Saying lesbians figuring out they’re bisexual is showing men that they can turn lesbians is ridiculous, because ultimately, it’s not about you. Someone’s own exploration of their own sexuality has nothing to do with you. It’s not your business to discourse about someone’s sexuality. You need to recognize that you’re just projecting your insecurities onto other people and you’re hurting people over something that ultimately isn’t about them.
“To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege”
literally, nothing exclusionists do, and nothing you say to an exclusionist, will ever matter. nothing will ever get a response beyond “nuh uh!”
they’ll phrase it different ways every time: “aces are cishet. cishets are cishet. they just wanna be oppressed so bad. they’re literally not oppressed in any way. they don’t experience homophobia or transphobia. they benefit from homophobia and transphobia. they are lying. that never happened.
“you can’t use their tumblr posts as proof. you can’t use studies about them as proof. you can’t use every real-life org including them as proof. you can’t use our community’s own oral history as proof. you can’t use our community’s own written historical documents as proof.
“lmao i’m not a terf, i’m literally an nb lesbian. lmao i’m not quoting terf rhetoric, i’m literally an nb lesbian. lmao i’m not consistently attacking trans women inclusionists, i’m literally an nb lesbian. lmao our movement isn’t full of terfs, we literally called out a terf once. lmao how dare you show me a blocklist of hundreds of terf exclusionists to call out, I’m literally an nb lesbian.
“anyway the community literally started to combat homophobia and transphobia. anyway it’s always been lgbtpn. anyway it’s always been lgbt. anyway cishets aren’t lgbt.”
some of the things that canonically Don’t Even Matter and are clearly Fake News:
(Same study: A higher percentage of trans aces are harassed at work than of trans LGBQ people. A much higher percentage of trans aces have had to quit school because of harassment, than of trans LGBQ people. A higher percentage of trans aces have experienced family rejection, than of trans LGBQ people. A higher percentage of trans aces lack health insurance, than of trans LGBQ people.)
I had no idea about any of these facts. Have so far tried not to get involved but according to these stats it’s a lot more important than I thought
honestly, getting involved in Discourse is probably pointless. It seems like the only exclusionists left are people who are so invested in their beliefs that they can’t or won’t even look at other information; they just insist everything’s all lies, and make fun of it without reading.
But getting involved in supporting aces in whatever ways they need/want, or raising awareness among the rest of us? That’s always worth doing. 💖
i was talking to my bi ace genderqueer cousin about this and pulled up the post again and like….
i just want to highlight this part. This list is all from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which had a sample size of something like 15,000 people. Which is fucking huge for that type of study.
A higher percentage of trans aces are harassed at work than of trans LGBQ people.
A much higher percentage of trans aces have had to quit school because of harassment, than of trans LGBQ people.
A higher percentage of trans aces have experienced family rejection, than of trans LGBQ people.
A higher percentage of trans aces lack health insurance, than of trans LGBQ people.
None of this is because we are trans. If it were because we were trans, then the numbers would be similar to the numbers in the other groups. The difference between the groups is that we’re ace.
I need to point that out, because I’m pretty sure the knee-jerk exclusionist reaction to this would be “but they’re trans, so it is just because they’re trans.”
And it’s not a surprising difference. It parallels what happens when studies of things like suicide, poverty, et cetera, in gay+bi vs straight people, actually separate out the gay and bi people. It always turns out that the bi people have the highest rates of whatever is being studied.
This is just the same thing happening again. The groups that get the least attention have the worst outcomes, gosh gee I wonder how that could be… and then that makes it harder for us to advocate for ourselves, which continues the vicious cycle.
basically, a lot of exclusionists have seized upon Pride Month as a great time to double down on claiming that “aces aren’t oppressed in any way”
this list is my gift to everyone who sees those posts and has to be like, “I mean, we might not die or be kicked out or assaulted for being ace, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy” or “so we should take a backseat, but we deserve to be in the car”
print it out, crumple it into a ball, and throw it at an exclusionist today!
A couple people have asked if they can use the Fork Theory if they’re not (fill in whatever, I don’t care.)
The short answer is, “Of course.”
I’d like to just say that gatekeeping takes up too much energy, uses too many spoons and sticks forks in people.
Both hubby and I deal with chronic mental and physical health issues. Mine are more obvious–severe rheumatoid arthritis on top of a stack of other issues will do that to you. But “running out of spoons” happens even to people who do have the physical ability to exercise, for example. Just because someone starts out their day with more spoons, or bigger spoons, doesn’t mean they can’t run out. And EVERYONE has a fork limit.
This was designed to be a corollary, not a substitute, and I would not for a second limit who could use this idea. Everyone, disabled or not, has limits to what they can take.
In fact, the difference, in many cases, between an able-bodied person and a disabled person, between a person without mental health diagnoses and someone with mental health diagnoses is very small, and can be encompassed by one word.
The word?
YET.
You live long enough, life is going to throw trauma your way. You live long enough, you will experience disability.
And if you don’t, well, apparently you are terminally unlucky.
Seriously, gatekeeping this particular thing is a zero sum game and I really wish people wouldn’t. We need the curb cutter effect of able-bodied people understanding our metaphors. Of being able to shorthand something and have someone else go, “Ah, I understand.”
It’s tempting for me, with how disabled I am, how much more disabled I’ve been at times, to think, “Oh, no one could really understand how bad this is” with the undercurrent of (I assume I’m handling this badly compared to everyone else, but if I’m the only one feeling this way, and others don’t understand, then it’s not my fault.)
The fact of the matter is that disability is hard, and isolating and literally anyone who went through what I have gone through would have a hard time with it. I don’t have to feel guilty about not dealing very well with it.
My sister said to me once, and it stuck with me forever, “This shit is objectively hard.”
And yeah, RA is. Lupus is. Thyroiditis and Ehlers Danlos and allergies and asthma and sleep apnea and depression and isolation and dealing with the current political situation and worrying about money and stressing about jobs and kids and and and and… this stuff is hard. Lots of people can deal okay with a couple of issues, some people deal gracefully with some huge issues and most of us? Just muddle along doing our best and it would behoove us to assume that others are also trying.
We discover in our online communities commonality of experience, that we are not alone in our not-dealing-very-well, that when some people are dealing better it may be because they have more resources or know information that they can share with others.
If we forget that the reason we come together is for understanding, and start to shut people out… we’re just part of someone else’s bad day. And I’d rather not.
(Oh, and as for the knife theory, it’s pretty damn simple… in this context, knives are the things you bleed from when you pull them out, the things that make triggers, the lasting traumas, the actual aggression. They’re the things you may need medical or mental health attention to heal from.)
I’m not saying this in order to berate you or anything of the sort, nonny, but I need to remind people that Ezra Miller specifically identifies as genderfluid:
Miller publicly came out as queer in 2012, and today he tells me his gender identity is fluid. “I’m comfortable with all the pronouns,” he says. “I let he/his/him ride, and that’s fine.” (source)
Which makes the rancid garbage in the notes of that post all the more goddamn reprehensible, particularly the turd who framed the whole thing as a ‘cishet man wanting to fuck multiple people.’
Thing is, nonny, not a single one of those initial people who screenshotted the interview, posted it and spread it to make fun of it would’ve taken even a second to try and understand his meaning or ask other people for clarification. Because they never approached Ezra Miller and his words with anything even remotely resembling GOOD-FAITH to begin with. To a particular brand of ‘rainbow regressive’ on here, Miller represents everything they rabidly hate. He was specifically targeted for slander about belonging to a ‘cult’ because he lies at the intersection of three currents of frothing hatred on here:
he identifies himself clearly and openly as genderfluid, providing a public example for other genderfluid, nonbary, genderqueer people (something which is anathema to the type of wretched persons who can’t stand the sight of anything that provides proof of validity and acceptance for nonbinary / genderfluid / genderqueer people)
he identifies himself clearly and openly as queer, championing the identity (and thus drawing the rage of the Cavalcade of Utter Fucking Shit that are the queerphobes on here – from radfems and other REGs to randos with piss-poor knowledge of their own community history)
he’s an openly polyamorous person, talking about polyamory and taking one of the brave, necessary steps that might lead to it being one day seen as equally valid as relationships based on monogamy (which, of course, cannot be allowed to stand by the individuals who loathe polyamory and poly people).
A few years back, I would have been utterly shocked and unable to understand how people with LGBTQ+ identities could treat one of their own as badly as those miserable individuals treated Ezra in the notes of that post. But the cold and brutal truth is that being LGBTQ+ doesn’t actually insulate one from social-conservatism, particularly with a few identities slowly gaining acceptance in certain quarters of mainstream society. It’s very possible to be an LGBTQ+ person and be a social-conservative, only with an exception for one’s identity and a few adjacent ones. In this framework
‘gender as a spectrum’
queer people who resist assimilation
respectability politics
atypical relationships models
are seen as something unacceptable and a source of anxiety, something to mock andattack. Particularly since, as far as a rainbow-regressive is concerned, us Weirdos, with our Weird Identities and Weird Relationship Models, are an active impediment when it comes to THEM being accepted by mainstream society.
This right here. Because they don’t actually want to dismantle the system of oppression. They just want to belong on the ‘right’ side of it.
this isn’t a cult lmao please read up on how cults function before you call any group of people that have sex with more than one person a cult
“Polyamory is basically like a cult” wow fuck you too
a poly man: i’m in a relationship with a bunch of people and if other people want to join this relationship the process is kind of selective because i don’t want to date just anyone i want to date people who i click with and there’s a lot of people involved who also get a say because i want my partners to like each other
Woke monogamous ppl on tumblr dot edu: This is LITERALLY a cult? this Literally describes a Cult?
Op just admit you are mad you could never get more than one person to put up with you hshshdjjdjsjsj
Like, no duh it’s kind of selective? Dating is selective. Polyamorous dating isn’t less selective than monogamous dating. Don’t call things cults unless they meet the actual definition of a cult because words actually mean things, OP. Demonizing queer people isn’t cute.
Yeah, unlike what some people might believe, we don’t just fuck anyone. Nothing cult-like about, you know, wanting to choose your partners based on certain standards, like…you know…everyone else.
This is… a really weird uncharitable description of a poly relationship by someone who has never listened to a damn word the person in that relationship said about it.
(I say this as a n obligate mono person who doesn’t really get it either, fwiw. But WOW. The framing here is just…. y i k e s)
Is the way the dude phrased things a little weird? Yeah. But if Jeff Goldblum got up there and said he felt like he’d married his wife 25 lifetimes ago the moment they met, y’all be calling it #goals
This, btw, is what polyam people are talking about when we say “sometimes we face bigotry or oppression for being polyam.” Because OP’s attitude isn’t unusual. Framing a polycule as a “sex cult” is the go-to #1 way even vaguely socially conservative people see us. This is the exact shit that makes us very careful about who we let know about our situations, because shit like this gets you out of a job, or CPS’d, etc.
And god help you if you happen to be a man in a polycule that’s primarily women or that includes at least one lesbian. (Fun fact: Everyone in the polycule isn’t necessarily fucking everyone else in the polycule) Because no matter when you came in or what your position is, you WILL be assumed to be the “leader” of the thing and absolutely will be assumed predatory by assholes like OP. Even in queer spaces, people will be checking on your partners, trying to convince them that they don’t “have” to stay with you.
And while the sentiment behind it is good (trying to make sure people aren’t in situations they don’t want, trying to keep an eye out for possible creepos), it’s also goddamn exhausting.
I am allo as fuck. I experience lots of romantic attraction. I get crushes all the ding dang time, of all sorts. (Side note, I didn’t really understand the concept of a ‘squish’ for a long time, because I had never had a crush that didn’t have some sort of I MIGHT LIKE TO DO A SEXY THING component. And then I realized I totally have a squish on Reggie Watts from the Late Late Show. I just want to snuggle and talk about Westworld? But I’m like super crushing on him in a snuggly friend way?)
Anyway. Here’s the thing. Like. I can choose to either be an inclusive person who stretches out my arms and says, “come on up, bring that bit of wood you’ve been clinging to, and add it to our raft so that our raft is bigger, and we will all weather the storm together. I can see that you are hurt and tired, and I, too, am hurt and tired. And together we have a better chance of surviving.”
Or.
I can shove people off the raft, have a smaller raft because people aren’t bringing me their life jackets and bits of flotsam they’ve been clinging to, have a shittier crew on that raft because we’re all focused on who should and shouldn’t be on the raft rather than how we can get the raft to a safe harbor and take care of everybody on it until we get there.
Those are the choices. The only reason to shove someone off the raft is if they’re actively, that individual, a danger to people on the raft, because no one ends up clinging to flotsam in the middle of this metaphorical ocean unless they belong on the ding dang raft in the first place. They’re all on the big sturdy SS Cisheteroalloperipatriarchy. They don’t need our raft and they don’t want it.
Clearly, I choose the first one. And I’m glad to welcome you up onto my raft. The seas are high and choppy, and we’re not gonna make it if we have to weather these waves alone.
discourse posts making fun of ace kids for saying some cringey stuff are honestly so gross. like, when i first realized i was asexual, i was all about those silly memes about how i would rather eat cake than have sex. up until that point, society had made it very clear that sex was the best thing that could ever happen and that i should be always concerning myself with how to have it. which, of course, wasn’t something that i wanted.
and then for the first time, people were telling me that, no, i didn’t have to make sex my top priority. i could make mac n cheese and shitty horror movies and cake my top priority. and that was a Big Deal to lil asexual me. yeah, some of the stuff i said was pretty iffy and maybe even a little problematic, but damn! i was just a teenager expressing their newfound identity and trying to be proud of something that all of mainstream media was telling me i should never, ever be proud of.
so, you know, maybe cut those kids who are always going on about how cool it is to be ace little bit of slack?
People are allowed to be proud of their orientations and it doesn’t have to cater to you, ffs people
[Image description: A black and white picture of Marjane Satrapi, Iranian author and artist, next to a drawing which is presumably a self-portrait. Both depictions of Satrapi are smoking. Above these are the words:
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly.
The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
(Honestly, I’d rather we didn’t make fun of straight people at all. Heteronormativity? Have at, it’s ridiculous. People? That’s kinda pointless and mean imo.)
Lord yes. I am so used to Mean Tumblr Gay that I find myself feeling reluctant to call myself gay even though my last couple partners have been women and I am extremely happy to have a super awesome girlfriend right now.
Some of my friends are straight men who would like to have girlfriends too. Given that my friends are super neat and my girlfriend is awesome, I would like them to also have girlfriends who are awesome. ‘Cause it’s pretty neat.
Tumblr-gay is so aggressively about “stealing all the poor unhappy girls from Straight Men” that I feel… vaguely like wanting my friends to find healthy relationships makes me Insufficiently Gay.
I fucking hate it so much. I’ve mentioned before that I’m thankful I’ve had a concept of lesbian culture before finding the tumblr version, or I’d feel queasy even wanting to call myself that. Nasty cruel teenage goblins are so not my thing.
I do get it, though. Having just spent two weeks around aggressively straight people who assume everyone is straight and operate in this framework in which the world doesn’t make sense unless women date men and men date women… It makes me feel defensive. It gives rise to unlovely impulses. It makes me want to make them feel the way I feel – weird, gross, like part of who I am is a dirty secret.
And then, less dramatically, it just makes me want to be around people who give me a little distance from this heterosexual monolith, who step back from it and mock it as the Other instead of presuming that it’s the only thing that exists. I mean, queer women laugh about our mothers saying “when are you going to find a good man to marry”, but when you’re hearing it all the time, it actually is fucking demoralizing.
Mocking people is immature. When it’s not a one-off but something condoned and practiced by an entire community, it becomes indefensible. But I get it. Some teenagers are constantly spending time around cishet parents and teachers who have power over them, and their resentment at that arrangement can get redirected to less powerful targets. Everybody who acts poorly toward others has a life that we don’t know about, and maybe if we knew then we’d get it.
I think part of this is who you’re mostly around, though?
I mean, homophobic straight people (and homophobic gay people–tumblr doesn’t want anyone to talk about them but they’re definitely out there and can hurt us worse than our more obvious enemies) are common enough that we’ve all encountered them. But I think different people have different views about how common they are.
Like I keep wondering if people I hang with casually will be startled if I mention my GF, and they keep… not doing that, and just being excited that I have a partner and wanting to know what she’s like and wondering when they can meet her.
It’s kind of hard to see most hets as the hateful overlords when only a few of them actually act like hateful overlords.
It makes it really hard for me to stay bitter in the way Tumblr seems to mark as a distinguishing characteristic of Gay.
(Also most people I happen to know have straight parents. Bad parents are terrible, and most parents aren’t perfect and most of us have a couple emotional scars…
…but it breaks my brain to even attempt to presume ALMOST EVERYONE I KNOW has a bad person for a mom and a dad BOTH.)
Hm. I’m not really talking about straight-up bad homophobes, though. Most people I encounter aren’t explicitly homophobic. I’m privileged that way, but I’m guessing so is much of my tumblr circle (incl you), so take that as read. I’m talking about, like, hanging out with my Indian relatives, my mom is nervous about me telling them I have a girlfriend and wants me to take the pride pins off my purse so I don’t come off as weird, she’s prone to minor fits of teariness when she starts worrying I’ll never get married to a man, everybody I encounter at a wedding assumes I’ll end up with a guy and some ask me questions that presuppose that, that tiny look of surprise when I divulge this information, the hesitant “so are you gay, or…?” –
It’s not that they make life that hard for me. As a reasonably self-possessed adult, all of this I can handle. It’s that it’s their world and I’m just living in it, and sometimes it gets fatiguing. I’m aware that I have it good, though. Many trans people, of course, have the Hard Mode version of this shit.
So I’m saying, note that some people might be dealing with frustration you don’t feel, and although you recognize that doesn’t make their actions right, you can try to understand where they’re coming from.
Ah, okay. Yeah, living in a world that doesn’t accept you is very fatiguing. And I’m pretty sure I’ve done the thing too—when I first got into the bdsm community it was more underground than it is now. I definitely had a bit of a “the vanilla mundanes just don’t understand us” attitude, and… yeah, when you feel really alienated that’s a bit of a soothing balm.
The thing that made that… less appealing to me over time was… well part of it probably WAS just time passing. But I think another part of it was I feel so different from other people so much of the time that if I adopted that attitude about being gay and kinky and disabled and a gifted kid and someone who likes dark fic and and and I’d look down on everyone.
And that’s a lonely place to be. And when I read those posts about the hetties lmao smh smh that’s the overwhelming vibe I get from them: I’m going to reject you before you reject me.
And someone who does that isn’t happy, no matter how loudly they snicker at other people.
Not to get controversial or anything but can we stop with making fun of women being abused by their husbands and playing it off as ‘straight culture’
I lost 10 followers for saying we shouldnt make fun of domestic abuse victims.
can we also please stop making fun of men being abused by their wives thanks
Good addition
Can we also stop acting that domestic abuse is just a “straight” thing?
It’s literally teaching our baby gays that any same sex relationship their going into is safe and they don’t need to be worried about being abused and controlled.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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