Tumblr-Centric

[queer_scribbling]

(Relatedly, I have much to lament about nonbinary discourse so often taking place on Tumblr [1], and I think these are the consequences of that [2].)

- From a recent comment thread on a post from before I appeared on the Pillowfort scene.

Yes, I found this from Coy's hitching post. I could probably comment on the post itself, but I'm more pulling this out in a 'maybe come back to this' sense. I have a draft that's been collecting some dust from earlier in 2020 called 'Reasons Why I’m (Jokingly) Disowned From Nonbinary Tumblr Spaces' because I didn't click with a section of nonbinary tumblr I tried looking into at one point. I'm not entirely sure it has actual relevance to Coy's original post or the comment thread discussion, but I've been trying to think of how to translate some old gender related posting into a 'hey, I should probably mention this on this new platform' post of some sort.

This post is a cross between 'that linked tumblr post is interesting' and a heads up that I might write about this sometime before 2020 ends.

Archival note: I did not, in fact, write about this before 2020 ended. Some of these links seem to be from publicly visible but rather personal posts, so I only have two archival links:
[1] How Using Tumblr is Undermining Your Community, archived Pillowfort post or WordPress post.
[2] Re: lack of a nonbinary community, archived Tumblr post.

Comments

[queer_scribbling]

Copying over an initial comment of mine, posted on the original PF post:

I'm not well-known enough on any platform to have some sort of community consensus that I should be disowned/exiled/banished/etc. from said community. It's more that I just didn't get the point of certain systems* that came across like 'I want to communicate something that could utilize feminine/masculine without actually using those words' to me, and I had the impression that asking questions about what the point of creating these systems was when you still had to use the words masculine/feminine in explanations would lead to defensiveness and be interpreted as exclusionist in some manner.

* Galactian Alignment System. The Alloy Alignment System, which might also be known as the gender alloy system, the metal element system, or the metal alloy system. The Pallet System and Floral System; note that p-a-l-l-e-t is the creator's spelling, and they actually meant palette or p-a-l-e-t-t-e.

[...]

At first, I was worried that someone was going to copy over Pagan or magical correspondences based on deity or mythological connections (example: oak is masculine because it's associated with such-and-such god), but then I was trying to figure out why someone would arbitrarily give gender descriptions to the wood you'd build stuff with or put down as flooring. Is purple heartwood associated with something? Pine?

Then I realized that it was colors. Like, "cerul" (from cerulean) refers to someone's presentation that's solely/primarily feminine. (Original description uses "purely" instead of solely or primarily, but that's probably because someone didn't think the word choice through when putting something on tumblr.) And then I realized that no one in the course of using the phrase across several wiki pages used palette system. I don't think it's impossible to redirect pallet system to palette system, and it would just be more clear.

[...]

The main system I came across on tumblr in bios and outside of explanation/creation posts was the galactian one. As to the rest, I'm not sure if I found a particular subsect that were more into these systems, if some of it was more reblogged by the under 18s, or if blogs trying to be community resources didn't want to leave folks out.

I've found individual nonbinary people I can follow on tumblr, but at a certain point, I thought I'd just struck out on anything resembling community space that wasn't mostly flag creation or positivity. Maybe the tumblr update that hid posts with links affected things, maybe tumblr's search function was off, maybe I didn't know the exact tags to be looking for, what have you.

[queer_scribbling]

From a thread branching off a reply:

It's more that I just didn't get the point of certain systems* that came across like 'I want to communicate something that could utilize feminine/masculine without actually using those words' to me,

I was under the impression that this was the reason these systems were created. Is there another reason?

I haven't had the best of luck with finding archived posts about the creation of these systems (linking to the tumblr post but not an archived version of the tumblr post while it's still up is not helpful later), but I did note somewhere above in another comment that at least one of them has a line about butch and femme being lesbian only terms in the wiki page.

On a personal level, I just don't click with creating a word to mean masculine or feminine without using those words, but I can understand that some people feel more comfortable with that. On a non-personal level, I think there's a difference between that situation and a stance that only lesbians can use the word butch or femme, so nonbinary people *have* to create a new, separate system. (I can't remember when I first saw that on tumblr, but I do tend to associate that with certain tumblr discussions that I'm not sure if or how far outside of tumblr they traveled.)