Batshittery from the Guardian

[PlayerOneReady]

And yes they really did refer to lesbians as ‘non men loving non men’

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/05/i-am-16-and-identify-as-an-ace-lesbian-but-i-dont-want-to-come-out-to-my-parents

I hope she/they find a nice non man to not have sex with

Errrrrr...

Are we sure it was a girl?😀
As of the female persuasion girl, because it reads either way.

TGAG lesbians have to exist to grow up!🤷🏼‍♀️

I'm middle-aged. If anything were to happen to DH, my vicarious experience of OLD via friends and family and Srinivasan's call to problematise every tiny flicker of desire I might experience has rendered me wholeheartedly asexual in the conventional understanding of the word.

If the Guardian has any interest in a proto-ace middle-aged person who is unlikely to ever experience desire or attraction again, I can raise my boring hand or use both to type a column that will spread this indifference (edging towards antipathy).

@ArabellaScott

If said young person is 'ace', then surely the label would be 'non-men not-loving non-men'?

I think you'll find it's NMLNMBNLT (Non-men loving non-men, but not like that)

I came here just to see if anyone else had read this and reacted the same way.
I laughed out loud. Absolutely bonkers!
I loved Ace in Doctor Who, I wanted to take up graffiti to be like her.
Jesus wept.

Sorry, but WTF is an ace lesbian? How do they differ from ordinary lesbians?

(Don't want to Google, my tablet and work PC seem to have linked somehow).

I half seriously find myself wishing for a solar flare to wipe out the internet for a few weeks, just to get all these poor confused kids out in the real world, where validation and affirmation are not the be all and end all of life.

I hope they're providing a full definition of "man" so that we can all work out whether we're men or non-men. It's so so hard!

So basically:

Q: I'm 16 and I'm worried my parents don't understand me.

A: Chill out, you're a perfectly normal teenager.

What I don't understand is why the Guardian have linked to random Reddit pages - is that normal?

I hope she has a good osteopath. All that naval gazing must be very bad for your spine.

@Mochudubh

Sorry, but WTF is an ace lesbian? How do they differ from ordinary lesbians?

(Don't want to Google, my tablet and work PC seem to have linked somehow).

From another thread about Girl Guide leaders announcing who they did not want to have sex with

Ace = Asexual
So person who is not L, G, B or H.
Where
L : f>f
G: m>m
B: f>f/m or m>m/f
H: f>m or m>f

Has no interest in having sex but this is not because they have low sex drive.
But person may have sex anyway

A prankster?
www.gawker.com/media/dear-prudie-it-was-me-all-along

It’s a spoof

Is MN now Non-TikTok?

No way was that written by a 16 year old.

@BettyfromBristol

No way was that written by a 16 year old.

Totally agree.

I think the reply is batshit too.

The last sentence is (roughly because I cba to read it again), 'who better to educate them than their daughter.' You can get fucked with that shit Grauniad quite frankly.

I can’t even read it. So we have non men but we still have men? Seems totally fair. Very progressive & inclusive to women. God I hate this ideology and I hate its grip on teenagers.

I knew before I clicked on this thread that it would be about this letter! I thought the response was very measured and sensible, gently pointing out that at 16 you are very often seeking your tribe and labelling yourself, but that it's not set in stone and that it's highly likely your feelings will change.

The non men thing I can't work out if it's what the letter writer said or not.

As it's in brackets with the initials as well I cant see that as something that anyone would write in a letter? Esp as the word lesbian doesn't need explaining.

And the link if you want to learn about NMLNM is to a Reddit thread? Linked in a newspaper? That's just really peculiar as well. Esp as if teens come across the piece they will prob read it and the guardian says here. Reddit threads are a viaible credible source of info.

Has anyone else read the link? It's got a lot of new genders and sexualities I hadn't heard before. E.g. alexifkux and caedgender... (?). The guardian thought yep that'll do it.

Incidentally you have to read the comments etc to actually get the definition of NMLNM... So it's a shit job on the part of the guardian full stop.

I can't understand WHY they used that link at all.

Oh and you have to read the comments to get the NMLNM meaning... Which is not actually the same as lesbian at all... Again. Why?

'Sapphic is the umbrella term for non-men who are attracted to non-men. Lesbians, bisexual, omnisexual, pansexual women/nb people, they're sapphic'

Are the guardian on a mission to.. baffle readers?
Signpost teens to Reddit?

@RepentMotherfucker

I think the reply is batshit too.

The last sentence is (roughly because I cba to read it again), 'who better to educate them than their daughter.' You can get fucked with that shit Grauniad quite frankly.

I'm reading that as a challenge ...

I mean obv 16 is prime age of introversion, finding out who you are, experimenting with where you fit, and of course lots of angst.

This current tribal thing seems to be exhausting though. As others have mentioned.

It was easier when you're not a proper Goth if you like X band was the sort of stuff going on!

Poor sods.

That letter is a piss take. Surely.

When I was 16 I was desperate to grow up, get to university, see the world, meet people, have new experiences, learn things. I was desperate to be let out of the cage of being a child and being stuck at home! The thought of being so unbelievably introspective that all I could think of was myself myself myself would have been pretty foreign at that age. I reckon it would have been to most of my cohort too (90s).

I was also completely aware I was bisexual, possibly lesbian; but was very unconcerned about it. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to discuss with my parents, or at school / with friends in my very provincial town; but I was looking forward to getting out of there, and having interesting experiences to find out more about myself and other people.

I think that was the view shared by most of my friends and fellow teenagers - impatience to get out into the world and start discovering new things, including yourself. Not sitting there agonising over what label fitted and then wanting to tell the world all about it endlessly! As if you can know much about yourself at 16!

And why does everyone else have to be informed and educated about your “identity”? I would have died of embarrassment at the thought of explaining who I felt like having sex with, and how often or whatever or not at all, to my parents 🤦‍♀️ It’s so bloody self involved and self righteous, all of it.

Reading the phrase "educate yourself/themselves" really sets my teeth on edge. It is the go-to cliche for gen Z/+ and is usually preceded or followed by a load of narcissitic twattery.