Queerbased

Outside of the possibility that queerness affects our system's origins, it undeniably affects our functions, both currently and in the past.

While we know it's possible for somebody to identify with many or even all queer labels at once, we also believe that words have meanings and that, while you can expand or bend the definition of a word, there should typically be some kind of reason that you're using it for yourself.

For example, it is possible for someone to be a gay man/veldian and a lesbian at the same time. It is also possible for someone who used to be a lesbian to become a gay man later in life.

Let's say that a person like that initially experienced "lesbian" as meaning "genderqueer woman who is attracted to women and genderqueer people", and then their attractions and gender change such that they are a genderqueer man who is attracted to men and genderqueer people. They may define themselves as a veldian when they figure out their identity has changed. However, they experienced "lesbian" and "veldian" as two things with two different definitions, and if they do not feel that they are currently a woman at all or attracted to women, they will probably feel disingenuous identifying as a lesbian, even if they wanted to be a lesbian.

We are someone who feels that our collective identity has changed over time, largely due to trauma. While we are no longer a woman nor attracted to women, there are still parts of the system who define themselves as lesbians because they are genderqueer woman-aligned people who are attracted to other genderqueer people, even if masculinity is a factor in both aspects of that identity.

We still want to hold onto our identity as a lesbian, because there is no real reason we shouldn't (e.g. it's not an identity about something negative). However, Blixa is most comfortable identifying in a way that he feels is incompatible with being a lesbian, and Bryan was never a lesbian to begin with. Therefore, while Blue is not a lesbian in a "conventional" sense and nor are most of the lesbians in their supercluster, Blue still does have that identity, and their supercluster is basically an entire self for us to still have that identity.

As for Bryan's Supercluster, Bryan embodies queerness but in a way that is more complicated for us. If Blue is queer in ways we were in the past, Bryan is queer in ways that most people would say that, due to our body, we can't be.

Part of the amnesia surrounding Bryan was that he is a cisgender boy (split at a time where we personally would not have had a concept of a transgender boy anyway, even if we/Blue were an AFAB intersex person without a strong sense of gender for themself).

Bryan was originally only meant to have so much awareness of what the body was like, and we have childhood memories that we now recognize were Bryan, where we genuinely didn't understand our body wasn't built the same as a cis boy's body. This level of non-awareness of the body in favor of an identity our system now has is similar to Blue not realizing they weren't a literal dog.

The thing is, due to some of the circumstances under which Bryan split, he was treated as male by an external abuser who knew about the system and who accounted for much of Bryan's interactions with the world outside the system. Furthermore, due to being born at the advent of the internet, Bryan was able to present himself online in a way such that nobody knew what body he was in.

Some of the situations Bryan got into online, he feels that he was treated as a cisgender man or boy instead of as an AFAB person or as something else, and some parts of Bryan's Supercluster do not feel that some of their experiences - including with the offline abuser who knew of our system - make sense if you don't think of them as cis men's experiences, such as situations where femininity was seen as "other" with regards to them and as a way to humiliate them, as opposed to an identity that would be normative and conforming for them.

Furthermore, some parts of Bryan's Supercluster, who are mostly veldian men, also experience gender in a way where they consider themselves transfem. While people in AMAB bodies can consider themselves transfem if they consider themselves transgender or genderqueer in ways that involve femininity or alignments other than masculinity, it is more debatable under what circumstances AFAB people can use that term.

In the opinion of the system, few if any members of the system would really count as an "AFAB transfem" (outside of definitions of that term that refer to plurality), because we don't feel any of the non-plural meanings of that term apply to our system. And a transfem identity doesn't seem important to the system in the same way that a lesbian identity is, as we feel that the latter is something we collectively genuinely had and that affected us developmentally, but we don't think that is true of the former.

Nevertheless, we feel it is partly important that some parts of Bryan's Supercluster are or can be transfem (including trans women and transfeminine men), because this validates our experience that Bryan's Supercluster originated as male and was seen as male from the start. That means that, if he adopts a feminine identity later of his own volition, this is more transgender than cisgender.

Because many members of Bryan's Supercluster identify in ways that are outside of what many people would consider the lived experiences of the system but that do relate to identities that our system is capable of having (e.g. gay, male, transgender), they are able to have perspectives on things that the other superclusters may not but that we consider valuable.

For example, Trevor from Bryan's Supercluster considers himself a cis man and that he was always seen as a man. However, he also actively experiences gender euphoria over being a man, and he feels it's important for cisgender people to understand that gender euphoria is not only for transgender people and that gender euphoria can be an important part in being certain that you really are a gender.

Trevor and other members of Bryan's Supercluster also believe that the word "genderqueer" can be used by anyone who experiences their gender in a way that has to do with queerness, even if they are not transgender, transitioning, or a gender other than male or female.

For example, gay men often feel that the way in which they are male is different than straight men, because many of society's standards for men are based on the assumption that they will engage in relationships with women. Due to being queer, they experience their genders differently than normative men.

Trevor does not currently actively identify as genders other than male, but he considers himself genderqueer due to being a gay man who has a different concept of what it means to be a man than a cishet man does, and even if he were other genders, he would also fully be a man, and it would not be in a binary cishet way, therefore genderqueer.

Local Void considers these perspectives valuable to have, and they are similar to things we've heard of cisgender people in the outerworld saying, but we don't hear these perspectives from the people we know in our everyday lives. Therefore, it benefits us to have headmates who are queer but perceive their queerness very differently than you would expect someone with our body to.