Who are you?

I have ALWAYS been a sucker for the misuse of the force tag 😳 I love the idea way too much lmao. But yeah, Luke is lifting Din with the force because he can, and Din’s probably having a gay panic under the helmet 🤪

Honestly this is probably one of my fave art pieces I’ve ever done. I don’t usually draw and I’m not usually proud of it if I do, but this was a nice surprise.

I am both.

#one weird counterintuitive aspect of being asexual #is that im more open to kinky or weird shit #im not HAVING kinky or weird sex it's all theoretical

Hey @rosierugosa I hope it’s okay that I stole your tags because YES.

Because sexual desire is so weird and alien to me, personally, I find myself more accepting of weird and alien sex: I’m definitely not a monsterfucker in that I don’t wanna fuck the monster, but I fully accept and respect all monsterfucking because hey, sex in general -- straight, gay, or otherwise! -- is already so weird to me. Wanting to fuck Chad McDude down the street is just as strange to me as wanting to fuck the mothman. So my attitude is...go for it, I guess! Here’s a water bottle.

Same here, I'm not afraid to admit I've written a couple of filthy what if fanfics about the evil demon bad guy who totally is a giant dragon looking thing and the OC ninja chick totally getting it on that one time. That's kind of hot. Wouldn't it be weird if they fricked? Three times? Because he wants her soul for some blood ritual and enemies to lovers?

But yeah agreed. Sex is weird, I'm weird about it, whatever.

Just go for it!

How to spot the asexual: It’s all fun and games until you try to make them read self insert smut.

I will read the kinkiest filth, but try to mentally put me there and I’ll click away superfast.

So I have something I want to ask to a group of Tumblr users. This is mostly a rhetorical question; I don't want your knee-jerk response, I want you to sit with this for a few minutes, maybe even hours or days, and think about it.

The group of whom I am speaking are the people who are violently against the word "queer," but claim they are not TERFs.

When I was in high school--we're going back to 2002-2006 here, if you're wondering--the slurs of choice were "gay" and "lesbo." There was, of course, the infamous slang "that's so gay" that was so prevalent there was literally a series of TV spots by GLSEN and the Ad Counsel about it. These aren't even the only ones that aired--they're just the only ones I could find. (and yes, "you're so gay" was a variant.) The phrase became one of the songs that launched Katy Perry to fame, and if you go ahead and click on that link, you're going to see there is nothing kind or positive about how she's using it.

I still remember getting the shit beaten out of me at one point while a group of girls screamed "fucking lesbo" at me. I wasn't out at the time; I wasn't even entirely aware yet that there was anything to be out about. But I was an outcast and it was the worst thing they could think of to call me. I tried, exactly once, to stand up to someone who was using "that's so gay" and the result was me opening my locker one day to find "your so gay", and the words "kill yourself fucking faggot," written inside in very thick Sharpie that the school then made me scrub out.

Now with all of that said, I want to ask: will you start tagging gay and lesbian as "g-slur" and "l-slur" for me? Or does that idea make you uncomfortable?

While you're thinking on that: I was born in 1988. The year I was born, the phrase "queer theory" was coined. Queer Theory is the name of a certain kind of academic study, and it can actually also be a verbed noun--for example, I went to an LGBTQIA convention, and one of the panels (which I attended, and which was awesome) was called "Queering Shakespeare." The idea was to read Shakespeare through a lens in which we did not treat cishet people as a default, and to think about how things like the crossdressing conventions of the day influenced his work. (Are there queer themes in Twelfth Night? You fuckin' bet there are, and if your teachers aren't acknowledging that they're not doing their jobs.) In 1991, the activist group "Queer Nation" was born, and with it, two slogans you should learn if you don't already know them: "we're here, we're queer, get used to it," and "not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you." These were a huge part of the political movement around LGBTQIA rights in the 1990s.

"Gay" still gets used as a slur. And yeah, I'm sure there are some places where "queer" does, too. But you can see the process of reclamation began a good 15 years before "gay" hit a tidal peak of being a slur.

And yet, and yet...

It's "queer," the one that encompasses the entire community, the one we screamed in defiance of a world that wanted us to be cishet and "normal," that gets slammed into the "THIS IS A SLUR" box, while "gay" is being pushed as the umbrella term for the community (over "queer," which was the term when I was in college, and...also through much of the 1990s).

So I want you to sit with that for a few minutes, and think about it. And I don't want you to come back with "oh, it's okay if you call yourself that, just don't call other people that," because that is always how this question gets derailed. And yes, it is a derailing--it's basically saying we're fucked up but you'll let us be fucked up, aren't you so generous.

Sit with that for a little while.

And then tell me:

Will you start tagging g-slur?

Or does it suddenly feel like you’re being singled out?

this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it

like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”

“oh, he thinks a piece of paper shouldn’t define your relationship? ASK HIM HOW HE FEELS ABOUT BEING ON YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PATRICIA.”

“oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your estranged parents are making medical decisions for you and inheriting all your property, TIMOTHY.”

so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.

so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.

the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.

how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.

what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.

the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to be married.

it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).

you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.

and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!

tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”

Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?

Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.

Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.

Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.

But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.

I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).

this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.

if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.

if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.

queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).

if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, really naïve.

Pre-legal-gay-marriage, I saw this happen.  I was on a parenting board and one day a woman we’d posted with for years told us her partner and one of their children had died in a car accident.  And because she wasn’t the biological parent of the surviving child – the child she’d been a parent to since conception – her ex’s parents took custody and took the child away and kept her from seeing that child.  Ever.

Because here’s the thing: children are not property.  Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.”  You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.   

“But my will states who I want as guardian!”  You say.

Welp.  That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion.  A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.  

Again: Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.

The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was.  Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her.  Forever. 

That’s not my only “my outlaws are great and fine with us and its okay we’re not legally married” story, but it’s probably the most heartbreaking.  Though the image of a man who has just lost his partner of 25 years watching his ex-outlaws take ½ of his chairs, ½ of his pillows, ½ of his sheets, ½ of his napkins, ½ of his towels, ½ of his dishes, ½ of his books….. is pretty fucking close.  After they made him sit behind “the family” at his partner’s funeral.

My mother was a lifelong Republican, a very conservative Catholic. The thing that pushed her over on legalizing gay marriage was stories about people being in the hospital and their partner of 20 years not being allowed to see them, because they weren’t legally married. She thought that was wrong and unfair. 

Also a reminder “get married” does not mean “have a wedding.” You can file the paperwork and get married in a courthouse or office. There doesn’t even need to be a ceremony, you just have to sign some papers. (Bonus: you get access to the legal privileges of marriage as well as the protections, AND you get to stick it to the billion dollar “wedding industry” that preys on us all.)

Yeah. It was like this.

That’s what Republicans want back with their Federalist Society court.

They also want to make us illegal again.

Yeah. Like we were before 2003 in 19 states. For fucking EXISTING.

That’s what they want.