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What "girlfag" means to me


TheMaria

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I know there have been posts about this a while ago, but I've been exploring my own identity lately and thought it'd be worth it to share my thoughts.

 

If you don't know, the term "girlfag" (and "guydyke") was created at a time when there was an effort to reclaim "fag", and it means basically a girl who feels attracted to gay men or like she is a gay man in a woman's body, thought she is not a trans man and may or may not present masculine.

 

I guess it's pretty evident why it means different things to different people. The definition that makes "girlfag" a label I find useful to apply to myself would be "a girl who wishes she were a gay man, but isn't". 

 

Since I was 12 I've always been into slash fanfiction, and male gay couples in media in general. I had vague ideas that it would be so cool to be a guy and be able to date another guy. This is rather awkward to admit, but to this day I occasionally have role playing sessions with my pillow where, for instance, I'm John and the pillow is Sherlock.

 

But all that never caused me enough distress to feel uncomfortable being a girl. Recently I started wondering if maybe I would actually like to present as a guy, maybe just crossdress. Coincidentally, on the next day I found Jack Dylan Grazer's instagram and thought I kinda looked like him (yeah, he's 14 -- details).

 

So I photoshopped my face onto his hair and body just for fun. At first it was exhilarating, just because of the novelty in exploring the foreign idea of me as a man -- imagine finding a male partner and realising all my gay dreams! But after that initial high had passed, I realised it felt fake. I could never make myself look like that and not feel like I was playing a character.

 

Of course, playing a character still has its value, perhaps I shouldn't discard the possibility of a Jack Dylan Grazer drag king, but the point is: I'm not a man. Trans men feel that they are men. I, a girlfag, feel that I wish I were a man.

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Eh, just sounds like a word cis women who fetishize gay relationships came up with. But if it works for you...

Also idk how to feel about someone who ain’t a gay man trying to “reclaim” f*g...

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Yeah don't use f*g unless you're mlm. It's gross.

Also fetishizing us? Also gross.

 

And feeling like a gay man trapped in a woman's body? Sounds like dysphoria to me, and I would know.

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I don't really like the "fag" and "dyke" works since some jocks tried to insult me with them, but I remember when I first discovered them, it was the first time I got to know that you could be trans and homo. Oh good ol' days, when I wished I was a gay boy, ha ha. It had little to do with anything else and little did I suspect back then. And it had its allure... two androgynous individuals, both capable and beautiful, in love... I think it's the androgyny and fluidity of gender roles that make it appealing. 

 

Peace :) 

All gender is drag :P 

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1 hour ago, Emery. said:

All gender is drag :P

Gender expression =/= gender

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6 hours ago, ChillaKilla said:

Eh, just sounds like a word cis women who fetishize gay relationships came up with. But if it works for you...

Also idk how to feel about someone who ain’t a gay man trying to “reclaim” f*g...

I'm not trying to reclaim "fag", I said gay people were trying to reclaim it when the words "girlfag" and "guydyke" were invented, that's why "fag" and "dyke" are parts of those words and there is no alternative.

 

4 hours ago, Flower Boy said:

Yeah don't use f*g unless you're mlm. It's gross.

Also fetishizing us? Also gross.

 

And feeling like a gay man trapped in a woman's body? Sounds like dysphoria to me, and I would know.


When someone can come up with a reasonable explanation about how "fetishising" things is harmful or should be condemned, I'll stop doing it, okay?

And the whole point of this post was that it's not the same thing as dysphoria, I don't know how you missed that.

 

 



 

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4 minutes ago, TheMaria said:

I'm not trying to reclaim "fag",

Then what would you call your use of it then? I’d call it complicit <_< 

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5 hours ago, TheMaria said:

When someone can come up with a reasonable explanation about how "fetishising" things is harmful or should be condemned, I'll stop doing it, okay?

And the whole point of this post was that it's not the same thing as dysphoria, I don't know how you missed that.
 

How about because it's dehumanizing and mlm already are hypersexualized by cishets and thus viewed as deviant? How about how 90% of the damn 'fujoshi' get off to viewing us as 'sinful' and 'dirty'?

 

And as far as dysphoria goes I'm not even gonna bother, I was just trying to be helpful.

 

5 hours ago, TheMaria said:

I'm not trying to reclaim "fag", I said gay people were trying to reclaim it when the words "girlfag" and "guydyke" were invented, that's why "fag" and "dyke" are parts of those words and there is no alternative.

How about you just not use slurs that aren't yours?

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butterflydreams
6 hours ago, ChillaKilla said:

Eh, just sounds like a word cis women who fetishize gay relationships came up with.

Probably a lot of it.

 

I'd only ever really heard of "guydyke" before, and my understanding of the term was a femme-ish but also butchy guy who hung around with butchy lesbians. 

 

<<looks it up on urban dictionary>>

Quote

A cisgender, heterosexual man who fetishises lesbians. The term "guydyke" is a self proclaimed label, and is an offensive use of the word "dyke" as they have no right whatsoever to reclaim the once-slur, since they are heterosexual. They also seem to enjoy using the word "queer", which is also a slur they have no right to reclaim.

Guydykes are incredibly homophobic and transphobic, as they see lesbians as nothing more than an object to fetishize, they compare themselves to lesbian trans women which spreads false information, and they try to get themselves into LGBT spaces and call themselves "queer" for their fetish, which is dangerous when accepted as there are a large portion of guydykes who aim to sexually abuse and even attempt to rape lesbians.

The male version of guydykes are girlfags.

So I was pretty close. Eh, sounds like a lot of identity politics bullshit to me though. 

 

You wanna see people fetishize lesbians, spend some time around the trans lesbians on tumblr...holy shit. It grosses me out and I don't even really have a dog in that fight.

 

As for the reclaiming stuff, I think it's all bullshit. Because someone can declare they're going to reclaim some word, and then even if it still hurts people, well, fuck them they're SOL. Looking at you, "queer". Ugh, I fucking hate that word.

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11 minutes ago, ChillaKilla said:

Then what would you call your use of it then? I’d call it complicit <_< 

That's precisely the reason why I explained that: I would rather not use that word, but that's the word that was created and there is no alternative.

 

10 minutes ago, Flower Boy said:

How about because it's dehumanizing and mlm already are hypersexualized by cishets and thus viewed as deviant? How about how 90% of the damn 'fujoshi' get off to viewing us as 'sinful' and 'dirty'?

 

And as far as dysphoria goes I'm not even gonna bother, I was just trying to be helpful.

 

How about you just not use slurs that aren't yours?

That's the problem: every complaint I've read about women fetishising gay men has to do with things that are not present in every case. I agree that finding allure in how it's "sinful" and "dirty" can be bad, seme/uke dynamics can be fucked up, characters who are walking stereotypes can be bad -- IF the reader/spectator is not completely aware that has nothing to do with how real gay men are, and if it leads to them treating real gay men badly, such as shipping real people or asking creepy questions. But it's possible to be a fan of slash without any of that. 

As I said above, I wish I had the option of not using those slurs; including the origin of the term was intended as a disclaimer, maybe I could have made that more explicit.

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butterflydreams
26 minutes ago, TheMaria said:

I wish I had the option of not using those slurs

Don't let people rag you about it. It is what it is. Some people try to tell me I can't use the word "tranny". They're just words. What pisses off some people doesn't bother others. I get pissed off at the word "queer" but look at how much people use it. So I deal. But if they get to use "queer" I get to use "tranny" that's how it works. 

 

That said, the idea of a girlfag does sound fetishistic to me. Because it's not like they are men in female bodies, as you said. It's some straight cis woman who's...into gay men? For some reason? Why? I feel like the only reason could be something superficial about gay men. 

 

I dunno, the whole thing doesn't rub me the right way. Nothing against you though @TheMaria, I'm sure you had the best of intentions. No hard feelings from me.

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24 minutes ago, butterflydreams said:

Don't let people rag you about it. It is what it is. Some people try to tell me I can't use the word "tranny". They're just words. What pisses off some people doesn't bother others. I get pissed off at the word "queer" but look at how much people use it. So I deal. But if they get to use "queer" I get to use "tranny" that's how it works. 

 

That said, the idea of a girlfag does sound fetishistic to me. Because it's not like they are men in female bodies, as you said. It's some straight cis woman who's...into gay men? For some reason? Why? I feel like the only reason could be something superficial about gay men. 

 

I dunno, the whole thing doesn't rub me the right way. Nothing against you though @TheMaria, I'm sure you had the best of intentions. No hard feelings from me.

Generally I try to avoid those words because there's just no reason to be petty about it. I mean, if somebody's super passionate about their "right to use slurs" I'm forced to wonder why they're so invested in that. But yeah, in this case I've already explained myself and that's all I can do.

Do you think you could explain how it's fetishistic, and more importantly, how fetishes, whatever that even means, harm people? Also, I don't know why women are into gay men or why I am, but just the fact that it's two men in a relationship makes it different enough from other things for it to have a specific appeal (such as straight women being attracted to guys and there being two guys, being into male intimacy because it's unusual in our patriarchal society, being into relationships without the potential for traditional straight power dynamics, aego- women being into relationships between people of not-their-gender/sex etc etc).

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butterflydreams
2 minutes ago, TheMaria said:

Do you think you could explain how it's fetishistic, and more importantly, how fetishes, whatever that even means, harm people?

I feel like it's similar to the guys who say they're into trans women. They could just say they're into women, but they don't. They specify trans women, which always makes me think they're into what makes trans women different. Which is just kind of gross. So why would someone be into gay men, for any other reason than they are a men attracted to other men? You know? Those people must be into some superficial aspect of gay men. That's kind of fetishy. I'm pretty sure gay men don't want to be seen that way, liked for being anything other than the men they are. Not the fact that they are gay. 

 

How it harms people is nobody wants to be the non consenting target of someone else's fetish. I don't want straight "trans attracted" men fetishizing me and being into me because I'm trans. And I'm sure gay men don't want to feel like people are into them because they're gay men.

 

I hope all of this is making sense. I'm kind of tired so doing my best to get it down.

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1 hour ago, butterflydreams said:

I feel like it's similar to the guys who say they're into trans women. They could just say they're into women, but they don't. They specify trans women, which always makes me think they're into what makes trans women different. Which is just kind of gross. So why would someone be into gay men, for any other reason than they are a men attracted to other men? You know? Those people must be into some superficial aspect of gay men. That's kind of fetishy. I'm pretty sure gay men don't want to be seen that way, liked for being anything other than the men they are. Not the fact that they are gay. 

 

How it harms people is nobody wants to be the non consenting target of someone else's fetish. I don't want straight "trans attracted" men fetishizing me and being into me because I'm trans. And I'm sure gay men don't want to feel like people are into them because they're gay men.

 

I hope all of this is making sense. I'm kind of tired so doing my best to get it down.

 

No, it makes sense. But

 

1. Trans women (post-op, I'm assuming, right?) aren't really different to cis women, whereas gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender. So that seems like it could justify straight women may being into gay men and straight men being into lesbians, no? Plus the other aspects I mentioned before.

 

2. I can tell you that if you take any of my gay ships and replace the characters, I won't like them just because they're gay, I mean, I don't even ship every gay ship there is (and I don't know anyone who does); but if you take one of my ships and make one character a woman, I wouldn't ship it, so I don't know.

 

3a. Notice how you talk about people would feel if they were fetishised, how you would feel -- that's the essential line I would draw, between what you do with fictional characters and how you treat real people who feel things. Yeah, often the fictional shipping bleeds into problematic real life behaviour, but that's not always the case and that can be avoided without condemning the shipping itself. 

3b. We don't condemn violence in fiction, what we do is make sure the audience knows that's not acceptable in real life. That's how I would like problematic portrayals of women, gay men etc to be treated as well, in addition to better portrayals being encouraged. I won't condemn sociopathic ace characters, but rather speak out about how that's not what real life aces are like, and try to support better representation *as well*. Though, as I've said before, I don't think every portrayal of gay men in slash written by women is inherently problematic -- people write about characters with experiences they haven't had all the time.

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Alejandrogynous
17 minutes ago, TheMaria said:

Trans women (post-op, I'm assuming, right?) aren't really different to cis women, whereas gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender. So that seems like it could justify straight women may being into gay men and straight men being into lesbians, no? Plus the other aspects I mentioned before.

Ehhhh. I have to say no to this. Gay relationships are fundamentally just like any other relationships - as in, relationships between two (or more?) human beings. Their relationship dynamics aren't inherently different to any straight couple's relationship dynamics, and to view them as different just because they're gay is very othering. And the very thing the gay community has been fighting for so long to make people understand - that they're just people, like everyone else.


There are an infinite number of different kinds of relationship dynamics, all over the spectrum of man/woman, woman/woman, man/man, and ever gender identity in between. It's not 'straight couples are this way and gay couples are this way', it's 'people are different so they form different kinds of relationships with each other based on their personalities'. So if you ship two gay men together but would have zero interest if you made one of them a woman, that means that you are reducing the relationship (and the people/characters in it) to their sexuality only. And that's pretty dehumanizing.


To answer the original question, I don't like girlfag/guydyke either. The slurs squick me out, especially being used by straight people in order to justify fetishizing other human beings.

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3 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

You wanna see people fetishize lesbians, spend some time around the trans lesbians on tumblr...holy shit. It grosses me out and I don't even really have a dog in that fight.

Wait, who’s ferishizing who in this scenario? I don’t spend a lot of time in that tag (for obvious reasons haha)

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1 hour ago, Alejandrogynous said:

To answer the original question, I don't like girlfag/guydyke either. The slurs squick me out, especially being used by straight people in order to justify fetishizing other human beings.

Yep, using slurs as casual terms or labels just seems like it's more of a dehumanizing insult.

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1 hour ago, Alejandrogynous said:

Ehhhh. I have to say no to this. Gay relationships are fundamentally just like any other relationships - as in, relationships between two (or more?) human beings. Their relationship dynamics aren't inherently different to any straight couple's relationship dynamics, and to view them as different just because they're gay is very othering. And the very thing the gay community has been fighting for so long to make people understand - that they're just people, like everyone else.


There are an infinite number of different kinds of relationship dynamics, all over the spectrum of man/woman, woman/woman, man/man, and ever gender identity in between. It's not 'straight couples are this way and gay couples are this way', it's 'people are different so they form different kinds of relationships with each other based on their personalities'. So if you ship two gay men together but would have zero interest if you made one of them a woman, that means that you are reducing the relationship (and the people/characters in it) to their sexuality only. And that's pretty dehumanizing.

 

Are you denying that men and women are different? I'm not saying that the dynamics are necessarily different, or whatever. We can focus on the sex/gender thing. Do you deny that there is a difference between two people of the sex/gender you're attracted to and one person of your sex/gender + one person of the sex/gender you're attracted to?

Also I love how you chose to address pretty much only one sentence of everything I've said.
 

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6 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

You wanna see people fetishize lesbians, spend some time around the trans lesbians on tumblr...holy shit. It grosses me out and I don't even really have a dog in that fight.

 

As for the reclaiming stuff, I think it's all bullshit. Because someone can declare they're going to reclaim some word, and then even if it still hurts people, well, fuck them they're SOL. Looking at you, "queer". Ugh, I fucking hate that word.

Tumblr is... quite the something. :mellow: There's so much fetishization of LGBT+ people, I try to avoid it. I feel grossed out too. They think they're so "progressive" and "accepting" of people, but only treating people like objects for their own desire and not recognizing people as actually people. It's the same as fetishizing women, which sometimes goes hand in hand (like lesbian fetish for straight guys as another example) as it's still an issue. 

 

I see people's argument about not bringing power to words, thus "reclaiming" words to give it less power. I understand the perspective of meaning no ill-intent, but I honestly mostly disagree with said argument. Similar to how I mostly disagree with the phrase "sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Communication is a vital part of any living thing when interacting with others, especially humans in regards to language. It does have significant meaning. If people have tough skin, good for them, but I just don't think it's that simple. 

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Alejandrogynous
1 hour ago, TheMaria said:

Are you denying that men and women are different? I'm not saying that the dynamics are necessarily different, or whatever. We can focus on the sex/gender thing. Do you deny that there is a difference between two people of the sex/gender you're attracted to and one person of your sex/gender + one person of the sex/gender you're attracted to?

Are you saying that your motivation for liking two gay men over a man and a woman is that you only like men, so you'd rather leave out the boring woman character and add an extra hot guy to your fantasies instead?
I'm not condemning you for liking slash or whatever. You said, "gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender" and I thought that was an inaccurate statement. Being gay does not inherently make your relationships any different than straight couples. 

 

1 hour ago, TheMaria said:

Also I love how you chose to address pretty much only one sentence of everything I've said.

Because that's the part I had the most opinion on. It wasn't a snub.

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2 minutes ago, Alejandrogynous said:

I'm not condemning you for liking slash or whatever. You said, "gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender" and I thought that was an inaccurate statement. Being gay does not inherently make your relationships any different than straight couples.

I agree. There's so much more to a relationship than just sex. Similar to how a heterosexual couple has other important elements into the relationship than sex. Same-sex/gender couples are no different. It functions just the same.

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butterflydreams
9 hours ago, ChillaKilla said:

Wait, who’s ferishizing who in this scenario? I don’t spend a lot of time in that tag (for obvious reasons haha)

I feel like the trans women are fetishizing lesbian relationships. It’s just weird when I see it. They get all giddy about it and just post stuff all focusing on it. Honestly, I only follow a few trans women blogs because they’re sometimes interesting. Mostly I follow automotive blogs there. They have some pretty good ones.

 

10 hours ago, TheMaria said:

1. Trans women (post-op, I'm assuming, right?) aren't really different to cis women, whereas gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender. So that seems like it could justify straight women may being into gay men and straight men being into lesbians, no? Plus the other aspects I mentioned before.

Usually pre op actually, the same men won’t give a care in the world to the same post op woman. Also, as an aside, trans women really aren’t different from cis women regardless of surgical status. My comparison to trans women was only one of another fetishizing relationship, not to say it was the same in substance. I’m honestly just not understanding what the appeal of being into gay relationships is outside of fetishizing them. It just seems so much like the trans women I see fetishizing lesbian relationships. Like, those are real people in those relationships, not some stereotype of gay/lesbian relationships. There’s a lot more depth to it than that.

 

10 hours ago, TheMaria said:

3a. Notice how you talk about people would feel if they were fetishised, how you would feel -- that's the essential line I would draw, between what you do with fictional characters and how you treat real people who feel things. Yeah, often the fictional shipping bleeds into problematic real life behaviour, but that's not always the case and that can be avoided without condemning the shipping itself. 

I mean, I guess technically it’s not hurting anyone, which is why I don’t personally care that much, but I still find it weird to go all googly eyed over some fictitious gay relationship just because they’re gay. I guess maybe I don’t understand the “shipping” community. 

 

7 hours ago, SkyWorld said:

Tumblr is... quite the something. :mellow: There's so much fetishization of LGBT+ people, I try to avoid it. I feel grossed out too. They think they're so "progressive" and "accepting" of people, but only treating people like objects for their own desire and not recognizing people as actually people. It's the same as fetishizing women, which sometimes goes hand in hand (like lesbian fetish for straight guys as another example) as it's still an issue. 

Yeah, and some of it is among other LGBT people. I think they think that they can’t be fetishizing lesbian relationships because they are lesbian women, but it just doesn’t look that way to me from the outside. Any time you’re going all googly eyed over lesbians, trans women, gay men, etc, it just seems like you’re fetishizing them. You’re into that aspect of them rather than them as people. I’ve had 1 or 2 people into me because I was a trans woman specifically, and it’s gross. It makes you feel like you’re just boobs and a “dick”. 

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19 hours ago, Alejandrogynous said:

Are you saying that your motivation for liking two gay men over a man and a woman is that you only like men, so you'd rather leave out the boring woman character and add an extra hot guy to your fantasies instead?
I'm not condemning you for liking slash or whatever. You said, "gay relationships are different from straight ones just by virtue of being between two people of the same sex/gender" and I thought that was an inaccurate statement. Being gay does not inherently make your relationships any different than straight couples. 

 

Because that's the part I had the most opinion on. It wasn't a snub.

Yeah, that's a pretty strong argument for not wanting boring, unnattractive women in your romantic/sexual fantasies. It does make it different in the sense of it being same sex/gender relationships, but I'm not extrapolating anything from that about how people would interact or anything like that.

Sure, I guess I'm just surprised that saying all that I said about being careful that you're not actually causing harm and all that apparently means nothing if I make a remark about not being as into het ships.

 

13 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

I feel like the trans women are fetishizing lesbian relationships. It’s just weird when I see it. They get all giddy about it and just post stuff all focusing on it. Honestly, I only follow a few trans women blogs because they’re sometimes interesting. Mostly I follow automotive blogs there. They have some pretty good ones.

 

Usually pre op actually, the same men won’t give a care in the world to the same post op woman. Also, as an aside, trans women really aren’t different from cis women regardless of surgical status. My comparison to trans women was only one of another fetishizing relationship, not to say it was the same in substance. I’m honestly just not understanding what the appeal of being into gay relationships is outside of fetishizing them. It just seems so much like the trans women I see fetishizing lesbian relationships. Like, those are real people in those relationships, not some stereotype of gay/lesbian relationships. There’s a lot more depth to it than that.

 

I mean, I guess technically it’s not hurting anyone, which is why I don’t personally care that much, but I still find it weird to go all googly eyed over some fictitious gay relationship just because they’re gay. I guess maybe I don’t understand the “shipping” community. 

 

Yeah, and some of it is among other LGBT people. I think they think that they can’t be fetishizing lesbian relationships because they are lesbian women, but it just doesn’t look that way to me from the outside. Any time you’re going all googly eyed over lesbians, trans women, gay men, etc, it just seems like you’re fetishizing them. You’re into that aspect of them rather than them as people. I’ve had 1 or 2 people into me because I was a trans woman specifically, and it’s gross. It makes you feel like you’re just boobs and a “dick”. 

Yes, just like there's a lot more depth into the way that a lot of people ship their gay ships -- which again, are fictional characters, not real people on tumblr. But there is also a time and place for stuff without any depth, and I would advise against throwing shade at people for what kind of porn they get off to (not saying you're doing that).

And if you just find it weird, yeah, that's cool. I just got the impression you actually had a problem with it bc I wouldn't go around expressing my personal negative opinions about fetishes I find weird and gross just on a preference level.

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