@Bub
You realize, of course, that you have become a caricature of yourself.
That, and mental illness.

There you go again, Dan ... pretending there's no such thing as the Gay Agender. :-|

Gender, race, sexuality...they’re all just social constructs. OMG, get over it!

@3 Spot on. Both times, actually.

Remember how Rachel Dolezal identifies as African American despite both her parents being white? Or how white people appropriating cultural characteristics angers people whose culture is being appropriated, this is why we've had two letters from people in the LGBTQIA community frustrated over people that adopt the label but (arguably) not the lifestyle.

#4, you win for today.

I’m so bored with identity policeing. Who is queer enough/black enough/white enough/ disabled enough/Jewish enough /enough of whatEVER to claim an identity? Yes! no! Poseur! ME! Not you! Get out of my little circle!

Yeesh. It’s enough to make one want to retreat behind an avatar of a dog.

Why not? Sen. Tim Sheldon has been calling himself (and is refered to by the media, including The Strange, as) a Democrat - even though he caucuses with Republicans, votes like a Republican, openly supports Republican candidates, etc.

@Bub
Would you believe that I'm worried about your mental health?

Honestly, I wonder why you bother posting here every time I see one of your posts.

What does "openly gay stealth trans woman" mean? Stealth trans woman = person with male body but (invisible) female gender? But what is the openly gay part then? Does the LW have sex with men or with women? If with men, wouldn't that be stealth straight rather than openly gay? If with women, stealth gay?

@gueralinda, re-imagine the issue as one of cultural appropriation. If someone who is not Native American opens a Native American Sweat Lodge don't Native Americans have reason to object?

@11 when trans ppl call themselves stealth it's in reference to others not being able to tell that we are trans. LW is a gay trans women who people assume is a gay cis woman.

Dear Dan,

My closest dearest friend had a child born in June but insisted on naming the child "April". As someone born in April, I am deeply offended and considering ending the friendship. Please tell me why I'm absolutely right.

Moniker Is Really, Ethically April.

@4 wouldn't gay agender mean that you were in a relationship with another agender person? How can you date someone with the same gender if you don't have a gender?
You could go by biological sex, I guess, but by that qualifier this is a straight agender person.

The cisguy could be designated as queer since he's attracted to a person other than opposite-gender (though let's be real... a historically straight cis guy dating a classically feminine agender person is most likely attracted to her classical femininity and is probably pretty effing straight. He may not mind that she doesn't identify as a woman but I bet there's a good chance he would mind if she changed her appearance to be full-on androgynous.)

Basically there is no bending of logic that makes this a gay couple.

LW, they're trolling you and everyone who put so much stock in self-applied identities to begin with. Here's a general hint: if you abandon your principle ("identities are valid / I'm super supportive of my friends loves") at the first moment it becomes inconvenient, it was never in fact a principle. [I take a weirdly perverse joy in reading the comments on jezebel about any murder case, each of which will contain "I'm 100% against the death penalty, except in *this* case" - when it's obvious what they mean is they're 100% for the death penalty when the victim is someone they identify with. The cognitive dissonance is off the charts]

Secondly, the difference between folks like me who were eye-rolling and relatively frosty to this Identity-Mania trend we've been in for the past twenty years or so since the onset, and people like you who subscribed to them avidly is how long we went until we suspected that people were using these identities to take advantage of other people. Congratulations, you're in the club!

Question about SLLOTD: Does Dan just pick a weekly theme out of hat, do the editors decide on a theme, or is it just a case of the human urge to see patterns where none exist?

This is not quite that simple. I'd agree that I would not go yelling to the world in this situation that "look at me, I'm agender in a gay relationship!!!!11"). But there may very well be people who consider themselves agender, even if they "look" like a woman (or a man) to the outside and date the opposite sex. How is an agender person supposed to look like? That's just as ridiculous question as asking how a gay, bi or lesbian should look like.

@16: The themes pick me.

"I'm old enough to remember yesterday's SLLOTD"
Me too, bye.

@10: The constant reference to the basement dweller himself as “we” would point to a mazagine rack full of issues.

@20 sure. But most of this kind of thing is - to extend your example - a person who is one-quarter Native American telling a person who is one-eighth Native American what they can and can’t do, say, or believe because they aren’t Native “enough.” This happened all the freaking time in every identity group there is, and I, for one, think most of it is boolshit.

Oops I meant @12

I also just realized that my comment mght make it sound like I have some insight or experience with this phenomenon as it relates to Native Americans. Not at all; just using someone else’s example. I only have personal experience with not being “Jewish enough” and “Disabled enough.”

@13 btrxbtrxbtrx: Thank you, I couldn't figure out what that meant either. So stealth refers to the trans aspect and not the woman aspect. Basically, "I am a gay woman. Everybody knows I'm gay. Nobody knows that I was assigned male at birth"?

The commonality of the past two SLLOTD is that two white cis gendered women co-opted an LGTBQ label for social cachet. Many white women want to rely on intersectionalism to join the ranks of the oppressed, when in reality white women have, in most respects, been at the apex of power, and were instrumental in enforcing racial and other forms of discrimination. Now, some young white women are claiming labels - labels that were often forced on people, with harsh consequences - and doing so in an age where that stigma and social marginalization has diminished to the point where those labels safe (at least in the college campuses from where these letter come). So, know wonder the people to whom those label traditionally applied are getting appalled and angry.

I think the label being looked for here (and in yesterday's SLLOTD) is "narcissist".

In other words, if you have to make up a whole new category to describe what is an utterly conventional relationship, then you are an "attention whore."

"Gay" means something. Specifically, while it can include anyone who is predominantly attracted to members of the same sex, it's most commonly applied to men who are attracted to other men. That's it.

LW, if your straight male friend wants to identify as gay, then let him suck cock.

Wow, thanks for the shout out, Dan. That was a funny, nice surprise.

So if I am understanding it correctly, gender and sexual minorities are becoming gentrified, right? And the current residents who had to fight to live through the shitty times, and rightfully had pride in holding their ground and keeping their culture, find themselves getting pushed out by yuppies that want to take advantage of someone else's fight, diluting what it meant to be where they are from. And is it not their right to live wherever they want? Should they be denied the opportunity to live where they will? You can't stop them; you can only mourn your lost little neighborhood. On the bright side, if yuppies are trying to get in your neighborhood, it must have gotten liveable! Congratulations, the fight is almost over.

Also, in the past two SLLOTDs' comments, "cachet" has been mentioned more times than I had previously seen the word used IN MY LIFE. Is that the new buzz word? Am I out of the loop?

Ok first off, gender=sex (since sex is just the gendered aspects of bodies, it's just as socially constructed and essentially a synonym). That means that an agender person has no gender and no sex (unless they specify otherwise). So while they may not be 'gay' in the strictest sense of 'same sex/gender' relations, clearly they're enjoying being queer and maybe that's more what they're going for with the whole #gay thing.

Why gatekeep anyway? Who wins when people are told they're not gay enough, not trans enough, not agender enough?
The worthless cissexist misogynist objectifying queerphobic patriarchy, that's who.

I say to all those wanting to be queer, welcome and congratulations, you're queer!

Also can cis gay guys get over their whole gay=cocksucking thing? Erases a lot of trans dudes and intersex folks and anyone else who's gay and male without any cocksuckin goin on. Cheers.

@13 btrxbtrxbtrx and @14 Ankylosaurus: Thanks to both of you, the lightbulb went on after reading Ankylosaurus's interpretation.

Well fuck, what are a gender and nonbinary people supposed to look like then? Can't wear 'womens' clothes cause that makes us women, can't wear 'mens' clothes cause that makes us men!
If a man wears a dress is he still a man? Yes? Then an enby wearing a dress is still an enby. Gender isn't about what you look like but your internal sense of self, stop gender policing. Erasing non binary people is just like erasing bisexual people, you should know better Dan.

How can an agender person identify as gay, straight, bi etc. Doesn't being agender mean they identify as having no gender.. my head hurts.

@30

"Why gatekeep anyway? Who wins when people are told they're not gay enough, not trans enough, not agender enough?"

Honestly? We all win.

The reason we have labels in the first place is that most people(myself included) don't have the time or inclination to hear a super long exposition about topics that aren't appropriate to discuss with strangers.

For example, which would you prefer to hear from someone you just met?

"Well, my girlfriend and I are in a relationship and we might try to add a third someday maybe but I'm worried that the emotional toll on her part would far exceed anything she would gain and I don't want to be selfish."

Or

"We're monogamous."

In my experience(being the person who has said both statements), I've found that people much prefer the second option.

If labels have no meaning than everyone has to sit and listen to everyone's life story before figuring out even the most basic information about them.

BTRX @13: Thank you, I was wondering about that too. Perhaps part of why LABEL is so bothered by this is because her friends are being so Out There and she herself doesn't feel comfortable being out as transgender?

High five (or bi five) to Dan for confirming my position that as a bisexual, I will never be in "a straight relationship" or "a gay relationship." Even if I were in a monogamous relationship, my relationship status would not cancel my sexual orientation. Thanks, Dan!

Sublime @25: Nitpick: In this case, it's a straight man who has co-opted the label "gay," so you'll need to revise your theory. I agree with your thoughts about why the "real" sexual minorities are getting miffed.

Cory @26: Maybe he's sucking, and being fucked by, his nonbinaryfriend's strap-on while calling them "daddy," and that's why he feels he's gay. (I would agree with you that this may entitle him to claim that he's "queer," but not gay.)

TheRob @28 and Jayem @30: Gold star comments.

Good point Fan @35; the LW is not being honest about herself. Passing as a cis woman is not being a cis woman. Like the woman yesterday, both of them getting upset about other people's business. Is it hurting anybody?
Obviously labels are very malleable these days.

Lava @33: I admit it's confusing, but I would reiterate the difference between gender and biological sex. People who identify as having no gender still have a biological sex; this person's is female. So if they only like other women (cis or trans) or biological females, they might identify as gay, and if they only like men (cis or trans) or biological males, they might identify as straight. In practice, the non-binary people I've known have almost all been bi or pansexual, so it's not a common issue. If you reject the idea of gender, then you usually also reject the idea of gender being a deciding factor in whom you date.

I can't help feeling like these letters are a trap for Dan to get caught saying "the wrong thing", so some SJWs can lambaste him in the coming years for not being progressive enough/ on the wrong side of these issues.

@37, we and (as far as I can tell from the letter) the LW don't actually know what the friend's partner has in their pants. Not real sure it makes a difference for this discussion but it isn't actually information we KNOW...

I know I promised, yet glancing the comments I noticed BDF is staring while liberally sharing space objects with others.

Luitha @ 32
Your comment made me realize once again some of the challenges female-borns are facing. As a male born nonbinarian who steps out en femme on occasion, it is my general assumption that female-borns have it so much easier.
Less of a threat to society, hence less vulnerable and more likely to be accepted or at least tolerated, and also able to make a statement in an easier manner by simply NOT doing what is often expected from het women, as opposed to go out of one’s way and wear a wig, make up, breast forms, cover hairy arms and legs, and so on.
The way I see it a female-born nonbinarian can simply opt to not wearing makeup, not addressing any hair issues (from short hair to eyebrows to underarms and legs or any combination of the above) and wear whatever they like.
But then, we only know what we know.

Ms Fan - Agreed that your relationship with an F or M partner should not be called lesbian or straight. Nor would I call your relationship bi if it were with with a mono partner.

I'm inclined to agree partially with the Out There interpretation, although it goes farther than most people are willing to look.

My sympathies to agender people who do, indeed, have to wear clothes.

Do people not see it as a problem that there is now no word that refers specifically and only to monosexual MMers, or to extreme hatred of/wish to inflict violence upon us? We'll just have to invent a new word with a new community and a new phobia, and make it gated. This is not a case, as expressed by M? Rob, of a bunch of undesirables moving into neighbourhood Q; it's about all the other Qs forcing their way into and taking over (cismono)MMhaus, setting up anti-MM rules, and pulling all kinds of tricks to try to force us to stay in that house. Despite the fact that Mr Savage will be one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders/ringleaders of such a plan, we will get out, even if we have to leave the G word behind.

I've said numerous times we can be good neighbours, but make rotten housemates. Don't things like this letter support that contention?

Nartweag @38: Good point. I have met cis males who looked remarkably feminine. As a "stealth trans woman," LABEL should be more wary than most of assuming someone's biological sex.

Venn @40: If I were in a monogamous relationship with another bisexual, I would have no problem calling it "a bi relationship." Why would this not be "a bi relationship," in your eyes?

Fuck gatekeeping. LW can be irritated with the performative nature of the relationship without invalidating the identities of two people.

I'm infuriated with Dan's response, and the fact that he featured the TERFy comment from Mischa Vainburg. Just because she's a cisgender woman who wears men's clothes doesn't mean that gender nonconforming and gender expansive people don't exist. No one gets to police other people's gender and sexual identities.

Side note: lots of people call themselves gay who are not homosexual, cisgendered men who are assigned male at birth (see: Ellen DeGeneres on the cover of TIME in 1997). I am a pansexual, cisgender woman married to a genderqueer human assigned female at birth, and we say that we're gay ALL THE DAMN TIME.

Many millennials say "queer" because of bullshit gatekeeping like this. Gender and sexuality are complicated and it's nice to have a shorthand.

Also, it seems like this is coming from a place of envy on the part of the LW, since they're stealth trans. Maybe they're bitter that their so-called friend is out and proud and they can't/won't be?

"let him suck cock." Marie Antoinette should have said

Here, as people have pointed out, for all we know the LW knows, they both are in fact sucking all the cock.

What if I'm not gay or trans but I'm still mad at people who are in denial, because I think it's stupid? Am I still a "gatekeeper?" Or just a Bad Person?

I unfortunately know some people like this. I know a nonbinary person who very loudly insists they are gay despite being asexual and aromantic. Probably the worst example is a friend who used to identify as male and used to hate all the tumblr otherkin bullshit. Now they identify as a woman. Or to be more specific, an anime catgirl. I can accept someone being a woman because women exist. Catgirls don't exist. She has made absolutely no progress toward her "transition" in real life (in spite of claiming she wants to) but still puts on a loud online performance of being a "lesbian." This is why Trump won.

I think the LW should get over their petty pique.and be a good friend and throw a party for their formerly straight friend who has now come out of the closet as gay through the hashtags.But before the party: a social media blitz of welcoming him out of the closet, tagging the newly out guy in every post, including cute little remark, or even hashtags, along the line of "when your friend finally realizes what you've known about him all along" "keeping his secret has been so hard" and "I am so glad he was able to find someone oto be with where he could also be his true self"" and so on.

That would be a bitch move Alanmt @46, and not the behaviour of a good friend.

@25. SublimeAfterglow. Yes, no wonder.

It can rankle for gays for not-gay people (in their minds) to muscle in on their identity now that it's come to carry kudos. Previously, of course, gayness was stigmatised and socially painful; and the people claiming queerness on a more or less volitional basis are the not the historical inheritors of the constituency that was gay and persecuted (including self-persecuting).

At the same time ... I think it's better that people want to be part of a still minoritized community than it would be if they denigrated them, or even cultivated a lofty and superior unawareness of them, like many of the older (and so dreary!) cishet generation.

@26. Corydon. The guy is identifying as 'queer', not gay.

So, I *might* know whence this specific use of "gay" as a more general term than some consider it to be comes. "Gay" has been used as a synonym for "queer" i.e. "not straight" (with "straight" defined not simply as heterosexual, but as conforming to cultural norms in general, not just those regarding sexuality; the comedy term "straight man" is an example of this more general usage of "straight") in popular usage for as long as it's been used to describe sexuality at all (David Valentine's book Imagining Transgender has a great discussion of what's going on with seemingly contradictory identity labels, and it's a lot of the same things that Leslie Feinberg touches on when describing identity labeling in Stone Butch Blues, which, while not autobiographical, does draw heavily from her own experiences, going back to the 50s and 60s), and not simply a label for people who engage in same-sex/-gender sexual behavior. For that matter, when it was first self-adopted by gay - or homophile, as they identified up until that point - activists, we weren't even using the same frameworks to conceptualize gender and sexuality, in popular culture or academia.

Oh, and anyone who thinks label messiness, insistence, and boundary-policing are a specifically Millennial thing is probably ignorant of queer history as relates to self-identification and expression. Literally none of this is new; it's been a continuous (sub)cultural debate for at least the couple hundred years of queer history with which I'm most familiar. Use terms as you best understand them, try to not be an asshole, and apologize-and-try-to-avoid-the-offense-in-the-future if you accidentally do something that bothers someone you wish to not bother (for people about whom you are indifferent or whom you are actively trying to piss off, you don't have to worry as much about apologizing or avoiding).

Some people try to construe labeling as a matter of general ethics* and insist on e.g. self definition, dictionary definitions, appeals to various scientific frameworks, whatever as a tribal or virtue signals, so you may wish to adopt the norms of whatever groups with which you wish to get along. However, since I don't believe that using a different conceptual (and linguistic) framework than someone else makes you a terrible person, a [something]-phobe, or any of the other accusations the more confrontational identity activists like to use, I recommend shrugging off people who give you serious grief as assholes and pay them no further mind.

*As far as I'm concerned, it's not, as can be trivially demonstrated by considering the case of utterly absurd and disingenuous asserted identities that can nevertheless not be disproved becasue we can't read minds. I see utility in both descriptivist and prescriptivist approaches to linguistics - it helps to have a degree of prescription about definitions so that mutual intelligibility is possible, but it's also necessary to try to describe what people are intending to communicate when using words, and there is a constant, unsolvable tension between the two. It's ironically the case that a lot of the people most insistent on accepting self-identification for gender or sexuality don't do so with respect to other categories like race, which are socially constructed (and therefore not essential) to at least the same degree as gender or sexuality (and often to an even greater degree, as with race).

@50. John Horstman. But race-ing others, seeing them as having particular characteristics on the basis of a certain racial designation, has an entirely different history from queering, as it's been a tactic of denigration and othering, and then self-queering, as it's become the means of affirmatively asserting an identity and building out a political constituency.

There are wildly different social norms concerning how one can 'become', can announce oneself as, can acquire a social identity as 'black', 'Asian' or e.g. BAME (black and minority ethnicity) in Britain, and so on. Typically, one can't; or only through wholesale social repositioning, like returning to the bosom of a majority-minority community or perhaps by marrying someone of another race and living in their milieu. Perhaps your last point is that this is wrong or unnecessary; people should be able to cross racial boundaries just as we cross those of gender (since 'race' and 'gender' are equally socially constructed). But this does not take sufficient account of the specific histories of racism, and the way (most prominently in the US) discrimination against black people was historically met and countered by 'race consciousness', the explicit strategic elevation of the race-d identity that had been labeled inferior. To a far greater extent, any feminism targeted equality and was premissed on equal rights, and on women deserving the entitlements of any person; and there was always a much stronger strand in feminism that noted social constructionism, that took an interest in the cultural production of gender, than there was any antiessentialist discourse in the race politics of civil rights or the radical movements of the 60s and 70s.

I agree with lots of other things you say about prescriptivist/descriptivist approaches to social labeling and labeling not being a quandary of 'general ethics'.

The exception is duBois's 'double consciousness' and the academic interest in him in Henry Louis Gates and others, but this considerably postdates the most influential black social movements.

@39, CMD, female- norms have it so much easier. You think clothes/ shaving are what defines us?
Try forty years of monthly bleeds except when some ingrate is growing inside you or charging out your vagina or sucking on your tits. Not to mention the Patriarchy defining your life experience. Bit like you just did.

*Female- borns. (Fuck you phone, stop second guessing me. )

@45: “What if I'm not gay or trans but I'm still mad at people who are in denial, because I think it's stupid? Am I still a "gatekeeper?" Or just a Bad Person?”

...

“This is why Trump won.”

Yeah, you do sound pretty shitty here considering the latter.

I’m a relatively private person and not fond of some performative behavior but if I like the people I shrug, if I don’t I don’t hang out with them.

Trump won because people are legitimately hateful piles of burning trash, not because Tumblr exists.

That was a joke.

Them labels.
Lately, for some reasons - which probably have something to do with the fact that I live with a man and a woman - people have felt an urge to ask whether I'm bi or something. I say no. And if they insist that I answer, I say that I'm one of me.
The last time I checked, to identify as something, one didn't have to prove to any random nosy stranger that they are somehow entitled to call themselves, say, agender queer. So what the fuck? I also see the ambivalence - the queer community insist that sex and physical presentation are not social determinants and if someone has boobs, they don't necessarily need to be a woman but it seems that having the overall shape of woman doesn't allow one to wear what is generally perceived as women's clothes? Is there some sort of thought police who issue affidavits who can actually reasonably identify as this or that? No. So, LW, leave that person alone.

Harriet @49: The guy should be identifying as queer, not gay. If he were, I suspect LABEL wouldn't have such an issue.

Lava @53: What CMD meant is that gender-nonconforming individuals who are female born find less resistant to being gender nonconforming than male-born ones do, a statement with which I agree. CMD was not denying the existence of the patriarchy, male privilege, or female biology. Those are separate issues.

TLC @56: You might try using a winkyface emoticon to indicate when you are joking. We get all manner of right-wing trolls around here; it was not at all clear from your Trump comment that you weren't one of them.

Wow, I sure picked a lousy time to be Internet-free for ~48 hours. Catching up now, and it appears that both today's and yesterday's SLLOTDs were right up my alley.

Long story short, you're totally allowed to be pissed off if your friend is not doing LSBTQ+++ right, in your opinion. What you're not allowed to do is TELL THEM they're not doing it right - at least, not if you want to keep them as a friend. If their conversation or behavior or social-media posting is pissing you off, just disengage...and give it time to play out. If it really is just a passing fad, your old friend will be back, right after this short commercial message.

Also, let's cut "millennials" (the post-millennial generation is what most of you are actually dissing on - it's 2018 already, FFS) a bit of a break here. What better time in life to experiment with who you are, what you want, and how you plan to get it?

Venn @40, I get where you are coming from. It was mostly MM-ers who put their principles and often their lives on the line to defend their rights to exist, and that started long before Stonewall - but Stonewall turned out to be the turning-point event that made it a lot easier for all of the rest of us in Queer-World to be more honest and open, and frankly more HAPPY to be the people we already were. But now "Gay and Proud" is just one more throw-away slogan among thousands in the LGBTQ+++ community, and the historic MM leadership role is rarely acknowledged by others who have been marginalized by their sexual or gender identity. Not to mention the fact that mainstream society has benefited greatly from the contributions of out queer people, who would have had less to give to the world if they had to focus most of their attention on the work it takes to stay in the closet. Here's one straight(-ish), monogam(-ish) androgyne who is proud to be able to say THANK YOU, it was a job well done - and we have not forgotten you, even though sometimes it may feel that way.

@58, Fan, ok. sorry CMD, I misread you.
Non gender conforming female born though don't put bulges in their pants and put on a false beard (or do they?). So it's a false equivalency.

@58. Bi. There's a sliver of difference between tweeting the hashtag #WERESOGAY and saying 'I am gay', attributing to oneself the identity 'gay'. The first could be read as 'we're like gays' or 'we stand with the gays'. Yes, sure, he could say 'queer'.

I have sympathy for the older gay men who feel crowded out. Younger folks are basking in the heritage of their victories without having taken part in the fight. In nomenclatural terms, though, I don't see why the adjective 'gay male' can't have a specific reference.

Lava- there are challenges on either side. Female-born can often make a visual statement without having to go to the extreme. They are also less likely to be ridiculed and/or attacked.

@61 - Yeah, sometimes we do. Not the facial hair so much, but I've gone out with my packer tucked into my shorts before. Best feeling is when I'm wearing a long flowy dress and sporting a hefty bulge.

In return for kindness shown when I expected to be grilled and sauteed, I shall revive a question from three decades ago about someone else with a Greek name and relate one of my most recent ideas for yet another novel I'll probably never write.

In the spirit of Bernard Shaw, I began by speculating, "If le beau Milo (which I began calling Mr Yiannopoulos not out of admiration but after he'd been confused several times with another Milo called Stewart) were raped and murdered..." and went on to imagine the scene, with a message left on the body that would universally be reported as "homophobic". The entertaining part was imagining how long it would take his bitterest enemies to decide whether to sing "Ding-Dong, the Witch Is Dead" or to take the line that would annoy him a good deal more and call the murder "an attack on the entire [Alphabet Soup] Community". They would take the latter course, producing such headlines as "Milo Murdered - LBTQ+ Community Most Affected" (a parallel to occasionally-seen anti-SJW responses to such statements as Mrs Clinton's about the Primary Victims of War). This would improbably gather momentum, resulting in a Milo Memorial Bill that would actually horrify the poor victim and turn his hair as green and white as Cruella de Vil's. Only, just when the bill would be on the brink of passage, the killer would be discovered and revealed to be a Radical Lesbian (he's not very nice to them, and indeed has often doubted their existence as genuine) determined to prove herself the Real Deal.

One may think what one likes about my weird views, but surely almost everyone can find something to enjoy in that unwritten novel.

Mx. Suga
I would welcome such appearance as creative, confident, and extremely sexy.

It’s comments like this from the cis gay community that kept me terrified of acknowledging my queerness, fearing I’d never be “gay enough”. It’s some serious bullshit that anyone who’s not cis, homosexual and monosexual gets scrutinized and told that because they're a millennial they’re lived experience is a “fad” not a reality.

In the queer 20-something friend group I belong to, gay=queer a.k.a. not straight. I’m a bisexual cis woman dating a trans woman, and yes we are a gay couple.

Lava @61: Not all gender non-conforming cis men wear false breasts. And yes, some trans men/drag kings/bull dykes do "pack," aka stuff their pants, and/or wear facial hair. So it's not a false equivalency. There are myriad ways of performing gender. CMD's point was that generally, cis females are afforded more license to dress in ways stereotypical of the opposite gender than cis males are -- and that, again, is due to maleness being seen as superior, femininity as weakness and an abdication of one's male privilege. A woman with a bulging codpiece might get as much attention as a man wearing false breasts, but a man in makeup will get more stares than a woman in a suit.

Reading this letter and the comments a couple days ago hurt my brain, so I had to take a rest and come back.

First of all, you can identify as any gender you want no matter how you dress or wear your hair - complaining that this agender person's fashion choices aren't "trans" enough perpetuates the false idea that women or men are supposed to look or dress a certain way if they are "really" women or men. Women and men and people who aren't either can wear whatever they d*mn well please. This isn't even some advanced trans or LGBT concept; it's basic feminist sh*t. Wearing pants doesn't make you a man. Wearing a dress doesn't make you a woman. They're just clothes.

Now, even though I firmly believe that this "cis appearing" person can be agender if that's how they feel, and that a trans person shouldn't give them sh*t for it, there is definitely still something annoying about the behavior the couple is displaying. Mainly, they seem to be flaunting their privilege and shoving it in the face of trans and queer people who don't have the luxury of having a presentation that is so acceptable to the wider world, or who had to go through a lot of surgeries/awkward and painful physical and social transition to get there. I don't see a problem with the couple's friends calling them out on not being more humble about their privilege. As a community we have to be in conversation with each other and hold each other accountable. Maybe something their trans friend has to say will wake them up. Often, learning is not easy, and they may continue their annoying behavior, but it's worth a shot.