I used to be a blue haired pansexual with a septum piercing...

[MimmyMoozer]

AMA

Oh.

I don't think I was ever 'pansexual'.
I was attracted to men and I was attracted to women. The woman I had a brief relationship with was 'non binary - masc presenting'
Basically a butch lesbian. Which is the type of woman i did have a curiosity about previously.
I probably at that time would have dated a 'transman' because they are women and I liked the masculine look on women. But then again I don't think I would have coped with things such as top surgery or been able to have sexual contact with someone who had phalloplasty (fake penis)

I definitely would have had no interest in a transwoman (man) but would not have voice that.

However the relationship was very controlling because at first we were friends and this woman was a lesbian and as we got into a casual relationship she 'came out' as non binary which changed the dynamics of everything.

I wasn't allowed to say I had a girlfriend, ai wasn't allowed to use female pronouns for her, I wasn't allowed to refer to myself as gay or lesbian as that 'invalidated her identity'.

I had been bi curious since my early teens and always wanted to experience having a girlfriend and even though I was a same sex relationship I didn't get to have that experience as it was more important to validate her.

I find it VERY difficult to look at photos from that time. I don't think I look 'bad' the hair suited me and I wouldnt have the piercings now but they fit with the vibe and i was only in my early 30s so I think I looked quite pretty with it but its also a uniform. That hair and those piercings represented something much more than just an aesthetic look. It was a movement and quite an aggressive/intimidating one and I truely regret that part of my life and they way I presented/ behaved back then.

What were you allowed to refer to your girlfriend as, if not girlfriend?

I am glad to read this op. My dd is mid 20s and started to be influenced by this cult in her late teens. It is frightening how they get pulled in. She is autistic and has some other mental health issues, managed with medication. She has a (male) partner who is a lot older than her and very influential. I do worry a lot but it is difficult to see what I can do. We do have a good relationship and I really want to maintain that. In the last year she seems to be gaining some independence and has got a new job that hopefully will give her some space from the partner. I try to stay hopeful.

Something neutral. Partner usually. But strangly she didn't mind male titles. So I could say boyfriend 🤔

So she was non binary (but biologically female) and used gender neutral or male pronouns and titles.

I find it confusing even now.

I find this super interesting OP, thanks for starting it. Especially I find it generally really interesting in terms of our general human longing to ‘belong’ and all the different ways we express that (then often don’t give a shit when we get older, mostly these days I want to identify as a benign witch in a lonely forest cottage with a cat tbh).

Im very slightly older than you and it might be easy for me to think i never would have had queer blue hair in such a conformist non conformist way. But ive been really shocked recently (while of all things watching Gilmore girls) how much i can now see that i tightly identified with all my friends into that late nineties/noughties ‘fun, uninhibited girl with lots of friends, some of whom I whoops sleep with and we’re all so FEY and quirky and gone-girl-cool-girl though we don’t even really realise it, bit Zoe ball with the booze, bit kate moss with the bed head, bit bridget jones with the career, bit Friends with our friends, bit wannabe Carrie Bradshaw with our style .’ We were all very much conforming into a different era of conformity.

My point is, it’s so easy to get sucked into SOME tribe.

What made you start stepping away again?

What were you like as a teen? Did you struggle with friendships? Did you have a 'tribe'.

What made you turn away from the whole situation in the end?
Where were you working at the time (if that's not too outing) and how did the blue hair and piercings go down?

My daughter did too from ages 13 to 15 though. Influenced by a group of female, autistic friends who 'mass transed' themselves with the help of the school.
I didn't know for months

Luckily my experience in this area helped me to put an end to the influence within school and talk, talk, talk to my daughter about WHY she felt that way. It was a very typical presentation of a young autistic girl wanting to be a boy for all the reasons you would expect :(

A lot of therapy and openess and she found her way out of it herself and I am so proud of her for looking at everything objectively and forming her own opinion once she had all the facts from the opposing opinion too.

Shes now a complete TERF at 17 and has no time for 'gender nonsense'.

It scares me so much that if she would have gone through that confusion at the same time as I was influenced the outcome, with my consent, could have been absolutely terrifying.

That's why I look back with such shame, I was so judgemental and superior in my attitude to what I 'knew was right'...and I was so wrong.

Did you ever consider green hair?

(I think if you have wavy hair it looks like you have seaweed on your head).

20 years ago?

Struggled massively. Always felt that people didn't like me. Always trying to fit in. Always felt like an outsider and 'unlovable'.
Was a real 'Emo' in my teens (still am at heart)

Had a few friendships that faded away and some that fizzled out and turned into bullying. Really lost confidence in my ability to maintain frienships and so was quite isolated in terms of friends. So latched onto these 'welcoming and accepting' people.

No, 10 years ago.
Am early 40s now, this was my early 30s.

Why? What is a pansexual? Have you ever been on antidepressants or other mental
health medication?

Did you keep any of your piercings? I love my nose piercings.
Did you prefer crazy colour or directions?

I had it every colour. Pink. Lilac, green, orange, blue, purple.

But to be fair the hair dying started in my teens unrelated to this movement and more to do with the emo/goth scene

I don't accept that the troons are the only ones who can have stoopid hair or piercings

It's so hard when you're autistic isn't it. DS spent most of secondary school alone, he's autistic and thinks he may be asexual. He's working now and enjoying that thankfully.

What made you come out of it?

Nope, I stretched my ears and so still have holes that are bigger than normal piercing holes but I don't even wear earrings.

In the space of about 6 years I had my nose, septum, tongue, labret and the bridge of my nose pierced. Not all at same time. They never really healed well.

I now know that I have an autoimmune disease and so that probably played a big part in the constant rejections.

I also have a lot of tattoos and the vast majority of them I do not like and regret a lot. There is one that means a lot to me but even so, if I had a magic wand I would remove all of them immediately.

I always used directions as my local hair shop stocked it so was easier to get. Artic Fox was my favourite but its much more expensive so I just used directions.

I used to use turquoise and lagoon blue a lot.

I started to have reactions to the bleach (again maybe autoimmune related, never looked into it) and had to take some hospital grade antihistamines the last time I bleached it.

So my hair is au natural now, complete with greys. Though I do throw a brown box dye on every so often.

No, of course anyone can, but in that circle it was seen as a sort of right off passage and transition into visually being part of the community.

But nothing is restricted to one demographic, I still have all my tattoos but am not the same person as when I got them done.

Firstly I got dumped by the woman I was seeing. The one who brought me into the group. I had a few people who would still talk to me but it was very much 'taking sides' and their loyalty was to her.

What got me out of the wider picture? The realisation that these people never had my best interests at heart. The realisation that anyone who had questioned or fought against (even slightly) any of the accepted rhetoric was ostracised or publicly humiliated for it. Shame and threat were big weapons.

Someone had pointed out to me that it was unfair that I wasn't allowed to call this person my girlfriend and asked why that persons idea of their gender identity trumped my reality of my sexuality.

We were 2 women in a sexual relationship. Yet I was not allowed to refer to myself as a lesbian? Why was my language being policed? My feelings? My sexuality?
Why was my identity as a lesbian woman 2nd place to her identity as a non binary person? Why did all the language in the relationship have to revolve around her feelings about herself and not be based in the reality of a same sex relationship.

Once I sat down and really thought about that it all started to crack.

How could I be in a sexual relationship with a woman and not be a lesbian? Not just that but be chastised and ridiculed for describing myself that way?

Why did MY self identification mean nothing? But 'theirs' meant everything?

Another HUGE part of the breakaway was me going and attending a 'trans festival' in the town centre of my city as an 'ally' with some trans friends after my relationship ended.

I think that was the last straw for me and I think I blocked and ghosted a lot of people after that experience.

So many autistic people have a low sex drive. It saddens me that it's become a cultural norm to slap a label on that and treat it as an identity. It's usually a product of hormonal imbalance, medication side effects, the part of autism that makes it difficult to connect with people (many autistic people need that connection first to experience sexual feelings) and also just good old autistic burn out. Plus as teens/young people our experiences with human connections are often so different to neurotypical people, even making friends is so difficult so finding someone to have a sexual experience with probably seems impossible.

I think a lot of young 'asexual' people are probably ND, shy, lack confidence and are just, what we used to call, 'late bloomers'

But now they have an 'excuse' for it, I'm not shy/finding dating difficult/just a virgin a little later than the national average...im actually a-sexual. Its like a way for them to opt out of all that pressure and get a nice little pin badge to be part of the LGBTQIA+ crew (how can having no sexual feeling be a sexuality)

Please don't take that as a criticism of your son, I just am talking about the wider scope of the young autistic people in society.

I feel like its the same sort of thing as autistic girls becoming boys. It just feels easier to them to plaster this lable across themselves than to really delve into what they are feeling.

The idea that asexuality is simply the result of “social anxiety,” “low hormones,” or being a “cop-out” has been challenged and rejected by a substantial body of research. Studies by Dr. Anthony Bogaert in the Journal of Sex Research and Dr. Lori Brotto in Archives of Sexual Behavior describe asexuality as a recognized sexual orientation, generally characterized by little or no sexual attraction. Research also distinguishes asexuality from medical conditions, hormonal issues, and social difficulties.

The same principle applies when talking about autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. Research from Cambridge University, including work by Warrier et al. in Nature Communications, as well as developmental research by Strang et al. in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, supports the idea that autistic people can have a clear and meaningful understanding of their own sexuality and gender. Treating those identities as nothing more than “symptoms of autism” or an “easy way out” dismisses people’s own experiences and does not reflect the current evidence.