That Time Tumblr Invented Its Own Genders

Comments · 4.1K

• SA

  @saksagan1436 · 7 months ago

  It's called MOGAI because it's mo' gay

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• SE

  @selkiefluff · 3 years ago

  I wrote my master's thesis on neopronouns and gender expression via language and let me tell you, us chronically online queers take for granted how tumblr is the only quotable source for so many terms we see every day. The absolute rabbithole of deleted tumblr accounts and fanwiki troll dramas I had to plow through in order to satisfyingly explain things to my mid-40s male professor was traumatic, and this video brought it all back 💀

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• XA

  @xafilmbyx · 3 years ago

  Honestly I am in full support of “made up” genders. They’re all pretty much  symbolic and if it makes it easier for someone to understand themselves I see no reason why they shouldn’t use them :)

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• CR

  @craftymuffin3066 · 3 years ago

  “Crazy teenagers and their genders” I am now twenty and I still have my gender! Little known fact, they actually let you keep them!

  4.5K

• BA

  @BaddeGrasse · 3 years ago

  Seeing "social justice warriors" stigmatise kink, polyamory, and drag all in one fell swoop is really something

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• OL

  @ollieskinner3532 · 3 years ago

  i will never forget when my school decided to ‘revolutionise’ sex ed in 2015 by having one slide on a powerpoint with about 25 orientations and genders on and link to a MOGAI blog and i remember thinking “oh my god this is gonna set equality in my school back by a decade”

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• HY

  @hyruleeherb · 3 years ago

  to me, as an autistic adult who was a teen in this community back in the day, it just seems like such an inherently autistic thing. i love labels, i love making lists, i love being able to put my thoughts and feelings into words to try and make sense of them to others, and that can be so hard sometimes. it only makes sense that a community of young, neurodivergent, queer people would form online around the idea of being able to create hyperspecific descriptions of themselves as a way to work through and explore gender and sexuality.

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• NO

  @nollypair · 3 years ago

  i think MOGAI&apos;s biggest sin was creating the bi vs. pan discourse. those four years, bi and pan people were fighting for their LIVES trying to prove bisexuality is not transphobic and that pansexuality is not the same as bisexuality.<br><br>i think MOGAI had a good idea in trying to consolidate everyone under a non-offensive umbrella term, but the kids creating it weren&apos;t knowledgable enough to do it.

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• NA

  @naoki5741 · 3 years ago

  Finally, someone that mentions the transition from atheist to anti-sjw channels! This made it so easy for me as a young teenager to fall into the whole anti-sjw mindset because as an atheist, I had come to trust these channels and their opinions so much

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• AT

  @atoaster1209 · 3 years ago

  What a nuanced take on some extremely fraught subject matter! The ability to say both “creating words to fit one’s experience is itself radical” and “the culture of crafting identities among MOGAI teens can be impractical” is really really important. Your defense of MOGAI, your linking it back to the rise and fall of the skeptic community and the birth of your channel, your patience, is all appreciated. This, truly, is a queer historian and a scholar’s approach to teenage internet queerness.

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• TA

  @TalysAlankil · 3 years ago

  that said, i 100% agree with your point that the microlabels aren&apos;t useful for building a community or a political movement, but having witnessed a friend break down from realizing that the word aegosexual exists as a word that perfectly encapsulates their experiences of the world, it&apos;s like…nice to have that vocabulary. you don&apos;t break out the thesaurus for everything you describe in the world, but those words still have their purpose, y&apos;know?

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• LO

  @lovesick_loser · 3 years ago

  i was personally pretty hurt by the mogai-related infighting (the ace discourse... *shudders*) that happened, so i cant say i have super fond memories of this era, but the actual aftermath with having terms like nonbinary and asexual be popular enough that i can use it with most cis people and they ACTUALLY GET IT is crazy to me!! THEY DID THAT!!<br><br>and while i literally had to leave tumblr because of my highly controversial takes in the ace discourse (that are now literally just considered common sense by most other queer people) and being sent death threats for other now common sense takes, i do appreciate the impact the MOGAI movement had on normal offline society!

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