Made The Playlist [it's Still Wip Because I'm Trying To Find More Songs That Fit Them]

Perisex allies: stop this shit

CW: intersexism

Came across this infographic during some google image searching and I'm still kind of a state of despair about it because it's not just offensively wrong about what intersex is, it was used to teach university students about queer issues:

Alt text: LGBTQIA+ are defined one by one. Intersex is defined erroneously as "These are people who were born with genital organs of both sexes (male and female). It is a genetic condition."

It's one thing for your rando perisex person to be getting this wrong on social media. It's another thing entirely when it's professionals getting this wrong in an educational setting. 😩 And that this infographic appears in a peer-reviewed publication. 😩

It's even worse to know the students that were taught with this infographic were medical students, who will be the ones traumatizing intersex people for decades to come 😩

It's so wrong in so many different ways:

Intersex is not limited to people with genital differences. Most intersex people have intersex variations that are not apparent at birth, with puberty being the most common time of life for variations to present. Many people find out in adulthood having no outward physical differences.

Of the intersex people with genital differences, they do not have two sets of genitals. Most genital differences are still recognizably female or male (e.g. spadias), and those who have ambiguous genitals have one set.

Intersex is not "male parts + female parts" or even "intermediate male/female parts", it is an umbrella term for anybody whose primary/secondary sex characteristics don't line up with what is expected for male and female bodies. Some intersex variations make women look more feminine, or make men look more masculine.

Defining intersex by genital differences doesn't just exclude most intersex people, it also sets the tone that we are defined by our genitals. To be publicly intersex is to have non-stop DMs about your genitals. This sort of framing sets up openly intersex people for invasive questions and harassment, and it keeps large numbers of intersex people from coming out.

Many intersex variations do not have a known genetic basis. Many intersex variations are caused by exposure to certain hormonal levels in the womb. Certain medications when taken during pregnancy can trigger intersex variations.

While bodily variation is necessary for being intersex, the social experience of stigma, discrimination, isolation, hyper-medicalization, and hyper-sexualization are all just as much a part of being intersex.

📣 Perisex allies: this is shit you can stop. When you see other perisex people parrot this sort of misinformation, correct them. Direct them to look up resources written by actually intersex people.

Here are some starter resources to give:

Intersex explained by Hans Lindahl

Media and style guide by IHRA

FAQ by intersex-support

A recent post I did compiling information for trans people who want to be better intersex allies

reasons to care about trans men & mascs

we're people

Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:

Fiction is not reality.

You can enjoy things in fiction that would be awful in the real world. Like playing a murderhobo in a game! In the real world, being or supporting a murderer-thief would be pretty damn awful, while in the game it's just good fun. Same with anything else you choose to do with the pixels on the screen, like kinks that don't affect anyone real, so they're okay in fiction, but would be pretty damn bad in real life.

No one else is responsible for your online experience. They are required not to harass you, but they are not and never will be obligated to not post about ships, kinks, or tropes you dislike just to avoid you seeing them. It's up to you to blacklist words or phrases, block tags, or even block users as needed to avoid seeing content that upsets you.

No one can force you to read anything against your consent. Any content you don't like seeing can be instantly avoided by closing out of the offending post/fic.

You are not owed an online experience free of discomfort.

Nothing that happens in your imagination can ever make you a bad person. Words you write or read about fictional characters will never make you a bad person.

The claim that media consumption influences real-life behavior is intellectually dishonest and serves only to excuse the behavior of real offenders.

Fiction is a safe way to explore horrifying or confusing concepts. Therapists agree that fiction, even (or especially) about taboo topics is a good coping mechanism, especially, but not exclusively, for trauma survivors. Fiction is to adults what play therapy is to children. This doesn't stop being true if the work in question is of a sexual nature.

Sex isn't an inherently worse or better motivation than anything else. A work written to create feelings of arousal isn't dirty, shameful, or in any way less pure than works written to entertain, provoke moral questions, or for other reasons. And worth noting is that multiple purposes can exist in the same story, especially fanfiction.

You aren't entitled to an explanation for why someone reads, writes, or otherwise enjoys certain works, kinks, tropes, ships, etc.

“cis men with gynecomastia” “cis women with xy chromosomes” “cis people with DSDs” “people with differences in sexual development” is intersex a dirty word to you people holy shit

Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:

Fiction is not reality.

You can enjoy things in fiction that would be awful in the real world. Like playing a murderhobo in a game! In the real world, being or supporting a murderer-thief would be pretty damn awful, while in the game it's just good fun. Same with anything else you choose to do with the pixels on the screen, like kinks that don't affect anyone real, so they're okay in fiction, but would be pretty damn bad in real life.

No one else is responsible for your online experience. They are required not to harass you, but they are not and never will be obligated to not post about ships, kinks, or tropes you dislike just to avoid you seeing them. It's up to you to blacklist words or phrases, block tags, or even block users as needed to avoid seeing content that upsets you.

No one can force you to read anything against your consent. Any content you don't like seeing can be instantly avoided by closing out of the offending post/fic.

You are not owed an online experience free of discomfort.

Nothing that happens in your imagination can ever make you a bad person. Words you write or read about fictional characters will never make you a bad person.

The claim that media consumption influences real-life behavior is intellectually dishonest and serves only to excuse the behavior of real offenders.

Fiction is a safe way to explore horrifying or confusing concepts. Therapists agree that fiction, even (or especially) about taboo topics is a good coping mechanism, especially, but not exclusively, for trauma survivors. Fiction is to adults what play therapy is to children. This doesn't stop being true if the work in question is of a sexual nature.

Sex isn't an inherently worse or better motivation than anything else. A work written to create feelings of arousal isn't dirty, shameful, or in any way less pure than works written to entertain, provoke moral questions, or for other reasons. And worth noting is that multiple purposes can exist in the same story, especially fanfiction.

You aren't entitled to an explanation for why someone reads, writes, or otherwise enjoys certain works, kinks, tropes, ships, etc.

a comic about my weird irreverence for canon

go write a bad ending AU! ship your self-insert oc with your favourite villain!! the world's your oyster!!!

Hey, I get that you don't like that person's stance, but they don't deserve to die or to relive their own trauma because of it. Don't dehumanize your enemies.

If you're at the point where the most substantial thing you could say to somebody is a threat, just silently wish the best for them.

Wish that someday they'll stop being an enemy. Wish for character growth.

(Note: This is not asking you to "fix them." That's not your job, and helping people with the mindset of "fixing them" is not actually that helpful. If they ask for civil discussion-- and are genuine-- then it's your choice whether you permit it or not, but don't try to force your point without listening to them. Don't "fix them." It very likely is not going to work, and will very likely instead give them a bad/worse taste in their mouth about you and what you represent. Sometimes it is best to leave people be, in all honesty. You don't have to save the world, doing what you can is perfectly acceptable. Promoting good-will and stability in your own space is just as-- if not more-- important as stepping outside of said space.)

I

the whole "minor-coded" bullshit really is just such a thinly veiled excuse to justify infantilizing people with mental illnesses, speech impediments, asexual people, people who are just short, people who are female and short and happy-go-lucky, the list goes on and on and on. it also tends to justify racism and misogyny!

and really "minor-coded" is so disgusting to think abt. bc the majority of the time, it's just super fucking ableist! this whole "post-minor" bullshit is also just astoundingly devoid of critical thinking. and someone who swears by "minor-coded" or believes in the "post-minor" bullshit is either a minor themself or a genuine creep adult using fandom buzzwords to make themself look safe so they can lure in minors who actually believe in this crap. headcanon what you want, but this is SO prevalent it's driving me insane because i KNOW people are just following along with what they're told by "safe people".

anyways, all this to say, if this gets one note ill make a series of posts that explain why pretty much all the characters the cookie run fandom claims are minors are not minors via debunking the "minor-coded guidelines that say they are", and if i cant debunk it, ill explain why it's straight up Kind Of Sus to claim them minors because so fucking many of them are autistic coded, disabled, or just short. including but not limited to:

The Kraken

A Blizzard Pathfinding Shepherd

Not just one, but TWO Train Conductors

An Island Tour Guide

A Robot.

A Minor Deity of the Moon

University Graduate

Intersex people deserve spaces that don't just tolerate their existance, but celebrate it.

Intersex people deserve spaces that don't instinctively refer to them as "cis people with sex development disorders".

Intersex people deserve spaces with dedicated space for us, resources and action when intersexism arises.

Intersex people deserve spaces with the INTERSEX flag hung proudly alongside other queer pride flags.

Intersex people deserve to see themselves included, represented, uplifted, educated on, and celebrated.

Hey gentle reminder that you can ignore those "Reblog! If you don't you're [extremely upsetting label here]" posts. You should ignore them, btw. You don't suddenly become a racist because you ignored someone trying to farm interaction, you don't become homophobic because you felt bad about exposing your followers and friends to that, you don't become a bigot because of other people trying to guilt trip you.

If you're not purposely causing harm to minority groups or hold bigoted beliefs, you don't suddenly become a bigot because you ignored someone being an ass. You're allowed to ignore guilt tripping messages and if someone gets irritated at you for ignoring them, tell them to get a grip. 🫂

Likewise, you're allowed to ignore:

Guilt tripping spam asks.

Scam asks.

"Reblog if your account is [group] safe!" posts

"If you don't reblog, I'm going to assume you're a [insert term here]" posts

"People are dying, you can spare some time to reblog" posts

Posts that show actual pictures of real life tragedy with the intent of hoping you spread it across the platform.

"How dare you donate to Ao3/Wikipedia when there's [insert other tragedies here] going on!" posts

Posts that imply that you shouldn't have a safe space and that it's cruel to have your account be a safe space.

Posts that say you shouldn't be happy while there's tragedies going on in the real world.

At the end of the day, 90% of those posts use the "other people have it worse" mindset and that ISN'T HEALTHY. You don't tell someone that's happy they aren't allowed to be happy because someone else is happier than them at the moment, so don't do it for pain and suffering.

Anyway, I suggest you block the people that make guilt tripping posts. Better for your mindset in the long run and people need to realize they can get their point across without triggering people's OCD/thought spirals.