffering and feeling ‘valid’ even if they aren’t safe or ready to.
There’s this thing that happens with minority groups. We come together because of the discrimination but we stay together for the culture. But people seem to forget that – LGBTQIA+ people aren’t just together because we suffer, we’re together because we have something to celebrate in the uniqueness we share. There’s something fundamentally wrong about working towards a better world with less discrimination and then gatekeeping newer members of the community because we don’t feel they’re suffered enough. THAT WAS THE GOAL.
Every queer person you feel hasn’t suffered enough to qualify as queer is proof of a better world. A better world is what we said we wanted, but it’s not going to be what we get if we let our identities be defined by suffering.
dilemma: I want queer people to look at me and know that I’m a Fellow Queer, but I also don’t really want to put any effort into it or change my current (lack of) style
then again I pretty much always sit in chairs normally, so if nothing else I’m a bad gay to begin with
i don’t know why this is so hard to get across it’s like constantly saying the same thing over and over again. i feel like i’m in the twilight zone
queer: it would be great if everyone stopped saying that queer is a slur every time i identify as queer anti-queer: it’s really bad that you’re using queer as an umbrella term because it’s a slur queer: i’m not, i’m saying that queer is my identity and i would like to use it without getting into an argument about it every time i self-identity anti-queer: it’s really bad that you’re using queer as an umbrella term because it’s a slur queer: that’s not… are you… i’m not using it as an umbrella term, i’m queer anti-queer: it’s really bad that you’re using queer as an umbrella term because it’s a slur
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 