best thing tumblr ever did for me is the term “rotating it in my mind”. it’s really true that sometimes you think about something real hard but you can’t tell what the thoughts are exactly. it’s revolutionary stuff, i might even say
sometimes the subject of your thoughts is just in this thing
“Nobody ever used their tax dollars to help me!” says local man who drives on roads, gets his trash collected, has clean water, sends his kids to school, utilizes the police and fire departments, walks his dog in the park, receives mail, and also possess no sense of self reflection.
Tbh I think one of the reasons ppl on Tumblr have such a hard time understanding how someone can be a trans man and a lesbian/member of the lesbian community is because Tumblr skews SO young
When you’re 15, 20, 25, 5 years is a huge chunk of time. And a lot of people on Tumblr have done a lot of exploration on their own identities in like less than 5 years. So I think, possibly, what happens is that a lot of people hear “was a lesbian for years and part of that community and then realised they were a trans man” and think about how for 2 years they thought they were one identity and realised they another.
Because, of course, people still understand that 2 years isn’t actually that long. So they dismiss how a trans man can be a lesbian, and think “yeah but I thought I was x for 2 years and realised I was y and now I’m a member of the y community!”
But, the thing is, in my experience most people who are trans men lesbians or who are trans men and still part of the lesbian community (without identifying as a lesbian) were lesbians from ages like. 15-30. 15-40. 15-60! And THEN realised they’re trans men. Their entire community is made up lesbians, or at least their entire friend group. Maybe they’ve been married to a lesbian for 40 years. And so, of course they still identify with the people they grew up with and are their family members or lifelong friends.
But Tumblr skews so young that many people think of 25 as old. That 30 is ancient. And they also haven’t encountered older lgbtqia+ people.
That’s another thing. Online, when people say ‘community’ they often mean 'people who identify like I do’. They don’t mean, eg. the Tumblr community, the Toronto academic queer community, the working class Mexico city gay community. The understanding of 'community’ online is very abstract. Entering the trans community just means considering yourself trans and following more blogs or tiktoks or twitters run by trans people.
And while that is a valid understanding of a type of community, that’s usually not actually what people mean when they talk about feeling part of x community. Being a part of that community means actually knowing people, not just following online personas. You can know people and be a part of an online version of community by that definition, but that’s different than just following them on social media.
So, when people read 'im a trans man who is a lesbian because I was one for years and am still part of that community’, they misunderstand it. They think that man is just following a bunch of lesbian blogs and inserting himself into spaces he’s not welcome. When really, it’s that his mentors are lesbians, his partners are lesbians, loving women as a woman was a huge part of his life, being read as a lesbian by others was a huge part of his life, and understanding himself as a lesbian is a huge part of how he internally understands who he is. He is a member of a community that welcomes and embraces him, a member of a community that he worked to build and that he is recognised as a part of.
So yeah, I think Tumblr skewing so young and the usually-unspoken different definitions of communities means that there is a breakdown in communication, leading to people to not understand people like trans men lesbians or bi lesbians.
This is an excellent post. While I’m not a lesbian, I was one for six years. And the community that I am active in the most “IRL” is the lesbiqn community and the FTM community which often share spaces, since the lesbian community is one of the few communities that haven’t completely kicked out trans men (though many lesbian spaces did in the 90s and now with the raise of libfems and gatekeeping and the resurrection of lesbian separatism, we are being removed from these spaces, more often butch/ftm border wars have restarted)
So I’m not a lesbian, most of my bi friends aren’t lesbians, but in a way we are a part of the lesbian community, becouse that’s the community we participated in and the bars we hang out in and who a great deal of our friends are.
And yeah, some trans men do still consider themselves lesbians to some degree, because that’s the community they are in or its the label they’ve used for some 20 odd years and still connect to 3ven if they’ve realized they’re trans men.
You have to remember, for a very long time trans men were completely invisible, when I was a kid I knew about trans women, but I had no idea that trans men existed I remember learning about trans women and thinking “I was you coukd do it the other way around”, these days while trans men are still less visible they are far more vissible then we ever have been in like all of history. So younger trans men spend less time or even no time in the lesbian community and can’t understand why any trans man woukd want to call themselves a lesbian, they only perceive it as a form of misgendering, transphobia, or lesphobia. Which is why its important to acknowledge trans history, lesbian history, butch history and the interconnection of these communities and how in many countries (and even states in the US, or small towns) these communities are still a singular community and to acknowledge that trans mwn are allowed to have complex relationships with their gender and sexuality especially when they’re lived half of their life (or more!) as a lesbian or butch woman or bi woman.
Some people in fandom desperately need to become obsessed with something SUPER niche and obscure. Something with like 10 active fans at the very most. Something with only 6 fics if you’re very lucky, all but one written by the same dedicated fan. Something where when you do find a fan account, it’s been innactive for years. Something that’s not available on streaming and its only physical release was never released in your country. Let it humble you.
“your rent should be a third of your income” well wouldn’t that be nice. wouldn’t it. lower the rent pussy
Casual observation from someone old enough to remember: in the year 2000 financial advice was that rent should be no more than ¼ of your income.
Until the mid 80s, the advice was that if you must rent instead of owning, then that 20% of your monthly income (oh yes, only 20%) should include all your utilities too.
After all, rent costs more than a mortgage, so it should offer more too.
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body.
that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
Tumblr makes sense to me bc if i see something i like i get excited and hit the button to show other people and theres no weird unspoken social conventions my autistic brain doesnt understand. I can literally sit here and reblog 150 niche shitposts about harvest mice in an hour just bc they make me happy and i dont have to explain myself to anyone and i’ll actually *gain* followers instead of just being called weird and downvoted or whatever its so cool
obviously dietary requirements aren’t a joke but my grandma sometimes runs errands for her church and i asked her what she’s up to today and she said extremely seriously “ive got to track down the body of the gluten free christ, julia”
having used tumblr as a teenager is a vaccination against using tiktok today
i realize you’re probably half-joking but legitimately having this level of control over what i see on my dash and not having the popularity of my posts determined by The Algorithm makes using tiktok feel like my body is fighting a Disease
