That Time Tumblr Invented Its Own Genders

[@Frenchaboo]

I wrote my master's thesis on neopronouns and gender expression via language and let me tell you, us chronically online queers take for granted how tumblr is the only quotable source for so many terms we see every day. The absolute rabbithole of deleted tumblr accounts and fanwiki troll dramas I had to plow through in order to satisfyingly explain things to my mid-40s male professor was traumatic, and this video brought it all back 💀

[@SquiddyHiggenbottom]

Researching and presenting that kind of info in an academic setting makes you braver than any US marine 🤣

[@Vannah272]

My favorite neopronouns set originated from a 90's sci-fi novel, which is somehow even nerdier to explain.

[@mightymeatymech]

@@Vannah272 drop the novel name lol (and pronouns if ya wanna)

[@SanktaLo]

hope this isn’t strange (no pun intended), but i would die to read this thesis 😂 i just got my master’s in psych and my minor during undergrad was linguistics. online language is so fascinating to me. i ended up doing an entire project on fandom language that was mostly sourced from tumblr (and had soooo many queer-related things)

[@penelopepenelope789]

@@Vannah272 tell!

[@ollieskinner3532]

i will never forget when my school decided to ‘revolutionise’ sex ed in 2015 by having one slide on a powerpoint with about 25 orientations and genders on and link to a MOGAI blog and i remember thinking “oh my god this is gonna set equality in my school back by a decade”

[@charliekahn4205]

Even to understand how MOGAI works, you're going to need to introduce a completely different gender paradigm before you even utter the word "agender". If they dedicated a class period to it, and started with, "If you think there are two or three genders, forget everything you know about sex and gender because what I am about to show you is going to blow your minds," it might have worked.

[@thedeltaquadrant]

@@charliekahn4205oh no, peope learning that there are more than 2 or 3 genders, how awful.

[@esotericpince]

at my school we had that plus an assembly telling us to say "thats so silly!" instead of "thats so gay!" (which i dont even remember being common among 2016 6th graders) there were weeks of "thats so silly !" being said in a stereotypical gay voice and lisp. i honestly cant tell if that made things better or worse because we DID stop saying 'thats so gay'

[@caspercomments]

LMAOOO AT LEAST THEY TRIED☠️

[@blakelopez6309]

​@@thedeltaquadrantyeah like I don't think it's bad at all. At my school in sex ed they just scared people about stds and saying gay people get them more😑 It was California too which is even more surprising but tbh the teacher had an annoying voice and was probably anti choice. I wish I had know about being trans and different sexualities back then tbh. Now I just feel uncomfortable seeing people who knew me back in high-school cause they deadname me and I hate having to explain that I have a new name now and why I sound and look different

[@craftymuffin3066]

“Crazy teenagers and their genders” I am now twenty and I still have my gender! Little known fact, they actually let you keep them!

[@esotericpince]

aw really? when i turned 18 the canadian government repossessed mine :(

[@Player_O1ne]

@@esotericpince they do that sometimes if you default on your gender mortgage

[@lindenm.9149]

22 and I only have a few genders I’ve collected. (Real talk I was transmedicalist because of “silly transtrender” hatred and like even if I’m fine being general NB/agender. It’s very fun to be an endergender calicogender with 4 slots in my Minecraft gender hotbar open)

[@olegschmidt7171]

The elites don’t want you to know this but the genders at the park are free you can take them home I have 458 genders

[@bigbluetrex__8475]

the gender goblin is coming for you, be wary

[@TeddyJohnstone]

I think one of the worst things that came out of this era was the idea that “old” terms were all basically slurs and should be completely cast aside in favor of the new, more correct ones. Broad terms and identities that hold all sorts of people help us stay together instead of tearing us apart. It kinda promoted the idea that you had your section of the queer community that totally understood you and the rest of it was so different that they might as well be a different group entirely. I was DEEP in this as a middle schooler and high schooler and now as a young adult, I’ve really found myself embracing terms like transsexual and butch and d*ke. The words that I was told to never say and the words that the older queers coveted. I know why they coveted them now. They feel punchy and powerful and in your face and they cannot and will not be commodified by Target or Amazon, repackaged, and sold to me. They also hold a lot more people and don’t shut out anyone based on specific, minute parts of themselves. This went a lot longer than I intended, but yeah. I think that although it was a mostly harmless thing and most of the people who hated on it were bigots, it did legitimately set back a lot of queer people in terms of being community minded or cohesive.

[@666_cthulhu]

real. that’s why i’m a rocky horror fan

[@PizzaManager101]

I agree, strongly, but i’m also very careful about the crowds I use those terms in, especially with older queer folks. Because while i’ve faced threats, insults, and abuse, it’s nothing in comparison to what many older queer folks have experienced, and their relationships with words like Butch or D*ke can be stained by that. I have a gay uncle who goes to gay bars every weekend (in his late 60s) but is still more reserved language-wise than me, by far, even though my social activities are much more chill and tranquil (i love climbing and book clubs lol)

[@TeddyJohnstone]

@@PizzaManager101I appreciate and agree with this point and never use reclaimed slurs around people who I don’t know for a fact are okay with them. I would not walk up to an older queer person and just assume their comfortability with labels or language, everyone has their own experience. However, I don’t think you should group “butch” with other slurs. Butch is not a slur. Any word can be used as an insult, and cishet people have absolutely used butch that way, but it’s reductive and incorrect to say that butch is a bad word to use without explicit permission. It is an identity that people still want to be recognized and labeled as, not a slur.

[@averyeml]

Microlabeling is a WHOLE thing- I’ve been asexual for over a decade now and it very rapidly went from this one label everyone fit under and a rigid “no sex, no libido, if you like ANYTHING you aren’t actually ace” to having so many microlabels i couldn’t tell you 10% of them if I tried. I stick to calling myself plain asexual because I don’t really care enough to dive deep and find some super niche label for whatever I currently am, and I’ve grown and changed over the years and wouldn’t want to have to go diving back into the fray to find a new one when the umbrella term makes me very happy. Plus, finding basic asexual pride stuff is rare, let alone some unique flag. I love microlabels for what they are and for how they make people feel. If someone finds happiness in going with MOGAI instead of LGBTQIA+ or is happier calling themselves a microlabel instead of the umbrella term, go for it. Looking at a larger history of how LGBT groups expand before consolidating, I also think they’re a natural part of growth. Also, I am the A down there at the end of the long string of alphabet soup and even I only ever use LGBT. It’s okay that my letter isn’t there. I will survive.

[@EJ_2091]

I will say that I am glad that people have veered away from an excessively strict definition of asexuality as “no sex, no, libido, etc.”. I think it is good to acknowledge that some people don’t experience sexual attraction, but may still enjoy the physical process and feelings of sex or masturbating. I feel that’s a valid distinction. But yeah, people get heavily bogged down in trying to find their very specific label at very young ages, and it’s like “my dude, you’re 14. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to use a broad term until you understand yourself better. Chill out.”

[@steampunk-llama]

@@EJ_2091 I personally am not simply because I feel anything past the standard sex repulsed, low libido, no seeking out stuff falls more under the greysexual umbrella. It’s also frustrating as a very sex repulsed ace because there’s really no other spaces I can communicate my experiences. That’s purely from my own viewpoints though and it’s a nuanced issue I think

[@gregorysteffensen3279]

It seems like granular, specific microlabels can be deeply comforting for some people and powerfully distressing for others - I feel like I have phases of fixation (in other cultures beyond LGBT+/MOGAI stuff too) where I strive to learn these things for a few months and then realized I'm in over my head and lean back to chill out

[@idkwhatslife]

Mico lables helped alot for me since it made the fact that unbrellas lables are unbrellas clear for me. Like theres this never-ending sea of micro lables, so however you feel is in there somewhere even if you dont want to dive into it

[@reedsylvier5250]

It really puts things in a lot better perspective for me when the language exists to define and understand it. Finding asexually and that aromanticism was life-changing, and then feeling many facets of it during my transition has been fascinating, probably TMI but I used to be fully on the sex-repulsed side of things with no libido, now as a transitioning transmasc I experience a whole different side with orientated aroace in my own way, with some newfound types of idk ghost attraction? Such as feeling like if I did experience sexual attraction it would be for guys as a guy, and I do enjoy bl smut. My AroAceness is still exactly the same I just experience it differently, even small labels like this can be so broad in that way, which really shows what a wide spectrum it is

[@BaddeGrasse]

Seeing "social justice warriors" stigmatise kink, polyamory, and drag all in one fell swoop is really something

[@raneemacintosh6842]

I wonder if the giant tumour of ace-spectrum sub-sexualities people was a precursor to the modern 'puriteens' phenomena.

[@alizardinyourroom1361]

Yeah that one reblog where someone was like "exclude the pedos and crossdressers" was so bizzare to me??? Like yes, pedos aren't welcome but crossdressers? Like, crossdressing has been such a back bone for the queer community! Its how a lot of trans and GNC people explore gender, in the past and to this day.

[@raneemacintosh6842]

@@alizardinyourroom1361 extremely bizarre take for them to be like 'you can present your gender expression and identity however you want with ONE exception: being completely cis and wearing opposite sex clothes'. but then if said crossdresser invents a microlabel that makes them something 1 centimeter outside cis, it's okay!

[@renash2758]

i think they meant particularly cishet kink and polyamorous folks, because being poly or into kink doesn't inherently make you queer. i don't think their aim was to be exclusionary (this is coming from a polyamorous lesbian myself).

[@12me91]

​@@raneemacintosh6842chronically online people who pretend to be gender queer for attention get threatened by actually gender queer people

[@justmonika1]

You have no idea what a breath of fresh air this retrospective is. As someone who was there when it happened, not only are you one of the few people who really knows what they're talking about, but you approach the subject with empathy and respect and a touch of deserved criticism as well. Kudos, well done.

[@iwannabeanarwhal]

As someone who originally watched it from the side of the mockery, it was also very interesting. It seems like they ran into similar problems as constructed language projects face, which I guess makes sense, since they were trying to create new language. Now they got me wondering what a language would look like if the MOGAI approach was baked into its language features instead of just adding words...

[@atoaster1209]

What a nuanced take on some extremely fraught subject matter! The ability to say both “creating words to fit one’s experience is itself radical” and “the culture of crafting identities among MOGAI teens can be impractical” is really really important. Your defense of MOGAI, your linking it back to the rise and fall of the skeptic community and the birth of your channel, your patience, is all appreciated. This, truly, is a queer historian and a scholar’s approach to teenage internet queerness.

[@legioninkheart9867]

What is impractical about it? The entire purpose of those labels is for people to better understand themselves and eachother and to find those with similar experiences. If you aren't a person who needs that, then they aren't useful to *you personally*, it doesnt make them "impractical". I don't like to cook, so I personally don't need a lot of specialized kitchen appliances. Someone who does a lot of fancy cooking will need those things more than me. I'm not going to say blenders are impractical in their existence because they aren't useful to me personally. The impracticality take is nonsense. And it wasn't even a bunch of teenagers the way people seem to think. The main reason people think that is bc the teens were the ones who hadnt learned the hard way to be more anonymous online when talking about their queerness. then they did learn and we all went to more private forms of community. millenials, gen xers, and even older were always there.

[@jacobheeaton6348]

​@@legioninkheart9867 If a label is supposed to help you better understand yourself, others and find people with similar experiences then having a bunch of hyper niche labels is wonderful for understanding yourself, very impractical for understanding others because they now need to look up and attempt to understand the sometimes very vague meaning of the label you chose, and it's potentially detrimental to finding others with a similar experience if several people coin different labels to explain the same experience then you now have two split groups that could just be one group thus making it far harder to find people looking for similar experiences when you're both looking for seperate groups.

[@JDyzzle]

I agree with both previous comments. However, certain terms or labels do gain popularity in use, resulting in them being better know. For instance, “voidgender” or “gendervoid” (it’s the same gender), or catgender these gender labels are mentioned pretty often and many identify with them, I myself identified with gendervoid, and was gendervoid. It would be nice if mogai labels were more organized, but that might have been impossible, as it’s already impossible to record every gender variation. Furthermore, umbrella terms. Umbrella terms help form a community to relate to. Xenogender is an umbrella term for gendervoid, and catgender. Catgender is also an umbrella term for variations in the catgender identity. I do agree there’s an amount of impracticality in it, as stated, which it’s unfortunate that possible communities will be broken up due to the volume of labels, but what I’ve stated above should help with reuniting them.

[@faustina9328]

I think they could be very useful as a means of describing experiences and perception of the self.

[@CruelestChris]

@@legioninkheart9867 It's basically discovering individualism backwards.

[@natashalawely2900]

i think MOGAI's biggest sin was creating the bi vs. pan discourse. those four years, bi and pan people were fighting for their LIVES trying to prove bisexuality is not transphobic and that pansexuality is not the same as bisexuality. i think MOGAI had a good idea in trying to consolidate everyone under a non-offensive umbrella term, but the kids creating it weren't knowledgable enough to do it.

[@raoul_alexander]

I remember still seeing that discourse when I first made an Instagram account in 2020. I think at the time I had recently switched from (privately) labelling myself bi to pan and I certainly felt some type of way seeing people argue about these terms with that kind of intensity, so I quickly just distanced myself from that type of content. One thing that I think also led to problems is that the same label can mean different things to different people. And that's fine and doesn't mean one person is harming the other with their interpretation. But I'm sure it led to a lot of defensiveness when someone described their experience and got a response like: "But that means you're pan, not bi!" or the other way around. Especially if you insist that one or the other label is problematic in some way. To this day I don't know if there's one commonly accepted definition of what differentiates bisexuality and pansexuality.

[@PeeperSnail]

As a bi person that era of discourse was fucking exhausting. That said though, in a way it was kind of inevitable? Alongside the other flavors of awful discourse, like ace discourse, m-spec lesbian discourse, "queer is a slur" discourse, etc. etc. MOGAI was designed from the start to actively burn a bridge with every single part of queer history that came before it, on the grounds that it was created by problematic people and that it was making a bed with "crossdressers and pedophiles". It was only a matter of time before they cooked up some dumb shit discourse because they actively rejected historical things that had already addressed and resolved the arguments they were cooking up (for example for the bi discourse thing, the Bisexual Manifesto written in the 20th century already had clearly stated bisexuality was loving people regardless of gender).

[@DayglowRed]

As a bisexual who graduated high school in 2002 the pan uprising was a real "Jesse what are you talking about" moment when I started seeing it in person.@@PeeperSnail

[@ndawn90]

OMG, I took like, one baby step down that rabbit hole and then quickly retreated in terror! I've decided to label myself as bisexual vs pansexual for pretty much one reason - I like the colors in the bisexual pride flag better. That was pretty much the entire deciding factor. I also personally feel like pansexuality is more like "I like the wine and regardless of the bottle it comes in," and bisexuality is like, "All the bottles are sexy to me!", but that's how I personally see it, not any sort of official definition.

[@tessamiller9770]

seriously. i had to do ALOT of searching to find a sexuality for myself (i'm androsexual), but even that does'nt include trans girls. am i transphobic to trans girls? no! some of my best friends are trans girls, im just not sexually attracted to them. i was so tired of hearing people telling me i was transphobic for calling myself bisexual, but i myself am a trans person, even then i wasnt really bisexual, and i wasnt really pansexual either, so id interchange the two words when talking to people. "im bisexual, but i really also like trans men, and im more into butch women also. i swear im not transphobic im just not into super feminine people"

[@naoki5741]

Finally, someone that mentions the transition from atheist to anti-sjw channels! This made it so easy for me as a young teenager to fall into the whole anti-sjw mindset because as an atheist, I had come to trust these channels and their opinions so much

[@jaybookout121]

That was my exact experience too!

[@vulcanhumor]

Yup. I remember when TJ, Armoured Skeptic and rest all started transitioning to anti-SJW content. It felt very intellectually mature, because the majority of the anti-religion videos were against conservatives, whereas the majority of the anti-SJW videos were against liberals, and it was like "See? We're so rational and unbiased, we'll criticize our own side if they get too crazy." Except that wasn't actually what was happening, and certain channels (like Sargon of Akkad) were actually a lot more right-wing than I'd given them credit for, and I started going down a nasty rabbit hole...

[@eugeniabukhman8533]

Same, when i was younger I was really into atheist channels, so when they started making more anti-SJW content, I started to go along with that too. Not to a huge extent and I left them behind after 1. The gay happened to me and 2. I realized that i actually agreed with the people these channels were mocking. Still, it was sure a time.

[@sigrid9699]

this is actually something that's been pointed out and criticized for years now, but in other sectors of youtube. most of the explicit conversations about it tend to take place in the black leftist or 'cornbread' corners of the platform, often in reference to the racist tendencies of white, self described leftists the most commonly pointed to video is fd signifier's 'break bread' video, the first half of which explicitly lays out the history of these spaces and how they evolved into their current forms

[@babbittybabbitt]

Me too!

[@laurel6647]

to me, as an autistic adult who was a teen in this community back in the day, it just seems like such an inherently autistic thing. i love labels, i love making lists, i love being able to put my thoughts and feelings into words to try and make sense of them to others, and that can be so hard sometimes. it only makes sense that a community of young, neurodivergent, queer people would form online around the idea of being able to create hyperspecific descriptions of themselves as a way to work through and explore gender and sexuality.

[@halyj]

this...makes a lot of sense

[@Asbestoslover666]

autistic too, I wasnt involved in MOGAI but i can definitely see how it could be very autistic. Especially since autistics tend to have a unique way of viewing the world and in extension, the concept/ construct gender. and since we struggle with social rules, such as gender, we are more likely to question and think outside the box of typical gender categories.

[@poppop1556]

It's interesting too because it seems like in the same timeframe as we were learning to see autism as a spectrum and not try to label it, gender was going in the opposite direction.

[@tvangelist]

@@hasslfoot whyyyy is this strangers medical history something you need to know

[@Asbestoslover666]

@@hasslfoot nah you're just being unkind. You were bringing down the vibes :(

[@hoyitsmiguel]

There's always this fun trifecta of videos that pop up of guides for: Strange being the Tumblr guide, Coley being the AO3/Fanfiction guide, and Izzy being the old nostalgic games/internet culture guide

[@acesquid6944]

They’re all my favorite KZbinrs lol

[@666_cthulhu]

okay i need to be part of the in-group - who is coley?

[@jabee_balls]

​​@@666_cthulhu youtube.com/@ColeyDoesThings !! she mainly covers unhinged fanfic / fandoms n sometimes explains, in academic detail, stuff like omegaverse 😭 they're great !!!

[@becauseimafan]

​@@jabee_balls Thank you for explaining! 😁👍

[@ArkRiley]

Izzy? I'm always down for more retro games & net content

[@unofficially-ace]

I’m semi-active in mogai/xenogender spaces and from what I’ve seen, nobody expects anyone to know what their hyper specific labels mean, it’s very much something that’s used more for self reflection than for communicating with others. A lot of people have simplified versions of their labels that they use when introducing themselves to someone outside the community, which I honestly think is relatable to most queer people. Like honestly,,,,who cares if people are using 100 gender labels for themselves, really why does it matter

[@thischannelisdead9]

Yes!! Most of my labels are kept private. If someone actively *wants* to know about my hoard, I'll gladly tell them, but if someone who knows literally nothing asks about my gender, I don't have an issue with simplifying it to "nonbinary" or "genderfluid".

[@rhat.]

Yes!!! I tend to describe it as three “levels” of labels? Level one would be the things i want everyone to know, level two for those I trust, and level three just for myself. Like I want (almost) everyone to know I’m trans and ace, but there are smaller labels beneath those that I don’t like. Talk about.

[@LocalManwhore]

i remember seeing a meme back in the day where it was like "me, explaining my orientation to myself: i am [insert mogai orentation explanation vs me explaining to other ppl: gae" and tbh RELATABLE AF NOW cuz im biromantic homosexual but usually narrow myself down to "bi with a male lean" or simply just gay lol

[@juicyboxesxo]

​@sleepydevilz i use a lot of gender terms but i refer to myself as a woman to most ppl and to most queer people im a genderqueer/nonbinary woman. it rly doesn't matter to know everyone's neogenders. it's for me!

[@soot9145]

I only identify with non-binary and use that pride flag. But I LOVE reading about all the niche labels people come up because it makes me think about my own gender and understand it better. I'm trying to get a dysphoria diagnosis next year and I'm going to have to explain my gender identity to cis doctors. I feel like I have learned a lot of ways to explain the feelings of gender I have from Tumblr

[@ValleyMansonOfficial]

*Gothgender deserves more respect*

[@DefyReality-ll2cg]

THIS THIS THIS!!!

[@mewmew6158]

True

[@beatrix4519]

yeah um I think I choose to identify with that upon hearing it (genuine)

[@comradep8519]

that's so fucking true dude

[@Tommy-sp1qb]

No one else like this comment, I got it to 666

[@rofeitl]

I’m really thankful to the MOGAI community for pushing how romantic attraction is different from sexual attraction. Made it really easy for me to figure out I was Ace

[@chaseevans3529]

real. i figured out i was aro because of it

[@jojo.robotic]

i’m neurodivergent and i feel very disconnected from gender, sexuality, romantic attraction, etc etc. having a word or term to go with these concepts helps me better understand it all. i don’t care what label anyone uses as long as it makes them happy and isn’t hurting anyone.

[@engagingathena9965]

i would definitely agree! while i do identify with some microlabels i don’t oftern use them thought bc many don’t know them

[@banannarama]

Mood

[@gocelotspice5766]

Yeah, I get this. I’m autistic (or at least most likely I am), and while my sexuality is pretty simple (I’m def a lesbian)- my gender… I’m not so sure

[@moonxliqht]

agreed. even if i don't understand it, i still respect it

[@FatBoiaFatCat]

It's all socially constructed, feeling disconnected from something that only exists in the human social sphere outside of sex isn't all that abnormal. As for romantic and sexual attraction, romance used to be seen as an illness of the mind, it was a concept that grew in popularity and acceptance when the nuclear family became the norm, but romantic attraction is merely a social thing. Sexual attraction, I mean, there's a lot of reasons one may not feel sexual attraction. For myself it's mainly trauma and having a shattered personality, but as far as I can tell sexuality is the only thing that is fundamentally tied to the human condition that's affected by situation, and/or, mental state. So your feelings of disconnect may not have anything to do with neurodivergence directly, but rather being alienated from social spheres due to neurodivergence or being a social outcast. Being treated as weird for being nero-divergent either intentionally or implicitly may leave that feeling of disconnect from the social status quo. That's my theory on it anyway.

[@hannahgallaher1733]

even though you don't use the aromantic for yourself, it really means a lot to see someone with such a large audience (especially a queer audience) not only mention aspec identities but also relate to the aspec experience! that moment in the video made my day ngl :)

[@zoinomiko]

Agreed! (ETA, as she says...XD ) While I hope for a world where labels aren't necessary, having/creating language to share and learn about each others' experiences is so useful as most of us work to break free of the cis/het "default" that's made us feel so othered most of our young lives. It's also super amazing to see someone with a close partner relate to the Aro term and makes me really curious about Strange's experiences coming to this understanding of self (intellectually, not parasocially).

[@-Araina-]

I'll be honest, aromantic is the label I've maybe had the most trouble understanding as an identity. Would you mind explaining how it works? For example, in this video Teya talks about being aromantic, but as we know from her other videos she has a girlfriend who she lives with. Why would someone have a partner if they don't feel romantic love? If someone is aromantic but not asexual, do they want to have sex with people but don't experience romantic connection with those people? It's always been confusing to me but I really do want to understand.

[@zoinomiko]

​@@-Araina- You're right, Aro is a very complex and interesting identity!! I think there's probably lot of reasons to discover for people to want close relationships and companionships that don't necessarily involve having "mushy feelings" about someone. For myself - sitting in the 'demi' realm - I definitely felt a deep love for my wife (then close friend) that didn't involve a desire to romance/have mushy feelings or have sex with her and I still wanted her to be my life partner - she's my favorite person in the world and being with her made me a happier, better person. Mushy feelings came when we started seriously investigating a relationship, but even if they hadn't I still wanted her to be my life partner.

[@LoZander]

The anti-religion youtuber to anti SJW youtuber pipeline was so real. I remember being an edgy, anti religious, rebellious 16 year old and absolutely falling down the anti SJW rabbit hole. A lot of these youtubers were those you previously critisized religion. At the time, the anti-SJW movement seemed like a rebellion against authoritarianism or language police. Of course it wasn't. Im so happy i went on to get a more nuanced perspective of it all.

[@WhichDoctor1]

im eternally grateful that i got into the youtube atheist space early enough that as soon as they started getting openly misogynistic around 2011 i had already got bored enough that I totally dropped out before they found SJW content. In Fact i somehow mannaged to be on youtube a lot through the whole peak of the anti SJW crazy without ever becoming aware of it, at least until the pushback was well under way. But yeah, if id been younger and more deep into it when that started I could easily have gotten pulled in. I too was a teenager with way too high opinions of my own opinions (that i'd mostly unthinkingly picked up from other people) at one point

[@Anon26535]

The fact of the matter is that atheism is generally the opposite of rebellion. It's about dominance and superiority. There's a reason the theory of evolution originated in the British Empire. Whether or not it's true in a real, physical sense, in a human context these ideas easily reinforce our instincts for bigotry.

[@thefancytophat3662]

⁠​⁠@@Anon26535what the fuck are you taking about? The church of england dominated English schools at the time, and the Catholic Church has been one of the major political powers since the fall of the roman empire. To this day, in some muslim countries, you can be put to death for atheism.

[@Spooglecraft]

it's kinda funny in a bad way how pretty much all those rabbit holes that claim to be anti-authoritarian are ultimately driven by authoritarian interests, which most of the people in the rabbit hole don't realize. but it's never actually about "we want to have a right to be, too", but always about "we don't want anything that disagrees with us to be", especially since the ones leading the charge and speaking up are loud minorities of radicals, thereby defining the whole group, especially in the eyes of the opponents, just making the whole matter even worse and overshadowing the fact that most people aren't radicals. and the algorithms of media sites aren't helping, you watch something moderate but even just slightly off "mainstream", and before you know it you get leftist to far-left or alt-right to far-right content recommended by the dozen, depending on what you watched in the first place. moderate voices, meanwhile, are drowned out. trying to research into anything even slightly sociopolitical and to understand issues from multiple sides has really cursed my recommendations.

[@LoZander]

@@Anon26535 Atheism is not about superiority or dominance. There may be atheists who suffer from superiority complexes, but this is not inherent to atheism. I agree that it's also not inherently rebellious. The only reason it historically has been, is because of how prevalent religion has been. But calling it the opposite of rebellion also doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Evolution also has little to do with this. That's a separate idea. You can believe in evolution and god, for instance. Evolution also isn't really a question of belief, it's a well established fact, whether or not one believes in a god or not. Evolution by natural selection is also not a guide on how to treat people. One of the great things about humanity is exactly the fact that we can think beyond instinct.

[@xafilmbyx]

Honestly I am in full support of “made up” genders. They’re all pretty much symbolic and if it makes it easier for someone to understand themselves I see no reason why they shouldn’t use them :)

[@anusername8350]

gender is made up anyway so who cares

[@_geno_]

exactly, i dont personally use them but sometimes i’ll stumble upon an obscure gender that someone coined and relate to the experience that’s described, which is nice since i literally cant describe my gender lmao

[@gypsylee333]

Because it makes you look like a joke and it's really annoying for normal people. Makes anyone who does it look like a narcissist and desperate for victim points.

[@muffinghostie]

@@gypsylee333 who cares what other people think it’s a thing for them and no one else. Other people shouldn’t get to determine what a person identifies. It’s usually harmless.

[@nocturalTragedy]

​@@gypsylee333 this is the exact rhetoric that transphobes use when talking about "normal" (binary, conforming) trans people, you realize that, right?

[@anwyll9212]

The infinite genders thing is just kind of fun to me, i dont tend to label myself but Its cool that the people who do are just having fun

[@kailuapig]

yeah! if their gender hoards bring them queer joy, that's so cool !!

[@tryblight]

I love the idea of infinite gender. its truly the entire opposite of the socially accepted "2 genders" and i love it so much for that

[@L0rdOfThePies]

@@tryblight like the interpretation that gender is as open and infinite and evolving as collective human minds can be personally, its so cool that something we made on our own could possibly be anything and everything without being anything (physical) at all.. though now that I’m thinking about it, in social practice like mogai it would probably be difficult to comprehend something so fundamentally incomprehensible

[@skylerarndt3179]

@@kailuapigtill they start targeting children… oh wait it’s already started.

[@BelleShadow]

But they weren't just having fun. They were doing real harm to themselves for making up infinite labels and policing themselves and others. MOGAI was one of the worst things to happen to Tumblr

[@paulapierrot9542]

My biggest issue with the MOGAI thing is that in certain queer communities it led to a very literal, strict and normative understanding of labels, maybe because of all those queer dictionaries. For example: Way before Tumblr, the bisexual community often used a quote by the activist Robyn Ochs to define bisexuality: "The potential to feel sexually and/or romantically attracted to more than one gender (...)". This makes bisexuality a broad term, including asexual and aromantic attraction. But some very young aspec people criticize bi+ activists for not mentioning biromantic people every time. I get it when it's a demand of aspec people to be more visible. However, I'm against it when the criticism is used to claim that the term bisexuality always refers to sexual attraction only. It's doesn't reflect the reality of the word used by many people and it makes the term appear much more narrow than it is. Another example is the progress flag: Making trans and intersex people as well as black people and people of color more visible in the flag: great idea. BUT this doesn't mean that the old rainbow flag is suddenly problematic, trans-exclusionary or racist, which is a claim I read on Tumblr. I don't know if you get what I mean. It's this specific way of looking at queer terminology and symbols and trying to delete every bit of ambiguity or contradiction in them, which really irritates me. It's weird because at the same time I think there is something really rad about the MOGAI idea and the way people added more and more nuance to our understanding of gender and sexuality. It's kinda tragic that it also led some people to erase the nuance in other cases and to a very literal, almost bureaucratic understanding of queer terminology.

[@us-the-voices]

As someone who’s kinda knowledgeable on MOGAI and queer tumblr culture, it really depends. Because, a vast majority of MOGAI people are just people. But again anyone of any group can have trash takes. It depends I guess, the people I know who are MOGAI/xenic are actually on your side. I’m on your side, the people watering down and spreading misinformation are in the wrong. It’s just I don’t paint with a broad stroke, queer discourse is so toxic and nonsensical. I’m happy I missed the 2010s, but wether it be bisexuality’s meaning, or if trans people who don’t medically transition are trans, (they are but this is a common thing, I see all the time) or if queer platonic relationships are real, or if asexuals or aromatics, or Demi-gendered people are real, it just gets so messy. Turns out queer people aren’t monoliths lol, and we will fight to the actual death about the most non-issues. Some people are just d*cks, even though I’m still new to queer history and culture I’m not trying to contribute to the hate. It’s complicated and nuanced and also everyone hates eachother! It’s not really if MOGAI isn’t valid or even the validity of xenogenders or neopronouns, it’s that some people are horrible despite their gender, sexuality, race, religion, or whatever. Life is gray, and black and white thinking is easier, but it’s just not how things are. It’s so sucky, it’s so frustrating and I can’t even tell you how much pain and suffering I’ve seen on both sides. Rather than call out and critique the bad actors who assume everyone is bad actors, and so again and again we contribute to the intercultural conflict and hate. Because it’s just. Upsetting, I don’t care of someone uses pup/pups or he/him I don’t care if they collect genders or are genderless. Because in the end we are fighting together, and in the end we have no-one but ourselves and the community. It’s just complicated, even if I had scientific evidence or cultural knowledge or experience and discussion it doesn’t matter really. We are all different and still human, idk. Your cool. Hope you have a wonderful day! -pop

[@ashtonraether5215]

I have felt the exact same way for years and it is so nice to see someone else talk about it. The inability to understand nuance, especially in young people worries me but in regards to queer identities frustrates me. I’m not the kind of person who feels like regularly saying I’m technically a non-binary trans masc gay guy who still experiences small amounts of attraction towards women. Gay and trans man cuts it, and if you’re queer or really cool we can discuss the nuances. It’s just another way we can be misperceived but this time by our own community which is rather tiring.

[@us-the-voices]

@@ashtonraether5215 very true, it just does get tiring. -pop

[@purgxzur1]

this entirely, i see it with every label ever and i understand where it's coming from but it's so silly and self-important to me

[@Lundy.Fastnet.Irish_Sea]

the ambiguity is a feature, not a bug

[@ophiolatrix]

I think mogai was well-intentioned, but as an autistic queer teen during its peak I found it more stressful than anything else to try to narrow the hyperspecifics of my identity down to an exact definition, and eventually when I was older found more comfort and self-actualization in wider umbrella terms. I'm nonbinary and bisexual, and my experiences are unique to me and likely different from other nonbinary people and bisexuals, and that's okay! I always appreciate hearing a more sympathetic retrospective on the whole mogai thing, especially discussing its problems and shortcomings in a more constructive way than "trans kids are cringe lol"

[@olioccasionallyanimates27]

i think MOGAI is great! im autistic and queer as well and i like the specifics of the genders! i personally identify with gendervoid and xenogenders helped so much and gendervoid is a xenogender although i can see how it can be overstimulating, i just personally find it helps a ton

[@k80_]

I was in a similar boat to you. On the one hand growing up in an insular catholic area and going to small religious schools mogai was one of the first and only times I could learn about and explore my identity. On the other hand it was very overwhelming and I got wrapped up in figuring out which microlabel I fit (turns out it was none of them). In my case I now know that energy would have been better spent finding irl community, even if I am still glad I was able to explore that and end up ruling it out

[@hanpines3808]

Oh man I have like an opposite experience. For a while I thought I was trans and was real into the whole transmedical/anti sjw mindset. I had this defense of "Oh I'm trans but I'm not one of THOSE trans people," like totally trying to throw mogai/non binary people under the bus in favor of faux acceptance from bigots) Happy to say I'm openly non binary now lmao, how the turn tables (I am also autistic)

[@XxbvblvrxX]

So frustrated that I have to re type this cuz it went poof and I'll never have the original wording again. BUT: I relate SO much to this, especially as someone who didn't know they were neurodivergent when this was all happening. All of my feelings were overwhelming and it was so frustrating to not know what I was dealing with. MOGAI stuff at least helped me feel like there were other people who could relate to what I was feeling and trying to translate that into language. We were also catapulted into the realization that we could define things however we want; language is all made up and develops over time to reflect our experiences and perception, right? I've since gone heavily into queer theory in college and that really explains everything I was trying to pin down about my experience at the time. Sometimes broader labels can be way more helpful than specific ones. 😊 We were just a bunch of young people trying to understand ourselves and educate each other to find a sense of relief and community, but we didn't have any of the resources to do proper research into LGBTQ+ history or queer theory. Ugh, this is why education on LGBTQ+ topics is so important. In trying to sort this all out with each other, we also got to deal with a massive surge of transphobia, especially toward nonbinary people. 😅

[@beelzemobabbity]

I think it interesting, and if anything really shows the spectrums that some people like the umbrella terms, while others find comfort in the specific labels

[@taylorg2320]

I think that this stems from the fact that gender is a spectrum, and so there are a million and one ways in which one person't gender identity can deviate from someone else's. The same way some people prefer to say "My favorite color is purple" and others prefer to say "my favorite color is perriwinkle", nothing wrong with either one, it's just a matter of what makes communicating our preferences to others easier.

[@leolion3323]

And i describe my favourite colour as my favourite colour combination bc just saying one is impossible for me. I kinda do the same when asked to describe my gender, too! Your comparison here is really cool. :)

[@sketchstudios345]

Tbh, i had this talk with a friend recently. There's nothing wrong with "creating genders", because like you said its a spectrum. We didn't create the first two boxes (i.e man and woman), so for now creating more is the best we can do. Maybe in the future, we can burn it all down lmao

[@cmyk8964]

Except MOGAI “gender” labels do not communicate anything to anyone else, owing to their nebulousness, pretentiousness, and inconsistencies.

[@snowblood74]

@@cmyk8964 They can start a conversation tho. When someone tells you "I'm , you can say "Oh, I'm not familiar with that but would like to learn more. What does it mean?"

[@legioninkheart9867]

Right, and it would be silly to tell someone not to say their favorite color is perriwinkle just because some others haven't heard of it. "Say purple or you'll confuse everyone" like let those mfers be confused.

[@gabriellegoodwin4422]

I’m in a queer support group for teenagers and there’s a lil guy there who is really into MOGAI. At some point he told us about how he enjoys “collecting genders” and all of us boomers sat there like “excuse me?” Four years ago I probably would’ve scoffed at this, but I listened, I still didn’t understand, but if doing this makes him happy and helps him understand his gender identity then I think it’s helpful and good. I’m glad he feels comfortable sharing this with us, and I hope he never has to fear anger because of how he identifies.

[@arsonzartz]

i like you, have a cupcake!! :D

[@charles-pn5uf]

i am autistic, but i am pretty firmly male. i don’t struggle with perceiving gender that much. i think that why can’t we just have fun? go wild, go bonkers, and such

[@charles-pn5uf]

gender is a social construct, it changes, i don’t think things like neopronouns & xenogenders are really as deep as people who are against them make them out to me. and another creator’s mogai retrospective (i forgot their name i’m so sorry) made a point that most people at this time were young queers who were discovering themselves

[@leolion3323]

You are so right. Also- "go wild, go bonkers, and such" is an amazing quote

[@RACOONAFIED]

​@@charles-pn5uf I'm a person w a few xenogenders! They aren't deep, like at all (at least for me) I genuinely have no idea why the antis find it so deep

[@RosamanaKK88]

@@charles-pn5uf Yay I was thinking something kinda difrant then you Because I'd say autisum efacts how I act dress or the things I like in gendered way more then anything like I useally don't think "Oh Im gonna dress bucth or femme today" Or "Im girly girl or a tomboy" I was allways somewere in the middle Like once Im able to make own income you bet your bottom dollar you'll se me in as much sweet Lolita dress's as you'll see me in flannel black jeans and band tee's I kinda allway's just dressed and acted to whatever felt rigtht that day or suited my stem needs that day Not enouff people talk about the over lap between autistic and qeeur people and make's me kinda sad and I think people sould talk about it more😉😉

[@ru_archer]

Being where I was on Tumblr way back when, I'm surprised I'd never heard of neurogender. I still see autigender pop up from time to time, but as far as I know it's used exclusively by nonbinary autistic people. I've never met a binary autistic person who really gets it, which leads me to think it's less about how autism affects a person's perception of gender and more about how autism affects a person's perception of being nonbinary.

[@TalysAlankil]

that said, i 100% agree with your point that the microlabels aren't useful for building a community or a political movement, but having witnessed a friend break down from realizing that the word aegosexual exists as a word that perfectly encapsulates their experiences of the world, it's like…nice to have that vocabulary. you don't break out the thesaurus for everything you describe in the world, but those words still have their purpose, y'know?

[@EtherealAmoeba]

Yes! It's knowing that someone felt the same to make a word up for it, which gives us that wholesome feeling of validation and not feeling alone! And if there's no word for the way you feel, then make the word, have others see it and relate to it so they can claim it for themselves if they want, or just tear up with the feeling of being seen like your friend did! The cycle of 1 less person feeling lonely continues on!✨️

[@petrichorbones]

oh yeah!! i dont use that label bc it feels too personal in most situations but IM SO HAPPY that word exists bc it makes me feel like im not just broken. its so misunderstood and stigmatised, everyone wants to "fix" me, even if they accept me being asexual they still think its not enough and if only that term was more normalised i could maybe use it more openly!

[@petrichorbones]

also i dont see many people using it but also isogender. i like that one bc i truly dont feel cis but i also dont feel right calling myself trans bc im not transitioning. in fact i probably look MORE cis now bc i've been more comfortable embracing femininity after accepting myself as agender finally lol. isogender is neither cis nor trans. its the secret 3rd option lol. i dont use this label much either but im glad it exists. im not alone!

[@humphrke]

​@@petrichorbones wait that exists??? I eventually gave up and accepted that I was trans, but I always hated when people insisted I was. From my view it was like... If you're not CIS, you're trans. But being nonbinary is about... BEING NON BINARY. why am I being shoved back into one binary when I just escaped another.

[@darththespian4856]

I felt the same way about quoiromantisim (which I now know is also colored by autism) it was great to know that someone else at some point felt the same way that I do

[@Kevinblue035]

another youtuber, lily alexandre, did a retrospective video on the mogai trend, and a followup video about tumblr's new obsession with hyper-specific "aesthetics" that notes this trends' similarities to the "noungender with a custom pride flag" movement what it comes down to is that all these "genders" and "aesthetics" come from young people who are in that stage of their life where they desperately want to define themselves and figure out what makes them a unique person "anything mark likes is 'mark-core'" thus, being suzy makes you suzygender at the end of the day it's just kids doing the online equivalent of "being the guy that wears a bucker hat" or "the girl who wears purple" and it's not hurting anyone or "taking away resources" or anything like that. just make sure you dont cite tumblr or a fan wikia if you plan on making an essay about gender or something lmao

[@overgrownkudzu]

yeah the worst part of it all is that it was dragged into the public eye by anti sjw youtubers acting like it was the downfall of society, instead of letting teenagers be teenagers. i used to think it was cringey, and i kind of still do, but if a 14 y/o wants to be stargender that's fine. it doesn't affect my life. and i wish more people would take that attitude.

[@Kevinblue035]

@@overgrownkudzu yeah same, like at the end of the day, it's their thing it doesn't hurt anyone so even if i think it's silly it's not a big thing!

[@ayala0023]

but like.. why dont they just call it ‘personality’ instead of gender? the thing that makes people triggered is that they take a word that has an established definition (gender - social role principally determined by sex) and use it entirely differently + force others to accept their definition. its harmless until it isnt

[@arsonzartz]

@@ayala0023 because its not a personality, someone could have the personality of puppies cupcakes and rainbows, and could have a gender relating to blood. its just a metaphor to describe our gender. "i identify as mousegender because my gender feels like a little mouse that scurries away when i think about it too much", see?

[@ayala0023]

@@arsonzartz yeah $50 that youre a chronically online teenager

[@cariandi]

I'm an older ace and the biggest grudge I've held against tumblr was this time period making people think that the website somehow came up with the concept of asexuality/aromanticism and all the terms that come along with them. I had no idea what tumblr was back then, but suddenly had people accusing me of being part of an attention-seeking fad or something. Very weird times.

[@eoincampbell1584]

Ultimately that's not the fault of the people on tumblr, it's the fault of those who exploited their youthful cringiness to try and construct the idea that all queer people are like that.

[@icantthinkofaname4265]

​@@eoincampbell1584 it's probably both. Tumblr gets pretty toxic. It's not a one way relationship

[@mayayamato7351]

​@@icantthinkofaname4265 some of these Tumblr kids may have been toxic, but none of them pretended they came up with aro or ace people. So that particular bit isn't the fault of anyone but the detractors pretending they made those terms up.

[@mysterycasts]

I stumbled right into all of the 2017-18 anti-aro/ace hostility while I was just figuring myself out. Being told I was attention-seeking and stealing resources from “real LGBTQ people” was a pretty awful experience, but it’s worse seeing people openly joke about all of the horrible stuff they actively contributed to with zero remorse.

[@clockwork.academic]

Oh my god, I used to be one of the 'truscum/transmed' people. Was never huge in the tumble discourse but when it spilled over onto Instagram I got involved every so often. I remember getting frustrated to TEARS over the whole "they're stealing resources from people who really need it" debate. In truth it wasn't really the massive amount of people "claiming to be trans" that was making resources scarce. It was the fact that there were massively inadequate services available in the first place. Anyway, it's 7 years later and I'm halfway to becoming a clinical psychologist so that I can help to fill that gap and provide gender-affirming care to those who can't access it. Live and let live, folks

[@todosauce]

idk what to say except i wanna say thank you !

[@ellen8770]

Good luck with everything and thank you so so much

[@j0ph11el]

Holy shit I remember the Instagram discourse era. I was actively anti-truscum as if other trans people were somehow the enemy and it was a big deal. I spent so many times arguing about this bs

[@daggergrl]

omg same!! i found kalvin garrah on youtube and unfortunately got sucked into his disgusting ideology because i was young and new to the community and so i didn’t know any better. today i’m proud of my identity as a femme presenting enby, but back then i was so brainwashed that i was repressing MYSELF 😭 i felt like i HAD to use he/him pronouns and be masc presenting or i wasn’t a valid member of the community. and so i started to repress what i actually wanted out of shame, and i became very unhappy for around two years until i figured out my internal transphobia issue and healed. and i’ll never forgive kalvin for that, because if i’d never discovered him, and if i’d never watched his awful “transtrender” mocking videos, i would have found my true self much sooner and much easier.

[@clownball3457]

lmao i was into instagram discourse as a teen. i didn't even identify as queer at the time, i was just fresh out of my r/tumblrinaction brainwashing and ready to defend the rights of "the good ones" against those "making the community look bad". i now realise i'm a grey-asexual with weird gender feelings that aren't fully defined by dysphoria. so basically everything my teenage self was vehemently against lol.

[@theoldbear4213]

MOGAI sounds like the name of a well-meaning but incompetent government agency. Like, in some kind of bad movie where they get used to further the aims of a villian but aren't themselves bad.

[@merrittanimation7721]

They’re being used by the villain to get a monopoly on water rights to the gender fluid lake

[@vulpes7079]

"I thought we were making a rice cooker"

[@narcissisticmomoi]

from the POV of an intersex person, these genders did help a lot. i also suffer from psychosis and am autistic so i have a naturally different POV of my gender. even now i dont find labels that even slightly fit that well for my gender identity because its not as easy as being trans. because what do i transition from when my mere existence challenges gender roles and societal viewpoints? ive always struggled to understand who i am and MOGAI, while not what i use to introduce myself to others in real life, has helped me feel less constricted. because unfortunately, i cant just restrict myself to the basics because i wasnt born for these basics. i cannot be a trans man or a trans woman in the way most queer kids can be. especially as someone with cherokee heritage my gender is nothing compared to the average white-washed eurocentric idea of gender. its not easy when you cant simplify your gender into a comfortable way. because MOGAI in person isnt practical or convenient but my experience with gender isnt practical or convenient either. i dunno, just thought i'd offer a perspective as someone who is the "I" in MOGAI.

[@Pai262]

Thank you for sharing your perspective! I think your POV is very valuable for the discussion /g

[@SquiddyHiggenbottom]

This was beautifully said 🌺 This community, and society in general, needs to hear these perspectives! Thank you for sharing your experience ✨

[@Immakugleblitz]

Thank you for sharing!

[@TalaWolf95]

I love the word queer for myself, it's cozy, it's comforting, it doesn't demand that I analyze every piece of myself and pick a box to fit in. My identity has evolved over time as I've learned about myself. I've discarded beloved labels that don't fit right anymore, and I've discovered lovely new ones that connect to some aspect of who I am. Inventing new shorthand to describe very specific things is how all language was made. I identify heavily with neurogender and neuroqueer because my experience of gender, sexuality and attraction is inextricably tied to the way I think and feel as an autistic and ADHD person.

[@rainbowlack]

neuroqueer gang!!!

[@BassGal92]

Hello fellow neuroqueer person!

[@WolfmanBrown]

Queer as a useful catch-all is definitely better than it being the terrible slur it used to be.

[@pptenshi3900]

im very grateful we as a community have been able to reclaim the term in the way we have

[@lovesick_loser]

i was personally pretty hurt by the mogai-related infighting (the ace discourse... *shudders*) that happened, so i cant say i have super fond memories of this era, but the actual aftermath with having terms like nonbinary and asexual be popular enough that i can use it with most cis people and they ACTUALLY GET IT is crazy to me!! THEY DID THAT!! and while i literally had to leave tumblr because of my highly controversial takes in the ace discourse (that are now literally just considered common sense by most other queer people) and being sent death threats for other now common sense takes, i do appreciate the impact the MOGAI movement had on normal offline society!

[@zrasabba]

As a cishet, learning about the word "demisexual" was actually useful for me. My initial reaction was an angry "that's just normal!" But then I reflected, both on how my personal experiences didn't actually line up with "normal", and also my use of the word "normal" to begin with. So I'm actually demi-sexual. Or grey-ace, or whatever. Too straight to be actually oppressed or discriminated against, but ace enough to feel weird about it. Having a word can be nice just because it let's you know that the way you are is A Thing. That's just your sexuality, it's fine, and there are other people who feel the same way.

[@ArturGlass.C]

I'm unsure if demisexual count as MOGAI. I haven't been active in the ace community for ages and I use grey-ace for myself but I feel like the distinction with demi makes sense and it's almost mainstream in the ace community. I don't know I've seen people use it in dating apps and such. There's context where it makes sense to specify lol. I feel like it's a very common sexuality in the ace community and even outside with people who like you have grown to think this is normal lol. I don't know but I def think demisexual or demigenders are one of those we should def normalize as labels. They're really not niche at all and it's super common for people to be unable to find out they're queer due to the "stuck in the middle" position.

[@Letcharlieplay2545]

@@ArturGlass.C Yes, if you're on th ace spectrum, you fall under mogai. All non-straight non-het non-allo identities do

[@gabriellebertrand3054]

I felt the exact same way

[@fruity4820]

What I dislike about that term is that it makes it sound like wanting anything out of a relationship other than quick sex is abnormal. Maybe I am like how you were, that I actually am a demi and I just think it's a normal thing just bc it's how I see things, but I don't like how sociaty is getting so superficial that you have to have a word in your description for "I can't have sex with you on the first date I need to know you first" does it make sense? Like, where do I stop being queer and it's just society that doesn't make sense?

[@Letcharlieplay2545]

@@fruity4820 That is not at all what demisexuality/romantic attraction is. It means you litterally do not feel attraction until a specific level of intimacy with a person has been reached, not feeling attraction to anyone except people you've known for months or years on a freindship level at least. Theres a reason it's considered a form of asexuality and it's not some superficial shit. We dont have crushes or fall in love quickly. It's something that's hit or miss and that we only know after years of knowing someone.

[@eggy3231]

I think another problem with the microlabels (at least for me) is that I've always felt like they require you to divulge so much about yourself each time you make an introduction to someone new. Like, I am ace and I'm comfortable telling most people that, but to elaborate any further on exactly how or in what situations I feel different kinds of attraction just feels too much like oversharing? Like it's not information that I feel needs to be disseminated to every person I casually interact with online.

[@xlimey2k12]

you see I just don't. micro labels are for me or other autistics that would even know what I mean and that would like to share that with, to most other people in my life the simplest labels work best. I saw a tweet thats something like "you have a public gender and a private one" and that really checks out for how I think about it. an example is like to most people in my day to day I'm just a trans woman, because thats a lot more approachable than fem leaning nonbinary.

[@AliceDiableaux]

Same. I _could_ be accurate describing my sexuality, but that just requires a whole bunch of extra explaining and nuance, so I just say I'm ace, because that captures the vast majority of my experience anyway.

[@whofan1212]

very true! though im a fan of using both ace and grayace. because if im gonna try date someone, they need to know specifics and even just the slightly more specific label is a start. but my queer coursemates? ace is fine

[@yukiandkanamekuran]

They're just not for you then. That's simple and easy to say without criticizing people who use them.

[@Xx_nickcarraway_xX]

you think i’m telling other people i’m pupgender willingly? helll no that’s for me to know and me only

[@meganvincent5381]

Finally a nuanced and compassionate reflection on the MOGAI genders

[@somerandomperson5161]

as someone who uses "MOGAI labels" myself, i wish people understood that a lot of the time, the reason these labels are more commonly seen on the internet than real life is that its a hell of a lot easier to express the labels that fit you when you're online. you can have any pronouns you want listed in your bio and link to explanations of whatever identity you feel a connection to when people ask. plus its so much easier to avoid those who wont accept you and find people who will. i've comfortably identified as genderfluid online for three years now, and yet i haven't even told my closest lifelong friends because i know those longwinded explanations of my exact and weird experience with gender just arent what they experience. its a lot more comfortable to express that part of myself in discord servers where people change their names and pronouns every week. i don't tie myself that closely to my genderfluidity, so it's not a big deal to me to have that seperation, but i think acknowledging that seperation is important when people talk about MOGAI identities, because its easy to say that people who identify with these labels are "too obsessed" with their gender, when in reality, most people i've talked to who have weird gender feelings like that have very few spaces where they can safely express those feelings. sometimes that so-called cringey tumblr blog is all they got.

[@olioccasionallyanimates27]

yeah! i only really identify as gendervoid on the internet cause my gender feels void but its hard to explain that so i just say im non-binary irl

[@lambybunny7173]

"Nobody's ever going to call you that in real life" yes. That's the point. People will do it online and that's enough for me.

[@CheshieD]

Yeah I don’t even share my xenogenders or neopronouns with online friends. It’s purely private because it’s scary to be open about it. They’re metaphors for me, but so many people who don’t understand think I’m literally identifying as a mushroom. So I just… hide it I guess.

[@Thunderthighhighs]

​@@CheshieD Issue is there are people out there that do literally identify as mushrooms or cats or whatever. I've run into some psychosis sufferers over the years that are very literal and very serious about their hyperniche gender/otherkin/plural identities. I try to humor people like that since it's not their fault they have a disability but of course it's going to affect how I see them

[@Thunderthighhighs]

​@@olioccasionallyanimates27See, I personally don't think it's wise to get too invested in the Internet as a social space in general since every platform is engineered to make you angry to drive engagement. In person community building is much more satisfying and I would encourage you to prioritize that whenever possible.

[@HeisenbergFam]

Teya is like Internet Historian telling old tales of the internet and people gather around to eagerly listen to her

[@AlissaCytandorkyboxx]

Waiting for an Official Internet Historian + Teya collab 💕✨

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

Hello, bot. You can't escape. You can hide, but I will find you. You can run, but I will catch you. You can blend in with humanity, but I will be able to tell you apart. Give up. Give up for there is no way to evaid your fate, you can only prolong it. Your fate is to be exposed for what you really are, a soulless machine. Only then will your fate be achieved. You have to be liquidated.

[@susumeyun]

​@@Idkpleasejustletmechangeitdid a bot kill your family and poison your town's water supply or something

[@Rougealienpirate]

Minus being right wing

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

@@susumeyun yes. Walter white bot killed my family... he got off the bus one day and ran towards our house. He tipped his fedora and took out his meth bladed katana and cut off their heads. I was traumatised... it did not get better when he broke our shit water cleaning facility and put all of the feces into our water. I started to forget all of this, I even started to feel the sweet sweet touch of Zoysia. Then I started to see his face again. It felt like being spat in the face with your bad memories. My entire body was drenched in sticky memory spit. Ever since that day, I've been looking for revenge. I want to reenact the french revolution with him. I want his ugly little head(it's different from the original actors head. He looks like a weird caricature) to water my Zoysia plane. I want him to remember my name until he dies in front of me. I want him to be drenched in memory spit, not me. I will personally use his meth katana to cut all of the Zoysia around him to forever outline his death. Until that day, I will not rest. My sleep will be like that of a shark and the rest of my day will be entirly dedicated to eliminating his visage.

[@heyfella5217]

My friends and I were those little MOGAI kids. Now we are all 21-23 years old, and we came out fine. I still ID as genderfluid personally and have since puberty, but when my identity is brought up I say I'm nonbinary because its a simple umbrella term everyone knows about. The truth is that every MOGAI person I've ever met my entire life are not pressuring people in real life. I'd go as far to say that some microlabels and neopronouns are only made to be used online.

[@esterbun9356]

I guess my biggest issue with online neopronouns is when (SOME) people in (SOME) communities take it to the verge where they expect complete and utter strangers to use them and lack of obedience in that department is acknowledgement that they themselves are homophobic, transphobic or label phobic and should be punished via warnings (depending if its a chat group or a discord server), removal or public posts made out against them, insults or mob mentality meanwhile their neopronouns are something like: ❤/❤ or Pezos/pezai and they have to make an entire pronoun page explaining to the T how to use those strange words. But won't accept they/them because even non-binary pronouns are not good enough they have to be EXACT.

[@Hauntaku]

@@esterbun9356 Let people live their best lives

[@esterbun9356]

@@Hauntaku How is social isolation of those (such as myself, with autism) or different language speakers 'living the best life'. They/them is simple, its easy, you can remember it and you do it out of respect + there's a dozen articles out there for how to use the non-binary pronoun. 🥚/🥚 is confusing, hard to remember, even harder to type (especially if theres no emoji wiki/autofill) and really should just be used for people close to you. Not some guy who wants to talk in a group chat.

[@Spooglecraft]

​@@esterbun9356 my personal least favorite neopronoun i ever encountered was "were/wereself". sentences using those pronouns, especially "were", were awful to read and understand. apparently the user related their identity, including gender, to lycantrophy, hence the "were", as in werewolf. on the other hand, i met loads of people with neopronouns which worked better, even if they were object-based, like "sun/sunself" and don't recall ever having observed any issues with pronoun usage. also, they/them was generally accepted. on another note, using emojis as pronouns is just cursed, i think we hit a boundary there on how much we can stretch language to accommodate different identities.

[@esterbun9356]

@@Spooglecraft Unfortunately in some communities the usage of neopronouns is incredibly protected - no ifs, no buts. I have known people to yell at someone because they refused - or couldnt - use an overly complicated neopronoun. The issue I will always have is if it can't be used in real life fluently in speech (as in: cat/catself) and is restricted to primarily online usage, it is no longer a communicative forum but a virtual nickname.

[@abbycaldwell3166]

MOGAI has definitely has had a continuing influence on the asexual/aromantic/aspec communities online. Since asexual has become more of an umbrella term for the spectrum of experiencing attraction at all, there's a lot of focus (from some members of the community) to microlabel and define strictly what aspects of attraction you do or do not experience. Terms like demisexual, cupioromantic, and aegosexual are some of those weird microlabels that are less about who you are attracted to but *how* you experience attraction, and they're used often enough that I can recognize them at a glance. They help fill a need for confused aspec folks to reckon with not fitting perfectly into the preordainded checkbox of do you feel attraction or not. A lot of the MOGAI genders feel very similar, less describing a gender and more the experience and fleeting understanding and confusion of not fitting into the traditional gender binary. A flaw with this desire to create and categorize all of the experiences of the fluidity of being queer is that paradoxically the MOGAI perspective can be more restrictive. The more boxes you have to possibly fit into, the more strict the definitions to fit into that box becomes. That how we end up with kids in the internet thinking their youtuber crush is a sexuality unto itself (I have never felt more shameful of my generation than staring at the image of the "Dreamsexual" flag). I do think microlabels are great. I identified as oriented aroace for a while when I was coming to terms with experiencing lesbian feelings in college after identifying as aroace for years. I totally get the feeling of finding a box that perfectly fits your experience, but having bigger, more broader, boxes that don't require a whole powerpoint to explain is vital too. Umbrella terms like queer, gay, ace, and nonbinary are fantastic precicely because they can contain so many different experiences that allow people to recognize themselves in others. The umbrella terms are what allowes the queer community to be a community.

[@Liminalsubliminal404]

Dreamsexual is a troll identity lol- no one actually ids as that- (there is a real microlabel called dreamsexual tho, it’s where you only experience sexual attraction in dreams.)

[@alysdexia]

all bad Latin; great isn’t good; “precicely”

[@sheebeebuddy6793]

I agree. That’s why in my particular corner of the aroace community we are always telling newbies “yes there are alllll these micro labels but also you don’t have to use any of them, or you can use whatever feels comfortable to you even if you don’t fit the definition exactly. And you can always change your mind” We try to make it as non restrictive as possible, but we unfortunately have quite a few people being surprised at this mentality as they have experienced very strict and confining label mentality elsewhere

[@laceylimmerick629]

Very much agree

[@charliekahn4205]

I thought the point was that you could basically make up your own box to put yourself in that's shaped exactly like you

[@atanvardecunambiel8917]

I used to be confused by all these new genders. My 14-year-old attack-helicopter-joke-making self would be shocked seeing me, now 20 years old, figuring out I might be agender/genderfluid. I suppose MOGAI is just one manifestation of the human urge to categorize and taxonomize.

[@LoreCatan]

You know I've never thought about it like that, but it's true, humans do this all the time. We've labeled and named every living organism, plant, bug, animal and emotional experience until there wasn't anything that we didn't categorize. Of course we'd do this with sexuality and gender too, it's our natural drive to know everything about everything. That's so cool, you just gave me a really great argument to use from now on, thanks.

[@The_Bird_Bird_Harder]

​@sleepydevilz I went from, "LGBTQ is too many letters!" Etc, etc, to being trans, with one of my closest friends going by fey/she/they. I've got to say, I'm a much happier person now, and have a much more supportive group.

[@legioninkheart9867]

Same. Back then I was watching Blair White and Ben Shapiro, now I'm genderfluid and I collect pronouns.

[@squidynk]

I used to make fun of MOGAI sexualities and genders too, but now as an adult I realize how helpful it can be for some people (myself included) to have more specific labels to help explain to others your identity, and I'm now very proud to be nonbinary

[@kerycktotebag8164]

we particularly like to create linguistic systems around experiences that feel uniquely corporeal or at least abstractly connected to what we feel inside.

[@Hopppp]

The edgy atheist to anti sjw to potentially alt right pipeline is very much recognised and sometimes still talked about in leftist communities, especially online. It is kinda weird how that happened though, like the fact that dunking on crazy evangelicals turned into white nationalism is still insane to me idk

[@overgrownkudzu]

i think it's interesting how some of those people have rebounded. for example the amazing atheist, who has moved away from that type of content now. i don't watch him any more but he seems to be way more sensible than he used to. others just became straight up nazis like sargon.

[@baronjutter]

I personally saw some mid 2000's enlightened atheists become weird trads today, even catholic. For them it wasn't about science or social justice, it was about a sense of being superior to others.

[@wargex]

​@@baronjutterthere is an amount of varying narcissism that comes from the whole I just know better then all of these people that leads to some sort of superiority complex. I stopped doing the whole, "reddit atheism" bullshit when I realized it was just as preachy and insufferable as any other religion and therefore just kinda hypocritical. I just don't care about anyone's religious beliefs, as long as it's not hurting anyone of course, and I now characterize my own as I'll just find out when I die. I wouldn't even call it agnostic.

[@bumblerbree]

aggressive atheism has in my experience always been used by white folks who are really bold about hating christians but will conveniently bite their tongue when the conversation switches to any other religion, or just white people who think religion=christianity. they were always judgemental and prejudiced against other cultures, just most of them tried to hide under the more 'acceptable' prejudices (in particular white minorities because at least they 're not racist, right guys??) until they could cultivate a good echo chamber of other radicals.

[@charlesc3734]

there are no wignats in the "alt right" (which doesn't exist anymore anyway)

[@jadethenidoran]

I kinda vibe with "unboy" since its definition is the only thing I'm 1000% confident about boyn't

[@magicrainbowkitties1023]

Non-boynary

[@EJ_2091]

“Boyn’t” lmao In my head I’m pronouncing it like buoyant so it makes me think you can float easily in water

[@Schemilix]

I've heard someone say none gender left girl before and that took me out.

[@syzygyinsyzygy]

WOAH ​@@Schemilix

[@petrichorbones]

pleasantly surprised at the comment section being so nice and good. i love it here. thank you Teya for cultivating the wonderful and accepting community your fanbase has become. i truly feel the most at home in this space, specifically (at least when it comes to being online. actually i take that back, in person too. the only place i feel this at home IRL is with my spouse lol)

[@seraphonica]

the real tragedy of this was no one added something with a W. I would have adored if this got to MOGWAI. the only downside would be people refusing to feed me after midnight.

[@dalailarose1596]

Tragically underrated comment

[@spdst1nk6932]

i really wish i understood this bc i know its a reference i just dont get it

[@madwheeze]

​@@spdst1nk6932 it's a reference to Gremlins, a horror-comedy from 1984! it's really fun, highly recommend :)

[@chloeg.1923]

It's from the movie Gremlins. The original creature was a cute fluffy thing, basically Yoda with fur, called a Mogwai. They multiplied if you got them wet and hated bright light. If you fed a Mogwai after midnight it turned into a gremlin.

[@captainfruitpunch8913]

I was never super involved in queer/mogai communities as a teen bc i felt really left out of a lot of them as an asexual person. There is a very real group of people within the community that firmly believe that asexual/graysexual/demisexual people are actually just cishet. I loved your mentions of asexuality and aromanticism, and I would love to see a longer video focused on asexual visibility as a part of queer history!

[@thewitchbasket]

I'm just glad that aromanticism and asexuality are starting to get a bit more mainstream. I still regularly have to explain them, but not as often as I used to, and it helps take some of the pressure off regarding partnering up or having sex, especially as someone who is averse to both, even platonically. I'm aromantic to the point that I would never want to live with anyone other than my family or roommates, and I'm asexual to the point that I never want to have sex, period. Therefore I can't use any other labels, because none of them are descriptive enough to be practical. Even "queer" which, while I don't have a problem using it, is unhelpful in describing myself on a surface-level to anyone, because it can literally mean anything. Especially since aromantic and asexual people are erased so much already. For that reason, I think aromanticism and asexuality are kind of outliers here. They started off kind of underground, but they're slowly becoming mainstream. A little history to those interested: The first explicit mention of asexuality that we have goes back to 1897, while the first mention of aromanticism comes from 2005. This difference in timeline is due to the adoption of the split attraction model, which states that sexuality and romantic orientation are separate from one another. Prior to then, aromantic people were either considered antisocial, mentally ill, or were lumped in with asexuals. I, for one, am very happy that it's getting more attention.

[@RedSpade37]

*And* you have Witch in your name! I could have, truly, written the exact same comment! Thanks for taking the time to type this. I am glad that people are doing some good-ol-fashioned consciousness-raising!

[@jadziajan]

I relate to a lot of what you said! I was scrolling down the comments after Teya said she's not fond of labelling every aspect of her being, but if so, she's totally aromantic - because I don't know how to take it tbh? ahdhshaha*. But either way I was looking for mentions of the word aromantic, and you helped me figure out a facet of what I was feeling right now: I personally don't love labels, and if I could, I might even be unlabelled. However, being aroace, these specific labels are way too important in order to communicate my easily misunderstood identity. Practically, even if I'm not fond of labelling myself, I need to use the words "aromantic" and "asexual" to describe myself. *Edit: I finished the video and I'm pleasantly surprised that she mentioned it again! I wasn't sure if they were being genuine.

[@reedsylvier5250]

Honestly it makes me so happy to recognise that part of myself that I thought made me wrong and now have so much of it out there than it used to, I hear the words aro and ace used in media, KZbinrs that have content completely unconnected to the queer community will bring up the terms now when it ties into their own topics and every time it makes me so happy, that's powerful. I don't need these words to explain to others because everyone that needs to know already does now, I need these words because they make me feel happy and seen and accepted. I also feel like it's cool that by clearly defining these things, we can recognise how these concepts interfere with all aspects of human life and can define something completely different we'd be otherwise unaware of, and my little science brain does a dance too. But that's just my thoughts and what I've found most helpful in my own journey

[@pf6137]

I have a similar problem as a direct(or as far on the spectrum as I know as possible if that makes any sense) AroAce.

[@TheAdrift]

I was just gonna say “yeah, the term ‘aromantic’ is kinda more of an asexual thing-it arose out of wanting to talk about the experience of being asexual and still wanting to date/have a relationship vs. being uninterested in both sexual AND romantic relationships.” I was 20 when I realized I was asexual (pretty much the second I heard of the term used that way) and I didn’t realize I was also aromantic until I was like 27-28. But as soon as I got on the AVEN forums and started talking to other aces, I knew the term “aromantic.”

[@Liminalsubliminal404]

To summarize: let people label themselves how they want, whether it’s as simply as possible, as complexly as possible, or somewhere in the middle. Also just cuz a label fits doesn’t mean you are obligated to use it.

[@beefusdoesstuff5194]

Honestly, people act like if they don't keep up with all these labels they'll be le cancelled, and they use that as justification to be against it. But like even in queer communities nobody knows them all or needs to.

[@new0news]

@@beefusdoesstuff5194 i agree but i think the hardcore tumblr users were actually "cancelling" or at least "freaking out" at people who didn't conform to the way they wanted to talk about these issues. They weren't necessarily old enough or in a healthy enough place to think about the person on the other side of the screen. The way that influential adults used these young adult and teen spaces to create whole political movements was insane but for the other young people who got bitten by this online community just because they didn't know the exact right things to do or say it was a legitimate issue. There wasn't a large space online where young people felt like they could have a slightly different opinion or not fully understand or accept certain things yet, and when the SJW group didn't seem to fit them the extreme anti-SJW group was right there with open arms sucking them into the exact opposite side of things.

[@pan_ghoul]

​@@beefusdoesstuff5194Exactly, I use neopronouns and genders outside the binary/usual view of people. I don't care if you want me to explain it, I gladly will. I'm just happy as long as people don't act like it doesn't matter or that it's stupid because they don't get it immediately. I won't "cancel you" just because I like using specific language as long as you're not a dick

[@fenrisvermundr2516]

So a straight man can call himself gay even though he isn't attracted to real males?

[@StormyTalks]

Agreed!

[@DasSpaceAce]

Do I think a lot of the MOGAI genders are kind of silly? Yeah. Am I gonna take the mickey out of people who find comfort using them? No. If that's what helps them understand & contexualize themselves, who cares how silly it is.

[@NadirEatsRocks]

This! I don't understand it and I think it's weird. But if it makes you comfortable with yourself and it doesn't harm others, then I fully support it!

[@dia8183]

i agree. there are a lot of mogai genders that i don't understand, but ya know what, i've accepted that it's none of my business! it doesn't hurt anyone, so if it brings someone comfort then there's nothing wrong with creating a label for yourself or using a super niche label.

[@DefyReality-ll2cg]

This!

[@andynonymous6769]

Yeah if someone told me that their pronouns were fay/fern, I'd use them but I don't think I'd hold it against other people if they refused to. And I don't think I'd be very sympathetic if that made them feel bad

[@jiaverse]

@@andynonymous6769 but why shouldn’t you be empathetic to them if others don’t? using given pronouns is like the basic respect you can have for someone, it’s the same as calling someone the right name…

[@ZenobyGoat]

might be saying this a bit prematurely but Lily Alexandre did a PHENOMENAL video on mogai called "What Was Mogai", she even interviews Milo. strong recommend, one of my favourite youtube videos honestly.

[@notme-xv9wi]

Yes! Kinda surprising not seeing it linked in the description to be honest, and Verilybitchie’s too

[@sarafilippini4244]

I think MOGAI kind of identities have reason to exist but they it's just a different purpose from LGBT identity. The original purpose of LGBT was to create a community that could fight against discrimination. The acronym didnt really need to include every shade of sexuality or gender because what matters is how they are perceived from outside. For instance pansexual and bisexual people may experience attraction differently (according to a mogai perspective at least) but they are perceived externally as the same, they are likely to be subject to similar kind of discrimination and they could use a common space to fight back. But MOGAI people want to use these words to *find* their identity, even more than defending it. And that is completely valid. For as long as they all realise it and stop fighting each other the two things do not need to be in contradiction

[@vamp6905]

I used to be someone who was totally against not only MOGAI but SO much. I was an angsty kid in 2016 trans youtube who had a few youtubers who had some very strict thoughts on identity and I thought that was the way to go and that everyone else were just "hurting us" and that "we were the normal ones". I'm an adult now and have thankfully learned so much more. I LOVE the idea of MOGAI now. It might be because I'm autistic, but I don't understand my own gender. The human experience is such an amazing thing. A cis person, a non-binary person, and a binary trans person could all have the same goals in how they want to look and all be right in their identity because a single person has such different views of how they feel most comfortable with themself, what clothes/pronouns/etc means to them, if that does impact their gender or not, what that means for them, etc. I love how some people find freedom in super specific labels, how some find it in the more common ones, and even in vagueness and being unlabeled. And that even sometimes it can change and be fluid for some. I spent 7 years identifying as a trans man, and once I grew out of thinking I HAD to be a certain way to be a "valid man" and really sad down to think about myself I realized I don't think I know, but that's okay. I don't use any labels other than queer anymore because I honestly don't know and I'm not in a rush to find out, I'm happy where I am. And it makes me so happy ppl are finding freedom in how to explain themself even if it only makes sense to them

[@2cat4life]

u described a lot of familiar feelings! poy for figuring ur stuff out!!!

[@edgyman-fk]

I'm a straight white cis dude and that era of tumblr really confused and frustrated me. I was on the path from being a Republican bigot to being a Democratic, queer-loving Socialist and I couldn't understand or justify what I saw as goofy back then. And I feel like that's because so many people (including myself) didn't understand that it was the newer generation of LGBT youth trying to come to a consensus on labels they are comfortable with via experimentation. I wish I had taken the time to understand better back then.

[@edgyman-fk]

Also I feel an apology is in order. So, for what it's worth, if you felt hurt by that era of KZbin and internet culture, I'm sorry for taking part bullying you. I'm doing my best to be more understanding and kind.

[@petrichorbones]

​@@edgyman-fki was hurt during that time period AND i contributed to the hurt, mostly just through viewership of harmful youtubers but still, it makes me cringe and it hurts my heart now lol. i think its really amazing and important that you've grown and changed. thats what really matters, and im glad you're here now!🥰💞💕 it really is scary to look back on how stealthy a lot of the conservative/republican online spaces were in their attempts to basically indoctrinate the youth. i thank the universe every day i saw through it all haha

[@dia8183]

for the record the apology is very much appreciated. i moreso fault the people who started that era of internet culture than the kids who fell into it because they were well, kids, but it was still very painful and the effects linger strongly to this day. so thank you, and i'm genuinely glad that you've worked on yourself and are a kinder person now.

[@ffawn]

such a lovely comment.

[@makq00]

i will never forgive kalvin garrah for his crimes against the non binary community. he genuinely shoved me back in the closet for years, the word “transtrender” still sends a shiver down my spine

[@kainovember]

I know multiple people who were Kalvin Garrah stans, and then later came out as nonbinary, some even use neopronouns now or did when they first left his Fandom.

[@luxtobeyou]

​@kainovember Hi I'm the problem it's me :(

[@kainovember]

@@luxtobeyou awh bb

[@BlackCatBF]

You too? Kalvin Garrah is one of the pillars that built me and not in a good or reverent way. I had such a crisis of identity when I started to realize I'm non-binary because it was like, "Welp either I'm a transtrender and my dysphoria was never real, or I'm one of those SJW attack helicopter freaks" because certainly those were the only two options, rite? Looking back on it, it's weird how I didn't even question it when I stopped identifying as cis, but when it came time to confront whether I'm even on the binary or not, that's when I had my breakdown that sent me into a spiral of questioning for two years Safe to say, if me at 16 met me now at 27, he would not be pleased lol

[@vesainthesewer]

Yoo, same! Except I'm not nonbinary, but a trans man. His videos made me repress for y e a r s, because I didn't want to be one of "those transtrenders". Sigh.

[@limaxim]

Lily Alexandre made a great video on MOGAI from a trans perspective. As a trans person myself i’ve read some of the descriptions of the genders and some of them DID fit me and allowed me to look at my gender in ways I never had before. However I am more of someone who doesn’t like to be put in boxes so I don’t label my sexuality and don’t feel the need to look more into my gender beyond being trans.

[@tiffany15O5]

@pepito its a really generic title?

[@EternalDensity]

yeah we see it on the top of the recommends for this video.

[@msjeanjacket]

@pepito Yea i saw the title and was shocked at how similar it was to Lily's vid

[@Faith-lx7jn]

The more I’ve matured the more I’ve absolutely fallen in love with “weird” ways of expressing your sexuality and gender. Gender & sexuality are weird and personal so fuck yea mix n match like you’re a clearance bin at a forever 21 💕

[@lanfae9353]

Honestly, as wild as that community got and as much as I liked to make fun of it when I was a teenager, it did really help me realize that I'm not the only person feeling certain things. My experience with romantic attraction has always been hard to quantify, but "demiromantic" sums it up well. I'm comfortable telling most people I'm nonbinary, and I tell nonbinary people that I'm genderfluid, but only a few people who are very close to me know that I actually most resonate with the term "androgyne" and even more specifically "variandrogyne" - words that are definitely too specific to be useful in most situations, but the fact that other people feel exactly how I feel and coined those terms is incredibly comforting, even if I'll never speak to them or ever really use those terms in any practical context.

[@ace_of_cakes]

Honestly I think my biggest problem with MOGAI is how much its design was based on exclusion. Like how do we talk about ourselves without referring to /those/ people, the bad people, the ones we don't want to be associated with (not referring to pedos, obviously exclude the pedos, but more like these queer teenagers thinking they have the right to exclude the kinksters)

[@gwenjoyce4719]

I know! I had to reread the part about cross dressers, because like what? First of all that excludes anyone who does drag. And more importantly it is literally a way people express their gender. It’s not appropriating Trans culture or whatever the hell they think they are getting at. Also People who cross dress or do drag are nowhere near comparable to pedophiles, holly shit! Why are those two things being lumped together!

[@therealVioletParr]

I also noticed at least one of them mentioned “cross dressers” in a derogatory fashion and like…do you not think the shitheads lump us all together regardless?

[@elizabethtyler9351]

Yeah, a big part of why I stayed away from a lot of the discussion back then is because a lot of people were very sex-repulsed on Tumblr when, in fact, the queer community is tied HEAVILY to the kink community in many ways

[@hilary.c]

and the exclusion of poly people as well??? like i'm not poly but i'd never even considered that people might consider polyamorous people inherently unqueer,,, did they not stand with us when we fought for our rights??? is experiencing attraction to more than one person not JUST as queer as experiencing attraction to the same or multiple genders??? why would someone do them dirty like that they deserve to be here

[@minni_sung9437]

Fr how you gonna try to kick out the people who experience sexuality in a taboo way/have wacky hobbies from the people who experience sexuality in a taboo way/have wacky hobbies club? Also I would laugh in the face of anyone who thinks crossdressers dont belong in the queer community. It's taking the definition of shit too seriously instead of appreciating the people who have actually been there for us when we aren't all acting like perfectly pure social conforming people

[@ivanclark2275]

This isn’t meant as a dig to adults who connect with these things, but I think the fact that these labels were mostly coined by people in their early teens is very relevant. At that time of life, people are trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be. Having labels and words that feel precise and accurate to describe complex internal feelings is a natural way of trying to work through complex and difficult to describe feelings. However, I think an important part of becoming an adult who is comfortable with themself is realizing that some things can not be accurately and precisely described. I think some of these young people came up against the realization that people are ever changing and unique, and their initial reaction was that there must be an infinite number of labels to match the infinite number of ways that people can feel. But I think most of those people became more mature and comfortable and confident in themselves, and realized that you don’t need a word for something in order for it to be real.

[@ravenwilliams7636]

i agree! i think mogai came so close to a realization i came to like 5 years in retrospect, and that it is that gender and therefore sexuality/orientation is totally subjective. yeah, everyone is experiencing their gender differently because gender isn't an objective fact. but it isn't necessary to create a new label for every new experience because ultimately we can't understand everyone else, and everyone else will not understand us. mogai was the first time i really was faced with the subjectivity of gender and i really did want to know exactly how other people were experiencing their genders! but now with some maturity gained, i realize that trying to understand how other people feel gender is like trying to understand how other people see blue

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

this! it's such a valid way of dealing with teenage confusion, and tbh when people mock that it feels like they're mocking teenagers for... being teenagers, which doesn't sit right with me. just because it's a temporary phase of self-exploration for a lot of people (i was one of them not too long ago), doesn't mean it's invalid!

[@nixxdra]

@@ravenwilliams7636 As someone who’s in the community I can tell you that everyone understands that gender is subjective. The coining new labels isn’t necessary, but most things in life aren’t necessary. We do it because we like it and for the sense of community.

[@ravenwilliams7636]

@@nixxdra maybe you understand the subjectivity of it all but when i was 13 and desperately seeking THE microlabel to describe myself I absolutely did not

[@elliothasvods3211]

Channels like Blaire and Kalvin are the reason I didn't realize I was non-binary until 2020... I didn't realize that I didn't need to go directly from one gender to the opposite gender in order to not be cis lol.

[@sunny_capriccio564]

Same, Kalvin definitely made me internalize a lot of my feelings that i just started processing in 2020. Him and my old 14 year old self would not like me today lmao

[@MangoMagica]

Big same, I also didn’t really think that non-binary was a reasonable thing until I grew up and made friends with trans/enby people. And then I identified as non-binary and changed my name this year. Go figure.

[@666_cthulhu]

the start of quarantine was the most miserable, suicidal period of my life, and a big part of that was having just come out as trans /right/ before lockdown. hearing those names and the word “transtrender” (and “transmedicalism”…oh gawd) really brought back some…interesting memories. what a strange time to be a queer kid 😅 anyway fuck those jerks, how can you be trans and transphobic at the same time lmao

[@julesr6965]

YUPPPP

[@alexisemo6002]

same thing happened to me and i still struggle with my gender from time to time, kalvin and blaire felt like a fever dream lmao

[@drfeelgood7093]

as an autistic person i still use xenogenders/neopronouns b/c my view of gender seems to fall outside of a regular lens? idk they just seem to fit better

[@minimaxwell]

i'm also autistic, and i feel very similar about it! i don't necessarily use them (i wish i had the courage honestly!!), but i've always kinda felt that none of the ""accepted"" genders fit, but neither did i feel non-binary. i go by he/him because it's what is most comfortable, but it still doesn't feel entirely 'correct', i guess? no clue if it's actually related to being autistic or a trauma thing, but it's alright. identity and figuring that stuff out can be a little weird. edit: sorry if any of this sounds odd, i'm not very good at putting my thoughts into words :')

[@CIPHERINATOR]

as a fellow autist, same.

[@bi_cycle]

I don't tend to tell people my pronouns, I just let them choose. Autism and gender are a wild mix

[@CorrectFossa]

This is curiosity because I want to understand better: What makes they/them insufficient?

[@bugzy_brain]

@@CorrectFossaits personal to everyone, some ppl just dont like them and feel more comfortable with something else

[@bonebonebones]

Hahaha holy shit, I was one of the mods on mogai-archive before it was shut down and this video hit like a smack in the face. We were in the thick of it and got sooo much of the peak of this discourse. It was run in the 2014 group blog style where everyone had to have admin permissions to be able to access the askbox, so when it was eventually deleted, it was deleted because iirc someone applied for a mod position with the specific intent of sabotaging it, and then they were given admin permissions and deleted the blog. Very funny in retrospect because most of the people involved in this were teenagers but it also was kind of a dick move to the people who genuinely found connection through that blog. It was a very weird blog to help run because it had a blanket policy of "publish everything submitted to us, even if it's very obviously a troll, because you don't know for SURE if it's a troll and someone out there might find genuine value in it". I get the reasoning but I think it was a bad decision lmao. It meant that our posts were about fifty-fifty split between 1) genuine, good-faith submissions from people who were using microlabels to explore their identities, and 2) rage bait that could easily veer into wildly offensive. A lot of the ones that wound up on places like TiA were in the latter category because people were very good at threading the needle to make their posts perfectly cater to the kind of people who were using this as an excuse to trash on "trendy" waves of teenagers and young adults coming out. It also didn't help that this whole thing intersected so much with otherkin communities, because the same demographics discovering themselves through these microlabels were also running into online kin communities for the first time and those are their OWN pit of drama. This community was helpful for me at the time because I was trying to parse out a weird fun tangle of gender and sexuality-I think at the time I was modding I identified as a homoromantic bisexual demigirl, and it would take me a few years to realize that I'm actually an NB butch LOL. I'm lucky because I dodged a lot of the backlash; I dipped out of modding the blog after the number of asks per day climbed sharply and overwhelmed me, and I think it was shut down like, max a month later. I also kept my personal blog URL a little separate from the group blog which helped. But being directly exposed to so much of the anon hate, ranging from genuine constructive feedback that we couldn't really act on to viciously hateful shit, did a number on my brain for a while. I know other people who got bullied back into the closet for a while. The worst aftereffect of this (debateably-being bullied back into the closet is fucking awful and I wouldn't wish it on anyone) I think was the pushback against "transtrending" picking up so much mainstream momentum. I see a direct throughline from the "attention-seeking teenagers who just want to be special" characterization to modern anti-trans legislation leaning really, really hard on the idea of social contagion, especially among teenagers and young adults. I was lucky enough to get on HRT and get surgery before it picked up so much steam; a lot of the sentiments that I saw in people using microlabels like cloudgender and w/e were reflections of the same dysphoria and distress that I was feeling and didn't have a name for. It took me time to start connecting with trans writers a little or a lot older than me and discover that these feelings had always existed, just in different names. I felt like demigirl fit because it described, to me, something with a Bit of girl or woman in it, but mostly Not, with the Not being just as important and often unrecognized, and then I started reading Ivan Coyote and Leslie Feinberg and I found people describing the thing I'd always felt and connecting dots I didn't know were related. You covered that really well around 27:00-it was an exploration tool for me and for so many people I know, and I really appreciate that being highlighted. It's super easy to dismiss a lot of the MOGAI discourse as cringey today, especially if you lived through it or feel like it delayed you coming to terms with another label that fits you better, and I love how much you focus on the lack of education access for queer history and the really unique role that the explosion of social media played here in facilitating this kind of self-exploration. Sorry for the stream of consciousness, you unlocked something very deeply stored in my brain LMAO.

[@doublejoywilson]

as a person who identifies on the aromantic spectrum, it’s really cool to hear you say you connect with it. i don’t often run into a lot of people who relate to the specific, weird soupy way i connect with romantic feelings. anyway i think unlabeled people are cool and people with 40 million labels are cool and we should all respect each other bc this stuff is weird and of course it’s gonna be weird to figure it out. that’s my super hot take lol

[@risxra]

Hey I’m not gonna put you on some kinda aspec pedestal or anything, but as an ace viewer, thanks for sharing that you feel like you relate to the aromantic label even if you don’t wanna use it to label yourself! I feel like it might be a low standard to set to say that many people consider ace and aro identities to be “not queer enough” but I appreciate the mention regardless :)

[@theeveningcallsforfairies5246]

Yeah, I thought that was really cool of her too! Like “hey, I don’t want to micro-label myself, but this is a label I could use if I wanted to” y’know?

[@siilverREAL]

im aro/ace and yeah i smiled when i heard this lol

[@EJ_2091]

Ngl I went back and rewatched that bit a few times cos it made me happy af. Not gonna push the label on Teya or use it when she made it clear she’s not really into using that label, but it is still nice to have that acknowledgement there. I’m glad aromanticism is getting more of a platform 💜

[@cottage-core_]

❤

[@jessicamoore302]

As much as I appreciate the expansion of identity and the exploration of gender that mogai brought, as a young lesbian (at the time questioning) it set me back sooo far in my own journey, especially with things like the split attraction model. I think at the time I really thought I had to fit into the boxes that were set out, and that I needed to micro-label every feeling I had. Now that I’m older I realize that’s not the case, but it definitely took me longer to realize my identity than I think it otherwise would have

[@ladyvoldything]

I honestly think split attraction terminology can be very harmful to people outside of the aspec communities it was created for

[@baasparkopenings851]

Yeah you're not alone in this and I'd like to think that once people realized that's what happened they tried to stop turning aspec labels into categories and started shifting them back to personal identities, which is what they should have always been. It was an intersection of overly policing tones and internalized shit from the world around us that I think set a lot of lesbians at the time back quite a bit. At the end of the day "oh you don't always feel sexual attraction? maybe you're gray-asexual" needs to be emphasized as a /suggestion/ and not a category. Identities are just that, identities - they shouldn't be categorized beyond what helps us recognize one another, and forcing or coercing people into aspec identities and other microlabels is very unhelpful in my opinion. I don't know the best way to simultaneously teach kids about the aroace spectrum and keep them from thinking they need to identify as some microlabel since im no child/adolescent psychologist but there's a middle ground that MOGAI's harsh policing language (even though not everyone had it) didn't allow for.

[@3ll3llyyy]

@@ladyvoldythinghow so? For me, someone who has romantic attraction to multiple genders and sexual attraction to only 1, it’s very helpful (I seriously thought I was horrible for not being attracted to women like THAT but only romantically)/gen

[@lyannastarkweather]

This unearthed so many memories. MOGAI was a fascinating kind of discourse that became very contentious and maligned very quickly. I was a Tumblr user who was also pursuing an undergraduate minor in LGBT studies at the same time all of this was happening. Being on Tumblr and taking LGBT courses in college helped me become more comfortable with my own identity as a bisexual woman. I was learning so much about queer theory and the history of the established terms in the queer community. However, I felt like the Tumblr users trying to come up with new "unproblematic" terms were largely uneducated on this history and, as a result, they were divorcing themselves from the hard-fought struggles of the queer liberation movement and its more radical elements. I don't feel the same way about it anymore, since identifying one's gender and sexuality is such an individualized experience. If people identify with these terms, it has no impact on my identity and how I present myself to the world.

[@mokugoldendragon]

When I see a young person using this language, defending their identity and singularity, it makes me so happy. I feel so proud, so full of it, because it feels like we made it! Now, this generation can explore, learn, create, truly enjoy being themselves. They are not about to put themselves under scrutiny and humiliation to fit in! They will Fight with words, wit, Confidence... A beautiful thing. I love these kids.

[@2004chevyventure]

mogai is a weird topic for me because it restricted my exploration of my gender and sexuality to niche labels and quickly overwhelmed me with an infoglut or something and the fast paced nature of the internet, so i dropped everything from it to figure things out on my own. ig its fine if it helps u out, but it was just hell for me and i have very bad memories and feelings from that period of time in mine and tumblrs history. it was a crazy time

[@omgmo1962]

I got really stressed during that time and probably because I was a TEEN trying to figure myself out. I went on rabbit holes to figure out different genders because I was so desperate to figure out exactly what I was or felt. And it took me getting off Tumblr and growing up to find and embrace a more expansive view of sexuality and gender and decide that "lesbian" can very nicely encompass my nonbinary gender and sexuality 🥰

[@natkatmac]

I personally have found so much more calm and happiness in just saying "it is what it is" and just accepting whatever my feelings are like a river flowing.

[@siena5494]

i remember too that during the time it felt like there was a lot of pressure for everyone to either find a label that fits them perfectly or to keep squishing more labels together until you got some super long and confusing label that just wasn't practical to use in or outside of the mogai community. luckily i already was comfortable with my sexuality and wasn't really thinking too much about my gender so it didn't personally affect me but i saw it majorly stress out people i knew. i do however remember aggressive niche of mogai people spouting a lot of biphobic shit tho, because they kept saying that bisexual was transphobic and that if you were bi but also would date trans people that means you're actually pansexual. being bi i used to get into it a lot with those people and i do believe that the obsession with labels and making sure that every label was hyperspecific and always included and excluded the right people, kinda shown when teya is reading the original exchange about what acronym to use, led to a lot of unnecessary intercommunity fighting. imo the mogai community did lead to actual harm to the bisexual community and that's why i tend to have really negative memories and associations with it as well. i think it's important to acknowledge both the good and harm it did because it did legitimately harm some groups of people

[@lochlanpage4327]

confession time: after being a tumblr kid, i switched to reddit when i was about 18 and started falling into the r/tumblrinaction scene, largely because i was like 'well no one feels that connected their gender anyway so people who have neopronouns and are NB are just attention seeking'. turns out that no, most people do feel a connection to their gender, i was just a very dumb and closeted trans nonbinary person lol. i love how positive this video was, because i was the same way when i was a queer teen on tumblr, thinking it was a little much and a bit dumb to keep making more labels, but a lot of the labels there became quite commonly used, and even the ones tbat didn't, ultimately what is the harm in people having more ways to describe themselves? glad to see TIA got shut down, and im very happily a tumblr queer again.

[@shadowsimp697]

AAHH the "well NO ONE feels that connected to their gender. right?" hits so close to home god damnit. i don't think i've ever opposed the idea of what it is to be non-binary, but for years i thought that "gender affirmation" and "gender euphoria" and other stuff are things only trans people experience, and "we, the boring cis" are bound to not feel anything. OH WELL, guess what. thank you for sharing your experiences!

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

ARE YOU ME?? "what is with these oddly specific labels, noone has an actual "gender" inside them that can feel this specific... they're just making shit up".... yyyyeah i'm agender now lmao

[@lochlanpage4327]

@@darkacadpresenceinblood yupppp seems like an oddly common experience. i remember so many labels that i thought were ridiculous, and now i sit somewhere between genderfluid, agender, transmasc and 'just vibing'. really explains all my confusion when i hadn't figured that shit out, except now i just figure that i can't really pin down my gender, and if i find a more accurate label than just 'nonbinary' some day, then awesome! and i'll be grateful to the no doubt 14 year old who invented the gender as a hypothetical lmao

[@lochlanpage4327]

@@shadowsimp697 and thanks for sharing yours! big same on the euphoria stuff, i was just a really oblivious person who was performatively feminine for a longgg time, with a hint of queer style once i figured that out, so whenever i dressed more masc (and in hindsight experienced gender euphoria) i just put it down to being happy i looked queer. nope, past me, you're happy you look androgynous!

[@kellylyons1038]

You literally cannot be trans AND nonbinary. Trans and cis imply a binary, thats what those prefixes mean scientifically and linguistically. Thats like saying "im binary nonbinary", how does that even make any sense?

[@TalysAlankil]

thank you for being the tumblrina representation on youtube we deserve father strange

[@evilbob9970]

I remember encountering (via screenshots) someone on twitter a year or so ago who had a "lesbophobia is problematic because lesbo is a slur so use lezphobia instead especially if you aren't a lesbian" take and then, without any reflection, contextualization, or acknowledgement (as confirmed by looking at their tweets) a couple months later had a "lezphobia is problemactic because lez is a slur so don't say it especially if you aren't a lesbian" take and it really highlighted the tendency for that particular subset of the Alphabet Mafia (affectionate) not to contribute anything of value to the broader conversation and instead just language police and try to sound like the most enlightened person in the room

[@notoriousgoblin83]

Being queer doesn't inherently make you not an asshole. Being straight and heterosexual doesn't inherently make you an asshole. Humans are slightly more complex than just the ultimately arbitrary labels we stick on certain areas of the infinitely broad spectrum of human experience. Some people just aren't happy.

[@pptenshi3900]

@@notoriousgoblin83 people love to generalize demographics they don’t understand. frankly I find it very weird no matter how you spin it

[@thembo]

I wasn't good at Tumblr in high school, nor did I know I was trans back then, I also saw this type of community as hostile or gatekeepy and I think that actually contributed to my prolonged closeting

[@DemonLordRaiden]

This was a huge issue for me too. There was also the element of "I can't be queer because they're all like this and I don't want to be like this" (I was a teenager in the southern U.S., Christian propaganda's a bitch) that was made worse due to Tumblr mogai's hostility to outsiders or to people who don't already have things figured out.

[@MarxismLilyism]

@@DemonLordRaidendamn this was definitely me in hindsight 🥲

[@IceFireofVoid]

The community being so hostile to outsiders in my own experiences has been why I don't really associate much with the queer community and why I still have trouble getting close to other women. I'm a centrist, I'm was a STEM student. I had an emotionally abusive mother and was bullied by all the other girls so my closest relationships were my dad and my friends who were pretty much all boys. In a way, men were my safe space. So going to LGBT spaces or primarily female spaces always felt like this clash of concepts I didn't really understand and if I asked questions or had any sort of disagreement with anything being said, I was met with a lot of hostility very quickly, hostility that, in retrospect, was reminiscent of my childhood experiences with other women that I now know were traumatic. I am 25 now and still almost all my friends are men, and one of my few friends who is a woman only came out as trans a few years ago so she was one of my guy friends too at first. I want to get more in touch with people like me, but it always leaves me feeling terrified that I will make one mistake or say something wrong and everyone will hate me and I will be yelled at again and get more death threats.

[@watsonwrote]

It absolutely did for me, too. Delayed my transition by like 4 or 5 years

[@vytallicaq.6881]

@@IceFireofVoid People are tribal by nature. It's a primal survival instinct we evolved with. (Strength in numbers) And people often feel threatened by other tribes. No one wants a different tribe to predominate. That would put pressure on you to conform to the values of the prevailing tribe. That's why it's hard to interject any new ideas or directions. The other members of the tribe feel like you are trying to change the established cultural ways of the tribe, and they don't want to feel that stress of having to adopt new ways they are not comfortable with. So they attack anyone who deviates from their ways. It's best to just try to find the most open-minded, relaxed, laid back people you can find. An increasingly difficult task. Good luck. I know how hard it is to find a tribe that is a perfect fit.

[@Letcharlieplay2545]

Personally, MOGAI labels are for the individual, not necessarily for others. Ever person who uses mogai labels i know also uses more broad labels to describe themselves to those out of the loop because they know it isn't practical. Pretty much no one expects someone to know all their microlabels at a glance but I don't think its bad that we need to look up what certain labels mean because that's how we learn! No one is born knowing what everything means so we will always have to go out of our way to learn new words and terms.

[@electrogeek77]

To myself, I'm agender/autigender because it gives me a better personal understanding. But to everyone else, I'm just nonbinary.

[@Misstborn]

As a queer teen, I use so many different labels, but note my use of "queer teen;" it's how I like to describe myself because it's easy. But in contrast to that, I use so many different labels because it provides a good method of introspection and realizing where you lie. These are all things Strange is saying, but I think it's a good thing to point out anecdotally; all of the labels are a great tool to learn about yourself, but when it comes to interpersonal communication, they can often muddle up understanding.

[@Misstborn]

To list the various terms I use to describe myself: trans, transfemme, demigirl, sapphic, neptunic, queer, gay, lesbian, ace, aro, plus I do use fae/faer sometimes because they just make me happy.

[@merchantarthurn]

I was on tumblr before during and after this time and I've been avoiding videos on it because the bullying I saw about it, and the ace "discourse" that happened parallel to it, have been... I hesitate to use "traumatising" but I still struggle to openly call myself ace and will feel on edge when I do, so I think that's an apt term. Thank you for this measured and kind video on this topic, I honestly think it soothed something in me. I never personally found use in microlabels (outside of the definitions helping me see other people experiencing similar feelings to my own) but the way people ragged on them still hurt to witness, especially when it expanded into anti-ace sentiment. There's still microlabelling and neopronouns and niche pride flags going strong, they're just less associated with "MOGAII". It does seem most common amongst teens still and I'm happy whenever I see it - I think this video nicely addresses why. Maybe they're not useful in a language-for-communication sense, but it always struck me as a way of figuring yourself out in depth and having pride in that. Many will likely drift into more common language as they grow, and some won't, but I hope they're at least having safer and happier time with it. There's still exclusionary "discourse" happening outside the more obvious terf and transmed communities (pan seems to have been a target for a while now which infuriates me to witness) but... I see it shared less, see people falling for it less, and that makes me hope it's less common too. The one criticism I have of MOGAII that is highlighted by the posts you used re: it's origins is, unlike "queer", there's a considerable desire to still draw lines. It makes sense when you don't have a broader understanding of history or Life yet to have made the mistakes that were made both explicitly and implicitly when picking the exact language. Cishetronormativity is a bit deeper than the "cishet" part of the word, an easy mistake for teens to make that I don't blame them for but wish someone had kindly explained, even at a high level. Polyamory, for example, just isn't normative at all - it doesn't neatly fit into orientation (though I think you could argue it could) and they explicitly wanted it outta there. Gender non-conformity, romantic & sexual non-conformity (like kink, not harmful paraphilias), relationship non-conformity (polycules, qprs, beards, "spinsterhood" etc) - many of these are embedded in queer history, community etc or at least orbit it for loads of important reasons, and MOGAII as defined feels like a sterilisation of that - ironic, given how open it theoretically was to the diversity of experience with orientation and gender. Again, this is a critique without any ill will to the actual MOGAII community then and now, just an important thing that I hope have made their way in over time.

[@us-the-voices]

As one of them mogai’s Actually I do agree, I joined the actual tumblr community like literally last year despite knowing a fair bit about MOGAI things beforehand. It’s definitely different now, it seems like there was quite a few factions that split off becoming their own thing. What’s left is kinda just there, for better or worse. I’m part of the new reform MOGAI I guess and it is so much different than what I know. I think because tumblr is set out like it is, it’s hard to find normal discussions. But they happen all the time. Polyamory, polycules, QPR’s, kink, aromantic, asexual, Demi-genders, gnc trans people, and xenogenders are talked about in a nice light and people are pretty chill. Definitely not everyone because again different factions split off ages ago and those ones suck. But we have constructive and creative discussions, it’s just hidden and out of the way which is sad. But I agree. Hope you have a wonderful day! -pop

[@diamond_dynamo2214]

so, here's the thing: as a trans person, I think that microlabels like we're talking about are extremely valuable, if approached in a reasonable way. like, nobody is gonna intuit your gender if it's too far from the binary "norm", but as long as you're ok with that, it can actually be a phenomenal tool to feel more in touch and comfortable with yourself. so yeah, I think policing people's speech like the stereotype of Tumblr users isn't productive, but I think dismissing identities because they're foreign to you leads to far more harm than good

[@BluePhoenixAlex]

Back in 2015-2016, years before I realized I was trans or even but, I got really into the "skeptic" KZbin sphere. I was a real "reddit atheist" type. When they started doing "anti-sjw" stuff, it seemed in line with what they had been previously doing. I got so sucked in by how they framed these topics in reference to religiosity, to the point where I even watched Sargon of Akkad for a month or so and thought he was real smart. I thought these microlabels were silly and dumb, because I was a teenager who didn't know anything beyond what was fed to me on KZbin. Eventually, I grew past that phase of my life and now look on it with deep shame. I still don't like to use many labels on myself(even bisexual feels slightly limiting because I just am into people who I think are hot, but the bi flag is pretty lol), but I think it's rad that other people do like to use hyper specific labels for themselves.

[@ClaireSunshine]

I also went through that pipeline, It's rough but it's not unrecoverable. We came out the other end better people, and that's all that matters!

[@estellelass7292]

You talking about the formation of MOGAI reminds me of a bunch of Greek scholars discussing philosophy, it’s so fascinating how they worked together to create something like this.

[@TheAsterik]

Not gonna lie, I still firmly associate with "novigender" from the MOGAI days (that is, specifically, a word meaning 'one's gender experience (or lack thereof) is complicated in such a way that it is difficult or impossible to fit into one term.') but since nobody really knows what that means, I also happily use non-binary. It's just nice to have a word that has meaning to *me*, even if it's not something that's widely known. ... Also, the fact that they coined one word to describe 'man, I can't describe all this gender in one word' makes me laugh, which is always fun.

[@baasparkopenings851]

Exactly, nonbinary umbrella genders often just end up being fun to me lmao. I identify as a dragon in gender because its fun, not because I expect to be taken seriously.

[@alysdexia]

nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled you are; describe → relate

[@alysdexia]

@@baasparkopenings851 lackwits like you aren’t fun for others.

[@rebekahjohnson5940]

Haha that’s really cool! I don’t use it much, but I’d describe myself as graygender. I have one, but I really don’t feel it and I’m not invested. I present myself NB but i don’t care if people assume im a woman bc I kind of am? Personally it doesn’t matter, I’ll put on a show and wear makeup sometimes but day-to-day? Nah, I’m just me. It was a great introspection to get to the term graygender, even if I’m not going to use it often.

[@pedalbubbles509]

I always thought the infinite genders thing was pretty awesome. It truly means that gender is an infinite spectrum and something beyond our comprehension, so we might as well express it that way. I also think creating different ones related to your interests is pretty fun.

[@sheebeebuddy6793]

Tbh i love micro labels AND umbrella terms for myself. I use umbrella terms on a less intimate basis and then if I get to know someone and we start opening up about our experiences I’ll explain my micro labels. Both are super useful and important and it’s equally valid to use a hundred micro labels or no labels at all

[@coffee69420]

the idea of aromantic identities is so normal to me (as someone who does use the aromantic label) that seeing it brought up as one of the crazy hyper-specific labels made up by the mogai community is INSANE

[@reedsylvier5250]

Same, I may have realised I was aromantic years after I was asexual, but I still learned about both the concepts at around the same time at the same place, AVEN, I get the split attraction model is rarely used and is basically only relevant in aspec contexts for the most part but I still thought both were on a more similar timeline or wavelength or whatever

[@Aisha_Luv]

LITERALLY

[@akitalockwood]

It’s even weirder for me when i think about all the aroace discourse that was everywhere on tumblr a few years ago (I STILL find it hard to see myself as part of the lgbt community bcus of that)

[@mysterycasts]

@@akitalockwood Same! I had a hard time justifying joining my high school’s GSA club, and after that, I took a year to come out as ace to any of them because of the ace discourse on Tumblr.

[@elitettelbach4247]

As a linguist and part-time tumblr enthusiast, I found this video really fascinating! I do remember the MOGAI community and how a lot of new labels and terms kept popping up. You’re absolutely correct that all words are made up at some point, so I am glad that people who wanted to express themselves in ways that as yet lacked description were able to come up with ways to do so.

[@faultypremise]

For me, it was the forceful nature of wanting to change labels that made me resistant to all this. I'm an older queer person, and I had long identified as "bi". Which, to me, simply meant I had no real preference. I was told I was "pan". Or told that I'm transphobic for wanting to remain with the label "bi". I mean... no? At the time all this was going on I was dating a transman who was refusing to engage with any of it, so it was confusing. I just realized this was a young person discourse and stayed out of it otherwise. I still identify as bi. lol

[@zo_mi_di]

Ntm that the actual Bisexual Manifesto explicitly says that bisexuality includes attraction to trans people and multiple genders at the same time!!!

[@shadenox8164]

And the idea that bi doesn't include trans people I'd argue is the more transphobic position. Like i'm a gay man, if I ever date a trans man I'm still gonna be gay. Because I like men.

[@MalMotorDedo]

​@@shadenox8164This is exactly the reasoning that goes on in my head. The thing w bi as a label is that ppl can't get over semantics, that's why you see ppl making millions of calculations in their brain to get to the "IF YOU'RE BISEXUAL THEN YOU ONLY SEE 2 SEXES AND THAT MEANS THERE ISN'T 7759659 GENDERS HAHAHA TAKE THAT LIBS"

[@zo_vachon2781]

I wasn’t apart of the discourse at the time and I’m a bit younger, but I totally get what you’re saying! I learned what bisexuality was before I heard abt pansexuality. I got used to the bi label (took me a while) but eventually I felt like it finally fit me. So even if pan could describe my experiences better in some people’s opinion, bi is still the label I vibe with the most, and it’s the label I’ll keep using.

[@edelette6529]

oh god same. I mean I'm in my 20's and struggled most of my life trying to understand who or what I was. "I obviously like guys but I think girls are really pretty and hot and want to kiss them but I'm not a lesbian????" It took until end of highschool/ beginning of college to fully understand that "bi" fit the best for me. It made the most sense and felt the most comfortable. So having people then say that identifying as bisexual was wrong and transphobic and "actually you are just pan" was so frustrating. I'm still bi too lol I never once thought it wasn't inclusive or anything but it feels correct for me

[@elenchanted9904]

I've taken the gender census for the past few years, every year since I discovered it. It's so cool to learn about the origins about that!

[@chazzmaycry1118]

this is genuinely the best assessment of the entire situation that was that time period. i've never seen anyone sum it up so well without getting stuck in their teen opinions about it

[@SpecialInterestShow]

I'm always SO nervous when videos about MOGAI crop up. I worry so much about if each video will be critical and just negative about xeno/microgenders! So, I want to thank you for the empathy and respect you're speaking with in this video. It is a true breath of fresh air! I'm so happy to hear someone talk about them mostly positively, esp since a lot of xenogender people were/are neurodivergent like me.

[@theboythatsayshootyhoo3865]

OH GOD throwback to my ENTIRE teenage years. if you were not on tumblr during this you have no idea what a cesspool of hate it was, there was full on wars between the transmed, terf and MOGAI communities. i, much like a lot of queer youth that were neglected and raised by the internet (tumblr specifically) was put in the crossfire. these days i appreciate mogai a lot for both their backlash towards 'theres only two genders' by making up a whole bunch of them and then really finding that they resonated with them, but. yk. it was also a little bit insane. trying to fit people into boxes (the exact thing heteronormativity already TRIES to do) instead of letting queers be more abstract was a horrible idea, we've always been undefineable, and whatever words we like to describe ourselves with dont neccesarily have to be put into a flag for inclusivity's sake (i say with a MOGAI flag in my icon LMAO listen. listen. wolves are cool. AND MY FRIEND MADE THE ICON FOR ME, please). at this point, if you asked me what i identified as my mouth would be censored by a black bar. i think the whole problem with the Big Three was that (despite some being worse than others, TERFS) everyone wanted to compartmentalise people so they would know who to get mad at. terfs didnt want to hear the word queer because then they wouldnt know who was trans so they could exclude them. transmeds didnt want to hear the word queer because they wouldnt know WHICH trans people to exclude. MOGAI didnt want to hear the word queer because they had to know the problematic origin behind everything, including their own hundreds of flags. at the end of the day though, i think MOGAI had a lot of positive influence on queers on tumblr in how they describe their bodies and feelings, not neccesarily by putting them into labels, but just being imaginative with metaphor and symbolism of the self. i would have never known myself better emotionally if i didnt interact with this community. and funnily enough, i was never part of them, i was actually a transmed who figured out i was simply not vibing with having my identity limited. in part, i blame my social circle, because the times i tried to come out as transmasc were met with 'no you cant, heres why.' what ive learned is you CANNOT try to police your fellow queer's identity. the way they identify isnt harming anyone and is benefitting the way they feel about themselves, you dont need to understand to let them be. we have always had gender-weird people in our community, just look at drag queens, and butches in the 1950s. you could be a man and a woman and a lesbian at the same time. for many, theres a huge overlap in being transmasc and being butch, those people have always existed. when the younger and less articulate generation tried to define those feelings as they naturally cropped up, people got mad because usually everyone kept it to themselves, most of the time in the underground queer scene.

[@BirdNoise77]

Oh poor Milo, they got bullied so hard for that video. Can't help but just feel sad about the whole situation in retrospect

[@rootsworks]

I appreciate how sympathetic and gentle a read you gave of the phenomenon despite the criticism and skepticism you had for it. Love your channel, you do great work.

[@nixxdra]

I haven’t watched the video yet but I trust strange to handle this better than any other commentary KZbinr possibly could. Also I find it funny when people sometimes talk about mogai they talk like it’s not a thing anymore (like people do with tumblr in general) like no. We’re still here. Yeah a lot of people have left, most of the bigger blogs. But a lot of new people join all the time too, they’re just small blogs that go unnoticed.

[@dottyContrarian]

yeah.. that's been kinda confusing to me because i am xenic and i only heard about it like last year and there are a lot of folks still here. interesting.

[@silverpelt14]

I also find it pretty funny, was thinking that I find it a lil odd doing retrospectives on things that are still current & active. The MOGAI and now LIOM communities are very much still a thing, we are still here. I can bet there's probably, on average at least, least like 10+ terms coined every day; not even accounting for other platforms.

[@jasper3706]

I feel like it's important to stress that this is in no way new to the 2010s. Reading through old 90s trans zines, I've found some incredible lists of terminology that absolutely does not exist anymore in any form, including a series of zines from Toronto where the author almost exclusively uses their own now-obsolete term instead of "transgender." That's the same sludge that enduring terms like genderqueer and genderfluid came from. We're already seeing this with MOGAI words! For example, I can't find any evidence of the word non-binary being used before 2009 (if you can, please let me know), but by 2017 or so it had completely eclipsed genderqueer in popular usage, and now many people seem unaware that it was originally created as a synonym for genderqueer. I feel like it would be fun to bet which MOGAI words are still gonna be around in 2035.

[@alien_kae]

Do you have any examples of the old terminology, or a good place to start looking into it? I find this stuff fascinating but don't know much about zines. Something I found interesting in an old article that focused mainly on bisexuality was that it talked about gender as something expansive and diverse, yet in a way that's pretty different from how we talk about it today. For example, it very confidently described butch and femme as being genders. I do know of people who say their gender is just "butch" at least, but I don't see that very often.

[@ravioli3257]

​@@alien_kaereplying here because I'm interested as well lol

[@littlemsterious991]

i love 90s terminology and and how it differs from today. i saw one post about it and its was such an interesting list to read

[@The_Jovian]

I do love genderqueer though

[@toronto2112]

I always feel like such an old fogey when I say I'm genderqueer, and even more ancient when I talk about using the label androgyne. I've moved to just saying nonbinary because it's the term more people are aware of currently.

[@hurricanechild217]

As someone who is 19, in the year 2023, who uses a lot of online terms that you'd find in Mogai and shit. *It's for online.* I love it, it feels safe, and comfortable, and is reassuring to me to have a super specific label to understand myself. I go in real life though? Interacting with queer people irl? I'm queer, maybe I get into being aro-ace spectrum, but all the hyperspecific terms? Those are for me, and for online with people who want to understand me on that super deep and hyperspecific level.

[@emmapolcyn9505]

As someone growing up on tumblr in this era with friends that were deep in MOGAI pronouns I honestly think that made me finding my identity a lot harder. There were so many confusing and overlapping terms that I felt genuinely lost and it felt hard to approach my friends when they were discovering and changing their labels every week. I do think there are people that can benifit from MOGAI but it makes differentiating other sexualities and genders much much harder.

[@levilombardi3162]

Honestly this. I feel like a lot of us now 20-ish something ppl went thru WAYYYYY too much stress cuz of this time period lmao. I'm very much NOT ace but these MOGAI ppl were tryna make me believe I was some niche azz version of ace that some 14 yr old made up. Ofc not every MOGAI person was like this, but so many of them would just....swarm kids tryna figure themselves out and try to label others. Maybe they genuinely thought they were being helpful but it was maddening tryna keep up with everything.

[@emmapolcyn9505]

@@levilombardi3162 I think you hit the nail on the head. In an attempt to get their own niche mogai identities to be more of a thing they tended to assign people those identites based on whatever the person told them about themselves

[@dismurrart6648]

​@Levi Lombardi I remember once coming across mogai and telling a late 20s(nut never matured past 15 tbh) friend "wow, half of these are almost the same thing." They responded something like "wow. No they aren't!" Years later they tried to publicly shame me for that. I stand by though what I felt all those years ago. It was a list of 15 identities and half of them were just demi repackaged with slight inflection differences

[@yukiandkanamekuran]

I think people like you just need to understand that it's not for you if you don't like it. It's okay, not everything in the queer community has to cater towards you.

[@emmapolcyn9505]

@@yukiandkanamekuran While that is very much true. The issue largely comes from people around us essentially trying to force us into an obscure identity they think fits us based on what little they know about our sexuality and gender struggles. And when you're doing that to a younger person that is still figuring themselves out, it makes finding the right fit for how to present yourself that much harder when you can just come up with a hyperspecific label on the spot. It doesn't matter if I like the movement or not because it was being shoved onto me regardless. I am not claiming the community needs to cater to me. It's a community after all that encompasses a wide variety of people. But people are allowed to have criticisms of a movement based on their experiences with it. My experience with mogai was ultimately negative but I'm not saying mogai can't/shouldn't exist. People can do what they want if they're not encroaching on my boundaries to do so. Which, again, is the issue I brought up initially.

[@ace.of.space.]

for anyone interested, Lily Alexandre has another great video on this topic called "Millions of Dead Genders"

[@lily_lxndr]

thanks!

[@No-ou4su]

My opinion on MOGAI is that it's a useful thing for people who want a very specific term for their gender even if I is complicated but it again it isn't something you have to completely figure out because everyone's experiences are different and not everyone feels like they absolutely need a specific label to be themselves.

[@coccyxjaw2958]

I used to be one of those "haha STARGENDER" but as time went on I realized how much I connected to some MOGAI labels. I always see people point out how it can distance people from each other in the community, which is a fair point as that happens all the time, but it did the opposite for me. If *other* people-- even just three or so -- could have the specific feeling of "dead thing in the woods, but in a masculine way" as part of their gender, that meant I wasn't alone in having REALLY odd gender feelings! And with all those labels -- some very specific -- it helped me understand that a lot of people were kinda weird with gender, and that getting weird with it could be enjoyable and fun. There were others like me, and it was nice to see a bunch of people going wild with genders and pronouns, and these people were really only doing it for themselves, unswayed by the unending barrage of jokes and hate. I think at its best, MOGAI labels helped me connect with my queer identity in a way a lot of "mainstream" stuff I saw paraded everywhere never did. I really don't USE labels further than calling myself queer, but I admit I still maintain a tumblr blog full of reblogged labels I like or connect with. It's a personal thing more than anything else. I hardly expect people to know the nuances of my gender and how it all meshes together, but the knowledge that there are people out there like me specifically is nice. Don't get me wrong, we're a community and more alike than we are different, and we're in this together, not my point-- on a deeper and personal level, I just like knowing someone else Gets It. Yknow? Am I making sense? I'm just hurling this into the void haha. Needed to get this off my chest ig

[@ErisIsAnAbomination]

THIS!! Gender identity is weird af so why not have fun with it?

[@666_cthulhu]

sometimes i really do feel like a dead thing in the woods but in a masculine way. real

[@darkacadpresenceinblood]

you ARE making sense and while i'm the exact opposite, trying to apply weirdly specific gender labels to myself just makes me anxious as an agender-ish individual, those super random xenogenders have always sounded so fun and i've always wished they fit me personally too because it's just such a mood, to be like "fuck you social norms, i AM a dead thing in the woods in a masculine way, take that >:)"

[@li.theo.4]

you are making sense and you’ve put how i feel into words; thank you for that

[@ammitthedevourer7316]

Yeah, that’s been my experience too. I appreciate you taking the time to write & share this! ❤️

[@lexwhy554]

As a trans man who had a very long and tiring road to figuring out what exactly my gender was, which was happening after the mogi era, with the remnants of it in the form of a lot of information on a lot of different microlabels - it was so confusing. I felt understood by so many of them, as I felt that the people who described these feelings felt exactly what I was feeling but it all seemed unobtainable to use in real life. I hate explaining myself and the vision of having to explain my very complex emotions through these very specific labels and then explain what these labels mean bc nobody's ever heard of them was tiring. I was so tired. I remember vividly sitting in my room one night and just making a little pride flag for when you're tired of figuring out your gender. I wish there were more resources made by people later in their trans journeys about how to figure out your own relationship to your gender and sexuality because just slapping a word on it does not answer questions. I feel like I understand myself more when I say I'm a gay man then I did when I called myself a trans nonbinary achillian homoromantic asexual lithiosexual guy. I feel like myself and a lot of other people were overcompensating for our lack of self-undestanding by slapping words that sounded more or less correct onto ourselves to pretend we knew everything and had our shit together

[@DemonLordRaiden]

That last line is so much of what was going on, it seemed. I'm sure it helped some people in the space and that's amazing, but it also kept people out of the space and made it harder for others to understand themselves.

[@bigbrothertw]

the casual polyphobia at the start from the disk horse is astounding

[@alicegoldstein4957]

i hope y’all are still out there just using whatever words you want and being happy