#and the only people who benefit from that are the oppressor classes of queer identities | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nothorses · 2 years

Note

It doesn't make sense to say that transmascs are not (also) the oppressors of transfems when at the same time you admit that cis gays and cis lesbians are (also) the oppressors of trans people despite the fact that they are also a minority and a marginalized group. Either we are coherent and we say that transmascs are also the oppressors of transfems or we say that cis gays and cis lesbians are not the oppressors of trans people.

This is the cissest take I have ever seen.

Look, first of all: individual people are not oppressors. Individual people do not have the power to enact oppression without systems upheld by lots of other people backing them up. We're talking about classes of people, and we're talking about which classes of people hold the power, and which classes of people are stripped of power.

You need to stop thinking about this like pokemon damage types; it's not a math equation where you add up all the privileges and subtract all the marginalizations and end up with a number that tells you how much power you have. There are cis people who are perceived as trans, there are straight people who have more in common with queer people than other straight people, cis men who have more in common with trans men, etc.

This is more nuanced than what you're laying out, and that's absolutely a result of cissexist thinking. These things do not exist in perfectly distinct categories that you can name and classify to get a consistent result. "Man" and "woman" are more complex than society would have you believe, and so are the systems and experiences and power around them.

Cis people as a class are the ones who gain power from the oppression of trans people. You're right to say that cis queer people are sometimes perceived as trans, and sometimes relate to transness; they deserve space in the conversations relevant to their individual experiences.

But to say that no cis queer person benefits from transphobia, or that all cis queer people relate to trans experiences, is, to put it bluntly, fucking inane. It's out of touch beyond belief. I need only to point to the "drop the T" movement and to TERFism to demonstrate the ways in which cis queer people have historically enacted systemic violence upon trans people.

This cissexist way of thinking is also leading you to believe that "trans" and "man"/"woman" are seperate, distinct experiences and categories; trans men are oppressed for Trans but privileged for Man, because these things exist together only by coincidence, right?

Except they don't.

There is no "man" without "trans", and there is no "trans" without "man". These things are interdependant and inextricable.

Trans men are not seen as men by the rest of society, nor are we really seen as women (though cis people often try to erase our identities by presenting us as women; am act of misgendering, erasure, denial, and transphobic violence). Trans women are not seen as women by the rest of society, nor are they really seen as men (though cis people use their perceived connection to manhood to justify violence against them).

We exist in a third space. We are gatekept from cis gender binaries. We are Failed or Monsters, and our experiences cannot be placed within cis gender binaries; attempts to do so well invariably leave out huge chunks of our stories, erase crucial parts of our identities, and deny the systems of oppression that hurt us.

While our genders as we experience them might fit into "man" or "woman", we are not given access to them on a structural level. To deny that is to deny the existence of transphobia.

395 notes · View notes

xxcalicofemmexx · 5 months

Text

i think the thing is, is a lot of exclusionists are coming at this from the wrong direction. so much of the language used to argue against mspec lesbians is binarist to the extreme, which is extremely frustrating when what we’re talking about is a non-binary identity.

lesbianism has always included nonbinary people, and bisexuals, and gender nonconformists, and trans people, and aspecs, and men, and genderqueers, and mspec people of all kinds! we didn’t always have the language, but if you know what to look for you’ll see we were ALWAYS there.

but then the second wave of feminism hit, and with it came a lot of very loud upper-middle class white women’s opinions. political lesbianism became a thing, and lesbian separatism, and suddenly it wasn’t enough to just love women anymore. in fact, under political lesbian ideology, queer love for women didn’t factor in at all.

men were evil. men were inherently oppressors. men were sexually depraved animals that would ruin anything they touched. attraction under this ideology was an ethical choice. any woman who chose to align herself with a man was a traitor to the cause, and a victim of the patriarchy, and impure.

if that terminology sounds familiar, you’re right, it is! this was the birth of radical feminism, and with it came proto-TERFism.

now, please take a moment to consider why it became so important to center the exclusion of “men” in the definition of lesbianism. think about why a binary of “okay” and “not okay” genders would be encouraged, and who would benefit from their segregation.

all that said, i’ll address your concerns point by point

one of the bigger confusions for me with the mspec lesbian label is: what is a lesbian then?

the answer is the same as any queer identity. it’s up to personal interpretation. lesbian is a word that someone chooses to express theirself, to explain their identity, and to help find community where they belong.

in my opinion, and how i define lesbian for personal use: a lesbian is someone who experiences queer attraction to women, and prioritizes that attraction when seeking relationships.

but if a lesbian defines their personal experience with lesbianism around their lack of attraction to men, that’s cool! it’s their identity, and they’re the only one who can decide how to relate that to the real world.

the not cool part is when a singular experience is generalized, and touted as universal.

There Is No Universal Experience. the way you feel is not going to be exactly identical to everyone else.

Ive heard [lesbian] re-defined “queer attraction to women” but thats also for example what bisexual women have.

this seems to be a shocking statement to a lot of exclusionists. but. having things in common with other queer people is a good thing. yes, correct, bisexual women experience queer attraction to women. and they have personal reasons why they don’t identify with lesbianism, just like you (i assume) have personal reasons why you don’t identify with mspec labels. some people have personal reasons why they identify with multiple labels. and it’s not our business to pry into anyone’s private life!

also, as an aside bc it feels like a lot of people forget this: a bi woman’s queer attraction to women is not lesser than a lesbian woman’s. bisexuals and lesbians are equally queer. bi women and lesbian women have valuable shared experiences, including and not limited to their love for women, and the history of their communities.

Lesbianism centers women and its the only sexuality that doesnt include men.

it is not the only sexuality that doesn’t include men. ceterosexual. finsexual. enbian. neptunic. nominsexual. womasexual. hell, even bisexual doesn’t have to include men! i could go on and on and on, but my point is made.

if you don’t want to use a different label when you already identify with lesbianism so strongly, well… huh. i wonder who else feels that way 🤔

I dont see why lesbians cant just have our own label for our own sexuality?

this is a bad argument, and my absolute least favorite phrase to hear in a conversation about inclusivity. i will not give a question asked in such bad faith the dignity of a real response.

If we decide lesbianism includes men we wont even have a label for that shared experience anymore.

again, we’re not ~deciding~ that lesbianism includes men. multigender, genderfluid, nonbinary, butch, and otherwise genderqueer lesbians have always existed. it’s transphobic revisionism to say that they didn’t, to pretend this is a new concept.

parting statements

1) there are always reasons why a person connects with a label. when it comes to queer identity, a lot of people think long and hard about it. we’re talking hours upon hours of introspection- weeks, years even. if someone identifies in a way you don’t understand, it’s not your business to question them. they’ve thought about their experience more than you ever could.

2) because this is a big argument that gets thrown around: we are not going to force you to fuck men. we are not going to force you to fuck us. if you are not attracted to men, and/or you don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who could be, then walk away from them. that’s literally all it takes.

3) the acknowledgement and acceptance of mspec lesbians Does Not suggest or encourage the normalization of corrective rape, conversion therapy, or lesbophobic harassment. it does not contribute to lesbian erasure, as that is a problem with public representation and historical accounts, Not a matter of personal identity

repost, og posted feb 24, 2023

#bi lesbian #lunian #mspec lesbian #bi lesbian discourse #mspec lesbian discourse #i speak #anon #answers #long post #old blog

12 notes · View notes

transmascrage · 2 years

Note

make it make sense: how does a transmasc person say “trans men are only oppressed because of misogyny!” and then say “trans men benefit from misogyny actually”. i am so frustrated. i wish transmascs could like embrace each other more fully instead of telling each other to just shush be quiet don’t rock the boat when it comes to talking about specific oppression. why do we do this to each other, why do we regurgitate queer theory made by non transmascs without us in mind in order to describe transmascness to ourselves rather than listening to each other. why is everything concerning transmascs worded to please the sensibilities of non transmascs. urgh

Good question. To be honest, I think there's so many factors it's hard to explain in full detail.

On the one hand, the idea that men are the oppressors (which isn't completely wrong) lack nuance and it's never challenged past a "But trans men are better!" which not everyone says.

I've seen people say pretty vile shit towards trans men, because we're men and that makes us the oppressor.

There's also the idea that trans men have it easier than others in the trans community.

I've seen the argument that it's easier to pass for trans men, that we don't need as many surgery or that ours are better... or that "once we pass" (like it's everyone's objective) we gain male privilege and become undistinguishable from cis men.

And the thing is, none of these things are necessarily wrong, it's just that making broad generalisations on the ftm or transmasc community can only make a mess. Our communities are made to include people with any gender identities outside of the cis binary, so generalising will literally never work.

And bringing these arguments up whenever trans men and transmascs are just trying to talk aout their experiences is a dick move.

Also there are the more unhinged people who straight up say trans men can systematically oppress trans women or even cis women, but those are the exceptions.

Also there's the idea that, as long as you're hitting the oppressor you can go ahead and swing. Coupled with the recent increase in the belief that oppression must be fought back with violence, and a lot of people forget they're still punching a real human being.

To be clear, you're more than allowed to hit your oppressor. But I think there's a lot of leftists who still haven't unpacked all their prejudice and who expecially get excited at the idea of punishing people with violence.

But they don't actually have nuance, so, for example "guillotine the rich" becomes attacking anyone who's middle class (or that one minority that's always been accused of being secretly rich and powerful.)

"Beat up pedos" becomes attacking queer people when the right spreads false information on us.

"Protect minors" becomes stopping any display of kink at Pride or any mention of sex in our history.

I don't think the oppressed minorities should stay quiet and subservient, and never resort to violence. I just think before we start clocking people, we have to make sure we see the target and won't go crazy with bloodlust (not even in retaliation).

Those kinds of people scare me, because they'll beat a marginalised person up and then convince everyone they did it for a just cause.

#ask #lgbtq community #lgbtq #transmasc #transandrophobia #transunitism

30 notes · View notes

a-polite-melody · 6 years

Note

Why do you use “straight is an oppressor class so het aces can’t be straight” as an argument when het aces DO oppress and hold privilege over non het people

Because Straight as an oppressor class is an oppressor class on many axes.

Let’s flesh all of this out, shall we? Because I’m bored, don’t want to sleep even though I need to, and in a mental place where I don’t really care if sharing my honest opinion on how intersectionality functions within LGBTQ+ and queer communities blows up in my face.

Before I start, I should mention that I only identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community at the very fringes. I continue to hold onto a scrap of hope in that community because I’ve had some good experiences with offline spaces, even though online I’ve felt nothing but alienated by the community built around that acronym. I predominantly, community-wise, identify as queer and do so loudly because queer politics are empowering and have supported me through all that the LGBTQ+ community has not due to assimilationist bullshit. I mention all of this because I know there are different ideals between the LGBTQ+ and queer communities about these things, and I agree with the queer view, and I would like to see the LGBTQ+ community function at least somewhat more like it because it would benefit so many of us. But, I do understand that the LGBTQ+ community, in general, doesn’t like how I’m going to put all of this stuff.

The fundamental misunderstanding of my argument is that Straight is an all-encompassing oppressor class over all axes that are affected under both Cissexism and Heterosexism. I admit, I don’t often specify that. But when I say Straight, especially when I go out of my way to capitalize it, I mean it in that all encompassing way, not as an oppressor class on a single axis.

Now, what do I mean, exactly, when I say all axes under Cissexism and Heterosexism? There’s a lot. And I think that there are people who look at some of these axes as lesser forms of individual-axis-cissexism and individual-axis-heterosexism (if they even acknowledge them at all).

[As a side note: you’ll notice that there’s a lot of room for similar types of misunderstandings to occur, because the language we’ve been using to talk about these things has evolved in such a way that we’ve started using some of these as blanket terms for multiple axes, as well as names for their own individual axes. This is much in the same vein as how gay and trans have been used as a blanket terms and also as an individual identities. And so, in trying to be as clear as possible with the words I’m using, any time I capitalize a system of oppression or an oppressor class (for example, Heterosexism, Straight, etc.) I mean it as the blanket-usage, while if I do not I’m using it to describe things on the level of an individual axis of oppression. When there could be a doubt I’ll be sure to specify (and if you find any places you’re confused about, let me know).]

I’m pretty sure I did a breakdown of what the axes that are encompassed under Cissexism and Heterosexism are in a post before, but rather than trying to dig around for that I’ll just list them again, along with definitions of each of these terms.

Cissexism: The belief that there are only two sexes (male and female) and that as a result there are only two genders (man and woman) which, in everyone, will match exactly with the sex assigned to an individual at birth.

perisexism: The belief that there are only two sexes.

exorsexism: The belief that there are only two genders.

cissexism: The belief that everyone’s genders match exactly to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Heterosexism: The belief that everyone experiences a present, consistent, and persistent attraction that is both romantic and sexual in nature, but to exactly one gender, which is the other binary gender in relation to their own.

allosexism: The belief that everyone experiences a present, consistent, and persistent attraction that is both romantic and sexual in nature.

monosexism: The belief that everyone is attracted to exactly one gender.

heterosexism: The belief that everyone’s attraction is toward the other binary gender in relation to their own.

Without having privilege in all six of these axes covered under the blanket terms of Cissexism and Heterosexism, someone cannot have full access to Straight privilege. They may have conditional access, which involves erasure and invisibility. They may have advantages, which involves distancing themselves from the rest of the community. But they don’t have Straight privilege.

So, yes. Under the heterosexism axis, cisgender heteroromantic asexual people do hold privilege. However, they do not hold full privilege in the system of Heterosexism. But those who experience attraction, and in such a way that isn’t split, even if they are oppressed under heterosexism, hold privilege over that same cisgender heteroromantic asexual person under the allosexism axis. Of course, that isn’t to say that they hold full privilege in the system of Heterosexism. Neither of these two hypothetical individuals do.

Essentially, exclusionists view Heterosexism as only containing heterosexism. They discount, write off, down-play, or outright deny the existence of the other two axes that fall under Heterosexism. And if you only are dealing in heterosexism and don’t take those other two systems of oppression, I suppose it would make absolutely no sense for asexuality to be part of the LGBTQ+ and queer communities. But our communities don’t (or, at least shouldn’t in the case of the LGBTQ+ community) deal in only heterosexism with regards to oppression based on attraction.

The queer community doesn’t, because in rejecting assimilationism it’s pretty much a necessity that we acknowledge all three axes under Heterosexism.

The LGBTQ+ community, on the other hand is... inconsistent at best about acknowledging the other axes under Heterosexism. At worst we have those who claim that monosexism and allosexism don’t exist. This is where claims of, “bisexual people have to be attracted to the same gender,” come from. To reject monosexism but try to appease the ‘good bisexuals’ (the ones who are GAY oh and also maybe have attraction to other genders too I guess) by saying, “oh, no but bisexual people are oppressed in exactly the same way as gay and lesbian people!” which... no. Monosexism is it’s own unique thing and works differently to heterosexism. And there’s similar sentiment about asexuality, where, “oh, well, but LGB aces are oppressed only and exactly the say way as gays and lesbians (and the ‘good bisexuals’) who are allosexual [and trans aces are oppressed only the same way trans allosexual people are (which I’ve bracketed because while this is often part of the statement as well, I’m focusing on orientation as Heterosexism is the main focus)].”

All of that to say that, yes, a heteroromantic asexual person could also be called a straight asexual person, so long as they’re fine being referred to that way. But straight is a different oppressor class than Straight, and only Straightness (should) disqualify one from our communities.

#ace discourse #bi discourse #queer discourse #I'm going to tag some others for blacklisting because I touch on other stuff #like...#trans discourse #nonbinary discourse #intersex discourse #anon #asked

179 notes · View notes

theculturedmarxist · 6 years

Text

Mirror Mirror

American political education is absolutely abysmal. There really is no understating how woefully misserved young people are when it comes to the breadth, depth, or quality of politics, regarding both those in the United States and even more so abroad. Practically as soon as their education begins, they are taught to think in terms of us and them; you have the settlers and the natives, the colonists and the British, the Americans and everyone else, the Whigs and Tories, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Republicans and Democrats, Right and Left. At its most fundamental level, it’s a division between ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ a judgement dispassionately dispensed by the history of Winners and Losers. It’s a cornerstone of the American mythos, so much grease that keeps the gears of the illusory bourgeois democracy turning. ‘Democracy’ is right because it beat monarchy. The Allies were right because they defeated the Nazis. Capitalism is right because it beat Socialism. ‘American’s love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.’

youtube

This is an absurd, metaphysical view of the world. As Mao says, nothing is ever wholly good or wholly bad. Bad results can come from good events, and good results arise from bad events. History is a complex interaction of innumerable events, influences, processes, and factors resulting in sequences of unfathomable complexity. This is the reality of the world. There are rarely any easy answers, no one’s knowledge is complete, and black and white are so vanishingly rare as to scarcely exist at all.

It isn’t any wonder then that such a rigid dichotomy produces such intense alienation in those subjected to it. Male and female, man and woman, straight and gay, Black and White, all the innumerable false dichotomies perpetuated by this irrational philosophy are becoming increasingly manifest as the system which maintains them breaks down. It is a process long in coming. At every step of the way, it has been Capitalism producing the fertile ground necessary for these changes. Its destructive World Wars decimated the male populations in industrialized countries, thrusting women into industrial roles long reserved for men. The devastation of the first World War created in The Soviet Union the desperate need for skilled workers of any kind, opening up unprecedented opportunities for women as well as peoples throttled by the oppression of colonialism. This too was a manifestation of the absurdity of such a stark dichotomy. People are not content to subject themselves to the strictures of oppressor and oppressed.

Under Capitalism, there is no other choice. It all flows from the ultimate source: the logic of employer and employee, owner and lessee, bourgeois and prole.

We can see the results of this degrading logic here and now. Young people, finding themselves unable to be fit neatly into such trite categories as male and female, have ignited an explosion of exploratory gender expressions. As the brutality necessary to maintain Capitalism continue to manifest themselves, they increasingly turn away from the prescribed roles prescribed by it. As the system makes it impossible to achieve its allowed goals, people turn away from them. They see the folly in pursuing its hollow attainments, not only because their society has made it impossible to do so, but because they’ve seen the results of those that have; the wreckage of the lives of their brothers and sisters, parents and children, friends and family, continually wash up on the beaches of their own lives, embattled as they are by the tempestuous throes of Capitalism.

This is an inevitability, but it is only the initial stage of its own long, involved process.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. [Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme",Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958, Vol. 2, p. 23.]

These people, after first discovering the tremendous, obscene swindle that has robbed them of their lives up to the point of their revelation, are naturally upset, angry, to say the least. A person can endure great and terrible suffering, particularly in the service of what they believe to be a good cause. This is true even when they believe that the source of the suffering is their own fault, a flaw in themselves, that must be corrected through the agony of self denial and penitent flagellation. If they were only better, they wouldn’t need to suffer, and they can be so long as they choose to, or so they are told.

To discover at long last that the source of their suffering isn’t arising from within, but inflicted from without, often inflicts a wound so great it is nearly beyond healing. It’s beyond a simple lie–a cruel but necessary falsehood intended for their benefit. It’s a vicious, hateful deception perpetrated against them, not in the abstract, but in themselves. They discover that their suffering hasn’t been inflicted apurpose, or even necessarily by those that hate them. Rather, they’re victimized coldly and dispassionately by an impersonal system erected entirely to eradicate them only because they in themselves serve no useful purpose to the people that sit at its pinnacle other than to be destroyed. This is perhaps the most savage wound of all, inflicted by the realization that the people who not only set in motion and maintain such a system don’t even care enough to hate them, and in fact even find that ‘their kind’ participate in it. They aren’t persecuted because of who they are, but because they’re not even important enough to hate by those ultimately responsible. Whatever value they might have had as pariahs evaporates in the face of the illuminating realization that they are just grist for the mill, crushed impersonally, mechanically for the benefit of people who never knew or even cared that they ever existed.

They’re angry. They should be. They have every right to be.

But that isn’t enough.

Even having come to this understanding, it isn’t enough to free them from the logic of the system in which they have been indoctrinated since birth. If people with White skin are preferred by the system that oppressed them, then the natural response is to embrace people with ‘non-White’ skin. If heteronormativity is the social force imposed on them, then queerness is to be endorsed. If the gender binary is what Capitalist society demands of them, then nonbinary manifestations are to be championed.

This is a step in the right direction, but only just. They have come to understand the need to refute the system that binds them, but merely going this far doesn’t even jostle their cell door. Still they are bound up in its logic of dichotomies, of essential separateness between nonexistent or ultimately arbitrary distinctions imposed on them by bourgeois society. Instead of rejecting the illusion of good and evil, they’ve merely inverted its polarity, keeping its logic but inverting its direction. Anger is given an outlet, but rendered impotent, perpetuating the process that originally gave rise to it. In short, this reflexive anger is nothing short of reactionary, regardless of whom it is directed against.

You can see this clearly in the many ways in which the ‘Left’ on tumblr so perfectly reflects the ‘Right.’ They think and act in the same Hitlerite racial logic. They both behave in the same absurd tribal way: for the Right, it’s taking refuge in the illusion of racial or national identity. Many on the Left do this too, thinking the way to combat the racism of the Capitalist system is by turning it back on itself, aided with the flimsy, self-serving liberal logic like ‘racism is power plus privilege’ or ‘you can’t be racist against white people.’ They see fascists calling for the extermination of shitskins and mudslimes, and retaliate by calling for the genocide of cumskins and crackers. They demand and rejoice when ‘white characters’ are played by ‘people of color’ and react with the same idiotic reflexive tribalism as their white ‘opponents’ when they demand the same in return. They fail to see how their demands for ‘representation’ by this or that bourgeois lackey of whatever variety, in whatever vapid bourgeois fairy tale, is being used as a tool to further divide them from the other sections of the proletariat in a race to be financially exploited, all for the sake of demanding disposable entertainment ‘of their own’ to consume.

youtube

It isn’t difficult to see the absurdity in the Rightist fantasy of the ‘nation.’ Spin a globe and point, and whatever state you land on will be full of numerous peoples of varying superficial, religious, and cultural similarities and dissimilarities. Even a relatively small country like England, for example, is not homogeneous. Through its long history it has seen migrations of Celts and Latins, Saxons and Angles, Norse and Normans, and it tells in place names, dialects, physical characteristics—which of these is ‘English?’ Which could possibly be ‘more English’ than any other? ‘The English Nation’ don’t exist. No nation did or does or will. They’re a con, a PR campaign to convince the working class that their interests and the interests of the bourgeoisie align, connected through the primordial blood-ties of ‘the nation.’ Its purpose is to create the fiction that hardship and success are both shared measure for measure between the classes, that despite the misery it took to produce it, all share equally in the ‘achievements’ of the ‘nation-state.’ Sure, the Kaiser spends his days idle in sprawling palaces while millions upon millions of Germans are turned into hamburger on the fields of France and Russia, but he really, truly cares.

The Queer ‘nation’ isn’t any different. It’s contradictions are just as apparent. It strives at once to be both universally inclusive yet internally divisive. The Queer ‘nation’ is divided into innumerable discrete ‘ethnicities,’ all at once expected to be united in voice and action but materially, necessarily separate. Each jealously harbors every last shred of historical or contemporary resentment in a farcical pantomime of the national conflicts of old. Any preference or prejudice by the bourgeoisie toward one or the other is brandished as an implement to demand that their ‘liberation’ takes precedence. Endless arguments burn away as they argue around arbitrary definitions about who is what gender, what words to use (or not to use) and how, who is gay enough or too straight to be included. Instead of seeking to be liberated from the identities formed in opposition to yet necessarily within Capitalism, they too seek constantly to be recognized, represented, integrated within the bourgeois society that they ostensibly are revolting against.

Marx in his critique of Bauer’s On the Jewish Question examines what necessary facts are required in order to achieve universal human emancipation. Bauer asserts that for Jews to be emancipated as humans they first have to give up their Judaism, and similarly mankind give up it’s religiosity to achieve the emancipation of humanity. Rather Marx asserts the opposite, that merely abandoning Jewish religiosity won’t bring them any closer to emancipation as people. Instead, those conditions which make Jewishness possible have to be made impossible, as in, the social conditions to which Judaism has developed in order to manage have to be obviated.

This is the same concept which underscores the necessity of the revolutionary proletariat. It’s what makes Communism a truly revolutionary ideology. It doesn’t seek merely to replace one class with another. True, Marx does speak of replacing the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ with the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ but this isn’t the end of Communism, to merely invert the currently prevailing power structure.

And does modern history not speak to the truth of this? As we come into the 21st century, through much of the developed world Christianity has waned as an institution. The world is no longer so uncertain. To treat sickness means no longer to entreat God in His house, but to see a medical professional in a hospital. Material abundance has made the specter of famine a thing of the past.

We see further evidence of this in the likes of The New Deal. It didn’t emancipate the worker, but only extended to a certain section of workers privileges over the others. Nor was the Soviet Union able to abolish class society, and so degraded ultimately into Capitalism. Even for the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement in the middle of the 20th century, have those accomplishments lasted? The political Jim Crow might have vanished, but isn’t it just replaced with a financial one? In every case, the contradictions were not reconciled, only mitigated, and only temporarily. That is not to fault them for not accomplishing more, but recognizing that their goals were only partially fulfilled, and undone by the contradictions they let linger.

Consequently, the emancipation of any ‘identity’ or ‘class’ becomes a possibility when and only when it seeks to obviate the conditions which necessitate its existence. ‘Homosexuals’ will only be emancipated when ‘heterosexuality ‘ becomes an impossibility. ‘Blacks’ will only be emancipated only when ‘Whites’ becomes an impossibility. ‘Transgenders’ will only be emancipated when ‘cisgenders’ becomes an impossibility. The proletariat will be emancipated only when the bourgeois becomes an impossibility. Founding movements existing only in opposition to these things, fighting for ‘gay rights’ instead of abolishing the privileges which subjugate gays in the first place, is not only reactionary, but self defeating.

The fundamental conditions from which all of these arise is the class society created and perpetuated by Capitalism. The only way to free the peoples trapped within it is to dispose with the conditions which created and presupposed them in the first place.

#class politics #class warfare #bruno bauer #karl marx #marxism #communism #socialism #capitalism #homosexuality #hetersexuality #transgender #cisgender #civil rights #social justice #soviet union #the new deal

15 notes · View notes

misgivings · 7 years

Text

Ace/Aro Exclusionist Arguments

Note: For the sake of argument, all asexual people in examples are completely asexual, cisgender, and heteroromantic, and all aromantic people are completely aromantic, cisgender, and heterosexual.

Part 1: Exclusionist Ideologies

There are two main arguments that most ace exclusionists use when defending their beliefs.

Definition of LGBTQ+

The first one has to do with fundamental definitions of who is and is not LGBTQ+, and that the definition they hold conflicts with the definitions of inclusionists. They believe that you must be transgender and/or experience same-sex attraction, and aces/aros do not fit that label. This definition was nonexistent in the late 90s and through the early 2010s, until TERF rhetoric worked it’s way through the LGBTQ+ community and warped the definition into one of exclusivity.

As of now, the most frequent definition used online and in the physical world includes the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, Pansexual, Polysexual, Polyamorous, Intersex, Queer, Aseuxal, and Aromantic labels in their acronym or full definition. The Trevor Project, a prominent and well-respected LGBTQ+ organization dedicated to aiding mentally ill and suicidal queer youth, actively promotes the inclusion of aces/aros in the community.

Before this definition existed, there was originally the widely understood “gay” aspect and definition of the community due to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, which received the most media attention, and homophobia. “White, male and Western activists whose groups and theories gained leverage against homophobia did not necessarily represent the range of racial, class and national identities complicating a broader LGBT agenda.” Intersectional feminism, for example, was a response to this idea of “cis white gays” being the only ones to benefit from the shrinking homophobia in the United States today.

Oppression

Oppression is the second main argument when the exclusion of aces/aros is discussed. Most exclusionists argue that a lack of sexual or romantic attraction rarely, or never causes them to be oppressed.

Asexual/Lesbian Corrective Rape

Lesbian exclusionists often use the argument of corrective rape used against them by men in an attempt to “fix” them or “make them like it.” This disgusting and unfortunately common practice was once a lesbian-only term, but has since been interpreted and applied to asexuality by many asexual people. These asexual people claim to have experienced corrective rape by people, often men, that think they can “fix” them or “make them like it,” exactly as lesbians describe. Lesbian exclusionists are often frustrated by this, because they strongly believe that this term belongs to them, and only applies to them. There is an immediate alienation as a result, and actual discourse often comes screeching to a halt while asexuals and lesbians argue about corrective rape.

Aromantic Oppression, Mental Illness, and “Taking Advantage”

Frequently argued between inclusionists and exclusionists is the idea of oppression based on a lack of romantic attraction. Aromantic people believe that they are alienated from much of society and considered broken because they do not experience romantic love, while exclusionist reasoning against it ranges from the simple “that’s not true” to “you are mentally ill.” It’s a case of the “your word against mine” phenomenon, and just cannot be viewed objectively, since both arguments are based on experiences and opinions.

To elaborate on the idea that aromantic people are mentally ill or actually broken, nearly all inclusionists and a majority percentage of exclusionists disagree with this. However, some exclusionists, sometimes TERFs as well, consider them to be schizophrenic, psychopaths, or having a severe personality disorder.

There is also the aspect of aromantic people, men in particular, using their orientation against their sexual partners. The idea of “this cishet man is claiming to not feel romantic attraction and having sex with women” causes them to extrapolate to their point of “he is taking advantage of them.” Pretty much all aromatic men and women strongly disagree with this point, as they do not consider themselves to be predatory because of their ingrained orientation.

Part 2: TERFs

TERFs are the taboo subject of the LGBTQ+ community. Primarily consisting of cisgender lesbians, the most common subject of discourse they engage in is about the existence and validity of trans people, particularly transwomen. They are considered outcasts, their radical and regressive ideologies are deemed too toxic for the general population. They are few in number, but incredibly loud and spread like parasites throughout ace and trans discourse.

Self Identification and Common Signs

The most common indicator of a TERF is their self-identification of being “gender critical” and using the acronym “LGB.” This is a deliberate exclusion of transgender people, and everyone under the genderqueer/nonbinary umbrella. There is rampant biphobia, aphobia, and primarily transphobia. They often refuse new information, reports, statistics, news articles, and choose to focus on their hard mindset of “trans people are trying to reinforce the patriarchy.”

Their common ideologies include the intense hatred of transwomen, claiming that “men pretending to be women are invading female-only spaces” and that transwomen lesbians are “men trying to rape women.” There is also discourse about cisgender lesbians refusing to be sexually intimate with transwomen due to their repulsion of male genitalia, but there is often the argument of trauma to reinforce their position.

TERFs As Exclusionists

TERFs frequently echo each other, their voices getting louder each time a toxic opinion is shared. In addition to excluding transwomen, they also attack aces/aros and usually identify as exclusionists. This is often backed up with the argument of oppression, previously described to be one of the main arguments in ace discourse.

In order to make their opinions louder and repress transwomen, TERFs engage in disrespectful and occasionally illegal activity that increases tension and hatred. They will mock and misgender transwomen, calling them slurs and fake. They send suicide baiting messages, and doxx transwomen to expose them to more dangerous people that intend to bring the threat of physical harm, up to actual murder.

Part 3: Exclusionist interaction and behavior with aces/aros and discoursers

A substantial percentage of individuals within the LGBTQ+ community that identify as transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, or other gender-nonconforming label also identify themselves as exclusionist, more often than not on the basis of oppression. Some inclusionist discoursers have compared them to TERFs due to their sometimes extremely hateful, aggressive, disrespectful, and suicide baiting tactics used to push their points and agendas forward on inclusionists and those that choose to remove themselves from discourse altogether.

This usually causes incredible outrage from said individuals that fall under the “T” in the acronym, because they loathe the idea of being compared to their “oppressors,” TERFs. They generally miss the point that the inclusionists are trying to make, and instead focus on the injustice of the comparison.

Inclusionists, while going about it the wrong way, are trying to point out the hypocrisy of transgender exclusionists; they exclude ace/aro people, while TERFs are doing the exact same thing to transgender people, even if it’s backed by different faulty reasoning.

#asexual #ace discourse #aromantic #aro discourse #exclusionists #terfs

86 notes · View notes

8-intergalacticbutterfly-8-blog · 6 years

Text

Relationships: Part II – I’ve Heard You Shouldn’t Make Homes Out of People

Thinking more about the problems and questions I posed in the first part, I felt it necessary to make some distinctions. Although I condemn the use of pain to hurt others in person-to-person interactions, I do not believe the same can apply at other “levels” or “layers” of social and historical existence. When we speak of structural violence, we often refer to social institutions that perpetuate discrimination, exclusion and marginalization through various processes. These “processes” are composed of social practices and beliefs that, through their simultaneous operations, create the kinds of worlds in-and-through which we, as social subjects, come to see ourselves and others. The term “structural” can be interpreted as “networks” that coordinate themselves according to shifting condensations of economic, social, cultural and human capital – a “push” here, for example, might necessitate a “pull” there. In this way, no singular person could be said to serve as a point of absolute origin for the forms of violence that people experience in their day-to-day lives. Instead, power comes to embody the shape of conglomerations, of clusters, of interconnected nodes in network societies. Based on this particular understanding of power, authority and violence, the finger of blame cannot be pointed at a singular subject. Or, in other words, the problem does not necessarily lie with, for instance, “white people” themselves but with whiteness as a network of social institutions, ideologies and practices that maintains people who identify as (or even look) white in a structural position of relative privilege (whiteness also affords power to people who align themselves with these same institutions, ideologies and practices – of which my writing as an academic trained in elite institutions is complicit with).

So, what do we do with statistics such as these:

“In Australia, indigenous youth are 28 times more likely than non-indigenous youth to be detained (ABC News, 2011), while in the US black and Hispanic youth face harsher treatment at each stage in the criminal justice system (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 2000). While black youth represent 5 per cent and Hispanic youth 19 per cent of the juvenile population in the US, respectively they account for 45 per cent and 25 per cent of the incarcerated youth population (Saavedra, 2010).” (Andy Furlong, Youth Studies: An introduction, 2013, p. 191)

Clearly, there are groups of people that are structurally pre-dispositioned to be kept in certain social segments (e.g., physically in jail cells [issues of space/place]; migrants kept waiting for the right to have rights [issues of time/temporality]). There are specific histories of economic dispossession, social displacement and cultural genocide that help explain why brown and black communities (this isn’t exclusive to issues of skin color, though colorism can and does affect how people experience their lives) are over-represented in prison populations. To move from an individual level (the person-to-person engagements I addressed in “Part I”), to a structural level, means having to reckon with suffering and exploitation in ways that consider the larger contexts that inform how people think and act. At this level of social experience, attempts to count and leverage “coins” of pain in a group’s “historical jar” cannot be simply reduced to selfish acts of vengeance or egotistical demands for attention and care. At a structural level, socially afflicted communities are often cornered into political positions where there is little wiggle room to act “ethically” according to existing frameworks of morality and legality (morals and laws that often contribute structurally to more violence and marginalization, than to support or assistance).

I’ve heard that you shouldn’t make homes out of people.

My discussion of relationships in Part I begins to carve out the reasons why this statement might be true. “Hurt people, hurt people,” as the saying goes. The violence people embody often gets displaced onto others because they lack the capacity to hold the unbearable weight of histories (simultaneously distant and personal) that both connect and separate them. I think this is why we often “snap” at those whom we consider to be the closest and most intimate—we expect them to serve as our personal punching bags (after all, they love us, right?). This is also why people, amidst their busy schedules and right to live their lives, can sometimes only offer a share on Instagram or a status update on Facebook when confronted with global atrocities—including those sponsored by their “own” governments and countries (which also means, economically-speaking, their taxable incomes). The line that separates virtuous resistance from complicity to oppression is becoming increasingly thinner and thinner in social worlds where the clothes we wear and the foods we eat come to us from disparate locations, near and far, and often by exploitative means.

Is anyone innocent?

If one shouldn’t make a home out of people, perhaps it is in part because our insides mirror the wars taking place outside. There are terrible, invisible battles inside people’s hearts and minds that twinkle like guns fired all over the world—past and present. I believe change at a structural, systemic level requires social retribution for historical debts that persistently and perniciously feed current forms of inequity across differences of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability and nationality. At an interpersonal level, however, I fear these same demands fuel further alienation, splinter coalitions and build a general distrust of people who are different from “us.” Is there a way to mediate the two positions without falling into extreme forms of nationalism and territoriality, or empty “inclusions” that simply reproduce and reinforce social hierarchies? I return to an often-cited quote by Subcomandante Marcos: “El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos;” “The world we desire is one where many worlds can fit.” I highlight this demand not to romanticize indigenous Zapatista politics, nor to offer a solution to planetary disarray, but to suggest that a haunting question/reality remains with many communities today: Are people capable of letting “difference” live with integrity and on its own terms? Or are certain organizations of political and communal life automatically hostile to one another, preventing any “sincere” or “authentic” compromise from emerging? It is important to note that difference has many forms: ecological environments; non-human animals and plant life; cultural and political systems; spiritual and religious beliefs and practices; gendered and sexual diversities; and the list goes on.

My point, I suppose, is that even if we consider the brief, yet deeply complex scale that is a human life, an individual person’s biography, we will eventually reach a point where violence feels inevitable, even natural: to live in societies so entrenched with bloody histories, as is the case with the United States, can anyone truly say they exist free of charge? If we do, in fact, live in social networks, does this kind of (globalizing) cultural existence not implicate practically everyone? And if it does, are people touched by violence in the same way? I think the answer would be “no,” especially if modern histories of genocide, enslavement and dispossession are to be taken seriously at all. To equalize oppression, as when one claims that “All Lives Matter,” is to commit an error of magnitude and proportion, for people of color, women, and queer and trans* folks have served historically as collateral for the “civilized,” modern lifestyles that citizens, noncitizens and second-class citizens get to live in the here and now—whether they enjoy it or not, find it meaningful or not, is beside the point. It seems to me that across the tenuous spectrums of oppressor/oppressed, there runs a loud silence, a dazzling absence that grounds the very existences of people as social individuals: systematic death as a contemporary common origin – but not one from which everyone benefits equally.

Which brings me to another question: can trauma purify?

What does an inheritance of collective pain at an individual level do? Consider the following scenario: a third-generation indigenous girl accompanied by her Mexican-American father is called “Pocahontas” by an elderly white woman at a Whole Foods in Southern California. The woman looks down at the girl and repeats her observation with a warm smile – “You look like her [Pocahontas]” –, only to be met with an uncertainty that gleams from the girl’s eyes as to the significance of the claim, of the way in which she is being interpellated by the woman as looking “native” (I won’t go into the problematics of basing native and indigenous identity on Disney representations). So, what happened here? Are these innocent, everyday exchanges? Or has certain damage been done (again)? And, if so, who’s at fault? How ought one to respond? One way to reply to these questions—arguably the most obvious—would be to assume a binary approach: the woman is the oppressor and the girl is the oppressed; each is a symbolic condensation of histories of colonial violence. But we can also just as easily say that the woman is not a willful oppressor (her comment, from her perspective, was not meant to be offending). Likewise, the girl does not willfully assume the position of the victim or the oppressed (in fact, the woman’s comment might not even make an impression amidst other priorities and preoccupations). Rather, both are given to larger and deeper structures that, before they even happen to bump into each other at an aisle in a grocery store, already situate and render meaningful interactions in ways that seem to necessitate an implicit, and thus explicit, hierarchy.

This is the distinction that I highlight between the pain people wage on one another through interpersonal contact, and the suffering that people as communities depend on, and must therefore politically mobilize, in order to make claims for social justice. The two levels co-exist and constantly inform each other—this makes the problem of historical trauma particularly tricky to frame. Through this distinction, violence demonstrates the paradoxical and contradictory ways in which an emphasis on trauma might prove necessary on one level of social experience (the systematic nature of social institutions), while possibly detrimental on another (everyday encounters with people).

At the end, however, we are still left with questions of justice and ethics. How might the woman be made accountable for her supposed “innocent” remarks based on, and supported by, the structural privileges afforded to whiteness in the U.S.? Relatedly, how might the incident be made conscious to the girl in a way that does not propagate a victim mentality or an inferiority complex, but instead affirms the dignity of her identities and her right to exist as a person? I do not have answers to these questions. They might be questions for policy and lawmakers; for researchers and scholars; for grassroots activists and organizations. The issues I raise do not have singular, once-and-for-all remedies (or at least not any that I can personally identify) – they are symptoms of the immensity and the difficulty of existing in a world haunted by the debris of chance encounters gone terribly wrong, whether they happened in 1492 or last week.

1 note · View note

winterywitch · 7 years

Text

anyway heres a summary of my discourse beliefves:

cishet aces/aros do not belong in gay spaces, bi spaces, lesbian spaces or trans spaces

for me my whole life the LGBT community has been more than that. my perspective is not that of some sad brainwashed child, forced into being more ~tolerant~ than i should be. i genuinely believe and have always believed the LGBT community is more than that, and im not just gonna drop that anytime soon, because i dont think the right to only consider the LGBT community as for “SGA and trans” people is liberation.

therefore cishet aces/aros belong in ace/aro spaces, which for me, count as LGBT.

but not gay, bi, lesbian or trans spaces.

there will be overlap because they are LGBT. but no, cishet aces/aros should have no claim to anything specifically for the L, G, B or T of the community.

for me the community is

Lesbians

Gay men

Bisexuals [SGA or not - as an SGA bi person, i get to speak on this.

Pansexuals

Trans people

Nonbinary people [counting agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc. non-cis, non-binary identities]

Intersex people (of course should they want to - the point of this list isn't YOU HAVE TO BE LGBT it's You Can Be Included)

Queer people [anyone who isn't cis or isn't het, including aroace people. non sga bi people im a little iffy on re: them 'reclaiming' queer]

Allies [i think this is important for people in the closet, as long as we dont let cishets get too big for their britches]

Aroaces

and hell, here’s a + to include anything i might have forgotten

aroaces are not functionally cishet.

straight privilege is straight privilege. it isnt not-homophobia privilege. to experience straight privilege you must be straight.

they definitely benefit from not experiencing homophobia. they can be absolute dumbasses abt homophobia for that exact reason.

but they dont experience straight privilege, because they’re not straight. that is all straight privilege has ever meant for me in my LGBT community.

cishet aces are cishet, and also aces. this means they benefit from cis privilege and straight privilege, but aphobia weighs down that straight privilege because they dont perform straightness in the Right way. i dont believe this necessarily makes them systemically oppressed the same way we are. but i dont believe aro or ace identities are privileged either.

there is no coherent Ace Community boogieman that is unanimously a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, racist jackasses, and if you believe that, you are a complete dumbass

yeah, the ace community is comprised of white cishets but, im gonna wager even more commonly, its comprised of literally every LGBT identity and race you can imagine. the ace community is not the white cishet community. it’s the community of everyone who IDs as ace or aro. this is not white cishets as a rule, as a majority, or even half the time.

that being said, inclusionists can say some stupid, shortsighted shit sometimes that is completely ignorant of LGBT history/oppression. i dont agree with the implications that i dont stand for every single thing they say and will not be held accountable for every single thing they say.

similarly, unless you wanna be held accountable for every single thing your side says/does before being allowed to call us out, uh, dont expect the same of us. the onus for this is on exclusionists, i have been around long enough to know you guys started this one. it is up to you guys to start being decent on that one, and then we’ll follow suit. those of us who dont are jackasses.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their abuse or rape took place. that is called gaslighting, and no, you don’t get to throw a fit when someone calls this what it is. when you call a rape/abuse survivor an annoying disgusting freak for daring to talk about why their rape/abuse happened (since they factually know why it happened and you dont) and then proceed to insist that your headcanon of their trauma is the correct interpretation and theirs is not because theyre a filthy cishet ace (which they rarely are), that is quite literally the definition of gaslighting. and hey, don’t do it.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their parents forced them into Therapy Specifically Designed To Convert Them Away From Asexuality (which may have a more efficient, shorter name). you dont know how that therapy worked or how the therapist worked because you werent there. you dont know that it was only because of homophobia so therefore this person has no right to claim their own trauma.

not everyone you hate is a cishet ace. don’t call people cishet aces unless you know for a fact they are cishet aces. i imagine you wouldnt want to call a trans lesbian a cishet, which exclusionists have done too many times for me to count. your platform should not be “you said something stupid and harmful, youre a cishet ace,” it should be “you said something stupid and harmful, end of statement.”

for some reason this is a controversial point in some discourse circles, but no one owes you sex. your partners don’t owe you sex. relationships do not equal sex. relationships do not even equal romantic love. relationships are a decision between multiple people on closer emotional intimacy.

if romantic and sexual aspects of a relationship are necessary for you, that’s understandable and okay! but you aren’t OWED that. people don’t need to out themselves as aro or ace for you. people dont need to feel pressured to give you anything they dont want to give. and you dont need to stay in relationships that dont make you happy.

allosexual privilege is not real. no one but white cishet men are 100% celebrated and privileged for experiencing sexual attraction. even white cishet women are oppressed for their attraction in many ways, and repressed from early childhood - so you can imagine how absolutely horrific sex-based oppression is for the LGBT community. we are not celebrated for sexual attraction, we are treated like we are dirty, and we are sexual predators.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, yeah, sometimes we are definitely, blatantly favored over aces, and people run around saying asexuality is unnatural, and sexual attraction is what makes us human. this is harmful and damaging, and it shouldn’t happen. i dont consider it systemic oppression and it definitely does not make allosexual privilege a thing.

calling people allosexuals is not something i condone. its not comparable to “cis” as a label, because cis people are an actual oppressor class towards trans people - non-ace LGBP folks are not towards ace people.

intracommunity bigotry is real and it is traumatic. people devalue it constantly and pretend it’s just a slap on the wrist, but it is an absolutely traumatic thing to have to face every day of your life. but it isnt the same as OPPRESSION, and we dont have to conflate the two concepts for intracommunity bigotry to be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

similarly, dont call people REGs unless they are not only aphobes but also truscum or TERFs. i also personally dont really believe in equating aphobes with truscum/TERFs but i dont believe in silencing trans people who openly talk about the similarities, either.

dont call people AERFs unless youre a trans woman holy shit

as someone who was directly affected by the truscum discourse when it happened [not debatable, by the way], this is pretty much recycled truscum discourse in my eyes. you dont need to lecture me on how its not.

just because someone on the “other side” called something you did ableist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., does not mean you get to shut your eyes and plug your ears. ESPECIALLY if you are part of a privileged class relevant to that accusation. for example as a white exclusionist you dont get to ignore the concerns of inclusionists of color or lecture them on the racism of the ace community. for example as a cis inclusionist [or honestly, even just a non-trans-woman inclusionist] you dont get to ignore the concerns of trans exclusionist women or lecture them on the similarities between TERFs and exclusionists.

“aspec” is not exclusively for the autistic community and i have NEVER seen claims that it was until ace discourse started. thats transparent as fuck to me and youre not fooling anyone. dont just make shit up lmfao

jokes about how Oh Lol Cringe aces inherently are, arent funny especially considering how many of these Jokes are steeped in anti-autistic ableism

idk when this happened but recently ableist jokes are the new Hot Topic of Comedy and thats like, mind-numbingly bad

i dont care what side youre on, IF YOU ARE USING THINGS LIKE FICTIONAL CP/PEDOPHILIC SHIPS/INCEST/RAPE CONTENT TO COPE WITH YOUR TRAUMA, YOU BETTER BE DOING THAT SHIT IN PRIVATE, ONLY SHARING IT WITH LIKE-MINDED, ADULT SURVIVORS, AND NEVER LETTING THAT CONTENT CIRCULATE OUTSIDE OF THAT GROUP. end of story. no ifs, ands or buts about it. speaking as a survivor who uses stuff like this to cope, being a survivor does not give you a free pass to, inadvertently or not, contribute to the pedophilia and circulation of grooming material on the internet. it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a survivor to not continue that cycle. if you avoid that responsibility, you have no right to play victim or pull the “im a survivor ;-;” card when people call you out on this.

educating kids on asexuality is not pedophilia, grooming or sexual abuse. jesus christ lmfao you dont have to assume people word it in a way thats inappropriate or predatory just because theyre pro-ace. kids NEED label/identity options, they are discovering who they are and without a label that fits for them, theyll likely feel like shit. let them have their labels. knowing about asexuality might greatly improve their life if it fits them!

for this reason, stop being weird about mogai labels/trying to “ban” them from everyone’s vocabulary/trying to turn them into some Cringe Joke that is only about Cishets Trying To Be Special. they didn’t fuck over EVERYONE.

inclusionists, in advising kids and questioning people who ask you for answers, be more open-ended. the insistence of “oh youre not a lesbian you’re a quioromantic demi-homosexual!” without also making it ok to just be a lesbian is what hurt and confused so many people on their journey to discovering their identity and its why they resent the whole mogai thing, fairly so. make it okay to just be a lesbian, or just be gay, or just be bi, or just be trans, while letting people know their other, more specific options.

asexuality is not an NSFW or TMI orientation

ace headcanons arent INHERENTLY homophobic, racist or ableist. they absolutely can be and ive seen that shit with my Own Two Eyes [pure innocent baby ace autistic papyrus headcanons back in the undertale fandom (shudders)], but they are not INHERENTLY so.

headcanons for characters with marginalized identity labels that arent identical to the ones you headcanon that character with are not oppression. and you dont get to police this shit as if its factually wrong

absolutely zero sexual interactions with minors ever, thanks!

trying to Bother The Pure Aceys by talking about sex is unacceptable

posting bullshit in ace positivity tags is unacceptable

stop calling people doing nothing but talking about their experiences “freaks”???

dont engage in the whole Oh There Are Valid Identities And There Are Special Snowflake Identities thing its not a very good look

biphobia is its own thing independent of homophobia

biphobia perpetuated within the community isnt necessarily systemic oppression but its traumatic and wrong and shouldnt be treated like some Lol Cringe Joke

you cant just say UM THAT LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENS???? when someone calls your side out on shit lgfkhghgfh especially when it literally does, all the damn time

ace [IRL person, whether or a celebrity or god forbid a flat out bigot] moodboards arent funny

you shouldnt agree to sex that you as an ace person dont want in a situation that you can control if the sex happens or not, but the pressure to provide sex to a non-ace partner is very real. stop blaming ace ppl for that pressure lol speaking as a victim of coercive sexual abuse, you cannot blame the one who didnt want it, even if they COULD have spoken up.

you’re not a bad person for wanting sex if your ace partner doesn’t. there is nothing immoral about not being ace. you just dont get to have sex anyway and you arent owed it if you are set on this committed, monogamous relationship - if sex is a big deal to you, you need to leave that relationship or work out an open situation.

laughing off peoples’ experiences as The Discourse is completely unacceptable, it encourages people to shut up and never analyze themselves and their identities

its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the ace character is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their non-ace partner

similarly its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the non-ace partner is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their ace partner

you dont get to tell people “ok you identify as heteroflexible but ACTUALLY you’re [insert identity]” literally ever, i understand the concern with people using “safe” identity labels to avoid facing their LGBT identities but acting on that concern in that way is not concern, its concern-trolling and its not fuckin okay.

legitimizing your own identity by delegitimizing the identities of others is bad

DO NOT, AND I REPEAT, DO NOT, BLANKET-TERM PEOPLE AS QUEER, LITERALLY EVER. DONT DO IT

DONT FUCKIN DO IT!!!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS RECLAIMED THAT SLUR, AND IT IS 100% A SLUR ON TOP OF BEING A CULTURE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

JESUSS CHRIST DONT FUCKIGN DO IT!!!! WHEN YOU REFERENCE THE QUEER COMMUNITY YOU BETTER ONLY MEAN PPL WHO CALL THEMSELVES QUEER AND HAVE RECLAIMED IT/ARE PART OF THAT SUBCULTURE

we need more nonsexual, non-alcoholic spaces for LGBT folk that are safe for minors, trauma survivors and ace people, but thats not our fault, the prevalence of sexual and alcoholic spaces exists because we were literally not allowed to exist anywhere else until very, VERY recently, and even now it’s a Barely thing

you cant tell someone their experiences didnt happen like my god

we think ace discourse is about more than cishets because exclusionists make it about asexuality as a whole. you guys cant make it about more than cishets and then be like But Ok It’s Just About Cishets You IRrational Crazies?? :/

yes self harm through exposing oneself to the discourse tag is possible, no it’s not funny, no it’s not just ~cishets~doing that, triggers are not exclusive to PTSD survivors, shut the actual fuck up

you dont have any room to comment on the validity of quasiplatonic relationships if you’re not in one, most of the time you guys complaining about them and saying theyre Special Snowflake Things dont actually know what they are. mind your own business lol let people live

if youre not intersex, you dont get to tell people that the intersex community doesnt wanna consider itself LGBT, so they are wrong for saying intersex people are allowed to consider themselves LGBT. youre not being a good ally. sit down, shut up and let intersex people talk amongst themselves.

[to be added to at some point im sure]

asexuals STOLE dragons from CHILDREN to make themselves seem PURE AND INNOCENT, the MONSTERS

#discourse tag

64 notes · View notes

22degreehalo · 7 years

Text

I feel like a lot of ppl on this site don’t get that like...... denying a person’s lived experiences and preferences, asserting that they MUST fit into straight definitions and are lying or wrong about defining themselves differently, and claiming that people are doing all these things to attain the Special Treatment reserved to ~allegedly oppressed classes~ is, like, Privileged Oppressor 101?

like I feel like a lot of people here GENUINELY BELIEVE that asserting ppl as straight/cis/white etc. regardless of their self-identification is INHERENTLY a revolutionary and progressive and radical act.

when, like. look, first off: what ‘privilege’ is gained through asserting your identity is, e.g., queer? What do straight people gain from that that is so great that they would cast off the title ‘straight’ for it? nothing. literally nothing. and acting like there ARE raving hoards of straight people trying to beat down LGBT+ ppl’s doors to be designated something other than ‘straight’ is literally right-wing propaganda that ‘gay rights’ are some special extra benefits queer people get that they don’t deserve.

secondly: the idea that this specific cis hetero default is the only real natural way to be and everything else is some Specific Exception that must be Actively Proved is bad. like I feel like most ppl here are pretty versed on heteronormativity but like. as soon as you find yourself saying ‘that’s just straightness’ maybe... take a second to ask urself about it?

finally: cis straight people LOVE to deny that non-cis non-straight people suffer anything. like literally, ask some right winger what they think about protections for gay people, there’s a 90% chance they’ll start raving about how straight people are actually the ones that need to be protected, and that if anything it’s a privilege to be gay nowadays. and that applies even more so for trans people. if they acknowledge there’s any suffering, it’s always ‘oh no that’s actually just some bigger issue!’ (trust me, there’s been a LOT of straight feminists who think lesbophobia is just a subset of misogyny and nothing more) or ‘well that’s just the natural consequence of deviant behaviour!’ or whatever. denying that people suffer - even when studies show again and again that those groups do disproportionately suffer - is absolutely step number one of keeping a group down.

and what’s all this for? to create a culture of silence. to gaslight people, make them question their own experiences and identity - to convince them that actually, they DO want to fulfil their Cis Hetero Destiny!! and that any part of them that doesn’t is something wrong and broken and selfish that needs to be fixed, through force if necessary. to refuse to acknowledge that it’s even possible to be this way - that anyone claiming it is selfish and entitled and, yes, privileged, and actually needs to be taken down even further. and you don’t want to be like that, do you? some screaming blue-haired liberal claiming to be oppressed because they want to be different, when all they need is a good fucking and to be put in their place as a real man/woman?

Denying someone’s identity has power. I’m not saying it’s always wrong - there are legitimately people who don’t understand oppression and should be corrected - but it’s absolutely NOT an inherently radical thing. telling someone ‘your identity is weird and unnecessary and you’re actually just a straight/cis person trying to gain access to queer privilege’ is, like... right-wing as fuck, guys.

#.#..#...#....#.....#like some of y'all sound indistinguishable from freaking reddit/4chan edgelords at times #checked a reblog from my history blog and accidentally caught an eyefull of a person threatening physical violence against aros lol #i dont even know what to say to that lmfao.#social justice tag

3 notes · View notes

bornpurple · 7 years

Text

So I realize that Rachel Dolezal is this really dated topic but my friend recently posted a story regarding cultural appropriation. And in our discussion on it I referenced the difference (from a black perspective) in the participation of Eminem vs Rachel Dolezal in "black culture" and community and how one came off as pretty acceptable and okay by black people and another came off as offensive. And I stated that intent + owning up to your [white] privilege is a big factor in what's okay vs not okay. Eminem for instance knows and states that he's taking a part in and profiting off of black culture/a black art form (one can reference some of his early lyrics) while also knowing that he's specifically non-black. Rachel Dolezal on the other hand is offensive because she does NOT acknowledge nor recognize that as a fact.

My friend then asked a very good follow up question (since he's cis and Desi/Singaporean and I'm trans and black) what the difference is between being trans racial (in the way that Rachel Dolezal states it, not the use of the term for trans racial adoptees) vs being transgender. After a bit of searching I realized that I couldn't find any good articles on it so I thought I'd just dissect the nuances myself. And after a bit of thinking I thought I'd copy/paste it here as well.

The initial question: “ Zade, great points, but I have to ask..in this world where we are having more and more conversations about the gender people identify with, are transracial people to be taken less seriously about the race they identify with?”

My response:

I wrote a long response but then my phone ate it so let me see if I can rehash. In summary I was saying that though race and gender are both a mixture of socially constructed concepts and biological markers they're also two separate things. Speaking of gender, it is a socially constructed class that is formed by both genetic and biological influences (nature) and experiences in the world (nurture). Though gender is socially constructed it seems to have some biological influence to it. Children often get a sense of their gender identity at around two or three. This is the age where they separate themselves into different play groups based off of who they view as similar to them and who they view as other, often prefer a certain set of toys, and usually model off of one parent or another. In cis people this aligns in the way you would expect it to, so for a cis boy it could look like him declaring that girls have cooties, only preferring to play with other boys, preferring trucks and trains over dolls, and wanting to wear his father's ties and hats. For trans people it could appear in a number of ways, such as not really understanding why their peers are separating themselves into alternate groups or mixing up preferences at different times if nonbinary, or preferring things seen as opposite to their assigned gender if binary trans (and probably getting shamed for it as in the case of young trans women which is why so many go through a hypermasculine period before coming out to overcompensate and remain safe and hidden). Though not every trans person experiences a strong gender identity in their youth and many only develop words for their internal feelings of dissonance later on in life or after several experiences have made it clear about the way they prefer to live, it is often thought that there is some sort of a genetic basis that ties into the formation of their identity in the same way there is for cis people even if it doesn't show up until later on. There's also the fact that majority of gender non-conforming kids actually grow up to be cis rather than trans, which is probably explained by the fact that existing as openly trans and transitioning in society doesn't have many benefits. It leads to unemployment, harassment, discrimination, and being beaten, raped or killed (especially for trans women of color). It's similar to being gay in society but with further chances of being ostracized. The majority of trans people come into their trans identity and their transition after many instances of being alienated, shunned from their families/friends/communities, recovering from suicide attempts, and constantly being belittled and disrespected along the way. Being gay is much more accepted now. Most people just see gay people as the same as them outside of their sexual preference. Trans people are still seen as aberrant, deviant and strange or criminal even within the lgbt community. There is no benefit to being trans in the eyes of society and despite how much media attention it's gotten now, the actual reality of being trans in the world has not yet shifted. In order for the identity to be held it follows that it would have a stronger genetic marker than a social one because if it were mostly socially based there would be no logical reason to exist in a trans space rather than a gender non-conforming cis space. It would be a lot easier and the risk of being a target of serious abuse, rape and death is lessened. Race on the other hand exists a bit different. Race is made up of both phenotypical differences (common features, skin color, common ancestry) and social experiences (shared history, common experiences of bigotry, communal "in" vs "out" group). There are some black people who do not feel a strong connection to the black community, usually due to ostracization within it (like multiracial people, black people with albinism, black geeks and queer people who are not seen as "black enough" due to not conforming to cultural norms and stereotypes). And there are of course several non-black people who feel a strong connection to the black community due to similar experiences or similar interests or what have you. The difference is that race was a socially constructed category devised to isolate and subjugate us, which was then flipped on its head and turned into a category to build common community and strength to fight back against oppressors. (When you think WHY black identity is brought up in society by black folk it's usually used in a way to uplift black people and bring them together against some sort of injustice being leveled against them. Think Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement during the era where black people re-embraced afros and were re-exploring their historical African roots. Prior to that black people were forced to assimilate into white culture, straighten their hair, lighten their appearance in order to achieve the same boons. Now black people were embracing the very characteristics that were held in detest by the social class in power and fighting for equal rights at the same time. Similar to the Black Lives Matter movement. Black identity is embraced not only as phenotype and shared experiences but as a political weapon to combat societal injustice. If one hasn't experienced those things then how can they call themselves black? How can they be a part of the NAACP as a BLACK person and claim to have the same experiences and history as the other black people in the room? If Dolezal recognized her whiteness while also being frank about the fact that she identified with the black community and its struggle this would be a non-issue. But she treats blackness like a costume rather than an actual identity that has been formed based off of societal injustice done to people of our heritage. You could argue what TERFs do and say that trans women for instance haven't experienced what it's like to be a woman in the world and thus they can't call themselves a marginalized class. However these TERFs are ignoring the reality of what it is to be trans. The transfeminine experience is entirely different from the cis male experience. Even in a feminine cis male he could theoretically find community and shelter within certain groups of the cis male community who could bolster and affirm his identity (think metrosexuals and femme gay men). Transfeminine people are even ostracized from that and shamed as a part of those communities for being aberrant and weird. They are alone even within those communities because their sense of self is not validated as a man not on the same axis. Being a woman posits a very different experience than being a man, even a feminine one. There are many trans women who have written on the subject of how the socialization is different. I'm not exactly an expert on it since I haven't experienced it. But there are many articles on the internet. Basically the issue is trans women have not received male privilege during any time of their being misgendered as male. Thus while it is not the same experience as being a cis woman in society, it IS the experience of being a woman in society albeit a trans one, and that is what makes it very different from being a man.

Dolezal's position in society is as a white woman. She has not experienced the same issues that black people have simply by virtue of existing as black in America. She has not been shamed for identifying with or participating in black culturally rooted things. In fact white people are usually hailed and praised for participating in things outside of their culture. They are seen as creative and unique vs black people for instance who participate in those things and who are seen as "too ghetto" or "too militant" or "unprofessional". In the case of a trans woman there are no boons for her to participate in the social class of women. In the case of a white person participating in the social class of being black? They get all the affirmation, love, respect and attention while black people still get nothing. It's very strange. Also gender (aka gender identity) is a social construct mostly based off of gender norms (which are a social construct and change in accordance to their culture). Sex (aka genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormonal makeup) is a biological reality but it is far more complicated than it's usually stated (it's not binary; intersex conditions and intersex people exist). Gender is often treated as the same as sex but actually it is only a social category based off of sex but entirely separate. There is some biological influence to what social category of gender you will or will not identity with but everything else is rather superfluous and can be put on or taken off at will. There is discrimination against people based off of gender and male privilege does exist but cis people by far have tons of privilege in comparison to trans people. And thus the scale goes more like cis men>cis women>trans men>trans women and nonbinary folk. (Some of these categories are intersectional and fluid though; for instance a stealth trans man might achieve equal privilege to a cis man until his trans status is announced) Trans women do not jump from cis male to cis female status nor are they trying to attain it. They jump from closeted transfeminine to out transfeminine status with all the danger that does entail. And even in closeted transfeminine status they don't have full access to the same privilege that men do by any measure due to ostracization and attacks. Race is a social category based off of phenotype primarily but shared discriminatory experiences secondarily. And in this way it is separate from the class of men or women. The class of women is expansive enough to include those experiences of both cis women AND trans women because they are both not seen as male and not treated as male in society and share the discrimination of being non-male and feminine-gendered in society. The class of race (at least in America) can ONLY be concluded based on existence of class of "other" with "other" being defined as having access to privilege that the initial racial class has been denied AND not being subject to the same bigotry that the initial racial class is often affronted with. Outliers include people who "pass" as the oppressor class (aka pass as white), people with albinism and multiracial people whom may not be usually read as black but as soon as their black status is noted are immediately relegated to the class of substandard racial status and treated accordingly. And thus due to common ancestry and experience they too have full access to the category of "black". A transracial white woman does not have this same hold on identity due to lack of commonality in experience/bigotry and lack of denial of privilege. With Dolezal she faces the opposite effect. Though she might pass as black and be accepted into the community due to phenotype, once it is found out that she is really white and has white ancestry, she will once again be relegated to the white class and be given privilege once more and affirmation and acceptance by society at large. To compare this with trans women. When trans women are found out to be non-cis/assigned male-at-birth they are NOT given cis male privilege and affirmed or accepted by society at large. They are taken down a notch in status yet again and treated as inferior and lacking humanity. Often times if a trans woman has not come out to her partner yet and her trans identity is exposed, her (statistically in these cases, usually cis male partner) will beat, rape or kill her simply by virtue of being trans (male-assigned-at-birth rather than female-assigned-at-birth). If she is in a circle/community of cis women and her history is exposed, she is also not relegated back up to cis-male privilege and status. She is seen as inferior and aberrant and as a threat and shunned from the community or treated as criminal. She does not have a safe circle where she can obtain male privilege again and be affirmed and accepted for her decisions and internal identity (as in the case of femme gay men or straight metrosexuals). Her status is forever inferior. Does this better denote why these classes are different? They're both defined slightly differently with different emphasis on certain aspects of the experience and they’re not equal in respect to how one is perceived when one's "true history" is exposed in contrast to their identity. There's also some sort of genetic basis for gender identity where there is none for racial identity [though there is the basis of phenotype] and racial identity is instead formed based off of common experiences with bigotry and injustice.

#rachel dolezal #transracial #transgender #thoughts

5 notes · View notes

synecdocheofouch-blog · 6 years

Text

On the ‘Noble Savage’ in particular and dilemma of whiteness in general

Organized society necessitates a certain amount of infantilization. To rely on others, and make it instinctive to rely on others for your basic needs, to make filling them yourself beyond imagining. That’s not entirely a bad thing, when it’s handled well in a fair just society (composed entirely of magical elves), but otherwise it’s kind of like child abuse as an ingrained institution. To justify this (and the huge inequalities that make it seem necessary to those in power) in a society that justifies itself on ideas of ‘fairness’ ‘equality’ and ‘merit’ those with disproportionate power touch themselves imagining an ideal of ‘self reliance’ and not needing anyone else (contrary to that civilized ideal of almost mechanical deference that gives them their disproportionate power) putting them among the (most) virtuous (being the ones who are needed, who must be deferred to, whose norms and interests determine popular understanding of ‘good’), and that it’s a real thing that's ever existed anywhere (even they must still act with consensus, or at least not against the interests of their own class. even hunter-gatherers venerated their prey and staple foods). So. The ‘Noble Savage’ bastardized ideation/appropriation of tribal (or even modern disenfranchised-enough-to-resort-to-self-help*) cultures.

And onto (white) people appropriating shit in general: the state of whiteness (in most of the world; maybe not KSA or PRC) is one of oppressing, whiteness is an act of oppression. The benefits (often in a zero sum system) are passive and come to you whether you want them or not, and you’re told you deserve them for reasons that have nothing to do with the amount of melanin you don’t have (almost) every time. But oppression hurts the oppressor as well as (of course always to a lesser extent than) the oppressed, and it necessitates certain ways of being; having servants is creepy, whipping slaves is hard, relying on others for everything is infantilizing as fuck, and living among a captive population that outnumbers you and could destroy your way of life by just stopping (not to mention active resistance) is fucking terrifying, traumatic, and limits the ways you can be in the world; noone had fun in sparta, white confederate families were always abusive, and apartheid south africa was probably just as creepy.

So. What is one to do when born into this? To actively swim against that current, to decline the benefits and advantages you’re unjustly offered pretty much from birth (and they’re never blatantly offered on merit of your race, so you have to decide whether to err towards sensitivity and fuck yourself more than you need to or specificity and still reap some of the rewards while feelings like you’re resisting in total solidarity?) insults others, functions implicitly as a call-out of everyone who just went with the flow. That pisses people off. That calls all their achievements all their joy all their daily satisfaction and maybe even their suffering (in their un-nuanced eyes) unjustified, unreal, cheating, made up (which it kind of is, but you still have to be exceptional to win at the olympics even if your pharmacist helps out, and a 10% edge at the roulette table still leaves you penniless more often than not). So obviously, in a society where we’re always told to go with the flow, that shit and all the attendant blowback isn’t an option, but for anyone with a conscience and basic self awareness just going with it’s not an option. What’s a self-aware but not self-critical milquetoast asshole to do?

This is where I compare cultural appropriation to libertarianism, and I’m pretty sure I owe one party or the other an apology but I can’t quite figure out which (I’m so sorry; white girl with dreadlocks, seattle yuppie. That comparison was mean spirited and I shouldn’t have. now stop making out.). A lot of (white) people whose awareness of the problem floats just below consciousness because they don’t quite have the integrity, emotional backing, or intelligence to resist instead cling to something else. for economic inequality, it’s libertarianism, a rejection of the system without actually pushing back against it, gaining all your strength through its most despicable mechanisms. For race, denying association with whiteness or white culture is a fun start, but since the view from nowhere isn’t a thing (and it would be fucking boring if it was) you have to claim SOME perspective, and what’s better than claiming you’re oppressed? you’re entitled to some sense of justification, after all; you are sorta-kinda not just going with the flow of whiteness. you're aware enough to cringe at those ‘white peepul aer uppressed mineorities!’ white nationalist asshats, so you can’t be one of them; your face would get tired! The obvious answer is: claim the identity of someone your whiteness oppressed (which you can only do because of that same whiteness, but hypothetical you isn’t self critical because that can be uncomfortable, so shush), because you can’t have benefitted been involved or even really be complicit if you’re from the streets (specifically a lovely cul-de-sac off maple drive in orange county), how could you possibly be the oppressor? it’s some bullshit psychopretzel absolution, but it seems to work for a lot of people, which is why they take it so hard. Besides; white culture is awful and boring and so pervasive as to be almost invisible. who wants to be invisible for reasons that aren’t creepy?

This isn’t me making excuses. I take joy in the discomfort of others, and hate myself fucking passionately, so I try to swim against that current at every opportunity, but it helps to understand why. I’m not sure I have a solution here. maybe the closed I can come is:

if you won your gold metal cheating doesn’t it nag at you? never knowing if you were really the best, or just ‘good enough’? it can’t all have been for the pretty rock.

Weirdly, even (white) people who HAVE legit connections to other cultural identities (regional poverty cultures, geekiness, disability, deafness, etc.) tend to either do this, or (so very often) be more dedicated to their whiteness, to avoiding the marginalization that goes with these other identities, to erase and make white these other parts of themselves. After all; being white is more fun than being a (white) disabled queer if comfort’s your priority.

*By ‘self help’ I don’t mean ‘boot straps!’, but ‘killing the pig who keeps raping members of your community yourself(ves)’, or ‘finding something to kill/cook when you’re hungry’.

#politics #history #race #philosophy #power #power dynamics #appropriation #psychology #navel gazing #this bra is amazing

0 notes