Marriage Equality and Other MOGAI/Queer Rights

[HeatherMarie]

7 hours ago, Kyath The Dream Worker said:

 

Romantic relationships can't solve everything.

 

 

This is sooooooo true. I'd go further and say that if you are *expecting* a romantic relationship to make your life better, you are setting yourself up to fail. Your happiness should not depend on having a significant other, heck your happiness shouldn't depend on *anyone* except yourself. I've been there done that, and romantic relationships do *not* suddenly make all the bad stuff in your life go away. 

 

I'm lucky to mostly have friends that aren't so focused on romantic relationships and never push others to date someone, but I'm an avid Facebook user and sometimes it annoys the heck out of me how many people are so overly focused on that. I mean it's wonderful if you are in love, good for you, but posting that it 'completes' you and that anyone who isn't in love is missing out on so much... It's annoying. Some of us are perfectly comfortable being single.

[Yubelchen]

As far as i saw around me (i mean my circle of friends): Most relationships only caused them trouble, drama and me being an annoyed bystander saying the one thing that comes to 90% true at the end or evantually happends at least once. Annoyed because all drama could be avoided if people would try to talk about it, even with someone between them calming down and stopping them from attacking one another.

 

I cant understand how hard it is to just clear such misunderstandings, but i was never in a relationship myself. Only tried online dating a good friend and finding out, that it was too much for me since he was pretty clingy.

So for me, relationships are nah.

Good if it would happen one day, but i dont care if not so then i could start hoarding lizards and pillows!

[HeatherMarie]

I've only been in two seriously relationships so far in my life (both with females, tho I identify more as pansexual then full-out lesbian). They were both definitely filled with drama. The first one, we probably shouldn't have been together in the first place, we both had way too many issues at that point and our issues sort of fed off each other's. The second kinda started out as a rebound from the first, but it became real and we were together for a little over three years.... Until she went back home for a week during the holidays, home to be surrounded by a bunch of homophobic religious fanatics, and decided that she couldn't be with me anymore because she had to 'make things right with God'. There was *so* much wrong with that situation, including stuff that happened after we broke up, and it took me literally years to get over her. 

 

That relationship ended in 2008 and I haven't been in a relationship since. I've watched things get better, in legal terms at least, for lgbt+ people, and it makes me happy (tho with our current government who knows what'll happen), but I'm in no hurry to be in a relationship again. I do have that dream of someday getting married, and I would really like it if that could happen before my mom passes away so at least she can be there for it, but... Yeah, no hurry to go back to all that drama. (I have, of course, had multiple crushes since 2008, one horrible stupid ridiculous one on an authority figure, the most recent on my best friend who lives like literally on the other side of the planet so that'll never happen...)

[HeatherMarie]

(double-posting is okay if it's been so long since the last post, right?)

 

I just learned that a friend has been working with a group to develop an actual LGBTQ+ center where I live. There is no such thing here, hasn't been the 15 years I've lived here, and I've always felt a little sad about that but I've never been in a position to do much about it. The local Latter-day Saints church is helping to make this center a reality, and attempting to put in motion a push to get sexual orientation and gender identity added to the state employment and housing discrimination laws. This fills me with such hope, for the local LGBTQ+ community and for the city as a whole. 

[StormWizard212]

@HeatherMarie that is fantastic! I'm so glad you're seeing some change where you live.

 

I live in a very metropolitan area of a city of 4 million, but I work at a school a few suburbs out where the majority of students come from very conservative backgrounds. It is such a homophobic/transphobic place and it just absolutely blows my mind that travelling 20 minutes out of the city centre makes such a profound difference. Thankfully, this environment does not reflect the city as a whole and is a bizarre anomaly, but it can be a pretty unpleasant place to work. My heart goes out to the queer and trans kids at school who experience this community as their entire reality and don't realise that the mindsets and attitudes there do not reflect the rest of the city, state and country as a whole. It's honestly heartbreaking. 

[JavaTigress]

I often WISH that there was a better .... understanding, maybe?..... of the existence of Asexuals as real people?

I OFTEN feel like we are sort of invisible.
Like... People acknowledge that homosexual and bisexual people EXIST. Whatever their opinions on it. 

That doesn't OFTEN feel like the case with those who aren't really interested in sex at all?

[StormWizard212]

@JavaTigress I'm sorry that you feel invisible. I think a lot of people just fundamentally don't understand a lot about gender/sexuality and just ignore/erase what they can't explain.  I wish there was better awareness and understanding of people who are trans as well. Better education is needed because people need to actually understand the subtleties in gender identity and sexual orientation before they can accept and embrace. It's a real shame that there's still so much ignorance. 

[HeatherMarie]

I agree with that... It seems that way with a lot of different things, that when humans don't understand something they just kind of pretend it doesn't exist. I think some people are scared of things they don't understand, scared of the fact that they don't understand, so they just push it away and are like 'nope, not true, let's focus on something else'. Which really really sucks, but yeah. 

 

I get that a lot with pansexuality, honestly... I think it's worse with asexuality, but I've had multiple people insisting that pansexuality doesn't actually exist and 'it's just called bisexual, stop trying to be special'. And it doesn't help when I point out that 'bi' literally means 'two', which excludes the dozens of other genders. (When I actually have the mental strength to try to explain, I basically say that I personally know multiple people who identify as bisexual but specifically exclude trans, or gender fluid, people from their 'people I'd date', and I don't feel right being lumped with them.)

[brisingrrider1]

For the dealio with pansexuality/bisexuality, I have almost the opposite experience. I identify as bisexual, and I'm dating someone nonbinary. Others always ask me why I don't call myself pansexual, because it's "more accurate", but in all reality the term bisexual doesn't stem from the bi=two root, and it really mean attraction "to two or more genders". I also use bisexual for personal reasons, where I use it in my activism to fight the stereotypes and erasure of bisexual people.

[Metto]

I'm 22 and never had a relationship with a woman...feelsbad

[StormWizard212]

I'm taking some of my students on an excursion on Monday and I'm really excited about it. A local police station is running an event where kids from a number of schools in the area have been invited along to create a mural. We're throwing paint-filled balloons at a brick wall of the police station to make a giant rainbow. It's going to be lots of fun and I can't wait!