"We all have the right to boundaries about how and when we engage with people, but when someone needs to tell you about a hurt you’ve created, your boundaries are no longer the priority. Especially not when the person you’ve hurt holds less privilege than you do."
sell merch, i want this on a t-shirt a hat and a tote
FINALLY. thank you. good god as someone born and raised in the bay area and a brown woman, i can say i've witnessed so much blatant racism from white tenderqueers, they tend to be transplants. these people are literally an emotional leech on the brown/black gay people that live here.
I could never quite put my finger on why these people come across as emotionally manipulative and you’ve articulated why that is so fucking well for me, thank you.
Thank you for this article. Its really good to have a word for this kind of behavior so I can check myself, as I have acted like this in the past. The advice in the ending paragraphs here is also really helpful for me outside of tenderqueerness, as I have struggled with having "friends" who I cant communicate with when theyve been very hurtful bc they always blame it on their neurodivergency. Im glad its not just me seeing it as harmful.
I love the line, "We all have the right to boundaries about how and when we engage with people, but when someone needs to tell you about a hurt you’ve created, your boundaries are no longer the priority". I wish I had heard that a year or so ago.
This behavior reminds me of what I started calling “consent bros.” They would talk about women’s rights, be “all about” consent, and were the same guys you felt the need to cover your drink when hanging out around.
I learned my lesson the hard way. And yes, on the surface, it was very easy to fall for their bs. The “tenderqueer” also seems to have a lot of overlap with toxic positivity spiritualism.
(And yes, I know my name is unfortunate in context of this article, funny but unfortunate lol)
I completely feel this article & had to challenge genderqueer was in myself. Obv there’s nothing wrong with being “sensitive/vulnerable” but like someone telling you they’re disappointed with flaking on plans shouldn’t make them act like that, they just can’t accept the responsibility. Living in Portland every plan I made with some white queer went this way, it’s disappointing af. I have seen so many POC queers so over this behaviour and how white fragility is usually tied to it, but never addressed. Also these comments, like no, you can’t use someone’s BPD to invalidate their valid discussion about this topic. One of the worst “tenderqueers” I’ve ever met was someone w BPD who when confronted with a sexual assault accusation, used all that tenderqueer nonsense lingo about “needing to heal to have this conversation”, “i made space for you to non-consent“, “you the victim must seek the proper accountability processes otherwise it’s not a valid accusation” like BPD doesn’t make you “harsh/blunt” ppl with BPD can be very tenderqueer and say very convoluted things. Its just gross in general to see someone deflect accountability by saying “i dont have the spoons / space to handle this“, “my xyz mental state/disorder/condition prevents me from having this convo“ like no.
In conclusion thank you so much for speaking on this subject especially since you have BPD because people always like to use it as a way to deflect or accuse someone of being too harsh etc. I don’t have BPD but many of my loved ones do and I don’t like it being scapegoated. You very intelligently put this “tenderqueer” phenomenon into words.
Oh my god YES. I’m a transplant in portland and some people I’ve met are so performatively “emotionally intelligent” it’s impossible to build an actual friendship with them. It’s such an unsettling energy.
I've never read someone articulate this specific type of violence so well. There's a sense of like.... weaponization that make relationships w tenderqueers so stressful and itchy
That line about co-opting the language of the oppressed and using it to treat people like garbage. Is absolute gold and perfectly expressed something I have experienced. Thank you.
All the different ways people, from all spectrums of life, can learn defense mechanisms to not consider others and treat them flat out cruel.
I have encountered the type of person you are describing, mostly in the Bay Area. In my own experience, this behavior wasn't specific to the queer community, "tender" or not, but to what I sometimes call the "Social Justice Hipster" types.
Mostly white, middleclass, and able bodied, they tended to be extremely immature for their ages, allergic to accountability, and displayed narcissistic behavior.
I'm not thrilled with the idea of normalizing "tender" or "queer" as labels for this demographic, since their behavior was anything but tender, and they rarely seemed very queer in practice (though they were quick to claim that label).
The only way I got these people entirely out of my life was moving back to the Rust Belt.
loved this so much. my experience with a tenderqueer was the inverse— they wrote a friendship breakup text to cut me off while i was going through several traumatic crises at the same time😵💫 using the EXACT same language you’re parodying. i can’t stop laughing at how spot on you are. you might as well have taken a photo of the person i used to be friends with lmao. i feel so jaded by white queer politics
Thank you for this. As an enby trans masc who is the opposite of tender queer I fucking needed to read this, because this issue and these people have been seriously detrimental to my life, and I feel like they are doing their damnedest to weaponize therapy speech, water down queer culture, white guilt non white folks, and shame the kink community.
I feel SEEN! The number of times I've dated tenderqueers it feels like I'm being thrown a bunch of therapy jargon instead of just being spoken to like a person.
This is an analysis I wish everyone would read. There is something about the point to which we’ve culturally taken perceived “sensitivity” that seems to just entirely circumvent the notion of culpability—or even being flawed in a way that impacts others. Maybe it’s a subconscious response to an online culture that has admittedly become puritanical and one-dimensional in its moralistic demands. If moral failure is guaranteed, then you simply have to adopt a disposition of moral superiority, social willful ignorance, and emotional aloofness.
"We all have the right to boundaries about how and when we engage with people, but when someone needs to tell you about a hurt you’ve created, your boundaries are no longer the priority. Especially not when the person you’ve hurt holds less privilege than you do."
sell merch, i want this on a t-shirt a hat and a tote
FINALLY. thank you. good god as someone born and raised in the bay area and a brown woman, i can say i've witnessed so much blatant racism from white tenderqueers, they tend to be transplants. these people are literally an emotional leech on the brown/black gay people that live here.
I could never quite put my finger on why these people come across as emotionally manipulative and you’ve articulated why that is so fucking well for me, thank you.
Thank you for this article. Its really good to have a word for this kind of behavior so I can check myself, as I have acted like this in the past. The advice in the ending paragraphs here is also really helpful for me outside of tenderqueerness, as I have struggled with having "friends" who I cant communicate with when theyve been very hurtful bc they always blame it on their neurodivergency. Im glad its not just me seeing it as harmful.
I love the line, "We all have the right to boundaries about how and when we engage with people, but when someone needs to tell you about a hurt you’ve created, your boundaries are no longer the priority". I wish I had heard that a year or so ago.
This behavior reminds me of what I started calling “consent bros.” They would talk about women’s rights, be “all about” consent, and were the same guys you felt the need to cover your drink when hanging out around.
I learned my lesson the hard way. And yes, on the surface, it was very easy to fall for their bs. The “tenderqueer” also seems to have a lot of overlap with toxic positivity spiritualism.
(And yes, I know my name is unfortunate in context of this article, funny but unfortunate lol)
Thank you for writing this
TW: discussion of SA
I completely feel this article & had to challenge genderqueer was in myself. Obv there’s nothing wrong with being “sensitive/vulnerable” but like someone telling you they’re disappointed with flaking on plans shouldn’t make them act like that, they just can’t accept the responsibility. Living in Portland every plan I made with some white queer went this way, it’s disappointing af. I have seen so many POC queers so over this behaviour and how white fragility is usually tied to it, but never addressed. Also these comments, like no, you can’t use someone’s BPD to invalidate their valid discussion about this topic. One of the worst “tenderqueers” I’ve ever met was someone w BPD who when confronted with a sexual assault accusation, used all that tenderqueer nonsense lingo about “needing to heal to have this conversation”, “i made space for you to non-consent“, “you the victim must seek the proper accountability processes otherwise it’s not a valid accusation” like BPD doesn’t make you “harsh/blunt” ppl with BPD can be very tenderqueer and say very convoluted things. Its just gross in general to see someone deflect accountability by saying “i dont have the spoons / space to handle this“, “my xyz mental state/disorder/condition prevents me from having this convo“ like no.
In conclusion thank you so much for speaking on this subject especially since you have BPD because people always like to use it as a way to deflect or accuse someone of being too harsh etc. I don’t have BPD but many of my loved ones do and I don’t like it being scapegoated. You very intelligently put this “tenderqueer” phenomenon into words.
Tenderqueer *** I write genderqueer too often my phone corrected to it lol
californius, oaklandium is killing me. this was so well written!
Eating this up with a fork and knife rn, I’ve lived in Portland for the last decade and I swear it’s where tenderqueers were invented
Oh my god YES. I’m a transplant in portland and some people I’ve met are so performatively “emotionally intelligent” it’s impossible to build an actual friendship with them. It’s such an unsettling energy.
I've never read someone articulate this specific type of violence so well. There's a sense of like.... weaponization that make relationships w tenderqueers so stressful and itchy
That line about co-opting the language of the oppressed and using it to treat people like garbage. Is absolute gold and perfectly expressed something I have experienced. Thank you.
All the different ways people, from all spectrums of life, can learn defense mechanisms to not consider others and treat them flat out cruel.
I have encountered the type of person you are describing, mostly in the Bay Area. In my own experience, this behavior wasn't specific to the queer community, "tender" or not, but to what I sometimes call the "Social Justice Hipster" types.
Mostly white, middleclass, and able bodied, they tended to be extremely immature for their ages, allergic to accountability, and displayed narcissistic behavior.
I'm not thrilled with the idea of normalizing "tender" or "queer" as labels for this demographic, since their behavior was anything but tender, and they rarely seemed very queer in practice (though they were quick to claim that label).
The only way I got these people entirely out of my life was moving back to the Rust Belt.
loved this so much. my experience with a tenderqueer was the inverse— they wrote a friendship breakup text to cut me off while i was going through several traumatic crises at the same time😵💫 using the EXACT same language you’re parodying. i can’t stop laughing at how spot on you are. you might as well have taken a photo of the person i used to be friends with lmao. i feel so jaded by white queer politics
Are we still talking about tenderqueers outside 2014 Tumblr? What's next? Hipsters?
Thank you for this. As an enby trans masc who is the opposite of tender queer I fucking needed to read this, because this issue and these people have been seriously detrimental to my life, and I feel like they are doing their damnedest to weaponize therapy speech, water down queer culture, white guilt non white folks, and shame the kink community.
I feel SEEN! The number of times I've dated tenderqueers it feels like I'm being thrown a bunch of therapy jargon instead of just being spoken to like a person.
This is an analysis I wish everyone would read. There is something about the point to which we’ve culturally taken perceived “sensitivity” that seems to just entirely circumvent the notion of culpability—or even being flawed in a way that impacts others. Maybe it’s a subconscious response to an online culture that has admittedly become puritanical and one-dimensional in its moralistic demands. If moral failure is guaranteed, then you simply have to adopt a disposition of moral superiority, social willful ignorance, and emotional aloofness.