y’know, if you’re at least trying to pretend that you care about other women besides women that are exactly like you, you’d think that you wouldn’t go around saying how stupid women that are attracted to men are and how much smarter you are than them
this thing baffles me so much tbh
like, i want everyone to have happy sex lives, whatever their gender or orientation
i feel like i missed some memo informing me that was never the goal
I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar – indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical – to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
I’ve gotten a few messages asking for (well, in some cases more “demanding”) elaboration, so: here are a few of the primary areas in which I’ve observed that arguments against bi inclusion and arguments against ace inclusion tend to exhibit significant overlap. There may well be others – these are simply the ones I’ve run into most frequently.
The Passing Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks don’t have any grounds to complain about discrimination and violence suffered in relation to their orientation, because a bisexual person is able to pass as straight simply by choosing partners of the appropriate gender. Therefore, any discrimination and violence that a bisexual person does experience must be construed as voluntarily undertaken, since they could have passed, and freely chose not to.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that being ace poses no particular barrier to seeking a partner of a socially acceptable gender, so any failure to do so must likewise be construed as voluntary.
The Performativity Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from queer communities because sexual orientation is purely performative; i.e., being gay is defined in terms of currently having a sexual partner of the same gender. A bisexual person who has a partner of a different gender is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person, and must therefore be regarded as straight. Conversely, a bisexual person whose current partner is of the same gender must nonetheless be regarded with suspicion, because they could “turn straight” at any time simply by leaving that partner.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that their orientation has no discernible performative component; an ace person is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person who simply isn’t involved in a sexual relationship at that particular moment, so ace folks must therefore be regarded as straight by default.
(An astute reader may notice that the passing argument dovetails neatly into the performativity argument: those who choose not to seek partners of a socially acceptable gender may be dismissed because any violence and discrimination they experience is a consequence of their voluntary failure to pass, while those who do seek such partners are performatively straight and therefore to be shunned. It’s a neat little system.)
The Mistaken Identity Argument
It has been argued that, while bisexual folks may suffer discrimination and physical and sexual violence, they’re not targeted by such acts because they’re bisexual. Any discrimination and violence a bisexual person suffers in relation to their orientation is suffered because they were mistaken for a gay person. Any effort on their part to discuss such experiences is therefore to be regarded as appropriative, in spite of the fact that they personally experienced it. In short, a bisexual person’s own experience of violence and discrimination doesn’t truly “belong” to them: it “belongs” to the purely hypothetical gay person their persecutors allegedly mistook them for.
This argument is applied to ace folks practically verbatim – no particular adaptation is necessary.
I’ll add The Contribution Argument, which involves one of these gatekeeping behaviors:
1) rewriting history to erase bisexual and asexual contributions to political LGBTQ rights movements, and then claiming that bisexuals and asexuals have never done anything for the community at large
2) arguing that modernday bisexuals and asexuals should be excluded from current political movements because our goals are distinct from, or even contradictory to the goals of the LGBTQ rights movement at large
3) interpreting any attempt on the part of bi/asexuals to make safe spaces for ourselves within the community as an attack on LG safe spaces, generally by reframing bi/ace pride as homo/lesbophobia, or by dismissing accusations of bi/acephobia as inherently homo/lesbophobic
In other words, arguing that bisexuals and asexuals, rather than being contributing members of the community, are parasites on the community, leeching from, and undermining the community and its goals.
The Contribution Argument is an interesting one because it goes way beyond popular biphobia.
It’s often been asserted that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from the LG community because that community is specifically for folks who experience homophobia, and bisexual folks don’t experience homophobia, save by misidentification. (See the Mistaken Identity Argument, above.)
However, anybody who’s over the age of 30 can tell you that the positioning of the experience of homophobia as the community’s great unifier is, itself, a relatively novel development.
Up until quite recently (and by “recently” I mean as recently as the mid 1980s), even lesbians were routinely characterised by the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism as unwelcome parasites, riding on the movement’s coattails and contributing nothing in return.
Not only is identifying the experience of homophobia – defined narrowly as discrimination against those who are actively involved in sexual relationships with persons of the same gender – as the sole qualifier for inclusion a totally arbitrary place to draw the line, it’s baldly ahistorical.
Historically, a great many folks who do experience this type of homophobia have routinely been left out in the cold by mainstream activism for gender and sexual minorities – and the Contribution Argument, as you’ve outlined it here, is one of the primary tools that’s been used to justify that exclusion.
this post is literally just “why won’t those big meanie gays let asexuals in their club??? :(” written in the form of a jargon-filled essay for a philosophy class
I love your wording; because that’s precisely it. Its the “gay club.” As in, its the same fuckers who wanted us bi people to be excluded. It’s the same people who argued that we should drop the “T” to focus on the “gay movement.”
Newsflash: no one wants an invitation to that party. No one is “invading.” No one wants to be included in your “gay club.”
What we want is shits like you to quit perpetuating intra community bigotry and hatred in the LGBT+; because the only ones treating it like a “club” are those of you that check the “queer credentials” of everyone looking for a safe space and stamp their hands with “gay enough I guess” to let us pass through the gates. (Not that we get the same treatment as the ~VIP cis gays~ anyway.)
Anyway, nice to know that you people are still ignoring when bi ppl speak and repurpose that biphobia as ace hatred in the same breath :)))))) kinda :))))))) reinforces the points above :))))))))))
Also the idea that you have to have the consistent ability to perform your sexual orientation on a daily basis in order to be oppressed enough to be welcomed into the exclusive “gay club” is pretty shitty. The point of having inclusive spaces is to allow people a specific space where they feel they can comfortably perform and express their orientation/identity/etc, but if you gatekeep, what you’re telling people (bi and ace people in the case of this discussion) is that they must subject themselves to a constant barrage of discrimination in order to be worthy enough to access a space where they do not feel discriminated against, which just defeats the purpose of said “inclusive” space, doesn’t it?
Why should anyone demand that certain members of the LGBTQ community must run a trial by fire first in order to have enough oppression points to pay for a spot in The Gay Club? And then on top of that, tell them that even AFTER they subject themselves to said discrimination, they’re only accessing the same discrimination “real” gay people face and are therefore somehow insincere in their experiences because they aren’t “gay enough” every day of their life to constitute a real place in the community.
This is more of a personal note, but nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
Nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
There are, however, two other things that I think hurt just as much.
I’ll call them:
(1) The Complete Asshole Argument, which, I guess, you see being deployed as subtext advice, and which I think is a corollary of the “you only get oppressed if you’re mistaken for us” bullshit:
Everyone knows that bisexuals/aces don’t experience oppression for being bi/ace. Therefore, if you say you do, you are wrong, lying, AND probably homophobic.
And my actual least favorite one, (2) The Mindfuck, which is the hardest to challenge because it’s almost completely passive.
This is when nobody says, or maybe even explicitly thinks, that you aren’t oppressed, or that you aren’t part of the community. You’re probably even in the acronym they use. You just… never get mentioned as your own subculture. Your history isn’t told as its own separate thing. Your icons only occasionally get named as part of your community; the rest of the time, they’re named, but as queer, as LGBT, as “lesbians and bi women,” “gay and bi men”… or misidentified as gay, even when they’re out as bi/pan/ace, and alive to check in with….or worst of all, casually praised for being good straight allies.
The issues that are specific to your community don’t get mentioned. When a study or an article or a program or a workshop addresses an issue you face, it doesn’t mention that it hits you at a much higher rate than your gay and lesbian peers. Nobody seems to know that almost every effect of oppression hits you harder.
Nobody, period, looks at whether your community needs different solutions or outreach; everyone assumes that just offering the same types of outreach and resources to the community as a whole will help everybody in it.
Worst of all, when articles and studies do surface about you specifically, there’s no follow-up. The HRC had someone from a bi org write them an article, for their blog during bi+ visibility month, about the bi+ community’s higher rates of poverty, of assault, of suicidal ideation, of homelessness. Did you know that 20% of all homeless youth in the US are bi/pan?
But they’ve never put together even an awareness campaign about any of it. They don’t fight for us in any way. It’s even worse if you’re aro, ace, and/or intersex; then you might get a mention once every few years, if you’re lucky.
You open up an LGBTQIA+ magazine, or website, or book, and find that it’s really a “gay and trans” publication – if that. You visit someplace like the Castro, and see multiple flyers about groups and events for the “gay and trans” or the “gay, lesbian and trans” community, even though in practice, they welcome all of us.
You read, over and over, about experiences and struggles that are actually specific to your community, but which are glossed over as being LGBT issues or specifically gay issues. You only know this if you are lucky enough to have a connection to your community, to some place online or in person where people are sharing those experiences and that culture with you.
Nobody else knows about it. They don’t erase it on purpose. They would never erase it on purpose. But it has already been erased. It’s already invisible to them. Because the experiences of everyone in the “alphabet soup” are erased and suppressed, and only a very few of our subcultures have built up the reach and the resources necessary to make their voices more widely heard.
It’s a very, very neat vicious cycle. Mainstream society erases and isolates us. We all start out in mainstream society. We learn about ourselves and our cultures and histories much later, with a fair bit of effort on both our own and our community’s part. But we mostly don’t actively try to learn about each other’s.
And we get all the semi-subtle messages from society that bi+/ace+ people don’t exist. (and therefore neither do our culture, experiences, politics, history, etc.) And… it’s really, really easy to just keep believing that.
And that’s what society wants. And the system of oppression is set up to teach us that if we support and fight for each other, we will each get less… less attention, fewer resources, less support. That it’s better to pick one, MAYBE two things to focus on and fight for. One or two things to educate people about and insist are real and important. “Valid.”
SO YEAH ANYWAY, THAT HAS BEEN DRIVING ME UP THE FUCKING WALL FOR TWENTY-PLUS YEARS AND IT WOULD BE SWELL IF IT COULD GET FUCKED ALREADY.
a terf called me a homophobe,,,,,,me,,a bisexual queer. a homophobe. that reach lol
The lack of self-awareness here is… fascinating
“Bisexual queer”
“a queer”
do you even think before u type
there is nothing wrong with identifying as queer, which you’d know if your brain had more than one lonely molecule floating in the dark
why do bisexuals think their attraction to both sexes means they can’t be homophobic? it means you can team up with heterosexuals against those of us who don’t experience opposite sex attraction.
there is nothing straight about a bisexual person’s attraction. that’s like saying that straight men and lesbians are in the same category, which is obviously ridiculous. I’m queer, I’m bisexual, I’m part of the LGBT+, I’m not “teaming up with the heterosexuals” holy shit. nice biphobia there buddy
I am consistently baffled by this “bi women don’t deal with homophobia” thing that’s on the rise lately.
I mostly date women. At any given time it is far more likely that I’d be answering “tell us all about your booooooyfriiiiiend~” with “actually, she…” than “sure, he…”
I’ve never understood this idea that because I’m not penis-repulsed, everyone around me instantly accepts my girlfriends.
What even in the shit hell?
This strain of biphobia is so weird. That’s not how bisexuality works. That’s not how heterosexuality works. That’s not how ANY of this works.
Agree.
The whole “let’s be mean to straight people now” thing is weird to me too actually.
I get maybe wanting a closed off space or group or club some of the time, I like those too sometimes.
But leaving those spaces and STILL being mean?
Yeah I… what? Why?
Wasn’t chilling in gay space supposed to make you feel *better?!*
things like this puzzle me just because finding real friends is so damn rare
if i had to exclude cishets from the running in principle, i’d be pretty lonely
i mean a lot of my friends are queer but dude what
this tumblr thing puzzles me more and more with each passing day
Hmm. I remember somewhere reading a bit by someone who had visiting a foreign culture where he didn’t speak the language and hit it off with the only other American there, and they bonded quite strongly over the course of that trip and made plans to meet up back in America, but when they did, he found that they didn’t actually have that much of a connection, and in the foreign country it was simply their unique shared experiences in a sea of foreignness that gave them a sense of closeness.
The linked post seems like it might be the same sort of thing. Friendships tend naturally to continue along at the same level of intensity until there’s a “breakthrough” that drops you down to a deeper friend level, and that can take a long time, but if you’re able to share a close personal experience with someone that the rest of society is unable to relate to – something that maies you feel alienated normally – that can drop you into a very high level of intimacy almost immediately. That can be valuable since it happens when it’s most needed, but it has the drawback alluded to in the story I mentioned: the initial similarity is rarely enough to support a lasting and functional relationship, so when the dust settles you may find yourself on extremely familiar terms with someone you just aren’t that into.
Yeah. That was basically my experience with the kink scene—since those were THE ONLY PEOPLE I COULD TRUST WITH MY HORRIBLE SECRET I trusted them immediately and fully.
I made a lot of real friends, yes!
but I also got way too close to some iffy people way too quickly. And found myself going “what the HELL?” fairly often when the shiny wore off.
That’s why I feel so uneasy when I see kids here going “queer GOOD cishet BAD.” Because the actual fault line for “this person is a true friend” isn’t “this person has similar life experiences to me.” It’s “this person is someone I consistently like and respect.”
That can be someone who shares a lot of traits with you OR someone who shares almost none.
This was also my experience with the kink scene, which was also my first experience with the Queer Scene (as opposed to just queer people, who I’ve been around all my life :P). Insta-connection based on a shared, deep, stigmatized part of How We Worked.
That insta-connection sure made a good bond for abusive people to fall back on. “Oh, she’d never rape anyone, she teaches consent classes, she’s one of us!” She was more involved in the scene so she had more connections, and I was the weird critical outsider (I thought I was an insider) and I had to be a liar because she couldn’t have done what I claimed. Except she did, and I hope she doesn’t do it again, but I have little confidence.
Be careful out there, folks. Someone can have all sorts of things in common with you, someone can “get” you on a truly deep level, someone can volunteer for wonderful causes and write amazing theory, and that someone can still abuse you.
100%. I stayed with an abusive girlfriend because I was a feminist and the other feminists around me kept saying “there is no power dynamic in lesbian relationships like there is in straight ones.”
Which my brainweasels interpreted as “whatever this is, it isn’t a power dynamic. You must deserve this.”
It took me a while to not give a damn what it was and decide it was ok to “fail at being gay.”
All great points above, but also, being queer/gay/lgbt/whatever doesn’t actually necessarily mean you’ll have the same experience being that as other lgbt people around you. That’s what confuses me, personally, when people go on these extended tangents about how great and necessary it is to have friends that are gay/women/your ethnicity/your whatever, etc., just like you, and how you’ll be instant friends bc of that shared experience, bc … it doesn’t really work like that??
so many lgbt people have the experience of being that – that’s completely different from my own. on top of that, there are plenty of lgbt people I just don’t like hanging out with for various reasons. also plenty of women i can’t stand. and plenty of nonbinary people. we may have smth in common, but we still have a bunch more things very much NOT in common.
thanks for making me question every fucking post that has the word ‘cishet’ or ‘lgbt’ or a million other dogwhistles (lots of them words that were actually needed for intra-community discussion)
thanks for making my friend question their own sexuality bc apparently minors aren’t allowed to be ace anymore (even though their peers are all talking about sex and their sexuality)
thanks for making shitty ahistoric exclusionary definitions of the community that don’t just harm a-spec people (not all bi people are fucking “”“sga”“”, and not all nonbinary people id as trans)
thanks for saying ace headcanons aren’t allowed (apparently they’re all racist or ableist or homophobic)
thanks for not letting ace people see themselves in their favorite characters (apparently i, an nd aroace poc, am a racist ableist homophobe for headcanoning a fav character of mine, a queer-coded, somewhat nd-coded poc as ace, just like all my other favs)
thanks for making me terrified that another person i follow is gonna turn out to be one of you (it’s happened far too many times)
thanks for making me check to make sure i’m not following an aphobe before following a blog (oh shit am i out of spoons for the day? guess i can’t follow this blog until i get some back!)
oh, wait, shit, did i say ‘thanks’? i meant ‘fuck you’. try that instead.
do you know how long it took me to come to terms with the fact that i’m aro? every part of society was screaming at me that i was broken, that of course i would fall in love, it’s natural, it’s what makes us human!
i can name all of one canonically ace character in popular media (jughead from the archie comics). i can’t name a single canonically aro one. anyone coded as ace or aro? they’re a robot (aros/aces aren’t human!), or they’re too busy with their work (it’s a choice!) or some other shit.
i felt i was inhuman and broken for so long even after i found a word for who i was. thank fucking god i was able to find ace positivity blogs that posted aro positivity too or i’d think i was still broken. if the ace discourse had been going on then who knows what i would have done.
being ace, being aro isn’t all fun and games and privilege. it’s never seeing yourself on tv, it’s getting asked invasive questions when you come out, it’s getting dismissed and dehumanized, it’s a million little things and a fair number of big ones, too.
so yeah.
fuck you.
Thanks for making me question whether the ‘safe space’ group for ‘any orientation’ will let me in or not
Thanks for getting me to freak a librarian out on craft night for the ‘Queer Book Club’ (their term not mine) when showing up early and checking for exit routes from the meeting room in case something went horribly wrong made it look like I was casing the joint.
Turns out they’ve been looking for and failing to find ace-centric book selections for a while now, with no attendees before me who identified as aromantic or asexual. They didn’t know why none of us were showing up.
Thanks for making me explain to a librarian why the ‘Queer Book Club’ is the scariest organization for in ten miles any direction in the eyes of some of the library patrons targeted by that programming because of things online they can do nothing about.
Thanks for frightening me out of going back, even when the book of the month was something I wanted to read and listen to discussion about (nonfiction book on the worst of the AIDS epidemic). I haven’t seen that librarian since, they’re probably wondering what they did wrong.
I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar – indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical – to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
I’ve gotten a few messages asking for (well, in some cases more “demanding”) elaboration, so: here are a few of the primary areas in which I’ve observed that arguments against bi inclusion and arguments against ace inclusion tend to exhibit significant overlap. There may well be others – these are simply the ones I’ve run into most frequently.
The Passing Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks don’t have any grounds to complain about discrimination and violence suffered in relation to their orientation, because a bisexual person is able to pass as straight simply by choosing partners of the appropriate gender. Therefore, any discrimination and violence that a bisexual person does experience must be construed as voluntarily undertaken, since they could have passed, and freely chose not to.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that being ace poses no particular barrier to seeking a partner of a socially acceptable gender, so any failure to do so must likewise be construed as voluntary.
The Performativity Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from queer communities because sexual orientation is purely performative; i.e., being gay is defined in terms of currently having a sexual partner of the same gender. A bisexual person who has a partner of a different gender is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person, and must therefore be regarded as straight. Conversely, a bisexual person whose current partner is of the same gender must nonetheless be regarded with suspicion, because they could “turn straight” at any time simply by leaving that partner.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that their orientation has no discernible performative component; an ace person is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person who simply isn’t involved in a sexual relationship at that particular moment, so ace folks must therefore be regarded as straight by default.
(An astute reader may notice that the passing argument dovetails neatly into the performativity argument: those who choose not to seek partners of a socially acceptable gender may be dismissed because any violence and discrimination they experience is a consequence of their voluntary failure to pass, while those who do seek such partners are performatively straight and therefore to be shunned. It’s a neat little system.)
The Mistaken Identity Argument
It has been argued that, while bisexual folks may suffer discrimination and physical and sexual violence, they’re not targeted by such acts because they’re bisexual. Any discrimination and violence a bisexual person suffers in relation to their orientation is suffered because they were mistaken for a gay person. Any effort on their part to discuss such experiences is therefore to be regarded as appropriative, in spite of the fact that they personally experienced it. In short, a bisexual person’s own experience of violence and discrimination doesn’t truly “belong” to them: it “belongs” to the purely hypothetical gay person their persecutors allegedly mistook them for.
This argument is applied to ace folks practically verbatim – no particular adaptation is necessary.
I’ll add The Contribution Argument, which involves one of these gatekeeping behaviors:
1) rewriting history to erase bisexual and asexual contributions to political LGBTQ rights movements, and then claiming that bisexuals and asexuals have never done anything for the community at large
2) arguing that modernday bisexuals and asexuals should be excluded from current political movements because our goals are distinct from, or even contradictory to the goals of the LGBTQ rights movement at large
3) interpreting any attempt on the part of bi/asexuals to make safe spaces for ourselves within the community as an attack on LG safe spaces, generally by reframing bi/ace pride as homo/lesbophobia, or by dismissing accusations of bi/acephobia as inherently homo/lesbophobic
In other words, arguing that bisexuals and asexuals, rather than being contributing members of the community, are parasites on the community, leeching from, and undermining the community and its goals.
The Contribution Argument is an interesting one because it goes way beyond popular biphobia.
It’s often been asserted that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from the LG community because that community is specifically for folks who experience homophobia, and bisexual folks don’t experience homophobia, save by misidentification. (See the Mistaken Identity Argument, above.)
However, anybody who’s over the age of 30 can tell you that the positioning of the experience of homophobia as the community’s great unifier is, itself, a relatively novel development.
Up until quite recently (and by “recently” I mean as recently as the mid 1980s), even lesbians were routinely characterised by the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism as unwelcome parasites, riding on the movement’s coattails and contributing nothing in return.
Not only is identifying the experience of homophobia – defined narrowly as discrimination against those who are actively involved in sexual relationships with persons of the same gender – as the sole qualifier for inclusion a totally arbitrary place to draw the line, it’s baldly ahistorical.
Historically, a great many folks who do experience this type of homophobia have routinely been left out in the cold by mainstream activism for gender and sexual minorities – and the Contribution Argument, as you’ve outlined it here, is one of the primary tools that’s been used to justify that exclusion.
this post is literally just “why won’t those big meanie gays let asexuals in their club??? :(” written in the form of a jargon-filled essay for a philosophy class
I love your wording; because that’s precisely it. Its the “gay club.” As in, its the same fuckers who wanted us bi people to be excluded. It’s the same people who argued that we should drop the “T” to focus on the “gay movement.”
Newsflash: no one wants an invitation to that party. No one is “invading.” No one wants to be included in your “gay club.”
What we want is shits like you to quit perpetuating intra community bigotry and hatred in the LGBT+; because the only ones treating it like a “club” are those of you that check the “queer credentials” of everyone looking for a safe space and stamp their hands with “gay enough I guess” to let us pass through the gates. (Not that we get the same treatment as the ~VIP cis gays~ anyway.)
Anyway, nice to know that you people are still ignoring when bi ppl speak and repurpose that biphobia as ace hatred in the same breath :)))))) kinda :))))))) reinforces the points above :))))))))))
Also the idea that you have to have the consistent ability to perform your sexual orientation on a daily basis in order to be oppressed enough to be welcomed into the exclusive “gay club” is pretty shitty. The point of having inclusive spaces is to allow people a specific space where they feel they can comfortably perform and express their orientation/identity/etc, but if you gatekeep, what you’re telling people (bi and ace people in the case of this discussion) is that they must subject themselves to a constant barrage of discrimination in order to be worthy enough to access a space where they do not feel discriminated against, which just defeats the purpose of said “inclusive” space, doesn’t it?
Why should anyone demand that certain members of the LGBTQ community must run a trial by fire first in order to have enough oppression points to pay for a spot in The Gay Club? And then on top of that, tell them that even AFTER they subject themselves to said discrimination, they’re only accessing the same discrimination “real” gay people face and are therefore somehow insincere in their experiences because they aren’t “gay enough” every day of their life to constitute a real place in the community.
This is more of a personal note, but nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
Nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
This is your decidedly unfriendly reminder that is this blog is run by a bisexual enby with ace family and under no circumstances will any form of harassment over gender and/or sexuality be tolerated here.
They have no basis in science, they’re purely political. People say this as a joke, but they really did start on this site. It started as a way for millenials who grew up with their parents telling them they’re special. Now this need to be special has leaked into their adult lives. We have child adults identifying as these abstract genders as a way to be unique. It’s also harmful to REAL trans people. Ones who actually have gender dysphoria, got diagnosed by a doctor, uprooted their entire lives to transition. It makes it seem like all that is just a fashion statement, a trend. If you want to identify as one of these abstract genders, by all means, do so. Just don’t expect people to take you seriously, and don’t call yourself trans.
Also dont lie to your doctor about being non binary so you can get on HRT there is a reason its harder to get on it if your not trans bc funnily enought it isnt essential to u its cosmetic, SO STOP LYING TO UR DOCTORS N PRETENDING TO JUSY BE FTMS TO GEY ON T THE SYSTEM IS TRANSPHOBIC UR JUST A TWAT THAT WANTS TO BE SPECIAL N ITS TRYING TO PROTECT U FEOM FUCKING URSELF UP
Uh NBs lie because we NEED hormones but won’t get them unless we lie, why the fuck are you mad at us for that?
OP needs to read up on the colonial origins of the modern gender binary so maybe his bigoted historical revisionism can be a bit less racist next time, and kiss my actual, diagnosed, on-HRT-and-fundraising-for-surgery, uprooted-my-entire-life-to-transition genderfuck ass.
OP needs to fuck off to hell, but if we’re suggesting reading material for the trip, these utter walnuts might enjoy:
– Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come
the fucking SEMINAL piece that genderqueer activist Les Feinberg published in goddamn 1992, which was what made the word transgender popular for the first time. AS AN UMBRELLA TERM THAT INCLUDED BOTH BINARY AND NONBINARY PEOPLE.
WHICH IS WHAT IT STILL MEANS, IF YOU LOOK AT THE DEFINITION GIVEN ON LITERALLY ANY TRANS ORGANIZATION’S WEBSITE.
They could read all kinds of trans history and activist works by Feinberg. They could read anything by Kate Bornstein, the NONBINARY trans activist who has been writing and educating people about this stuff since the 90s too.
They could read anything by Riki Anne Wilchins, a genderqueer activist who transitioned 40 years ago, started the Transexual Menace activist group around 25 years ago – which they definitely haven’t heard about – and Hermaphrodites With Attitude, which might have been the first intersex activist group? – and founded GenderPAC, one of the strongest trans nonprofits, and was named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century. Oh yeah, AND started Camp Trans, the camp that protested outside of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival for years.
(Honestly, almost all the progress we’ve had politically in the US probably stems from the work of nonbinary trans people. I can’t think of a good counterexample, other than maybe now Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who are both really strong advocates for nonbinary trans people?)
They could read literally any anthology of trans writing from the last 20 years, all of which will have authors identifying as genderqueer.
Fucking hell, I started a listserv (it was like a yahoo group before there were yahoo groups) for genderqueer people 20 years ago. I know somebody who still has the archives of it, if these yahoos would like to read that.
Even The Advocate, which was still doing things like polling cis gay folks about whether trans people should be included in the movement, was talking about genderqueer people in 1999. There were movies about and by us in queer film festivals like Frameline. There was an anthology specifically of genderqueer writing in 2002. This post has a LOT more examples: http://genderqueerid.com/gqhistory
Maybe they mean the word “nonbinary” itself, the you-can-say-it-in-front-of-your-mom version of “genderqueer,” was invented on Tumblr?
I can’t find anything on who coined it in a quick Google search, but i also don’t fucking care, so there’s that.
“Gender nonbinary people are as authentic in their gender status as transgender people who present with more binary gender identities or expressions…. As with people who have binary transgender identities, the process of gender affirmation and transition for those who are nonbinary is for some limited to an internal or purely social process; for others the process may involve a variety of gender affirming medical and/or surgical interventions.” (Which they go on to describe in detail.)
– They could talk to anybody at the queer youth clinic where my openly genderqueer ass (and a LOT of others) transitioned in fucking 1998. Here, enjoy: http://www.dimensionsclinic.org
Nonbinary people are trans. The only people who DON’T know this are the few trans people who are ignorant enough to not have EVEN READ THE STANDARDS OF CARE FFS.
(Obviously, anyone that ignorant is going to support cis people running the show for decades via the outdated and heterosexist SOC in the first place.
Obviously, it’s fucking fantastic and not at all transmisogynistic for them to be upholding what medical gatekeepers say as the end-all, be-all of Who Is Really Trans. Given that the history there, which isn’t even history in a lot of doctor’s offices, is one of forcing trans women in particular to pretend to be straight and high femme before they were even allowed hormones.
But hey, if that’s what doctors want, obviously they’re right, and trans lesbians and bi/pan women, and butch trans women, and queer trans men too, aren’t really trans either. Because that’s what cis doctors used to agree on!
Sure, that’s not what they say now. But they also don’t say that nonbinary people aren’t trans or shouldn’t transition anymore, so who knows what decade these fools’ sources are from!!)
implying pansexuality is the only sexuality that includes trans ppl is transphobic. implying pansexuality is the only sexuality that cares abt a persons personality rather than genitals is homophobic. implying pansexuality is an elevated/better version of bisexuality is biphobic. its fine to identify as pan but these mindsets specifically are still problematic and that needs to be recognized by the community.
Overall, queer was approved of by 72.9% of respondents, with 37.2% of respondents specifying queer was their preferred umbrella term.
Queer is the most widely preferred umbrella term, and the 3rd most approved of umbrella term, behind LGBT+ and LGBTQ+.
Groups that do not prefer the use of queer as an umbrella are: straight respondents, exclusionst-identifying respondents, transmedicalists, truscum, sex-negative respondents, and sex work critical respondents.
Queer as an umbrella was preferred above other umbrella terms by all gender identities, and by all orientation groups other than straight.
I’m fascinated to see that exclusionists are BY FAR the most opposed to the term “queer.” And that the only group that comes close to their 17% approval of the term is truscum, at 27%.
Not that I’m surprised they don’t like it. I’m surprised at the immense gap between what they insist, and scream, over and over – that very few people have reclaimed queer, that we should all avoid using it, that older people hate it because it was used against us but younger people hate it because only older people briefly reclaimed it –
and the reality of it being overwhelmingly accepted, preferred, and used, outside of all but a few very insulated groups.
What tickles me the most about it is that the one group where the majority does agree with exclusionists’ view of “gueer” is THE STRAIGHTS!
Like this makes me think so much of the whole “terfs and conservatives agree on a lot of stuff” -thing. (There’s a whole game somewhere, with quotes from terfs and conservatives where you have to guess which one said it, and it is a real fucking hard game…)
Like maybe you aren’t really all that much on the side you think you are, if you actually have a lot in common with the side that wants to hurt the group you claim to support.
We are officially done arguing about the appropriateness and appropriate usage of “queer.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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