Social LGBTQIA+

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
I don’t want to be all athiesm is a religion here but agender is a gender expression and that expression manifests in myriad ways as evidenced by how you qualified your agender expression as more femme. Your gender is unique unto itself therefore you can only be heterosexual.
 

Sacri'

the end is here
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnus
what's up
i have been checking this thread semi regularly since i joined smogon almost 5 years ago now, and have known about my sexuality for just as long. i have been open about it online for a long time and so i had thought coming out on this thread would have been silly. today i caught up on this thread after a few months and now i feel strangely compelled to post myself. mainly i just wanted to say that reading all of your experiences navigating through queer life is always interesting to me and especially enjoyable when i see so many of you growing into yourselves and finding happiness in the comfort of your indentities. as for me, i'm just excited about the prospect of living my life as a gay man, hoping to date more when my studies finally become less time-consuming and to finally come out to my dad. my mom and my 2 sisters have known for around 4 years now but i never found the opportunity to tell my dad because i could tell it would be slightly harder on him and so i always kept on putting it off. i also have the pleasure of being friends with several people from the community, never thought it would impact my life so positively, especially in regards to growing more comfortable with this aspect of my identity so i definitely wish that for each and everyone of you. guess this is all i have to say for now, please keep on sharing on here, it probably means more that you realize.
 
Last edited:

bloomm

Banned deucer.
hi there, i'm new to smogon, and was pretty excited when i came across this thread, so i'd like to share a little bit about myself.

first off, i'm a black gay male. for as long as i can remember, being a young black kid, i did not see queerness as a possibility within myself. it just didn't seem possible to exist within both of these identities. growing up as a kid was hard, coming from a very christian family who almost never missed the sunday morning service. i honestly felt guilty just being there, like i didn't belong, but what made this situation all that more interesting, is that my older brother is also gay. i don't quite remember when my brother came out, but i remember everyone's reaction to it, and it wasn't great. at first, no one in my family accepted the fact that he was gay, and some of them still don't to this day. it's quite sad really, for some reason, ethnic minority groups seem to have a lot of homophobia built up within them.

anyways, i think the one person who this affected the most was my mom. eventually, she came around to accept the fact that my brother is gay, but is still trying to understand it all to this day. my mom has been through so much and for her to know that both of her children are gay.. i don't know what that would do to her. i have not come out to my family and specifically my mom because of this, and i'm not sure if i ever will. part of me wants to, but the other part of me doesn't because i know that the overall reaction from my family won't be good, especially seeing how they reacted when my brother came out. my mom's love runs deep for my brother and i, and i don't want to live my life without her truly knowing who i am, but i think for now it's best that she doesn't know. i mean, maybe she does. she used to question me about it sometimes, but i would always firmly deny it.

i could keep on and on, but that's all i have to share for now. it makes me happy to see a place like this where lgbtq+ individuals can share their stories, so keep posting, and thanks for reading.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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UU Leader
not really a coming out post, just had something on my mind for the past few days that i'd like to get out, and here seems like a good place to do it. this is super rambly, i'm sorry if it's not really intelligible.

so recently, a friend came to me about their gender identity bc they knew i'd be supportive. they had concerns that they might be trans, but they weren't sure and they, quote, "weren't ready to make such a big change". this is something i've heard time and time again when people come to me about themselves, and it's normal bc humans just naturally don't like change and we like to fit ourselves into the easiest box possible. what i wanted to say here is basically just, like, idk who has to hear it but

discovering your gender identity, your sexuality, or anything of the sort is not an instant change you have to make. it doesn't have to change you at all.

it's gradual. it's personal. it doesn't have any bearing on anyone other than yourself and that means that you're free to do it whatever way suits you best. some people will want to shout out to the heavens in euphoria about who they are, some will want to keep it as low-key as possible until someone asks. some people will choose to shift their personality entirely, some will choose not to. discovering yourself is simply just becoming who you want to be, who you actually, truly are, and you don't have to see that as a bad thing.

everyone has different situations in life. for some people, they fear being extradited by their friends, their family, or anyone else that may be important to them. for others, they don't fear it; it has already happened to them. to those people, i'm so sorry. you've heard this before but i'm reiterating it anyway; your situation will get better. for every person filled with hatred, there are ten that love you for who you are. keep your fire lit and be safe.

it's okay to be scared. it really is. but there are people here, there are people everywhere, that will support you and love you. you are not alone and you don't have to suddenly become this new person just because you like dudes or because you feel more comfortable as a girl. you are you and no person or thing can change that.

think this ended up making no sense. idk im tired, but i wanted to mainly convery one thing - i love you all. you've got this. <3
 

pulsar512b

ss ou fangirl
is a Pre-Contributor
I think I'm the only one ever who wrote two coming out posts in one day but here I go again!

I came out as Trans (mtf) today, so I'm just getting used to that... This kinda goes into the same problems as I stated in my last post, so I won't make this post nearly as long, but yeah. Also, I won't be able to transition until at least college because of my parents...
Uh hi I guess. I'm rubysapphiremerald. I go on coldmamo on PS and stuff, but everyone online who doesn't know me irl just calls me rse. Most of you probably don't know me, so let's just say this... I exist in the trivia room from time to time, even though the time I spend on PS has kinda decreased lately due to schoolwork. Also, I'm on Smogon but rarely ever use it. I guess this is basically the first post I've ever made tbh... And yes, this is a coming out post.

I'm really introverted irl (even though I'm really extroverted on PS), so I'm kinda having a bit of difficulty posting this, but here we go...

So, about 3 weeks ago, I came out as bi online, and the very next day, I came out to my best friend irl. Luckily for me, he's been really accepting about it. I'm not open about being bi at all irl, and I've came out my best friend but nobody else. I'm 16 years old, have really homophobic parents, go to a really homophobic school, and kinda have no place to say anything about my struggles irl. I kinda realized that I was bi a bit more a year ago, but I, with my parents and school being super homophobic, I was in denial for over a year. I actually had a crush on a boy about 4 years ago, in like, 7th or 8th grade but I told nobody about it and just thought of it as something that was just a phase or something of the sort.

I live in the United States, but I am ethnically Indian. India (I'm using a generalization) is really not very accepting of homosexuality, and it was illegal until 2018. However, the prevalent attitude about it is still against LGBTQ+ people, which kinda explains why my parents are really homophobic.

So far, one of the hardest things irl for me about being bi was just finding out that over half the people I know pretty well at school are homophobic, which is making me really reevaluate everything about who I know at school... For all of you American out there, I live in a really red suburb of really blue city, which is why I've only told one person irl...

Last thing, just a really big thank you to all of y'all in trivia for helping me so much with coming out and everything... I really would have been closeted still if it wasn't for y'all being so accepting of my coming out!
I get your struggles girl. I'm in a similar spot, and am half-Indian myself. That's why I haven't came out at all IRL as asexual/whatever the heck my gende ris. I wish you the best. Congratulations on at least starting to figure yourself out!
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Following on from a conversation on Discord earlier tonight, I thought it might be useful to make some observations. First, some caveats:
  • People should identify however they want. This does not mean that they are necessarily correct about what their identity is at any given point. For instance, many people have initially thought they were straight/bi etc. but eventually came to the realisation they were gay. Similar understandings of identity develop when you think you are cis and later realise you were trans/nb/whatever. While people should identify as whatever they feel like at a particular point in time (they have no other reference point), it does not mean that they are correct in doing so, nor that it is healthy for them to do so. To take the most prominent example, it is widely accepted in feminist and LGBT scholarship that the social pressure of compulsory heterosexuality actively prevents LGBT women from identifying as such. The way people identify is certainly valid (whatever that actually means), but that does not mean that it should not be interrogated. We have an obligation not just to accept people as they are, but to help them in any way we can. If you disagree that we have such an obligation, you don’t actually care about LGBT people, only liberalism.
  • Human sexuality is probably some kind of spectrum. It does not follow from this that it is a continuous spectrum, nor that it operates in any and all possible dimensions based on how people decide to describe their individual sexuality. Sexuality is intensely personal, often confusing, and regularly indescribable. Attempts to reduce this to some set of identity labels is reductive in that it fails to capture what is actually happening when an individual feels that way, and regularly homophobic in its implications. I will expand on this later.
First observation: The split attraction model is at best incoherent and at worst homophobic or dangerous.

I understand the attraction of the split attraction model. For many years I found differentiating certain facets of how I felt to be a useful tool for understanding myself and communicating my identity to others. This does not change the fact that is makes no sense.

There is no coherent distinction between sexual/romantic/platonic attraction or connection. Each of us has a different understanding of each of those terms as it relates not only to us generally, but also to specific relationships that we have. For instance, when does a particularly close platonic relationship become romantic? Each individual will have a different bar/line/conception as the concepts are, themselves, vague. Attempts to delineate certain points or differences between the two will always fail. The same is true when it comes to distinctions between the other “kinds” of relationship. You only need to look at the myriad of different, yet overlapping and often indistinguishable terms that are used to describe and differentiate them by proponents of the split attraction model: queerplatonic (what is the difference between this and friends with benefits? If the answer is closeness then that is arbitrary between different relationships and how individuals define them), squishes (distinction from crushes and other terms is again only arbitrary and individual), etc. Human relationships are complicated and messy, and such a blunt tool of categorisation is both conceptually useless and often harmful to people who use them. Identity is not just how you feel at a particular moment, but also a set of limits that you are setting on yourself consciously or not. As a model in general, therefore, the split attraction model makes no sense at a fundamental level, and perhaps is even harmful to those who use it.

Further, an attempt at distinguishing between different modes of same gender attraction as xromantic, xsexual, xplatonic, etc. is also homophobic. It promotes an understanding of homosexual, bisexual etc. attraction as purely sexual, and lacking any of the apparently more nuanced qualities of definition these terms provide. It should come as no surprise that this is exactly the rhetoric that has been, and continues to be, levied against LGBT people to this day. That they are purely sexual deviants, and that nothing wholesome or true or virtuous can stem from their relationships. Attempting to define same gender attraction in this way, especially given its conceptual and ideological incoherence, perpetuates these same discriminatory attitudes. Especially given that the language is inaccessible and astonishingly esoteric. Does the language make sense for some people individually in their own conceptions of how they view themselves? Arguably, sometimes. But given its ideological incoherence and its effects on LGBT people as a whole, it should probably be put aside.

Why, then, is the split attraction model dangerous? It encourages young, confused, and often vulnerable members of the LGBT community to identify with terms that appeal to them at that particular point, rather than interrogate what they are actually feeling. The fact that I had a discussion today with members of the LGBT community who thought that someone who identified as “heteroromantic homosexual” was valid and should be taken as such is abhorrent to me. The absurdity of the split attraction model is, I think, most evident in these cases. Someone who is struggling with their identity, facing the forces of homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality, deserves our help, not just a blind claim that they are “valid”. Regularly, we are wrong. I think most LGBT people have this experience. The proliferation of micro-identities and the split attraction model actively prevent young LGBT people from finding themselves as they cling to labels that are actually incoherent and meaningless. It may sound like this is their choice, or essentially insignificant to them. Maybe they will find their identities in the future? But it is actually a significant site of trauma. When a young lesbian is compelled by compulsory heterosexuality to claim she is actually bisexual, the experiences that follow from that often follow her for life. It is no surprise or coincidence that the rhetoric of “heteroromantic homosexual” etc. are exactly the rhetoric used to create the ideal homosexual of conservatives and the Catholic church (just without the fancy terms provided by the split attraction model). If you think that this is acceptable, then you don’t actually care about gay people, you care about liberalism.

Second observation: a focus on personal identification is probably bad.

Is individual sexual identity a spectrum? Obviously, yes. Is individual gender identity a spectrum? Obviously, yes. And people should have freedom to personally identify as whatever they want. It does not follow from this that we should conceive of gender or sexuality in this way. Gender is distinct from gender identity. Gender refers to the set of social expectations, performances, and punishments that identify you as “man” or “woman”. Most crucially, it is a power relationship, where man dominates woman. Gender identity is distinct from this. Noone, when they encounter you, knows your gender identity. They can make inferences to decide how they treat you, sure. But that is in reference to the overarching categories of man or woman. This is the reason that non-binary identities are not a coherent political category. They are purely a set of individual identities. This is why the assertion that they are “a spectrum” is meaningless. Obviously they are, each is a manifestation of personal identity, but tt is only by comparison to capital G Gender that individuals are judged or punished for their unique expression of their gender identity.

The same is true of sexuality. The analogue of capital G Gender here are straight and gay. Society draws no broad distinction. This is the reason that the vast majority of discrimination allegedly perpetrated against various sexualities is better categorised as (misplaced but equally harmful) homophobia or misogyny.

The crucial point here is that identity is a neoliberal farce. It encourages us to view ourselves as individual units distinct from a social whole. It reduces us to a series of words that actually make very little sense, and strips us of our understanding of the relational whole that Gender and Sexuality actually must be. Neither Gender or Sexuality make any coherent conceptual sense unless viewed contextually. This should be obvious given that they are purely defined relationally. How you identify does not change how you will be treated. Homophobes, transphobes, etc. don’t know the difference. They categorise you and will harm you regardless of what you actually identify as. Your identity matters to you and you alone. Sometimes it is a useful tool to explain yourself to the world, but most of the time it is lazy – both in terms of articulating who you are and what you aspire to be, and in terms of introspection.

Third (and, thankfully, final) observation: identity is not absolute

This should be obvious by this point. We are often not very introspective, and social forces conspire to prevent us from being so. We should not take a set of terms we have decided fit at a particular point and decide they fit us. I think some of these terms are particularly dangerous. Many young people who identify as asexual or aromantic or heteroromantic or quiroromantic are actually facing a combination of homophobia and internalised homophobia. This does not change the fact that there are many people who identify as these terms. Many people who identify as asexual or aromantic etc are actually misattributing personal trauma as a facet of their identity. They should receive help. This does not mean they are not “valid”, nor does it mean they are necessarily wrong in how they are identifying. Nor does this observation take anything away from those who are, in fact, asexual or aromantic. The fact that many people in these communities find these observations offensive or troubling is deeply worrying to me. Really, they should be the people who care most about these cases.

I do think that for strictly asexual or aromantic people the split attraction model does make some sense. At least, more sense than in other cases. But attempting to apply a spectrum to this also is utterly nonsense, and attempting to categorise what is actually just a reflection of human difference in levels of attraction/connection. It may be a useful tool for you personally – it does not follow from this that it is a useful tool generally or that it should be generally proliferated. This same analysis also applies to people who too readily jump into labels of any kind – gay, bi, any kind of micro-label etc. (though I think less so in the former two cases given the objective risk of violence and social discrimination). I only bring these up specifically because a) they were the subject of the most recent Discord discussion I had on the matter and b) because I think they are the labels most relevant in terms of misidentification in recent years (see above for analysis as to why).

You’re valid, identify how you want. But also think about it. Unless you’re heteroromantic homosexual, in which case I love you and I think you need to get help.

Love,
Crux
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
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Based on this response I know you didn't actually read the post, but you really are part of the problem jeez
no, i read it all. because once i saw it first in the fifth paragraph, i assumed there had to be, like, something? i don't know. but i finished it. and there wasn't whatever i was looking for.

i chose to quote the latter rather than the former because choosing to end on something gives it power
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
no, i read it all. because once i saw it first in the fifth paragraph, i assumed there had to be, like, something? i don't know. but i finished it. and there wasn't whatever i was looking for.

i chose to quote the latter rather than the former because choosing to end on something gives it power
If you think that someone who identifies as homosexual homoromantic is prima facie valid and doesn't deserve our utmost affection and help, given that it is an incoherent identity of itself then you care more about liberalism and self identification than you do actual LGBT people and their experiences.
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
if you think that someone... doesn't deserve our utmost affection and help
ok if you're strawmanning / shit-slinging this hard on defense post 1, i'm not engaging

my goal was to challenge exclusionary idea that could enter this lgbt space, and i have already done so


also i assume you haven't seen my posts on this thread providing testimony to my being an "actual lgbt person" lol
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
1) you have not responded to any of my arguments about this
2) i explicitly said all identities were valid and that it is often a useful (if unhealthy tool), I personally don't think a heteroromantic homosexual identity is healthy but I'm pretty sure the I love you and the actual discussion indicates exactly what I think. When I was 13 I used to identify as such so maybe chill with the idea that I don't care
3) I don't care that you're LGBT or not it has nothing to do with my analysis. If you have a problem with the argument I made, then deal with it. Not the last line that mostly included as a joke with regard to how a Discord chat degraded.
4) Stop this whataboutism and actually deal with the content of my post
5) Each of these posts confirms you care more about identity and liberalism than the material outcomes for LGBT people, as I outlined in my post. Keep going though, I guess.

The fact you say "my posts say as an LGBT person" instead of making a point indicate this most powerfully
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
The fact you say "my posts say as an LGBT person" instead of making a point indicate this most powerfully
that bit was a response to you accusing me of

care more about liberalism and self identification than you do actual LGBT people
its status as a response to the above, and not as substitute for argument, can be discerned by my choice to set "actual LGBT people" in quotations marks, making that phrase a reference to your statement

also i assume you haven't seen my posts on this thread providing testimony to my being an "actual lgbt person" lol
such was not done out of refusal to engage in argument, i'm refusing to engage in argument quite intentionally. as i have also said.

i'm not engaging
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
If you are refusing to engage in argument stop posting contentless and meaningless nonsense. Otherwise, engage with the argument. The fact that you are more interested in obfuscating about eligibility for the argument (i.e. identity) rather than the argument itself indicates that you are probably more concerned with identity and liberalism than what I have posted.
 
what sort of mind goes to an lgbt space to say "y'all are good, except 'x', y'all need help"
this and your further engagements are such intentional misreadings of crux’s post. obviously that bit was tongue in cheek... and also: his entire message strikes at the politicization of our identities. some markers are not politically useful. you are free to with identify whatever you want. that does not mean your identities (i.e. sapiosexual) are above critique. the fact that you pullquote a straw man and refuse to engage with the substance of his post—instead accusing him of being exclusionar—is quite telling,,, considering how his post critiqued the gate keeping nature of such rigid classification structures.
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Before responding to this I just want to note that I do not think this is an effective response to any part of my argument. I think it is intellectually dishonest at best and bad faith at worst. Pulling out certain lines when literally the next sentence explains it in more depth or explains why the problem you have with the smaller quote is just lazy. A lot of what you have said in this post is already responded to in depth in my original post, and this reads more like a lazy attempt at a series of gotchas rather than any attempt to provide something of substance.

We also have different ideas about what sexual attraction is, what gender is, even what happiness or fulfillment or the color green is. Everyone has slightly different ideas of what anything means. This doesn't stop us from categorizing things - it's human nature. If the split attraction model categorizes things more accurately than a different model, regardless of the universal challenges it faces in people having different lines of where one thing becomes another, it's a better model.
1) This is not true. Most of the other concepts and models we use to describe human sexuality can be reasonably defined, at the very least there is broad intersubjective agreement about what the general concepts mean. Sure, there might be some fuzziness when it comes to distinguishing borderline cases but the concepts are workable. My argument is that this model and the concepts that come with it are not.

2) My whole argument is that it is not a better model. It is incoherent, homophobic, and dangerous. If you think it is a better model then justify it and engage with my argument.

Clearly the split attraction model has roots in reality, then? It's exceedingly clear to me that people who don't experience sexual attraction but do experience romantic attraction exist and also that people who do experience sexual attraction but not romantic attraction exist. If this is true, which based on the personal testaments of many people, it is, then sexual and romantic attraction do fall into different categories and ought to be categorized separately.
It does not follow from the fact that some people identify this way or feel this way that this model is true. Literally my whole post is dealing with that concept, which you have ignored. The model might be a useful conceptual tool for some individuals, I am not disputing that. Nothing else you say here is relevant to my post.

Because the concepts of “asexual” and “aromantic” reduce to meaninglessness when conceived of as a spectrum. What is the actual conceptual difference between a grey asexual and a demisexual? There is not one. One of these terms might resonate more strongly with any particular individual, but that does not a spectrum make. The problem is that asexual and aromantic as categories aren’t of themselves sexualities, but modifiers on sexuality. Where as identity classes like gay, bi, etc. describe to whom you experience attraction, ace, aro, etc. describe how you experience attraction. That is solely and completely an individual experience, and attempting to obfuscate your way into an additional meaningless spectrum is bad for the reasons I have outlined in my post.

I'm not sure that I get where you're going here; the wording is super vague. I'll give it a shot, though. So categorizations of romantic attraction (ie heteroromantic, etc) are actually just reflective of attraction? If you're talking about physical/sexual attraction, as proved by asexual people who are romantic and their inverses... no. If you're talking about romantic attraction... yes, that's what I'm saying so probably not where you're going. If you're talking about attraction in an intentionally broad sense, not only do the aforementioned asexual people who are romantic and their inverses break apart that distinction but saying that the split attraction model is bad for the reason that [its definition is untrue] proves nothing at all. Again, feel free to clarify.
I think I have clarified this in the immediately previous response.

I would also note that your argument “asexual/aromantic people exist therefore (???? Somehow ?????) this model is true” again makes no sense and has already been responded to in my original post.

I partially agree. If someone says they're gay, it makes sense to assume that they're both homosexual and homoromantic. This doesn't need to change and if you are, I'd even argue that it's a net negative for you to identify as homosexual and homoromantic instead of just gay. However, for people who do have differences in their sexual and romantic attractions, who are indeed a minority, there's no reason to toss the model out.
No, they’re just gay. This is homophobic for the reasons I have explained in my post.

Again, use it individually, but it is not useful in any other way and can actually be damaging. This is getting repetitive.

Honest question, do you think it is healthy for someone to identify as heteroromantic homosexual? If someone told you they were a heteroromantic homosexual what would you obligation to that person be?

This is exactly the kind of person that this split attraction model harms most, as I explained only to be churlishly responded to with a Pikachu face in what appears to be an attempt to virtue signal that you are not, in fact, virtuous.
 

TheValkyries

proudly reppin' 2 superbowl wins since DEFLATEGATE
A lot of queer politics en vogue lately have been about The Proper Taxonomy of The Homosexual, The Transsexual, and the Interrelations Therein. And it's trash eugenicist bullshit. It's cool and rad that we're expanding the language for queer peoples! It is not cool and rad to start deciding that the language dictates rigid boundaries. A theoretical model of Split Attraction makes sense for people who are ace but just because it makes sense in one instance doesn't mean that you can or even should extrapolate outwards as part of a Grande Unifying Theory of Gender and Sexuality Abnormality.

I understand the kneejerk reaction to Crux's point, that it could foster and buttress the arguments that we face from normative people who think they know better about our identities than us. That "well if we're allowed to say that someone openly advocating for an identity that allows them to be queer without rankling societal norms because they're afraid of actually admitting their own queerness, then really that means anyone else can say that we're just gay because it's popular, or trans because of social pressures." A lot of queer politics is flattened this way, the only discussions we're allowed to have are ones where the cis and the hetero can approve of in their current understandings of gender and sexuality. The reality is more complex, that much of our identities are formed in relation to the cisnormative, to the heteronormative, and understanding that and being open to the idea that we can sometimes be wrong about ourselves because we are still unlearning what society has taught us. And the corollary that sometimes a queer elder can see the failures we're making as we grow and can help us along the way.

To reiterate and assuage the reactionary concerns, this doesn't also mean that any queer elder who questions your identity is automatically correct! Buck Angel hey how are you. At the end of the day, the only person you have to answer to is yourself. But maybe just maybe you aren't asking yourself the right questions.
 

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