Hey, Arielle. Don't mind me - dealing with some wicked insomnia, was rewatching some of your older videos, and it struck me that I HATE what's happening within the LGBTQ community right now. Some of your videos feel so far removed from some of the things happening right now, and I'm now sleep-deprived AND sad. And also angry ... I've been angry about this for a long time. Right now, the community legit makes me feel like I'm watching a violent-ass train wreck and I can't do anything but watch it happen. If I try to speak out about the things I see happening, I risk getting called a bigot "who needs to rewire their brain".

I've been a part of the LGBT community since I came out when I was 17. I initially came out as a lesbian (I'm a homo-romantic bisexual) and found a community that not only accepted me, but gave me room to grow and helped me accept myself for who I was (I was raised in a conservative Catholic family who believed that same-sex attraction meant you were mentally ill, and I couldn't come out without destroying my relationship with my family - to this day, I'm still not out to my parents). I love the LGBT community, and I've always strived to support the community the way that it supported me.

But what I see happening within it now, what I've seen happening for about the last five years - some of that crap, I straight-up refuse to support. It's incredible - I've NEVER seen such divide within the LGBT, and I've been a part of it for over twenty years. I see queer people promoting intolerance (both within the community and outside of it), the worst kind of exclusivity (bullying and shunning anyone with a different opinion, especially within the community itself) and even promoting prejudice, hate and exclusion towards members of the gay, lesbian and trans communities.

There are a couple of things that made me pull away from the LGBT. If anyone finds this offensive, please let me know, respectfully, and I will delete if it's deemed too problematic.

Some of the worst conflict in the LGBT comes from the trans community. I think a lot of us can agree that the in-fighting is ugly - a lot of the conflict has to do with the belief that the "trans" label got appropriated by people who aren't transgender themselves, and also the fact that "transgender" is no longer considered a definitive term by progressives in the queer community. Not that long ago, it was a fairly straightforward term - if you experienced a severe disconnect between your biological gender and your gender identity (born male but psychologically female, or born female but psychologically male), you were transgender and suffering from gender dysphoria, and if you could, you treated it with therapy on top of social and physical transitioning.

Around five years ago, there was a surge of people who started identifying themselves as trans, but didn't exhibit signs or behaviors typical of dysphoria, and presented in ways that were atypical and against the trans "type" (example: Presenting as fully female with make-up, feminine clothing and curves on display, but using male pronouns, and not representing as male in any other way).

Personally, I don't really care how you choose to identify. Just give me your name and pronouns and I'll respect them. My issue is with the way that dysphoric trans people get treated by people in the community that don't have dysphoria themselves. The levels of invalidation and disrespect within the trans community are INSANE, and I'm blown away by the intolerance and blatant abuse - that's exactly what it amounts to.

I got kicked out of a queer group for defending Blaire White in a Blaire White "hate-post". She got completely trashed, and most of the people commenting were non-dysphoric trans people and non-binary folks. She got called transphobic, "tru-scum", "trans-med", "gate-keeper" and bunch of other slurs, they misgendered her on purpose and in vulgar ways, and even talked about committing violent crimes against her like it was something funny (it was disgusting, demented and sick). It was after the first description of her possible death that I finally said something. All I said was that it wasn't cool to trash her identity just because they didn't agree with the things she said. I also said that there IS actual science behind being transgender, and that for people like Blaire, being trans is part of a medical condition and not a loose gender expression. I thought I was being logical, but no - it was like stepping on a fucking beehive. I got criticized for "dictating what being trans is without being trans" myself, and was told that I was just "cis-scum defending tru-scum". I reported the post for hate speech and the promotion of violence before I got banned from the group.

That experience left such a bad taste in my mouth, and opened my eyes to this new vibe surrounding the LGBT community. I quietly left a few other groups when I saw the same kind of mentality. I don't want to be disrespectful, but more and more, I realize I don't agree with a lot of the ideals they promote. And I think it's sad that different opinions and points of view are no longer welcome within the LGBT community - if you contradict or don't agree with them, they rip you to pieces before they kick you out and shun you ... Reason #1 that "progressive" queers can kiss my ass.

Reason #2 - whoever first suggested that sexual orientation is nothing but a "genital preference" needs to be bitched-slapped and shot.

Never in my LIFE would I have ever imagined that gay men would be called transphobes for having zero interest in a sexual partner who has a vagina, or that lesbians would get bullied and shamed if they state that they only like vagina. The funny (and sad) thing is that most of this kind of bullying doesn't actually come from the trans community itself - it comes from well-meaning trans supporters, progressive leftists, and radical activists. And I'm sorry, but when did the fucking "queer" community forget what A HOMOSEXUAL FEMALE is? Being a female who's attracted exclusively to vagina does not make a lesbian transphobic - it makes her fucking GAY because she's a female who's attracted exclusively to vagina. That doesn't mean that a lesbian can't accept that a trans woman IS a woman. Trans women ARE women, regardless of their level of transition ... but they're also biologically male, and if they have male anatomy, that might very well be a deal breaker for a lesbian. That's not transphobic - that's a homosexual female making an innate preference clear.

Bullying gay people for being attracted to a specific experience AIN'T the way to promote the inclusion and acceptance of trans people. Besides - innate sexual orientation isn't a choice. Men attracted to penis and women attracted to vagina isn't a choice.

"ITS NOT A CHOICE" - the LGBT community was built on that motto, and "progressive" queers don't seem to remember what that phrase actually means.

What makes this fucking SAD is that progressives within the queer community are discounting sexual orientation altogether as literally nothing but a "genital preference" and that if you're only attracted to partners with specific genitalia, you're automatically a garbage human. I 100% support promoting the inclusion and acceptance of trans people. I also 100% believe that calling lesbians TERFs and gay men transphobes for being attracted to a specific experience is derogatory and cruel, and I also feel that promoting innate sexual orientation as transphobic is going to do the trans community WAY more harm than good in the long run. You have absolutely ZERO control over what you're attracted to, and what you're not - "IT'S NOT A CHOICE".

There are other things that I'm really unhappy about within the community, but this post would be six times longer than this, and I didn't mean to word-vomit this much. Apologies everybody ... sleep deprived, angry, and sad.