You know, one thing that confuses me about this whole “political lesbianism v 2.0” that has taken over tumblr is the whole “bi women give their energy to men”
Like, what even does that mean? I let them use my wind turbines?
Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”
And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”
Her response was, “Well, are you?”
My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.
The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”
I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.
Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular – but guys, value your allies.Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.
Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.
Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place – when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.
Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.
Signal boost to this unbelievably important message.
I’d reblog this a thousand times if I could.
Stop attacking allies. Educate. Not hate.
This is incredibly important. Please read!
Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving.
the idea that non sga bisexuals aren’t queer is a result of the homonormativity that pushes the idea that the salient feature of bisexuality which makes it “queer” is attraction to similar genders and not attraction to multiple genders. the truth is that bisexuality exists in conjunction with but entirely separate from homosexuality. we are not queer because of SGA (although for some of us that too is an aspect of our queerness/the only thing that makes them queer, which is valid but not a universal experience) we are queer due to our attraction to multiple genders and we deserve to be recognised and respected for that
when you’re straight but you’re mad about it
This is why I hate the term “queer”. It was used by straight people as a slur in the past, and it’s used by straight people to try and place themselves in gay spaces today.
Here’s the thing:
Bisexuality means attraction to both sexes. Not this absurd newspeak definition of “two or more genders”. Sexuality is about sex, not gender. Homosexual males are attracted to the male sex. Homosexual females are attracted to the female sex. Transgenderism has nothing to do with sexual attraction, and should never have been lumped in with bisexuality/homosexuality. But it was, and now people think that means that homosexual people should be attracted to the opposite sex if that sex identifies as their gender. But gender is made up, whereas sex and sexual attraction is a biological reality. So it’s insane to think that anyone should try to overcome their biological reality in order to satisfy somebody else’s demand to have their socially constructed identity validated.
I’m a Fucking WLW
Okay? Also if you’re gonna say certain people can’t interact with you in your About, you probably shouldn’t be seeking out and interacting with those people
I don’t know how to break this to you but ur on my post. I made this post. You aren’t supposed to be here.
When are exclusionists going to fucking realize that the ACTUAL straight people in society don’t give a flying fuck whether a bi/pan/queer person is “SGA” or not? Like… They still going to call you a f*g or a weirdo. They’re still going to assault you for being different. They’re still going to corrective rape you to turn you straight.
Like… It seems to me that exclusionists are under the impression that people are going to go “oh hey wtf kind of queer are you?” and then someone says “I’m a hetero-romantic asexual” and the response is going to be “oh sweet, you’re one of us, come on buddy, let’s go oppress those dirty SGA queers!”
No. ANYTHING that isn’t a heterosexual, heteroromantic, allosexual, cisgender response is going to be ridiculed and included in anti-LGBTQ+ oppression, because fucking homophobes don’t CARE about the specifics. They don’t CARE about the split attraction model or if someone is SGA or not. They will see someone different, someone who isn’t exactly like them, and they will throw the exact same bullshit at them that they give the rest of us.
And the sooner exclusionists realize that we are all fighting very similar battles against the same social institutions and the same prejudices, the sooner they can put on their big-kid pants, stop whining about people depleting non-tangible resources (and also tangible ones, because actually bi and ace people are being DENIED the same amount of resources as L and G people), and realize that not everyone is exactly like them, then they can stop peddling the same bullshit that homophobes and transphobes are by rejecting and ostracizing everyone who isn’t just like them or isn’t the “right” kind of queer.
I understand why you’re uncomfortable. You’ve got this idea that authoritarianism is only something that appears in totalitarian regimes that tend to target queer people like myself, so you don’t think it’s appropriate to compare exclusionists to authoritarians.
Only, I’m not presenting a tone deaf or ignorant analysis of the problem. The problem is actually that you don’t understand what authoritarianism is, and in your ignorance you send me a message like this.
Authoritarianism isn’t a political ideology, it’s a cognitive flaw that exists in all human cultures. Here’s a quick primer, pulled from similar things I’ve already said on my blog before:
Authoritarians are people who create a social power structure that requires obedience to a core authority, usually an individual but sometimes an ideology. They exhibit the following three behaviors as a core part of what they do.
Establish an in-group and then police it. People don’t just have to look like you, they also have to talk like you. If they don’t, they’re the enemy and you have to push them into the out-group.
Identify an out-group. These people are the enemy and must be attacked to keep the community safe.
Take your biggest, meanest, most violent person and put them in charge. They are now mom/dad and they will keep you safe.
Authoritarianism is, at its root, a cognitive flaw created by emotional immaturity. People who are emotionally immature build power structures that they think will keep them safe, and those power structures work by hurting other people. That’s why they have to imagine that they face an existential threat from people who pose no threat to them. To conservative Christians, it’s everything from leftists to Muslims. To TERFs, it’s trans women. And to exclusionists, it’s aces.
That’s why we keep pointing out that exclusionists talk like TERFs. Because they do. Because both groups are an expression of authoritarianism in the LGBTQ+ community.
Not satisfied? Neither am I, let’s go further.
Exclusionists are absolutely authoritarians. Here’s a short list of reasons why:
They have an in-group and they police it. To exclusionists, there is only the LGBT community. Anyone among those groups that don’t agree with exclusionists are policed in an attempt to exclude them from the community.
They have an out-group that they attack. Asexual people. And before that, bisexual people and trans people.
Their in-group doesn’t match reality. Asexual people have been a recognized part of the LGBTQ+ community for more than 50 years, but since that pokes a hole in exclusionism, they need to lie about it and claim that asexuality was a trend started by David Jay when he founded AVEN.
People in the LGBTQ+ community have been calling themselves queer for longer than I’ve been alive, but to exclusionists queer is a slur that must never be said by anyone.
Their out-group directly attacks people in the LGBTQ+ community in an effort to invalidate them, erase them, and deny them resources that they have every right to access.
Their fear of the out-group is entirely imaginary. Aces don’t take anything away from the LGBTQ+ community. Diversity is not a threat. Exclusionists just think it is because they’re authoritarians and authoritarians are always fearful and xenophobic.
This is not rocket science. Exclusionists argue that aces are a threat to the community because they take resources away from us. When we demonstrate how faulty that reasoning is, they fall back to claiming that aces aren’t actually oppressed. When we demonstrate how faulty and immoral that is, they fall back to their actual position.
Aces are the enemy, so exclusionists are going to label them as cishets and drive them out of the community for the sake of everyone’s safety.
And when we point out how that last argument isn’t just faulty, but also immoral and disgusting? Their true colors show and slurs and insults abound. Scratch an exclusionist and a hateful bigot bleeds.Your position is ignorant and tone deaf. You don’t understand what authoritarianism is and I find it personally insulting that you’d try to shame me into silence because you’re either too ignorant of the facts or too uncomfortable to acknowledge them.
Exclusionists are authoritarians. Learn to deal with it.
This is a good post.
I just want to add this:
When establishing an ‘out-group’ to harass and blame for all their problems, authoritarians frequently – maybe always – aim at people of similar or less social power than themselves, but claim that the designated out-group is more powerful than them.
This paints the authoritarian group as an underdog fighting a great foe, which encourages internal solidarity. But the bonus is doubled because the ‘great foe’ is actually fairly easy to gain political or legislative victories over; pretending this is nigh-impossible makes every victory a huge morale booster.
Examples:
TWERFs target trans women as the outgroup, but claim they are really fighting cis men.
SWERFs target sex workers as the outgroup, but claim they are fighting sex traffickers/the porn industry.
Exclusionists target ace people as the outgroup, but claim they are really fighting straight, cis people.
White nationalists target non-white refugees as the outgroup (& many others), but claim they are really fighting invaders who want to commit white genocide.
Gatekeepers need excuses for gatekeeping, after all, or they’re out of a job. But it’s not fun to gatekeep when you’re facing real enemies that might hurt you, so keeping busy with the ones you can kick around easily is a common pastime.
for the last……..i don’t know, 5 or so years, my m.o. regarding internet bisexual disourse has largely been to ignore it and encourage other bi people to do the same. it made sense to me because as far as i could see it was an issue that exclusively existed on this site. which isn’t to say i didn’t think it was harmful – i hated myself for years as a direct result of the things other lgbt people said about bisexual women on here – but i thought the harm could largely be avoided by blocking the few loudmouths who were trying to start shit and hanging with people who weren’t evil.
i no longer feel that way.
i no longer feel that way because, as of yesterday, you absolute fucking buffoons have ran your mouth so far that your fire new radical materialist feminist discourse so hot even fellow lgbts cant handle????????? has reached lena fucking dunham
do you want to know WHY your radical materialist feminist discourse reached lena dunham?????
because a bisexual journalist made this simple ass tweet
and in response, some straight white woman decided to tweet this
which would have just stayed straight nonsense if an extremely smart and clever white lesbian writer friend of hers hadn’t decided to join in with a searing hot take based on a radical perspective towards gender that could only have been achieved with her clearly useful phd in queer literature
which would have just stayed mildly irritating if she and the rest of her friends hadn’t proceeded to defend themselves by arguing that bi women deserve rape and abuse actually
which would have only been horrifyingly offensive if all of these people weren’t 1.) people who make money writing about lgbt shit that 2.) were tweeting from their work accounts where 3.) they have enough reach to be followed by actually influential people such as comrade lena dunham
so seeing as the “close your eyes and maybe itll go away” method has CLEARLY failed, i am genuinely pleased to announce my new tactic. its called
Can I also just draw out here that their argument is LITERALLY that “women who sleep with men deserve what happens to them.”
Like.
This kind of person is, straight (haha) up, the kind of person who is only here for “I want mine”. If they’d been born a straight guy they’d be the worst kind of bros.
This is a thing that happens: I know PLENTY of straight white women whose grasp of feminism is limited strictly to “this affects me, so it’s important”. And of every other stripe of identity.
But never mistake it for anything than what it is.
I recognize one of the names there
This woman gets paid for writing her opinions, having hot takes like “bi women deserve to suffer because of their sexuality”, “Picasso dating a 17 y/o girl when he was 45 is not that bad” and some bullshit stupid about butch women having male privilege
As somebody from queer journalism twitter lemme just say fuck this bitch and I see this shit all the time
Also fuck that person for saying an autistic woman has ‘faux empathy’ tbqh.
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it – there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves – normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation – to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table – and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language – or “community,” or social/economic/political support – of their own.
Oh hey look it’s the story of my growing up.
All of this is true.
Yes.
also, “qpoc” is a thing, like how about we not take away a term that a lot of people of color id with? thanks :))))
It’s the only word I have for what I am, that encompasses both identity and sexuality. It’s literally the only word. I’m not calling myself a “slur”, I’m using literally the only term that works to define me.
I’m not LGBTQ+. I’m not a catchall. I am a very specific thing.
I know there are people who don’t want it applied to them and I try to be considerate of that because I’m not a total asshole, but we CANNOT throw the term away.
i’ve said this already but wlw/mlm solidarity or w/e is fucking pointless if boys will continue to ignore misogyny and steal terms from wlw instead of coming up with their own
if you use the term achillean on yourself you’re not allowed to interact with this post
MLM are the ones who introduced “butch”. It was a word in Polari. Even the term “bisexual” might have descended from the Polari word “bibi”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari and the book they cite also lists “femme” as a Polari word.
they’ve been using it for themselves ever since. achillean is new, but I don’t understand why the fuck having a parallel term for sapphic would be considered some kind of cultural appropriation. seems like they SHOULD make their own word, rather than call themselves sapphic?
I did not know that about the origin of butch. Another mark for ‘this isn’t exclusive to lesbians,’ damn.
Can we stop it with this ‘stealing terms’ bullshit?? Like, what are you even talking about? Creating new terminology using the same convention as another word with a related meaning is exactly how language works
The stealing terms discourse is the absolute worst thing that has come out of Tumblr. Fucking stop already.
“Lgbt scholarships could go to cishet aces!!” You know some lgbt scholarships are open to cishet allies right?
also there are ways to remedy this (if it’s literally ever happened) without kicking ace people out of the community. Like literally you can make a scholarship only available to a certain group without doing any of the nasty shit exclusionists are currently doing.
ALSO plenty of scholarships go either unused completely OR get taken by someone who isn’t even remotely “qualified” for it. Had like a spokesperson come to one of my classes once and a dude applied for a women’s only scholarship and got all 10 slots cause he was the only person to even apply (also he applied by accident, he was just applying to any he got in his emails from some scholarship application website). Tbh I’d rather someone “unqualified” get a scholarship than no one get it at all
wild idea here but… instead of pushing this idea that teenagers can’t be asexual bc they’re children and not wanting sex is normal, how about “if you identify as ace as a teenager but later realize you just didn’t want sex bc you were a kid and stop identifying that way, that’s okay” and realizing that doesn’t mean no one can know they’re asexual as a teenager and stop maybe telling asexual teenagers that they’re too young to be ace bc that’s really weird given that teenagers are cetainly capable of being non-asexual also you totally can’t decide something like that for someone else
‘Here is your label, you can never change it’ is one of the most toxic things I’ve ever seen and honestly is the worst parts of pretty much any community there is. It keeps people from being willing to change or even self-reflect, because once they get a label it’s impossible to free themselves from it. And it’s behind all the ridiculous ‘well at one point you said a thing that all these years later in a different context doesn’t sound all that good so you’re a bigot and everything you do is terrible’ nonsense going around this hellsite.
teenagers especially need to be able to say “this is where i’m at now, it could change later, it’s valid either way,” because they’re still evolving really fast
anyone at any time in life can discover something new about themself and no one gets to tell them what they’re feeling
YES, and also??
The argument that “you could find out in the future you’re not ace, so you can’t identify as ace NOW” has an underlying sense that… identifying as ace is BAD. It makes it sound like identifying as ace is something you absolutely should not do until you’re 100% certain, because maybe it isn’t that bad, maybe you’re normal and you just don’t know it yet!
It’s the same mentality, I find, as people who think being gay or lesbian is a horrible fate you wouldn’t chose if you could, something you would change if it was possible. The same mentality that says you can’t be trans unless you’re horribly dysphoric all the time.
They treat the decision of identifying as asexual as some serious life-sentence instead of, you know, a simple way of exploring your identity??
are you seriously under the impression that ace ppl dont know that others prioritize sex
why do you think we struggle with trusting our autonomy, why do you think we hesitate to date others and come out to allo partners
and no, you are not being ~tricked~. you developed feelings for an ace person that doesn’t view sex the same way you do, thats part of them as a person, the same person you had feelings for in the first place, and if you actually respected them as a person that’s not a trick. ‘being allowed to develop feelings’ are you kidding me what entitlement is this
yeah yeah passionate sex is what you want. but us ace people will stay concerned about our own safety and sexual rights before we begin to worry about your dating preferences. itd be nice if you people began meeting us in the middle 🙂
“Tricked”.
Holy shit that’s some grade A entitlement. Sure, it’s disappointing to know you’re not compatible with someone, but they didn’t trick you by not telling you something intimidate about themselves.
As an allo partner to an asexual man – the kind of perspective that this anon is claiming to speak for – all I can add is that if your feelings for an asexual person vanish the second they won’t fuck you in the exact way you want them to? If you feel “tricked” or “lied to” because their sexual feelings aren’t up to your standards, or may not be compatible with yours?
You don’t love them. Not only do you not love them, but you never did.
If it’s true love, then you will be able to talk about what to do next. If you honestly care about their sexual autonomy, then you will listen to them and take what they suggest on board and you will meet them in the middle, just like you would for any allosexual partner. You will check up with them regularly to see if things are still comfortable and okay in that area, you will respect their boundaries (and stand up for them if you see other people disrespecting them), and you will not hurt them over who they are. Discuss with them what you would like, yes, but do not force or pressure or manipulate.
I hate that these are simple, “don’t abuse your fucking partner” statements but it apparently, sadly, bears reminding for some people.
If they don’t want to have sex with you then of course it’s up for you to decide if you still want to continue a relationship with them – you don’t have to remain in a relationship that doesn’t fulfil you or makes you unhappy. I understand the fear that it can cause – am I going over a boundary? Are they being honest about being okay with this? What if I’m hurting them and they’re just not telling me? – and if you’re not used to the idea of someone having love but no desire, then it can certainly fuel some insecurities. If you really just can’t match well with an asexual person, then fair enough…
…But that’s not actually what anon is saying here – what they’re saying is they’re not only sad that an asexual person might not want to have sex with them despite them at least believing that there’s shared romantic feelings involved (which is honestly where this “tricking” shit comes from, because creepers gonna creep apparently), but they’re sad that any sex they might have with that asexual person won’t be enthusiastic enough for their standards.
That’s the sentence here that truly, deeply disgusts me: “Most of us don’t want relationships with people who just put up with sex. We want passionately enthusiastic sex partners.” I mean yeah, I’m disgusted by all of it, but people have noted above why the “tricking” comment smacks of entitlement – I want to really emphasise this sentence here about “enthusiasm” and “putting up with sex” because it’s not just entitlement to a sexual act, it’s entitlement to a specific sexual performance.
This person doesn’t just want sex with an asexual person, they want their ace partner to fake enthusiasm and sexual passion that they might not even have – during an act that they might not even enjoy. What the actual fuck is wrong with you, anon?
As I said, I’m dating an asexual man, and having discussed it – and we’ve discussed it a lot over the years – we’ve reached the compromise in which we do have sex. He is not passionately sexual, he’s described it as being like folding laundry in terms of interest – but he makes me laugh and he makes sure I’m feeling good, and he does it because he loves me. Why in the fuck would I complain about that? If he told me tomorrow that he never wants to touch me again then I will fucking deal with it because fucking him – much less trying to convince myself that he isn’t asexual – means so much less to me than loving him does, and I have done my best to let him know that.
Fuck off back to space, you absolute cock – you do not speak for me, or anyone else; just because you don’t understand or respect asexual people doesn’t mean they have to pretend to be someone else for you.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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