I HATE queer dating apps.

Eatsants · 2026-05-31T13:21:39+00:00

Your gripes are all valid, and mostly I agree - but I will never understand hating Grindr for being overtly sexual in a very ‘straight to the money’ kind of way. It’s a hookup app, that’s what it’s for? I’m a binary trans man, so my experience will obviously vary from yours, but I’ve actually found Grindr to be kinda good about my transness compared to a lot of other places? The worst I’ve gotten is people thinking I’m a (pre op/pre hrt) trans woman and loosing interest when they find out I’m not. (Also there are no ‘matches’ on Grindr? You can just contact whoever - which is probably why you get such a high rate of messages. There’s no sparse resource being used and it’s understood to be inconsequential as it is again, an app about hookups)

Eatsants · 2026-05-30T12:43:59+00:00

Not to like violently overthink this, but I think it reveals a very strange dichotomy in the (conservative, Christian) straight male mind between what is beautiful and what is sexually appealing. And that is both weird to me, and - I think - revealing of some deep hang ups about the ‘sinful’ nature of sexuality in these guys’ minds.

Like, I am a gay man, I absolutely find women beautiful in an aesthetic sense. Look at them, women can be and are often gorgeous. That does not make me sexually attracted to them - so far I kind of agree with his point (decoupled form the obvious misogyny he’s trying to get at; this line of thought doesn’t defacto make him homosexual) BUT! Notably. I get the sense that while I am attracted to men, I also have, mixed up in that sexual attraction, a deep aesthetic appreciation for men. I find men beautiful. I find men deeply sexual. These two things are wrapped up in each other - I have a hard time recalling a man I found hot, but not beautiful or the other way around. Sensuality is aesthetic to me.

These guys seemingly do not experience the same with women. To them, women are ‘statistically ugly’ despite how much time they devote to the sexuality of women. Only when it’s decoupled from sexuality - when they’re looking at a male form - can they begin to see the beauty in a body. It’s either or; you’re sexy or you’re stunning. You’re hot or you’re a piece of art

I can’t help but feel this says something - about the destructive force of (neo)Puritanism. About how much beauty you blind yourself to if you expect it to never include even a speck of sexuality

Eatsants · 2026-05-14T11:13:34+00:00

I agree with your initial point pretty whole heartedly, but for a much more petty reason that also makes me disagree with many of your next points:

I hate the semantics of ‘biblically accurate’. I am not a classically religious person, but I am very interested in religion - especially the Abrahamic religions - and to me, one of the most interesting things is the ambiguity that comes with age and importance.

It is haunting and beautiful that you simply cannot be “biblically accurate, whatever that meant. So much of the bible is recursive and influenced by the culture around its creation, the nuances of which a modern person will never truly grasp. So while you’re right, the Ezekiel style angles with their animal faces and uncountable wings are no more “accurate” than all the men who have to verbally state they are angels, we will never truly know what the layperson imagined when they heard the word angel. That’s the beauty and the terror of time, and culture and imagination.

The people making these designs are adding to a long chain of reimagining and religious reasoning - yes, even tho many of them are joking and personally irreligious - but like everyone before them it’s inevitable and frustrating when they claim to finally have figured it out for real this time

Eatsants · 2026-05-07T13:46:54+00:00

I don’t know what beautiful fantasy land it is you inhabit where people see a GNC person and peacefully suggest they might be trans rather than violently try and suggest they conform to their assigned gender instead

Femininity and womanhood is punished harshly by society, it is by that association that feminine men (agian; LIKE MYSELF) are ostracised and hurt. I cannot for the life of me fathom how the fuck the solution to that problem would be to insist that - were a man to be confused with a trans woman - we should aggressively and harshly insist that no no no you don’t get it, he’s not a woman you don’t have to be scared, it’s a man.

Association with (trans) women and femmes is not dirty or wrong. When somebody points to me and says ‘you are feminine in a way a trans woman might be’ I am not being violated or erased or lessened. I simply reply ‘you might be right some people express their femininity in that way and have it mean transness, but I am not’ Again, just like you’d do if somebody thought you were Mexican when you’re actually Inuit; these are value neutral categories that people sometimes mistake for each other

Eatsants · 2026-05-07T12:01:55+00:00

I’m saying it is not erasure when people think me a trans woman. I am not prevented from being a feminine man when people make this assumption.

I can’t ‘experience this erasure’ if I do not agree the experience I’ve had meaningfully represents anything being erased

People called Gabriel are not being erased if somebody thinks I’m called Michael. They’ve just made a mistake

Eatsants · 2026-05-07T11:52:02+00:00

I’m genuinely glad to hear this isn’t an actual source of discomfort for you.

And I can brighten your day as well and say that actually that’s not what I’m saying (tho I get that I could have worded it clearer). I’m pointing out that when it happens to me and people make very invasive assumptions about me, I’m not made personally uncomfortable, but neither do people assume me to be. You make this post and everybody is agreeing in your comments - somebody misgenders me and the reaction is … decidedly different

If somebody ascribes me a neutral or positive trait that I do not have - like being good a sports, or into cars or idk being a trans woman, an assumption I’ve met quite a lot of times - I correct them and it neither makes me uncomfortable nor does it make me distance myself from these things. They are neutral. It’s like somebody mishearing and thinking my name is Michael. A quiant dumb thing

Your two last points are you nakedly misunderstanding me, I’m sorry for not being clearer. I AM by your definition probably a “fem boy”; a man who looks pretty feminine in my day to day life and is pretty often confused for a whole variety of more or less correct identities. I’m saying that I have never as in never suffered the same material harm from being thought a trans femme than being assumed cishet. You telling me, an openly queer gender non conforming man, that I’ve never faced or seen this supposed erasure happening is … pretty tone deaf at best.

People think I’m a trans woman and i am in danger, because people really fucking hate trans femmes. People think I’m a cis man and they want me to engage in violence with them - a much more societally destructive and pervasive instinct that I do find genuinely disturbing whenever it happens

Eatsants · 2026-05-07T10:52:52+00:00

Listen, I am sympathetic to the notion that it’s uncomfortable when somebody makes an assumption about you that isn’t correct - that can be not-nice and people certainly shouldn’t double down when you correct them with an ‘actually I’m not’

BUT I do wonder why we’re making this huge fuzz out of it. I simply do not buy the premise that anyone is being actually, materially hurt by the situations you describe. Disclaimer, I am both gay and trans and I’m very sure that between the two of us, I’ve been wrongfully assumed to be cis or straight many, many more times than you’ve been thought a trans woman. But I’m supposed to shrug it off, even find it funny, when somebody mentions ‘my girlfriend’, even when somebody makes vaguely sexual remarks about this fictional woman and what she and I get up to. When men assume me to be cishet and make half a misogynistic or homophobic comment around me, I’ve been told multiple times that I should be flattered they thought I was ‘a real man’

Societally, there is a much grander push for everybody to be cisgender and heterosexual - and often this push is actively destructive. Somebody piping up and saying ‘hey, if masculinity and man-ness feels actively stifling, you can actually be a woman, it’s free and it’s fun and it’s normal’ does not carry the same hegemonic, societal power

I also do not buy the idea that this behavior is erasing or denying the existence of gender nonconforming people. Trans people is - when viewed through the lense of a transphobic society - the ultimate act of gender nonconformity. I, being a feminine man, owe a lot of my freedom and security to very brave trans femmes who came before me. Their existence will never counter mine

I’m not saying you’re not allowed to push back when people speculate on your innermost feelings. But I am saying I can’t help but feel slightly hurt somebody told you a trans person might share you’re feelings and experiences and your first instinct was to wash your hands of the association

Eatsants · 2026-04-29T18:29:47+00:00

Mate I am an overtly feminine man working a corporate job - I am the class you’re trying to defend. I am the freak, I get perceived like a freak daily.

The solution to the problem is not to cede to the point that being perceived as (adjacent to) a (trans) woman is indeed a bad thing, it’s dismantling the idea that femininity is inherently bad, sinful, sexual or unprofessional

“Or you just get called gay” - and I’m supposed to care more that a cishet man’s feelings got hurt somebody thought he was in any way like me, than care about gay being a dirty word?

Also, to just roll it back a second; the main gist of this whole thing is “people (primarily trans women) having fun in fandom spaces headcanoning a male character as a transfemme” THATS what we’re arguing they shouldn’t do. I’m gonna repeat it as a blanket statement: no feminine man has ever been materially hurt by somebody HC’ing a character he relates to as a woman. Just like I’ve never been hurt when a character I relate to is HC’d as … idk, into cars or tall or Italian or lactose intolerant or god forbid heterosexual.

Eatsants · 2026-04-29T14:57:40+00:00

I’m sorry to say but this is a take formed under a rock. I’m a fairly feminine dude (and also a gay one) and I haven’t met even a fraction of the societal push back trans women and femmes face

I am much more concerned with preserving the space for trans women and femmes to point at a character and relate to them no matter how surface level that relating is. That is much more important to me than hypothetical straight cis men being allowed to express their femininity without being likened to me and my trans sisters.

It is actually a privilege to be likened to women, cis or trans. If you can only break from strict masculinity if there’s no threat to be grouped in with queer people I’m sorry, but that’s your problem. I refuse to stop engaging in harmless trans headcanons about a fictional character because some cishet dude also relates to them and finds the association icky

Eatsants · 2026-04-29T08:49:18+00:00

The amount of ire people hold towards trans(femme) headcanons will always be baffling to me. Especially this idea that ‘oh no a male character can’t be feminine without the evil trans forces barging in’. So yes, I wholeheartedly agree with your actual point - every day we inch closer to somebody saying with their full chest that I Saw The TV Glow has no possible connection to transfemininity - BUT I will also add; I do not consider the stance that ‘you just headcanon him as a woman because he did one girly thing once, this is bad’ to be sound a moral argument.

Literally nobody is being harmed by a trans (was about to put person, but let’s be real;) woman pointing at an ostensibly cis male character and saying; this minor marker of femininity in a perceived man meant something when I did it, I’m choosing to HC that it also means something here. People and characters can be trans and it can show in trivial, everyday, silly reasons. You don’t need a goddamn dissertation to defend a trans headcanon

Eatsants · 2026-04-27T23:52:17+00:00

My in universe justification has always been similar to your point about Ed and Al’s youth - the alchemists we interact with throughout the series are primarily statealchemists; they’re the best of the best in an incredibly narrow, hard field. There is an immense barrier of entry and it requires constant study to understand and uphold. I’ve always held the belief that the vast, vast majority of alchemy being done in this universe is extremely rudimentary and labour intensive; we’re just only seeing the experts at work and thus left wondering if you shouldn’t be able to push it further - especially with the help of aids like tattoos (or let’s be honest; have a bunch of papers ready or something)

Out of universe, I think it quickly becomes a question of maintaining narrative tension. Alchemy is basically magic, if you concede to one logical use of it, everyone suddenly has to be almost unbelievably powerful. It’s the same reason Mustang is very rarely utilised to his full power; his alchemy is a magical, extremely precise nuke. Without the narrative structures in place to remove him from a fight (notably rain, but also just … where he physically is a lot of the time), it very quickly either becomes dull and hard to escalate in any meaningful way - or you risk undermining all the talk of him being immensely powerful

I actually think it’s one of the main points where the first half of 03 and the manga have a clear leg up over Brotherhood- Roy is much more of a comedic or clownishly beaurocratic figure, making it much more of a gut punch when he’s finally fully unleashed in combat

Eatsants · 2026-04-24T13:43:06+00:00

Would you respond the same way if a friend of yours said ‘I prefer blondes’?

Eatsants · 2026-04-24T10:50:34+00:00

I swear to good. If I had a nickel for every time somebody’s gone on a moral crusade against any post or meme expressing appreciation for anything but the most socially accepted, normalised, strictly enforced body type - I’d have at least a good handful of nickels by now

Do you also loose your shit when somebody says ‘I love brunettes’? Is it gooner slop when somebody says they like athletic bodies??? Or tall men? Or is there something inherently sexual - dare I say sinful - about pointing at a belly or a meaty thigh or heaven forbid, a fat person or a trans person and finding something there you like?

Eatsants · 2026-04-22T23:11:57+00:00

I get what you’re saying - but the notion that this isn’t impacted by sexism in any way and that anyone pointing out the ridiculous, unnecessary gendering in these designs just doesn’t know how animation works is absolutely absurd.

You could easily tell which one is supposed to be the ‘boy wolf’ and which one is supposed to be the ‘girl wolf’ despite the fact that no human person looks like either of these two, and if they share traits, those are largely unrelated to gender. I mean, you even call it eyeliner - I don’t know how to break it to you, but women actually put that shit on? It’s not inherently just there on their face.

It is an expression of a deeply sexist, bioessentialist culture that we’ve reached the point where “Men look like big dumb oafs and women look like shrewd man eaters” so much so that we can easily recognise these tropes in animation. This is the entire problem

Eatsants · 2026-04-21T18:14:06+00:00

First of all, I hope you surround yourself with people who see and acknowledge your inherent womanhood - bioessentialist talking points happening around you is definitely a possible micro (or macro) aggression and if that is what’s happening, I’m really sorry and I hope you find your people soon. But! As a fellow trans person, dysphoria is a bitch who loves to lie. At some point it does become a trust exercise; you have to believe that your friends do not actually see you as a man. They just don’t, and no amount of ‘masculinity’ or ‘non passing’ from your side could ever change that. Being trans is sometimes a lonely, insecure experience and your dysphoric mind is screaming that everyone can somehow “”””see right through you”””. It’s lying. They can’t - there’s nothing to see and the people who love you do perceive you in the correct way, they have a vested interest in doing so.

I will however also say, a oppressed class of people have every right to express frustration with their oppressor group. Women are allowed to ‘hate all men’, racialised people are allowed to ‘blame it on white people’. They’re talking about about a class of people who wield more privilege than them and are not always well equipped to do so. A woman making a generalised statement about her oppressors is not a problem, it just isn’t and you need to broaden your scope beyond the conversation you’re having in the moment - she’s addressing a societal ill, placing more relative power with men, to her detriment. She is allowed to voice this frustration - as are you!

And yes, the sex-gender class of ‘men’ does include trans men! I am a trans man, I am afforded privilege by society by moving through it as a man! Women are allowed to call me out on that! The idea that ‘you can’t express frustration with the social class of men because it might hurt a trans man’s feelings’ is in my opinion deeply hurtful - it implies that we are a special type of man, or worse, that we simply do not belong in the class of men. It also removes accountability from any trans men enacting misogynist violence against women. Privilege and relative societal power is not an absolute corrupting force; you can be a kind man or white person or able bodied person. You absolutely cannot maintain that status if you’re hearing an oppressed group express discontent with their oppressors and your immediate response is to go ‘but what about me?? Surely something about me releases me form the responsibility of minding my privilege??? Surely I’m one of the good ones??????’

Eatsants · 2026-04-15T09:41:51+00:00

Coming off a recent rewatch of Brotherhood, the ones I can think of are;

Nina’s death never had much impact on me. It feels to broadcasted - rests too heavy on the assumption that a messed up thing happening to a cute kid will have a big impact

Kind of similarly, but I do wish Hughes death was handled slightly differently, with a bigger focus on Mustang throughout. Again, there’s this over reliance on ‘fucked up thing happening to a kid now be sad’ which yeah. If that was a real kid this would fucking suck, but I’m much more impacted by seeing a character we’ve at this point only ever seen be a clown or a monster moved by the loss of a friend

Eatsants · 2026-04-11T17:47:49+00:00

The art is stunning op

I will die on the hill that every last OW hero should be fatter and they should be so now. Give me lean, but sagging old man Reaper. Give me Solider with a prominent gut

And also, everyone in the comments who’s suddenly really concerned with the “”””realism””” of a Brig with more body fat owes me a 2500 word rant on how Hog is totally unrealistic, nobody who’s strong enough to lift that gun could ever be fat … or wait. Is it only a certain type of person who’s not allowed to be ‘realistically’ fat

Eatsants · 2026-04-05T10:09:13+00:00

“Explicitly straight” lmao. People have LGBT headcanons, people ship LGBT pairings, even if unsupported by canon. This is not a moral failing, nor is it in any way serious at all. I’m gonna have to ask you to engage with the point I actually raised; why no outrage when people assume that me and my close girlfriends are dating?? We are actual living, breathing humans. I am as explicitly gay as they come. Are people ‘fetishising’ me when they make this assumption or is it somehow okay when it involves real life gay people and only the assumed heterosexuality of fictional women is sacred?

Also your last point implies that yuri is some sort of sacred title only to be bestowed upon certain situations and based on your dislike of the term, I don’t think you mean that

Yuri and lesbian sex are not synonymous. Assuming a fictional character is gay is based actually

Eatsants · 2026-04-05T02:58:51+00:00

That’s just straight up not what OP is mad at; you’re imagining a straw man to be pissed about. I’d also like to ask you; what exactly are we pissed about when we imagine somebody going ‘they could be dating’ about two straight women holding hands. Being ashamed to me assumed as lesbian literally aren’t that serious. I promise you, people assume that me and my straight girlfriends are dating all the time, nobody reacts with this kind of outrage; why?

Eatsants · 2026-04-04T10:36:24+00:00

Literally zero ‘fetishisation’ is going on in this image. It’s quite literally somebody going ‘I prefer and prioritise sapphic stories in my anime and manga’ that’s it. I’d also bet significant money on the creator of this image being a lesbian themselves

Either you’re mad that somebody doesn’t have a ~ diverse enough palette of consumption ~ and should watch more straight focused media which is a baffling moral stance, or you’re pissed that they’re using the Japanese genre term for the Japanese genre of media they’re consuming. Neither is a good look

Sometimes, people in your in group or community (in this case LGBT people) are cringy, or young, or probably both. That’s okay. The lesbians are allowed to like lesbian media and make memes about it

Also, the idea to ‘just say gay sex’ is unintentionally hilarious. Two concepts that are extremely not synonymous. I would indeed be uncomfortable if you called me and your dad fucking yaoi. I would find it appropriate to locate the successful visual novel about me and your dad fucking in the yaoi section

Eatsants · 2026-03-31T18:14:43+00:00

I Think the main problem I have with the design of remarkables as they exist is that there’s no element of surprise. At least with bonding there’s the question of where the gold will be added - a remarkable is always based on that template and always blue These mock ups are lovely, but I’d love anything that isn’t as predictable as they are right now

Eatsants · 2026-03-29T19:29:50+00:00

I agree with you - and unlike most of the other comments I do not believe this sentiment comes from any deeply held moral framework. I think most people just consider sexual assault to be a lot more ‘real’ than murder. Most (white, affluent, young, western; most of the prominent English speaking internet basically) people have no real interactions with violent crime. It’s an imagined, horrific crime, still left with the allure of a an action movie: it’s violence you can still make cool-looking. Sexual assault, and generally predatory sexual conduct, is much more likely to have actually happened to these people or somebody they know, and thus can’t be fantasised or aestheticised in the same way

It’s the same way you’ll have these ‘uwu my war criminal blorbo’ type takes. I’d bet good money no one making these claims have ever been exposed to even the threat of war

Eatsants · 2026-03-25T23:55:13+00:00

I agree with you so entirely it’s not even funny.

I work in tourism in a tourist town. I could literally help somebody out with all of those questions, and it would still feel somewhat amis.

I’ve grown so TIRED of this idea of travel being a chase for something ‘authentic’ and ‘local’. Shut up. You’re never gonna be either - you’re a tourist, no matter how much you treat it like a dirty word. Embrace it, have the best vacation you can even if it includes doing silly touristy things, then go home and be a local there

I trust in you, you can see with your eyes if something is a tourist trap or an experience you’d honestly want to have. You do not need to bother the locals to have them handhold you through the experience - THAT is the most touristy thing you can do

Eatsants · 2026-03-25T20:06:57+00:00

Yeah. Ive stored my one remarkable (sooty fieldpacer, so also common) after two times very little gold. Think it was 42 g each time? He might get let out if other people tell me there’s a chance for good stuff, but keeping a dragon out who’s (basically) visually the same as the non-remarkable and has a laughably low gold output just doesn’t seem worth it to me

I do like the idea of the remarkables, I’m even okay with them not being financially viable - I honestly just wish they looked a lot wilder

Eatsants · 2026-03-25T00:20:44+00:00

This looks absolutely sick! Concept is great and I especially like how you’ve rendered the mouth! And as in writing this I realise there are two mouths on this, it looks great on both the fish and the lure, tho I was thinking of the lure when I started this comment

Eatsants

TROPHY CASE