Queerness ≤ Diverse [1]
In yesterday's #GayEveryDay [2] post I began by talking about my love for being naked and detoured to the imaginary happier planet I'm creating.
I may not have said why I label yesterday's musings gay. Those same opinions can be held by someone not gay. (Why use the ugly s-word? [4]) And there are definitely many gays who do not share my feelings that the gay ideal = happy, naked, #solarpunk world. [5] An important quality of my gayness is increasing love. If not for my gayness I may not have been forced to change. I had to expand the circle of those I considered deserving of love in order to choose to love myself. Without that growth I would not exist.
Gayness unleashed a journey of greater and greater acceptance. [6] For that I am thoroughly grateful. I love myself as I am. I work on that alongside working to love others as they are. It all started with being gay. It has led me to greater acceptance of human bodies. [7]
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[1] I identify with gayness. Not every queer identifies with that banner. When I wish to be more inclusive I use queer or LGBTQ. Wishing to be inclusive is a personal principle. Respecting all others is a value deeply tied to my gayness. ≤ usage: the equal sign is a borrowing from the language of planet B. The equal is not exclusive. The thought process to arrive at the headline for example goes like this: Queerness includes diversity. If one identifies as queer one embraces diversity. [More at Note 2] Diversity includes many things beyond queerness. So I chose ≤ instead of =. [More at Note 5] [2] I identify with gayness. Not every queer fits under that banner. When I wish to be more inclusive I use queer or LGBTQ. Wishing to be inclusive is a personal principle. Respecting all others is a value deeply tied to my gayness. In the case of my hashtag #GayEveryDay two core principles came into conflict and I chose rhyming over inclusivity. Acts of exclusion are frequently pleasurable for the perpetrators, making improvement harder. (This footnote sounds serious. And it is. It's also attempted humor. When a gay man embraces 'gay' as his label it need not be offensive to anyone. Every beautiful soul I know loves it when a gay man acts gay. Do say, 'gay'. But a gay man who believes that 'gay' is the mandatory umbrella term for the whole community risks creating division. He may be the one who is excluded if he repeatedly offends evolving community standards. [3] The worst case scenario is when anyone who identifies as gay intends to exclude. That person has already self-excluded from the community. That person does not meet their obligations to be part of the Gay Compact, the Queer Compact, and/nor 🙃 the LGBTQ+ Compact. Yes every sub-community has a compact. [3] My uncle. Not exactly but yes exactly. [4] joking! [5] = usage, further tips: My writing now borrows from the alien language I am creating. = is all forms of to be. [This part easily may have to be moved or removed. The man on Planet A has not been until now writing about other planets. Up until now I considered A to be blogging his human-is-some world view. If I'm using the framing of writing a story as a way to develop humanissome principles, would not A? It seems like a decision will have to be made that separates this blogging project from the story as I had known it; or that this part of the blog will be removed and possibly used as character building for C (if that works).] There may be confusion about reciprocity wben using the verb to be and when using =. I am Rob so Rob is me. I = Rob. Rob = me. But the entirety of diversity is more than all queerness. In the sentence at [5] it is again unclear if the = is comprehensive, transitive, reciprocal. (Surely one of those words makes sense.) In this case clarification is not necessary or desired. There is no reason to ponder potentially using ≥ or ≤ instead of = because the usage is trivial. Similarly I believe that my use of #GayEveryDay is also trivial and not worth frustration. Most everything that I am writing is trivial. That's safe to say. Then why do it? Why do my current projects, specifically the ways that I'm doing them? Because I am enjoying it completely. Even these words now. [6] I did not wish to spoil that lovely ending with muck. The muck goes down here. In this case muck refers to negative opinions of oneself and others. I still fight to overcome many and I hear them constantly expressed by others. Spending time with others can sometimes be a bad vibes contagion event. I can never know what others feel. Not fully. Not even if they try their best to tell me. I can get close but never know. I am choosing to write characters. That enables me to cheat. I can say that I know what they are thinking — something I cannot do in good conscience among real people. I can make up versions of me and work out what they believe. I can choose to model additional characters after real people or clusters of traits that I know from my experiences with real people and art. Then I get to explore how all my characters get along. This writing project benefits my character growth. Mine. And my characters'. [7] Demoted from above, needs further development: I cringe hearing others cringe when they see humans that spark no sexual attraction