smilingsub:

nerdvi:

thlayli-rah:

lesserkiwi:

anarchapella:

Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.

Give op their hard-earned notes

So my boyfriend uses “partner”.

He’s straight, I’m not. And when I asked him why he used it, his answer was simple “I like it better than girlfriend. It’s more significant. It’s what you are to me: a partner.”

Now, I’m queer. And until him, I had never considered using “partner” for my s/o because I was concerned it was this mild but explicit way of outing yourself to people. But realizing that it could just be another term, ordinary if not a little romantic, to describe the person you love— well suddenly it didn’t feel like such a big fucking deal anymore.

Normalizing a term like this doesn’t “steal” it from queer people. It makes it less of an outlier, less of a threat, and in my personal experience, more significant for the two of you.

You know, i’m with you on this one. I’m chilean and the spanish equivalent of partner would be “pareja”. Last time I was in a heterosexual relationship, i used it to refer to my BF of the time because I couldn’t bare the thought of being read as straight but I also was very careful about outing myself, so it felt like a good neutral. People were indeed confused, but mostly they didn’t give it a secon thought and moved on with the conversation in a normal way.

So yeah, i’m 10000% down with people using a gender neutral term to refer to their SO, it will lead to a safer society with less assumptions.

My partner started referring to me as such because I’m genderfluid and so not always his girlfriend it was a way of talking about me without misgendering me in anyway but I use it for him too as it keeps us equal and it feels more equal to us, we arent immediately put into a role in others minds as a relationship