What's Happening in the Queer World on TikTok
But as I am mostly passing as a very young biological male to most of my followers, I avoid talking about LGBT politics, as it's a quick giveaway that I am a trans man, and then I worry my followers will begin treating me like a woman. (Ironically, I don't think that'll make the sexual harassment increase in any way.) But I will both get a lot of conservatives commenting "girl" more than they already do (I'm not a girl. I'm a woman), and young annoying children asking me if I can verify that they pass or are also really transgender
Today I'll be writing about three annoying topics that recur in my for-you-page.
1. Lesbian gatekeeping
Are we still doing this? Lesbians are women who are exclusively attracted to other women. But in a world where a sizable amount of the Western population are accepting that gender is a spectrum, women can have penises, and nonbinary people are a legitimate category, homosexual labels like lesbian and gay get muddied. Not only does lesbian need to include straight men who use female pronouns, it also needs to accommodate for lesbian women who don't want to call themselves women.
I'll be avoiding the "can trans women be lesbians" mainly because it's an old and boring debate, but I'll conceded that trans women can be in lesbian relationships if it's exclusively with other trans women and they have sex fewer than one time a year and spend most of their time holding each other and crying (I can't wait for someone to take this sentence seriously and read it back to me as a sort of "gotcha" as if I haven't told multiple people this is what I think).
What about "he/him" lesbians? He/him lesbians refer to women who usually present masculine and want to be referred to with male pronouns. They may take testosterone or get top surgery. The goal, I observe, is to have straight men ignore them as "just another guy," but to not be included in the straight man category themselves. I don't think it's necessarily to be special. There is truly a camaraderie to the lesbian community that straight men generally don't experience with each other. I think the "he/him" aspect and wanting to look both intimidating and invisible to men is a product of internalized misogyny--that somehow they have to escape womanhood in order to avoid misogyny instead of tackling misogyny at its root.
I have no problem with he/him lesbians or trans men lesbians. Lesbians are women attracted to other women, and trans men and he/him lesbians are women. Yes, even your humble host.
I personally do not describe myself as a lesbian because of the connotations. I describe myself as straight to people who view trans men as men because the language is easier, or I describe myself as a homosexual female on steroids. But the reason I don't say lesbian is because there's a certain dynamic to lesbian relationships. Going to the same bathroom and locker room, bonding over shared anatomy, loving being a woman and female, enjoying lesbian sex.
(I know my parents and old church still have access to this account, so continue reading if you would enjoy some dirty, dirty details about my sex life 😈.)
Up until I was 20, I identified as asexual (more on that in point 2). After some run-ins with psychedelics, my sex drive and sexual attraction to women were unlocked, and I realized I badly wanted to have sex with women and I had never been and would never be attracted to men. Some reasons I believe I was asexual for so long were
1) I'm autistic, and a lot of autistic women in particular have sensory issues, making sex and genitalia a sensory nightmare. Autistic people also tend to miss cues their body gives them, so they may not know when they're aroused or experience arousal from typical stimuli.
2) I have gender dysphoria--or "sex distress" as Mr. Menno puts it, so my discomfort around my genitalia would make me not want to interact with it nor want anyone else to interact with it.
3) Penis-in-vagina sex or PIV--as it's abbreviated on the internet--is extremely revolting and distressing to me. I find penises one of the most revolting things on earth second to maybe vomit or carcasses. I have an intense visceral disgust to it, so the idea of having sex with one of those abominations made me even less interested in getting married or being sexually active.
4) I had no sex drive whatsoever, likely due to stunting my puberty and hormones by running 12 miles a day for years as a teenager.
In short, psychedelics brought those repressed human functions to the surface, and it turned out I was essentially just a stone top lesbian. A stone top refers to a lesbian who doesn't like her body being touched but enjoys pleasing other women.
I also enjoy sex best when I'm wearing a prosthetic cock strapped on. It's very psychologically arousing to the point where I can nearly feel it myself, and it adds an extra sense of intimacy so I can use my two hands for other things.
I also prefer being entirely in control, almost exclusively in a gentle way, but I can enjoy rougher dynamics when it's my partner's choice and she trusts me and wants me to get slightly more aggressive.
Well, you chose to read it, so I don't know why you're upset.
The short reason why I don't identify as a lesbian is because I don't want my vulva or chest being touched. I don't want to be fingered or eaten out or have that part of my body acknowledged in any way during sex. It's also why I won't date other lesbians anymore. I can imagine they would feel deprived not having access to a woman's body parts, so I'd choose someone more interested in male bodies or who won't be deprived by not having access to mine.
What about nonbinary lesbians? Nonbinary lesbians can be one of two things: women who identify as nonbinary, or men who identify as nonbinary. I think any woman exclusively attracted to women can be a lesbian. Not so with men. And most nonbinary men make no effort to transition anyway and are just hairy dudes with luscious locks and beards who wear a skirt once a week. Those can't be lesbians, and you can't be attracted to those men and be a lesbian.
What about lesbians who slept with men in the past? I am one of those myself. There are many reasons someone--and especially women, who are encouraged not to listen to their instinct of "I don't think this guy's attractive at all"--would sleep with someone they're not attracted to. Curiosity, pressure, genuine affection for the male's company. As I've said many times, you can't enjoy sex with someone you're not attracted to. Unless you're somehow able to completely dissociate and just use their body as an object to get masturbate with (which I think men are more likely to do than women, hence why a lot of men actively pursue women they find ugly because they're convinced these women will be easier to coerce into bed with them). There's no way a lesbian enjoyed sex with any of her past male partners. And if she "isn't sure," then she probably didn't enjoy it. If you enjoyed it--even if you didn't orgasm--oh, baby, you KNOW.
When I've brought this up on TikTok, so-called "lesbians" acted defensive. "Well, why does it matter what you identify as? You're not hurting anyone." Right, shall I pull out the "what if I identified as black" card? "But black people face systematic oppression!" Exactly. So do lesbians. Lesbians have been targeted by the law, by predatory men, and by their families who refuse to acknowledge a daughter who doesn't to marry a man or become a mother. Bisexuals with a preference for women may experience this to an extent, but nothing like the "well you don't know if you haven't tried" pressure lesbians get. And also, I guarantee that most of these bisexual woman would fall for the first feminine skinny man with fluffy hair who's willing to dress up for them, because that's usually their type anyway.
2. Wait, we're still talking about asexuals?
This debate is genuinely so exhausting. And it's even more frustrating knowing that there are so very few real asexuals who can respond to my video thanking me for standing up for their community. I had a woman with a lot of followers, who apparently followed me but I had never seen her before, commenting over a dozen times on a video where I said, "Asexuals don't enjoy sex." She talked about being ace spec (I hate that word but I'll try to explain it to you) and having a partner who enjoys sex while she herself doesn't care about it. She got mad that I didn't concede and unfollowed me, after leaving a petty comment that read something like, "I like how you speak up on different topics and I expected better from you, hope you have the best life can give you." Whyyy do chronically online people leave breakup comments on people's accounts before unfollowing? I genuinely never knew you existed, bye.
"Ace spec" is short for "asexual spectrum," which insinuates that asexuality is a spectrum for people who experience no attraction on one end to little attraction on the other end. But of course, no measurement for what exactly "little attraction" is compared to "normal levels of attraction." And these women (it's usually women, let's be real) never talk to other women who DON'T identify as asexual to find out that it's very normal to go years without crushes or finding anyone attractive or being interested in sex (specifically if you're single), and that having little attraction doesn't make you different or special. It may make you have a hard time relating to your friends, but that's genuinely it. This woman commenting on my TikTok said I was "erasing" her because I wasn't acknowledging she was asexual. How do you disappear just because one person doesn't agree with your label? I also didn't even tell her that she wasn't asexual but more expressed concern about her dating someone who expected her to have sex with them.
Do I disappear just because someone calls me a woman? Or because a man doesn't believe my sexuality doesn't revolve around his penis? I'm so fatigued by all these chronically online leftists whose only affliction is people not acknowledging their gender or sexuality-related identity.
I thought I was asexual most of my life, and when I did, I was sex-repulsed. I didn't experience any discrimination, but my dad did tell me I would never find a man who would be willing to marry me without having sex with me, and my mom insinuated that I NEEDED to have sex if I wanted to get married because of the verse, Genesis 2:24 (ESV): "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." I watched conservative trans people online say that asexuality wasn't a valid label and that all asexuals have a medical condition that should get checked. The online asexuality communities were completely taken over by horny, kinky people who for some reason thought that they experienced no attraction to other people.
The explanation I have seen time and time again is that, "Even if you're not attracted to someone, you can enjoy sex biologically." What, because a convex object attached to someone's body sliding in and out of your vagina feels so good when you don't like the look of the person you're riding? And if you provided the example, "Well, what if a gay man called himself gay but had sex with women because it feels good?" They would of course respond, "He's still gay because he's only attracted to men."
This explanation has even been used by rape apologists. "How can rape be that bad? It should feel good to have a dick inside of you, no?" Biologically speaking, if women were just horny lubricated holes with no preference. But they're not, and the queer community should stop acting like they are as well.
I am not going to enjoy sex with a man just because my vagina is supposed to get stimulated by a dick going in and out of it, and I am not going to enjoy fucking a man in the ass just because it stimulates my dick either. Because I'm not attracted to men. Seriously, zoomers who spend all day scrolling TikTok or Twitter or Tumblr have made up every possibly scenario or exception in their head to the point that they forgot how things work in real life. I'm convinced most of these people haven't even had sex, which is fine. Just don't pretend to be an expert on it.
3. Oh, the tucutes and trans meds are fighting again, except they're 15
Despite being a trans man myself, I absolutely hate online trans man culture. I have a couple of trans man friends in person--and while one of them will rant with me about dysphoria, or trans men being disregarded by the LGBT community, or how annoying people treat you as a clocky trans person--they would much rather talk about other things.
A little vocabulary: tucute is short for "too cute to be cis," and it refers to trans people online who crossdress for aesthetic reasons. A lot of them do transition, so they may be indistinguishable from dysphoric trans people (which is why I feel like "real trans" and "fake trans" are not useful categories). And trans med is short for "trans medicalist," or believing that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and the best solution is to medically transition. People without dysphoria, by their definition, are not trans.
So I have a few mutuals (that's people I follow who follow me back) who have TikTok accounts completely dedicated to being trans med. They get attention, they start arguments, they welcome debates. Some of them are genuinely enjoyable people to talk to. But I'm more of a TERF myself (not really a pure Terf, not according to Nina Paley), or at least more radical feminist and VERY gender critical. I'm gender critical in the sense that I don't believe I'm a man, and I don't believe dressing or sounding masculine makes me a man. I'm just a dysphoric woman taking medical steps to look and sound more male to feel less distressed over being female.
Also, I don't think any of these trans med trans boys--and they're all female to male--are over 18 years old. Like, the oldest are 18. And they make the same arguments over and over. Some I don't mind, but arguing for children to go on hormone replacement therapy or get surgery is a line I won't cross. I don't think I have to explain why I think children to young to make informed consent about taking drugs, joining the military, or having sex with adults should be responsible for making longterm medical choices about their fertility and their disease and cancer risks for the rest of their lives.
Some of these trans boys also make posts about "things that give them euphoria as a trans man," and it'll be ridiculous things like skateboarding, hunting, wearing dirty sneakers, being called "dude," etc. I don't think it's necessarily a fetish, although it wouldn't surprise me if some of them get off to the idea of having a male body as well as being dysphoric over having a female body. I find it generally harmful to tell insecure women to give up any sense of self-expression to mimic harmful stereotypes perpetuated by toxic masculinity (men can't have a sense of style, men are dirtier, men can't show emotion). I think it also gives these insecure women more things to be insecure about. And I think turning skateboarding and sports and chains into "male" things isn't helpful to encourage young women who can still change their minds into believing that they can't be cool muscular tomboys who wear hoodies and skateboard. Or it discourages insecure women from wearing alternative outfits and jewelry and colorful clothes for fear of not being taken seriously or for fear of not passing.
I think it's believable that it's a phase for all of them until they hit adulthood, which most of them haven't.
I also find trans boys making collages of "how to pass better" really uncomfortable for me. And I have to remind myself that I'm transitioning for me, not to be the most masculine man of all men. (Also, these collages that these girls make of different bland male outfits is very fembrained anyway.) I'm not going to let myself give up music or art or dressing goth or metal just because some fifteen-year-olds on TikTok might look more like guys than me for a year.
In short, I need a long detox from TikTok. And children need to go outside. AND I shouldn't have to pay for the restrictions for children on social media in Australia by giving every website my ID. No thanks, do you know how easy it is to hack a website??
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