Tag: leave my family alone dammit

i read your tags on one of the marriage equality posts, and if it’s not too rude, i was wondering why you can’t get married?

In brief, because I’m the third member of a triad. 

My girlfriends were legally married – and conceived the Kid – before I entered the scene.  In practice, I am a full partner in the adult relationship(s) and equal parent to the kid, whom all of us refer to as my son (as well as each of theirs).  In legality, I am a freeloading housemate whose only legal relationship to the family is that they get to claim me on their taxes because they supply more than 50% of my support (since I am not currently employed), and a medical consent paper that gives me the right to make decisions for “their” child.

I am on state health insurance (nearly-free, but bare-bones) because they are not allowed to add me to either of their plans.  If we were to break up, I would be ENTIRELY dependent on their goodwill to be able to continue to see my child.  If they were to die, I would be dependent on their parents’ goodwill to get custody of him. (There’s some possibility that I’d get it anyway if it came to a fight, since I’ve lived with him nearly his whole life and could call all kinds of witnesses to the fact that he considers me a mother, but it’s not anything like guaranteed.)   All legal rights I have as a member of the family – to hospital visits, executorship of wills, life insurance payouts, custody of my own damn kid – are the ones they have remembered explicitly to give me, and frankly we don’t have the money at the moment to hire a lawyer to tell us what we might have forgotten.  (Not to mention that I can’t put my savings toward our family debt, because it’s my only guaranteed safety net in the event of an emergency.)

So, yeah.  Intellectually, I’m over the moon about the SCOTUS decision – and even on a personal level, it’s really reassuring to know that there won’t be any kind of legal question about my partners’ marriage once the Girl changes her gender designation legally.  But it’s kind of painful to see (over and over and over) that post about the list of rights guaranteed by marriage that are now available to “everyone” and know I don’t get them yet.  And, like I said, I don’t expect to live to see it.

(ETA, since someone asked:  this is totally rebloggable if you want.)

ballisticducks:

katblaque:

silkarth:

katblaque:

Mike Huckabee’s comments about transgender bathroom laws have recently gained attention on social media. I have avoided making a formal video about transgender bathrooms, but I decided that I would discuss it in light of his comments

In this video I discuss Mike Huckabee’s comments, my experience as a trans woman using the women’s restroom and how transphobia/queerphobia is taught to children who of course become adults like Mike Huckabee who believe that trans women are predators.

Watch the full video here (x)

I wish I knew who first picked up on the queer-coded Disney villain thing, because that person deserves so many citations by now. I know I’ve been seeing it for at least 15 years around the internet on various social media.

Here’s an interesting blog about the complex visual coding of Disney villains.

Well to be fair, queer coding is something that I’ve known about before examining Disney Villians closely. A lot of this exists outside of Disney. a lot of literature written about vampires, for example, includes queer coding.

Well yeah but I think we should be more critical of it in children’s media because the effect is more harmful when we get it earlier. Disney however is by no means the only one that aims it at children; Him from Powerpuff Girls is a particularly blatant example, but even the English dub of Frieza from Dragonball Z is pretty clearly queer coded.

carmilla-unscripted:

dreamlordmorpheus:

If you aren’t cisgender heteroromantic heterosexual, you belong in the queer community. I’m sick of seeing this bullshit “you aren’t queer enough” sort of community policing.

And by “cisgender heteroromantic heterosexual” I mean ALL THREE of those things.

Are you a trans (binary or nonbinary) person who is attracted sexually and romantically to the opposite gender? You belong in the LGBTA+ community.

Are you a cis person who is heteroromantic asexual? You belong.

Are you a cis person who is heterosexual aromantic? You belong.

Are you a cis bisexual who is currently dating a cis member of the opposite gender? You belong.

Are you an intersex individual who otherwise is heteroromantic heterosexual? You belong.

Stop trying to alienate people based on some fucked-up “level of queerness”. There are enough problems in the LGBTA+ community without people being exclusive.

if you don’t agree w/this post please unfollow me