#bc straight people also hypersexualize queer identities

[menalez]

Can you explain how the split model is harmful?

i can try my best, i’m a little rusty bc i haven’t really touched this topic in quite some time.

speaking as a lesbian who once was closeted, and knows many lesbians who faced similar— the split attraction model simply does not work, is illogical, keeps us closeted + confused longer, and encourages denialism.

the split attraction model separates “sexual attraction” from “romantic attraction”. it argues that people can have sexual attraction in one way and romantic attraction in another. the most common examples are heteroromantic asexuals, aromantic asexuals, aromantic bisexuals, and the like. basically ace/aro on one axis and then a sexual orientation on another (and if it’s a “romantic attraction” then just remove the -sexual and replace it with -romantic, even though the -sexual just refers to the sex ur attracted to and doesn’t mean u necessarily want to have sex or have a libido). the logical conclusions of this is that sometimes someone may be homosexual but biromantic, meaning they’re “romantically attracted” to both sexes but only sexually desire the same sex. in normal speak, that’s either just being homosexual (& telling urself u could totally be able to tolerate a relationship that makes u unhappy bc at least ur with the opposite sex) or bisexual with strong preferences.

firstly, it’s homophobic— under the split attraction model, lesbians can be attracted to men if they’re “biromantic” or if they’re “homoromantic bisexuals” (ie bisexual with a strong preference). gay men can be into women for similar reasons. somehow, you could be gay AND straight at the same time (heterosexual homoromantic / homosexual heteroromantic).

secondly, it literally just confuses you further and keeps you from figuring yourself out. if you’re a lesbian and can’t figure out why men’s bodies repulse you and you feel nothing for men but you toooootally want a boyfriend (ie u want social acceptance and approval) then you can just tell urself ur heteroromantic homosexual or biromantic homosexual! and then u don’t have to accept that ur just a lesbian and can keep forcing urself to fake interest in men. this overwhelmingly will harm gay ppl, namely lesbians, especially since we are raised to revolve our futures around having a husband and kids & male approval the way all women are.

speaking anecdotally here, but i was literally just not into men but was able to tolerate being close to them (neutral on stuff like holding hands or hugging etc) and told myself that meant i’m “biromantic homosexual”, which was a step up from my previous belief that i was “heteroromantic homosexual”. before then i was just thinking i must be demisexual or asexual or aromantic or acespec etc because i simply did not consider the obvious possibility that maybe i’m just not interested in men. this is not a unique experience— many lesbians i know have spent years confused and closeted because they were telling themselves that not liking men must mean being asexual or aroace or whatever else. it keeps us in denial and ignoring our obvious feelings because simply finding a label that fits your current confused state & validating it as an Identity is much easier (& also somewhat fun esp when ur a teen struggling to know ur place in this world)

also a lot of it hinges on the assumption that the average gay person is like hypersexual as hell and it’s just generally not good to pretend like there’s these “separate forms of attraction” the way the SAM does.

i honestly don’t see an actual upside to it, it encourages heterosexuals to delude themselves into thinking they’re “””””queer””””””” because they have commitment issues or don’t want to be in a relationship or because they have a low libido, it convinces others that you can somehow be gay and not gay at the same time, it’s illogical, it encourages gay ppl to remain in denial and be closeted, it just. isn’t good

#anonymous

[lukah-o]

pretty obvious, but the only reason people are so uncomfortable with queer children and their existence is because, whether it is intentional or not, they hypersexualize the hell out of the queer community. they make it as though kink and queer identities cannot co-exist without the other in separate spaces. they feel as though, the idea of romance is never a factor in queerness.

this mentality also, in the process, erases and invalidates asexual people and their existence (and bc i feel the need to say this...yes, straight asexuals are valid and are a part of the community)

and queerness, regardless of love, is beautiful and right in all of it's weirdness and oddity

#queer #queer community #lgbtqplus #lgbtq community #lgbtq #gay #lesbian #bisexual #pansexual #trans #gender identity #genderqueer #genderfluid #asexuel

[blackwoolncrown]

This is so interesting. Much of what I know about Asexuality is from my (ex) best friend who told me that by having crushes and telling her about them, I oppressed her in a sense. At the time I didn't realize how toxic she was in my life but ultimately my knowledge about Asexuality comes from her. That she is inherently queer and has always identified w the community, stuff like that. Some things she said that kind of pierced me hurtfully was that she considered all allosexuals stupid and oppres

“and oppressive, which made me wonder why we were friends. I did understand that she felt incredibly pressured to have sex and that it was lumped into our society and thrown everywhere. I also knew she was dealing with pressures of marriage from society and she was worried about having to have sex with someone bc our society expects that in relationships. I mentioned once that after a trauma I experienced (murder of a close friend) I was ace for a while (wrong wording) bc I couldn't feel any (2)“

“(3) i couldn't experience any sexual urges anymore much less imagine that as a good thing. I was completely dead inside for a bit. She tried not to offend but she did mention that Asexuality isn't something that can come and go in phases like the effects on your libido after a trauma, that being ace is an identity defined from your being and isn't negotiable. Kind of like being gay, where it's not something that can be separated from yourself or you can change if you wanted to. I stopped saying“

“(4)stopped saying it that way. I kind of understood what she meant and honestly shouldn't have used the word ace to describe that year for myself. She was right, I knew that feeling that way wasn't normal for me and so probably couldn't use that word as a verb or adjective, it's more an identity. What do you think? That's as far as I'm familiar with the term. We're no longer friends. One thing I'll never forget is how after I came out to her @ 19, she said, Well You'll always be straight to me.“

First off, I think Ace as an identity and ‘Asexuality’ as a biological occurrence need to be understood as interlinked but still somewhat separate, because ‘Asexuality’ as a state/phenom happens for a lot of reasons, at different durations of people’s lives. And I think the most troublesome dialogue out of the Ace community recently is that ‘all forms, durations and conditions of Asexuality are ‘Ace The Identity’.

I think that Ace activism should be a thing because when someone lacks sex drive or sexual activity in their life there’s a damaging, unnecessary narrative that tells them they’re damaged, or lame, or somehow lacking, and that’s really toxic. I also think that our hypersexual and exploitative society has inundated people with itself that unless they have experience otherwise, they view ‘sex’ and sexuality through the lens that’s been shown them, and logically recoil from that-- but in some cases cannot distinguish ‘sexuality the human behavior’ from ‘sexuality as it’s depicted socially/in media’.

I also think that the experience you had is an interesting example. Because there are two facets of the working definition (in general) of Ace that are there as the discourse evolved (both manipulatively and honestly) to move away from MOGAI spaces which have been criticized for, among other things, convincing people that ‘Ace The Identity’ included things like trauma, paranoia, depression etc - again IT IS HARMFUL TO IDENTIFY *AS* ONE’S TRAUMA OR MENTAL ILLNESS. Anyway those points are now:

1. All durations (lifetime, changing, fluctuating) of Asexual behavior qualify one as Ace The Identity 

and to make that ‘real’,

2. All persons exhibiting Asexual behavior are Ace The Identity, even in cases where they know the reason has to do with illness or trauma.

and conflictingly,

3. Aceness **does not mean sex repulsion**

This raises multiple questions. How often an interval are we measuring against to determine someone’s aceness as real? At that point, what is the assumed interval/amount of sexual desire assumed of an ‘allo’ (this is not a real thing, literally everyone has different amounts of sex and varying levels of sexual desire, also at different times in life)? You see, when they started to say you could be Ace but still experience attraction ~under certain conditions~ (aka many extended MOGAI identities) that means that both ‘no sexual attraction’ and ‘some sexual attraction’ qualify as Ace. That...kind of makes everyone ace. If Asexuality is a spectrum, then there has to be a bar somewhere where it ticks over to ‘Not Asexual’. Kind of how sexuality is a spectrum, but Cis and Het is where it ticks back over to ‘not LGBT’. So where is that point?

Back to the example though, what I want to point out is that your friend basically suggested that just hearing about sex was oppressive--why would that be, unless she’s not sex repulsed? Being sex repulsed is a symptom of trauma, so by my personal opinion she has PTSD- she’s not Ace The Identity. However, again now the definition has expanded to include Mental Illnesses which is laughable because at that point that’s a Neurodivergence issue, which is a different community (yep, they overlap bc we’re human but again not all marginalized communities is the same!!). All that aside, that would make her argument that you’re not Ace oppressive. 

Before any of the recent discourse back when I was more involved in the community it was stated and agreed on that actually, yes, Aceness can fluctuate like any other identity can fluctuate. So here we are again. It’s Ace if you’r always Ace or if you’re only Ace sometimes and Ace if it’s ‘completely no to sex’ or ‘sometimes if you really like someone’ or even if ‘you’re romantically attracted to the same sex but still have internalized homophobia’.This is just messy and way too broad. I think social justice clout and the goodheartedness of people just trying to be inclusive have muddied what is a co-opting of LGBT dialogue that covers up a total lack of intersectional understanding, a history of general messiness and a LOT of unresolved trauma being covered up as an ID as a coping mechanism, which is very understandable but honestly kind of a huge issue. It truly tricked a lot of people out of exploring their inner issues or past or just figuring themselves out, and continues to do so. I absolutely believe there are people who are just Ace, but I also believe there are a lot of children (teens) and juvenile, not-fully-developed (!! BRAIN DEVELOPMENT DOESN’T EVEN END UNTIL YOU’RE ABOUT 22-25 PEOPLE !!) adults who think that if they don’t feel attraction constantly-like-on-tv and or at all at their age that they’re Asexual which just...no.

#Anonymous

[jiamour]

I am straight girl and i don't really watch porn anymore but when i used to watch,, i watched both straight and lesbian and sometimes very rarely i watched gay porn too.. bc its spiked my interests lol, but i would say i didnt really like most stuff labelled as porn because of the lack of attention a female usually gets and lesbian porn gives satisfaction in that aspect.

I usually get off of reactions and sounds more than the real thing and nowadays i prefer reading over watching bc we decided the pace and extra details we we are reading...

i get this,,, i hate the way a lot of porn fetishizes groups that marginalized like queer people, poc, and women,,, i know it also creates a lot of discourse within the lesbian community because a lot of lesbians believe there is a hypersexualization of lesbians

(which is a problem throughout the lgbtqa+ community as a whole, where people will see an ordinary act between a queer couple and deem it disgusting and inherently sexual,,, i also feel the need to mention queer history here as i am talking about the relationship between the sex industry and sexuality, the the past there was a lot of sexual repression and exploration of sexual desires was seen as taboo especially for queer people which lead to the formation of communities around kinks to form to form a place of acceptance for queer sex and sexual expression in the absence of the shame placed upon them by cishet people, queer sexuality is an import part of our history and was forced to be a major forefront of many allo queer peoples identities but this continues to be shamed and seen as gross or radical today even by other queer people while also being overrun in the porn industry where queer people are being used to conform to and act in a way that is consumable to the cishet male gaze while still being shit on from the outside world)

its also gives a lot of men the belief and the desire to “change” a lesbian which has lead to an increased fear and disgust towards men within the lesbian community,,,, and it ALSO is framed in a way to fit a mans desire, in conclusion if i want to get off i just think really hard and my brain does all the work for me🙏

#ask #anon #i just woke up and i have a pounding headache so sorry if this doesn’t make sense i haven’t turned my brain on yet

[breeeliss]

quick queer rant

im really tired of people within the LGBTQ+ community pointing fingers at each other and saying “you don’t really belong because you benefit from [insert type of privilege here]”

a heteroromantic asexual still suffers from marginalization. their sexuality has been pathologized as a mental illness right along with gayness and transness. in a hypersexual heternormative culture where we’re told we must enjoy sex and we must be in relationships, an asexual person is made to feel as if they’re broken, as if they don’t exist, as if forcing sex and intimacy on them is a corrective measure to “fix them”

a straight trans woman still suffers from marginalization. being able to “pass” as a woman while also being in a relationship with a man does not negate the fact that trans people face the most violence out of anyone in the queer community, must face a society that enforces a standard of womanhood that may not necessarily apply to them, and must navigate a political climate that seeks to banish them from public spaces and paint them as criminals

a bisexual man in a relationships with a woman still suffers from marginalization. compulsory heterosexuality not only erases this identity but enforces this idea that bisexuality is a phase or a kink that can soon be grown out of. bisexuality is the largest subset of the LGBTQ+ community yet has the least amount of representation and leaves bi people more likely to have mental illnesses. being constantly recloseted when you date different genders has psychological and emotional consequences

individuals in a polyamorous relationship still suffer from marginalization. they exist in a society that hails monogamy as the only acceptable relationship model and attempts to make polyamorous individuals feel as if their relationships are abnormal, deviant, and inappropriate for children. they are treated as the example of what not to do, seeing as how society fails to acknowledge the breadth of relationship models that don’t necessarily have to include just two people. 

examples like these can go on and on and on and on

these critiques also exist without the context of race, ethnicity, immigration status, ability, and/or religion. we’re so focused on worrying about whether certain queer identities even belong in the LGBTQ+ umbrella yet fail to see how whiteness, Christianity, citizenship laws, access to disability services, etc. further compound on the experiences of those who are told by a cishet world that we are abnormal. 

and that’s what it comes down to: there is a formula for privilege in our society, and part of that formula involves being straight, being cis, wanting to marry, desiring sex, and believing in only two genders. queerness was always meant to represent those who live in opposition of those formulas, in opposition of systems that enforce and perpetuate those formulas. 

our job is not to gatekeep our community because that is childish and unproductive. our job is to understand the systems that oppress us, figure out how to navigate/change these systems, and advocate for all people who fall victim to the violence and oppression that these systems were created to enforce. 

we don’t do that by telling people that they don’t belong in our communities bc “they’re not as oppressed as we are.” this isn’t the oppression olympics. this is a time to fight, to love, and to advocate. 

#pride #pride month #queer #lgbtq #queer discourse #bree talks #asexuality #bisexuality #polyamory #transgender