papadopoulos | (Reply)

From:

It still feels off, but he’ll continue explaining anyway.

“Right! Well, the flags represent different identities people might feel align with themselves. There’s quite a big umbrella, and if everyone who might fit under it is just called “gay” or “queer” it can sometimes feel a little, y’know, isolating, if your specific experience is different from how you’re seeing everyone else. Someone might be attracted to every gender, including what most would consider the “opposite”. But if in their mind “queer” is just men attracted to men only and women attracted to women only, they might assume they don’t fit in. But then they learn the terms pansexual and bisexual and realize no, nevermind, there are people like them as well. Or maybe someone is asexual, a lot of my friends who are ace have talked about that specific struggle too, of feeling like they don’t fit in anywhere, until they learn of the community. Uh, that’s— that’s when you’re not sexually attracted to anyone, not “asexual” in the scientific sense of reproducing by yourself.” Claudius is pretty scientifically minded, Dionysus thinks he might need that clarification if this is the first time he’s hearing the term.

“And then there’s the whole consideration of personal gender. Lots of different flags in that realm as well. But even though there’s all the different specific identities, it’s still important to work together to try and fight back, you know?”