Another thing that confuses me about the ‘butch/femme are lesbian only terms and m-spec women shouldn’t use them’ thing is that I’ve been seeing queer men use femme for like, a really long time?
Same. And it’s… telling that not a single word about them, that I’ve seen anyway, has been said by the “they’re for lesbians only” crowd. Like. If they are lesbian-exclusive words, shouldn’t gay men using them be just as in the wrong as multispec women?
I would ask why it is I haven’t heard a single word about that, but… I think the answer is pretty clear. (Hint: it’s multispec antagonism.)
It’s also just a complete lack of understanding of where the terms butch/femme came from. I can’t yell enough about how people need to look up Polaris and learn about the whole fascinating history of the cant that gave us butch and femme in the first place.
I mean, “Stone Butch Blues” shows men and women identifying as femme in Buffalo, NY’s bar scene in the 50s, but of course some random exclusionists on Tumblr.hell can go off, I guess.
Stone Butch Blues is actually set in the 1970s, but otherwise you’re dead on. 🙂
Hell, there’s a book on my shelf with quotes describing men as butch that go back to the 40′s (so what’s that whole “it came out of 50′s lesbian bar culture” thing again?):
Like most of Derrick’s partners – among them the “butch number” in charge of the electricity generator – Fred marries and raised a family after the war [WWII] was over.
[…]
The New Zealand Pictorial drew 1955 to a close with tales of this new urban phenomenon. Like the Observer some eight years earlier, the Pictorial managed to moralise, inform and titillate all at the same time:
“Homosexuals have a strict code of their own and on no account will they sexually associate with women. Oddly enough they fight among themselves like kilkenny cats [sic]. For this reason a group of homosexuals is always controlled by the “queen bee” whose word is absolutely final. Others in the sect are “marthas”, who dress as women; “arthurs”, who adopt the normal male role, and “butchs” who stand in either way.”
[AN: this was written by straight people, and as such may not be accurate terminology, but it also stands as evidence that these terms were widespread enough for straight people to notice them.]
[…]
One avid party-goer wrote about this in-between time of evening in “The Night Is Young and We’re So Beautiful”, an unpublished 1966 story about his Auckland social circle:
[cut for length] “The more discreet or nervous would exit hurriedly and linger not. They would attempt an air of “How ever did I get mixed up with this lot when I was really drinking in the side bar with all those butch sporty types?”, and rush to their transport looking neither to right nor to left. “
– from Mates & Lovers: A History Of Gay New Zealand by Chris Brickell
Also, there’s a claim that floats around sometimes that butch and femme mean different things for lesbians because they relate to gender identity and expression. That’s a cool claim! It also goes for gay men:
Many stereotypes of gay men presume some form of cross-gender identification and remain prevalent even though the past two decades have seen a large-scale “butch shift” among gay men in Western communities.
[…]
“Butch is to straight-acting what camp is to effeminate – it’s like taking qualities that we consider masculine and over-emphasising them.”
“Butch can be camp in a way. It’s almost like it’s an exaggerated, overblown, unrealistic version of masculinity – you know, it’s not real.”
While butch is taken to clearly be a performance and generally a self-conscious and entertaining one, straight-acting is ambiguous in the same way as camp.
[…]
“When I first came out I actually got quite camp in both my speaking style and my movement style and then sort of when I decided that was actually really dumb, I swung back and got sort of completely butch in both and now I think I’ve sort of settled somewhere in the middle somewhere and I’m quite comfortable.”
[…]
Interviewee: I think camp’s making a parody of the masculine stereotype [whereas butch] is trying to be the equivalent of what straight men should be, like really tough, macho.
Chris: Do you think it sends it up or actually values it?
Interviewee: I don’t know, I think both to an extent. I mostly think it values it.
[…]
The interview accounts discussed here suggest that, rather than attempting to dismantle the taxonomy that incorporates butch, camp, effeminate and straight acting, gay men are refining that semantic space by introducing a new dimension of authenticity to the available distinctions.
– from “What it means to be a gay man” in Queer In Aotearoa New Zealand (2004), by Chris Brickell and Ben Taylor
And as a bonus, some comments on gay men in film by Vito Goddamn Russo:
To make matters worse, it was just about this time (1969) that gay men, themselves buyers of the American dream, rejected the sissy confessions of The Boys in the Band, opting for the macho drag of Joe Buck instead of fuzzy sweaters and teased hair, in order to prove that homosexual men could be just as butch as anyone else. (Which is true, of course, but why bother?) Instead of recognizing and destroying the worn-out myth of the real man, faggots adopted the solution of the traditional male. Just as Marion Morrison changed his name to John Wayne, they jumped on the bandwagon and became part of the parade. […] George Schlatter’s Norman, Is That You? (1976) may have been the first pro-gay fag joke. Schlatter combined what looked to be good intentions with a production that only a hack could love and a solution that nobody could believe. The short-lived Broadway comedy about the parents who discover their son’s lover and gay lifestyle on a weekend visit went on to become a big dinner theater hit, and it is easy to see why: it plays both ends from the middle, refusing to make any comment on the situation for fear of offending someone. The black lover is butch, obviously the “husband”; the white lover is nellie, obviously the “wife.” Just like us, George!
– from The Celluloid Closet
Butch and femme are very important terms to lesbian history, I’m not arguing against that. But it hacks me the hell off to see the claim that they’re only for lesbians because that’s an active denial of my history and culture as a bi man. Plus, there are gay men out there right now with “no fats no femmes” in their grindr bios; try going and telling them that it’s a lesbian only term lmao
Thanks for adding all the citations! This is very good reference material.
Nothing that is useful to someone else is an anyone-only term.
I keep seeing this kind of thing. Guys. Guys, you cannot own a part of language. That is not how language works. We have made an exception for reclaimed slurs that describe identity, only because it does considerable actual harm to let members of a historical oppressor group run around using a term that people who look just like them used to scream at a specific group while trying to beat them to death (and even then there is ambiguity; the queer community freely gave their word to the academic community to describe them with, and now the term “queer” is a fully reclaimed term that can be used by anyone, despite what radfems and kids who can’t seem to grasp that every single term for homosexuals is a former slur have been trying to push on Tumblr). But you cannot say “only autistics can use the term ‘stim’ to describe repetitive actions they undertake that give them pleasure”, you cannot say “only black people are allowed to use vernacular terms that have passed into the media and the wider community of language because they invented those terms”, and you cannot say “only lesbians are allowed to use a specific term for gender nonconformity.” Among other things, a bi woman is absolutely in a position to be able to use any term lesbians use to describe anything other than “exclusively dates/loves women only”, and terms regarding gender nonconformity? All of the LGBT+ community has the right to those.
You invent language for the use of all of humanity. If you want to keep it to your community only, keep it off the internet and use only in small groups vetted to be your community exclusively. As soon as you use a term that is useful to someone else, expect them to pick it up, because humans are overall more similar than they are different. Your words have to have part of their definition applying to your group (for instance, misogynoir cannot be used to mean either prejudice against women in general or black people in general because it was specifically invented to mean prejudice against black women, and you can hear that in the word’s roots) for you to be able to keep them exclusive.
Pride Month is nearly upon us & i created this handy flowchart to help anyone who’s still confused
thats some tasty biphobia
How is this biphobia when to be bi you have to be attracted both to the opposite gender and the same gender? Did you think before posting?
The bi community tends to use “attraction to two or more genders” or “attraction to more than one gender” as its definition, not the one given here. @garlicsister please listen to bi people defining their own orientation, not others defining it for us.
I’m pretty sure the reason @inclusionistpropaganda posted about nonbinary and genderqueer people right after saying “thats some tasty biphobia” is because many people don’t feel that they have a same/similar gender to be attracted too?
i was simplifying for the sake of the limited space allowed for commenting on a post. here’s an example of what i was trying to say with my comments and the organization of the chart.
first, a man who is attracted to women and nonbinary people is simply transphobic. he is looking at nonbinary people and either seeing different flavors of women, or he’s seeing something to fetishize. if he’s attracted to women, nonbinary people, and men, there’s still a possibility that his attraction to nonbinary people is rooted in transphobia, but we now have a guarantee of attraction to at least two genders.
second, lesbian, gay, and bi people (i leave trans people out of this particular point because it’s not the place for those particular nuances) are oppressed for the attraction we feel. gay men are oppressed because we are attracted to men. lesbians are punished for attraction to women and their inherent unavailability to men. bi men and women are oppressed because they experience some attraction to their own gender, and are not correctly performing their expected role of “exclusive heterosexual attraction” (nonbinary bi people are oppressed on two axes here: not conforming to their birth assigned gender and not correctly performing their expected role of “heterosexual member of their birth assigned gender class”).
third, “are you cisgender” was my first node by design. nonbinary people can see that question and say “no, i am not cis” and follow it to the termination point that says “yes, you are lgbt” without ever having to consider their attraction. nonbinary people are lgbt regardless of their answer to “are you attracted to your own gender?” i am aware that the question can be irrelevant and at times even impossible to answer, so i placed it second, so that it would be a determining factor only for cis people, who are necessarily men or women
finally, a bit of self-defense. by brief time identifying as bisexual came to an end when i realized that the identity bore no relevance to my reality. the fact that i have seen nonbinary people to whom i am attracted and with whom i would consider a relationship does not change the fact that i will likely always be perceived and situated as a gay man, facing the material consequences of being a gay man. by either of our definitions, i could again identify as bi. i simply choose not to, because “gay” is a better fit for my economic and political ideology and for the actual way i live my life
1. I’m not nonbinary so I’m not going to comment on whether nonbinary people feel like they’re being fetishized but I will say that doubting bi people’s orientation is nothing new. You don’t need a “guarantee” that they’re bi – just listen to what they say.
2. Are you saying bi people are only oppressed if they have “"same gender attraction”“? Because “bi people are sluts!”, “bi people are more likely to cheat!” and other biphobic beliefs target bi people for beingbi, not “part gay” or whatever. Not to mention, some studies have found that bi people experience higher rates of sexual assault than gay men and lesbians, which doesn’t make sense if bi people only face homophobia, and not biphobia.
3. Again, I’m not nonbinary.
4. I’m glad you found a label that works for you. But just because you don’t think bi describes your experiences doesn’t mean you should limit how someone else describes themself. And if you don’t identify as bi, you shouldn’t be telling people who can use the bi label. (Tbh I don’t think anyone should tell anyone else which label to use.)
considering the # of people who don’t understand what lgbt means, i think it’s useful to remind people what labels mean and what they don’t
yes, that’s exactly what i’m saying. if a cis person doesn’t experience any attraction to their own gender, they aren’t oppressed for their attraction. there’s no structural oppression against straight transphobes who fetishize nonbinary people
But you aren’t reminding people what bi means…. since you aren’t using the right definition, you’re just misinforming others.
And biphobia applies to all bi people, not just ones that experience “same gender attraction” (like me). If a person says they’re bi, straight biphobes (the ones with the power to oppress non-straight people) aren’t going to ask “oh?? Are you same gender attracted??”
Also, how do you know that these bi people are fetishizing their nonbinary partners, as opposed to simply…. liking them? It seems like calling bi people straight without any reason.
If you want to call yourself gay and not bi, that’s great! But you can’t call bi people “straight”. Other people get to choose their own labels.
you can’t be cis & bi without attraction to your own gender. the lgbt community was built by and for trans people & (cis) people who experience attraction to their own gender (please attempt to read anything further in good faith & assume i’m not trying to force nonbinary bi/pan people to define their attraction as “to their own gender” when that might be impossible). like i’m sorry if the historical context of the lgbt community bothers you but like that’s just how it is
every (cis) person who says “i’m bi” experiences biphobia because people assume it means that the person in question is attracted to their own gender. Joe Blow isn’t gonna say “i’m bi” and have Hetty Betty ask “but wait, are you ‘bi’ as in ‘into dudes’ or…” because like… attraction to one’s own gender is necessary & sufficient for a cis person to be lgbt.
maybe they’re not! it’s also entirely possible that Joe Blow sees the nonbinary person he’s dating the way he sees, say, Diet Pepsi or Cherry Coke. even in the off-chance that he is sincere, being lgbt isn’t about ~deviating from heteronormativity~ or whatever. it’s about being trans and/or experiencing same-gender attraction. they still have access to privilege over real lgbt people, because the axes of oppression here are, as i’ve said, “trans” and “same-gender attraction”
Oh, look, the “Straights hurt us for fighting, guess it’s time to quietly assimilate” guy is also the author of this shitty chart.
And a biantagonistic, exorsexist asshole who thinks that it’s his G-d-Given Right as a Gay Man to minimize our struggles, redefine our attractions and our fucking identity, and tell us that we’re fundamentally unlovable, should we be politically inconvenient to him. Gee, I wonder why he thinks we should just quietly melt away into heteronormative society.
SIT YOUR BINARY MONOSEXUAL ASS DOWN.
We are not your possessions. You don’t get to define us, our struggles, our attractions, or our identities. You do not control this community you don’t even seem to fucking want.
I don’t know when the rule became “listen to marginalized people unless they’re inconvenient,” but it’s been a fucking bad idea every time.
aren’t you a pedophile or a pedo apologist or something? anyway, “monosexual” isn’t a coherent class and you should be ashamed of yourself for letting it pass from your brain and onto your fingertips to type
… Jesus, you really are a train wreck of a biphobe and nbphobe, aren’t you? Not just that but you bring up the fully-debunked pedo shit as a derail attempt.
You need help and many history lessons, but you think you know it all already, so, fuuuuuck this, i’m out. You’re a fucking dumpster fire of Nope.
But you don’t know if you’re autistic/ADHD and don’t wanna be offensive if you’re not
¯_(ツ)_/¯
For all y’all still exploring this, or are self diagnosed or community diagnosed… y’all aren’t being offensive. Keep on being you. It doesn’t matter if you ever get a clinical diagnosis or not. If you relate to the autistic and ADHD communities, and you find comfort in the advice and coping techniques we have to share, then chances are that you belong.
and word policing doesn’t help acceptance, it hurts it. Any of y’all what feels a thing feels the thing and can use the same words as nother peoples what feels the thing. Words is for communicating – if you restricts who can use them then they lose their value. Making up new words for the same thing based on tiny differences if F-ing stupid – we already gots too many words!
Ah yes. I remember when ~cishet~ aces started bi discourse in 2013–those DARN cishet aces, they just have a STRANGLE HOLD on the community.
i dont have to remember cishet aces making young bisexuals, most of whom are still trying to figure themselves out, afraid of LG people and afraid they’ll lose their community because it’s literally Happening Right Now.
also when is the last time you talked about biphobia in the community when it wasn’t related to ace discourse? it’s starting to seem like the only time this matters to anyone is when it’s related to ace discourse lmao
We talk about biphobia in Ace Discourse because a ton of REGs/exclusionists are biphobic. They continue to make up or change definitions of words and in doing so they constantly invalidate and erase bisexuals and other mspec folks. There’s a lot of bi/ace solidarity because bi people have already been through the shit REGs are putting aspecs through.
So try again with your “cishet aces are making bi kids afraid of LG people”. You know damn well there’s plenty of nasty biphobia in those communities and that bisexuality has historically been panned by gays and lesbians just as much as it has been by the straights. Bi people are afraid of the LG community because of those communities, not because of the nebulous cishet aces who are somehow responsible for all that’s wrong in the world.
More of my bi friends have been shit on by LG folks than aces, or are we forgetting that “bihet” shit that went around on Tumblr not three years ago. That wasn’t aspecs. Part of it wasn’t even straights. We’re just conveniently forgetting mspec antagonism from gays and lesbians because it’s the cool beans to shit on aspecs rn, are we.
Looks like you’re just as guilty of using biphobia as a discourse token as everyone you’re slagging off.
Oh, discussions of biphobia and monosexism have been happening non-stop, on and off tumblr, for literal decades.
If deetscourse here hasn’t seen those conversations, I imagine that’s a lack of effort not a lack of existence.
If you want to see more discussions of a subject, just find people talking about them.
Well, that and don’t spend years trying to silence those conversations, remove the language used to have them, redirect all of them to unrelated subjects like acecourse and lesbophpbia, etc.
It’s not bi people acting as ace allies that are ignoring or erasing these conversations…….
I honestly didn’t realize there was overlap until I dared ask aloud “wait so why does tumblr keep recommending me butch style/moodboard blogs but as soon as I look at the byf “this is not for bi women?”
An avalanche of angry people descended upon me to tell me of my “lesbophobia,” a word I’d never heard before.
THEN I started to understand.
If you don’t run afoul of Discoursey types you may not even realize they’re there.
@thisisbeabe jumping in on this reply chain the only way this stupid website will let me —
Firstly, as everyone else has kindly pointed out, this is about bi people who only date the same gender describing their same gender attraction as gay, while also retaining the bisexual identity due to its personal significance to them.
Nobody here is suggesting that identifying as “bi lesbians” or “homoromantic bisexuals” isn’t ridiculous. Nobody here is disagreeing in that it would be inappropriate for a bi woman to say “omg I’m so gay for my boyfriend” (but it is mysterious that this is seen as an inevitability for us to the point of demanding we alter our colloquialisms even surrounding our same-gender attraction 👀). It’s about language and ease of relating to material realities.
Would you suggest that a bi woman marrying another woman refer to all aspects of her marriage as a “bi marriage” instead of a gay or lesbian marriage? Should we add a caveat to the specific way we may experience attraction every time it comes up? When advocating for our own rights and lives purely within the context of our same-gender attraction do we need to add the caveat that we aren’t “fully” gay, even when the people oppressing us (often violently) don’t care enough to make that distinction? Because surprise, bi people describing our attraction and relationships with people of the same gender aren’t the reason that homophobes disrespect all of us.
To suggest that, say, women who only ever date women, who experience all the struggles of a woman who only dates women and only wants to spend her life with women, is committing an egregious betrayal by technically retaining attraction to men whilst identifying her attraction to women through common language (eg. “I can’t wait to get gay married/she’s so pretty I’m so gay/I love the gay community!”) despite that being a non-factor to the actual trajectory of her life, is impossible to divorce from the idea that the love a bi woman has for other women is less whole, genuine, and valuable, than the love of someone who is “truly” gay/a lesbian. That we have to qualify our love in a completely different way that makes it distinct from yours, despite it impacting our lives from the legal to the personal in identical ways.
This is NOT me, nor the OP, saying that the individual identities of “lesbian” or “bisexual” don’t matter, and in fact they said quite the opposite, by the statement that it’s important to respect the bisexual identity of a woman who only wants to be with women – and likewise, respect the lesbian identity of a woman who only wants to be with women even if she has complicated feelings on men. (I think the person replying directly above you was talking about the emergence of distinct lesbian and bisexual communities, specifically, though I see how their phrasing could be alarming). But all while respecting that both women, through their love of women, are experiencing gay attraction and the struggle that comes with it.
Also it once again places the blame for straight men’s violent entitlement on women and our perceived misdeeds. Str8 guys will harrass wlw whether or not some bi woman says “I’m gay for my girlfriend,” because straight men learned that they are entitled to harrass and bully women into giving them what they want from a misogynist, homophobic society, not from LGBT women.
Since I keep getting anons WRT multisexuals being able to use the terms butch + femme and positivity posts I’ve made for multisexuals who use these terms, I want to address that:
Now here’s the deal I’ll make with anyone who comes to this blog and takes issue with my posts: if you can refute these sources and provide me with actual evidence showing that the information is all bullshit and that multisexuals without a doubt have zero rights to use these words? I will be absolutely be happy to hear you out, read whatever sources you provide, reconsider my position on this issue, and apologize if I was wrong.
However anyone who comes into my ask box to complain without any legitimate argument + sources that show that multisexuals have no right to use these words (which “lesbophobe go die” does not count as, jsyk) is getting instantly blocked and I’ll be adding 10 positivity posts for butch/femme multisexuals to my queue just for you.
Deal? Deal. 🤝
multisexuals and queer men have been using butch and femme for a long-ass time. and hello, the standard “asshole gay” dating site marker is “no fats, no femmes”
Since I keep getting anons WRT multisexuals being able to use the terms butch + femme and positivity posts I’ve made for multisexuals who use these terms, I want to address that:
Now here’s the deal I’ll make with anyone who comes to this blog and takes issue with my posts: if you can refute these sources and provide me with actual evidence showing that the information is all bullshit and that multisexuals without a doubt have zero rights to use these words? I will be absolutely be happy to hear you out, read whatever sources you provide, reconsider my position on this issue, and apologize if I was wrong.
However anyone who comes into my ask box to complain without any legitimate argument + sources that show that multisexuals have no right to use these words (which “lesbophobe go die” does not count as, jsyk) is getting instantly blocked and I’ll be adding 10 positivity posts for butch/femme multisexuals to my queue just for you.
Deal? Deal. 🤝
This offer is still on the table, my pals.
Let me just casually bring this back around for y’all since I get a flood of asks ‘correcting’ me about who is/isn’t allowed to use the terms butch and femme literally every time I make a positivity post about the terms (none of which, btw, have had countersources – still waiting on those).
Also a reminder to y’all to read my byf/faq before you send in asks. This post was linked there, literally under a header that says “call me out”. I mean? 🤷
This is still so weird. Less than ten years ago, my gf and I called ourselves a butch/femme couple. We were both bi and both were open about it and NO ONE SAID SQUAT.
Corrective rape isn’t something just lesbians go through and forcing non-lesbians to create a different term for the same thing is just splitting hairs tbh
And the actual South Africans who invented the term have said it is open for anyone to use.
There, in the term’s original use, it is recognized as happening to: lesbian women, bisexual women, women who are not feminine enough, men who are too feminine, anybody transgender, and basically anyone else a violent such-and-such looking for someone to hurt thinks is insufficiently living according to binary gender roles and binary gender presentation. With having romantic and sexual attractions to the other binary gender being tied up in those gender roles much the same way American evangelicals and American protestant fundamentalists do.
In more basic terms, an attack on a lesbian there typically isn’t because she’s sexually interested in other women, it’s because someone decided she needed corrective punishment for Failing To Woman Correctly. Being a lesbian is just one of many ways the men committing these attacks think it is possible to Fail To Woman Correctly.
And no, the occasions where corrective rape happens to those presumed you be men do not count as homophobes being hypocrites because Rape By Object is a common theme in the attacks that the term first described. These are primarily ‘I am going to use sexual violence to coerce you into complying with a social role out of fear it might happen again’ attacks, not ‘the only reason you claim to be more interested in women than men is because you have not experienced the wonder hidden within my pants, I am now going to force this enlightenment upon you’ attacks. The sexual prowess or lack thereof of the attacker(s) doesn’t matter, nor does his or their sexual entitlement or lack thereof. Sexual violence is merely the chosen weapon for enforcing a set of cultural norms.
If anything, the western style ‘I am going to prove heterosexual sex is the best sex to you, whether you want me to or not, because clearly you’d prefer men if you had experienced me’ entitlement attack is the newcomer to the definition in use because the attacker becomes a visible essential part of the justification instead of merely being the anonymous dispenser of punishment for violation of a gender-based social code.
Psyops, especially professionally managed and government backed psyops, are very, very tricky business.
We have few existing examples of their orders, but one order we do have is the order to destroy queer solidarity by pitting us against ourselves, so that we would not participate in elections and political processes.
For that order to have been made, and then this political sinkhole to open up within months, is simply too obvious a connection to ignore. Some major social media pages focuses on queer rights have since been confirmed as Russian plants{1,2}.
The distaste for {subgroup} pride has always been prevalent in queer spaces. We try to fight it, but everyone in a queer group has issues. There is no way to avoid it. And sometimes, the attempts to keep things calm end up looking like favoring some groups in particular. In 2013, it was bis. 2014, nonbinaries. 2015, aces. 2016, nonbinaries and intersex. 2017, kink and polyamory. In 2018 it seems to be queers and pans.
All of these tensions and targets are always at risk, but until summer of 2015, when Russian operations launched, they had always been fairly subdued.
However, if you know what you’re doing (and farmed operatives do know what they’re doing) it only takes the lightest touch to set mild tensions into abject wildfire. {3}
Much like racial tensions were stoked to achieve the alt-right not by creating the movement whole cloth, but just slightly heating things until the movement coalesced on its own, I believe a similar slow boil took place in this context.
Remember, the goal of the psyop was to destabilize the US political process by electing Trump.
That means that people on the fence needed to be frightened into conservatism, and people who could not be frightened into it needed to be discouraged from voting or outright suppressed.
Empowering radical feminists gives more Trump votes- albeit not many more- and encouraging everyone else to be at each other’s throats takes away any counter votes against Trump.
Given that Russian operatives are known to have targeted queer groups, known to have targeted radical feminist groups, and known to have shifted as many people rightward as possible while setting the rest to in fighting, it is a completely reasonable conclusion that, although Russian operatives didn’t invent ace exclusion, they helped to popularize it very quickly.
This does not mean all ace hate is from Russia or all aphobe blogs are Russian plants. They don’t need to be. With two dozen blogs and six months of salary, even I could completely reshape the tumblr political environment. All you have to do is use your multiple identities to post positive content the implicitly supports the aggressive content from your other blogs, and have one blog in your network Get Big- have a fight with a popular blogger for example. Eventually, through the blog that got exposure, your other blogs, which are all incestuously interacting with themselves, will be found by and appeal to various different groups.
Within 2 months, you’ve now got 4 or 5 different groups of people saying either (x) is bad, or (x) doesn’t matter leave me alone. At that point actual people in the (x) group will start defending themselves, and you’re basically done.
You disappear, delete all those blogs, and don’t have to worry because the change was already made, and yeah, it will probably settle down in a few years, but that’s a few years my opponent isn’t operating at full capacity.
Or, if you’re lucky, you’ve artificially created a controversy on a long scale, the kind of thing you used to only be able to do if you owned one of the 3 major news companies and had a couple of friendly looking government agents on your show spouting your lines.
In any case, two months going 60-80 hours a week, anyone can at least start a fan war. 6 months with an entire trained team and a government budget? That’s enough to start a real war, maybe two.
3 years and multiple government agencies working multiple separate ops? Well, at that point, it’s a miracle there’s even a ghost of the US left at all.
So, the resurgence of radfems and the dissolution of queer coalition could, certainly, have been a coincidence that was always going to occur. But, in the full context of what was happening at the time?
There probably wasn’t an op targeting ace people or anything that dramatic. Just targeting lesbians and encouraging them to “return to their roots” and become radical separatists was more than enough to achieve the shitshow we see today.
Note: The correct response is not to write off all intracommunity problems as Russian interference, or your enemies as Russian agents. The correct respose is to reject their message and embrace solidarity.
Solidarity is the nly counterweapon that has any effect on their actual goals.
discoursers: aces dont belong in the lgbt community go make ur own
ace ppl: *make their own community*
discoursers:
Really bc the only response I’ve seen to “make your own community” is “that’s literally all we want you to do” but ok lol
Idk man,going thru tags like “ace positivity” ,“ace pride” or
ace ppl’s photos on tumblr and reblogging the posts with nasty comments, making and reblogging “ace donald trump/ronald raegan/margaret thatchers/or X horrible person” moodboards(thus equating aces with homophobes/facists)and making and reblogging those “cringey asexual” posts(thereby implying that there is something inherently “cringey” with being ace)really dosent scream “Thats
literally all we want you to do “ to me lmfao.
If the only problem with u is aces “invading” the LGBT+ community then dont demonize asexuality itself and stop erasing and making fun of our struggles which is exactly what 85% of ur blog is about lol
The funny thing is hetmarki says this, but was literally 1 of 4 exclusionists who hopped on a non-discourse post, that was obviously not discourse, by a writer talking about ace headcanons and their own ace characters that got mistagged, and harassed them to the point where the blog’s owner had a relapse.
Tw for talk of genitalia and sex, harassment, relapse mention, mockery, and desexualization of aroace people
So I’m sorry but I don’t exactly believe hetmarki’s “nobody does this, we want you to make your own community”.
They don’t want aces and aros to make their own community for support and validation. They want aces and aros to make a social community that doesn’t acknowledge any kind of systemic marginalization or societal difficulty, because a community based on support acknowledges systemic marginalization exists and therefore begs the question of why it has to be separate from the larger community of marginalized orientations.
They don’t want aces and aros to make a community that looks anything like the larger community (a big reason they whine about meme thievery). They want aces and aros to make a community that reflects their biases about us and only exists for the flag colors and cake jokes they think are all we bother to identify as ace for. They want us to make a community approved by them, and therefore are making efforts to stamp out anything else.
They say “make a community of your own” but they mean “acknowledge that you experience no marginalization and just form a social club like straight people do.” And that’s why they feel justified in shitting all over ace and aro spaces, because those spaces don’t look the way they think they should and – and why they consider ace positivity to be discourse by default, because anything that takes the position of aces and aros being in any way marginalized is, by default, a wrench in their entire position, even when it’s happening away from them, so they show up to stamp it out and tell us to do it over and get it right and admit that we don’t even need our own community at all.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.