#the shitty part is when it intersects with very real misogyny (which it does) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

genderkoolaid · 9 months

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^ lets deconstruct this post

So. Look. If you want to define transmisogyny not as "transphobia targeting transfems" but as the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, that's fine. Honestly, I'm for differentiating between anti-transfemininity and transmisogyny, while acknowledging that transmisogyny is fundamental to anti-transfemininity (and fundamental to anti-transmasculinity, and sexism/genderism based in male stereotypes ("misandry"/"antimasculism") is also fundamental to both, but I digress).

However. If we are seriously defining transmisogyny as the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, then it makes no sense to say that trans men can be transmisogyny exempt. If its just about the intersecting oppressions and not identity (or perceived identity), then it makes no sense to center transmisogyny entirely on transfeminine experiences. Under this definition, trans men are transmisogyny affected not only when we are perceived as transfems but all the time because its a fundamental part of transphobic rhetoric against us. The best example would be how transmascs experience the intersection of anti-trans bigotry against "unnatural" modification of bodily sex/gender status and the misogynistic obsession with controlling pregnancy and the bodies of those who can become pregnant.

For example: a trans man is outed to his family, who then force him into a marriage with a cishet man where he is maritally raped and impregnated. Its inaccurate to say that this is just transphobia or just misogyny; this is about punishing him for threatening the patriarchy on two levels: taking autonomy over his "female" body, and transgressing the gender/sex boundary.

But if "transmisogyny" refers exclusively to the intersection of misogyny and transphobia which targets transfems, then it only makes sense that we need another term to describe that which targets transmascs. You can't both complain that transmisogyny isn't "transphobia targeting transfems", so there doesn't need to be a transmasc equivalent, and argue that transmisogyny only targets transfems and transmascs are capable of being TME.

The rest of this is just the same shitty takes on transandrophobia discourse:

"Its a term made in retaliation against transfems!" No it isn't. It was and has always been a term made for transmascs so we have our own language to center our own experiences. Your obsession with making everything we do about transfems says more about you than it does us.

"Its just used to say "when transfems are mean to transmascs!"" No it isn't. For one, personally and from what I've seen from others, we tend to complain a lot more about self-identified TMEs than about transfems because honestly? Other transmascs have been the most annoying in this discourse. But two: it is disgustingly reductive to say this shit when we discuss the very real issues of suicide, rape and sexual assault, forced pregnancy, forced marriage, the way criminalization of T criminalizes transmascs and especially TMOC, the murder of transmascs and how we are erased after death. Again, this is your obsession with making everything we do about transfems.

"As it seems to be used only on this site" No it isn't. Multiple academics, including the literal coiner of the term, are doing research onto this concept & terminology.

EDIT: OP was not aware of the ongoing sexual harassment. I still think saying "trans women taking the piss" is downplaying a lot of the lateral transphobia that takes place, but she's not referring to anything specific I believe.

#m.#examples of transandrophobia #rape tw #forced pregnancy tw #forced marriage tw

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 5 years

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“I do see exclusion as an inherently bad thing, yes, and nothing will change my mind on that. Simply because women are not a monolith, and being born with a vagina does not mean we all share the same experiences of how being female relates to the world. I believe in intersectional feminism, and that transwomen are very much a part of that.” And this is the core thing, isn’t it. I actually held this same opinion until a couple of years ago. I started seeing a certain kind of rhetoric from trans activists online - some of whom, upon reflection, probably represent an extreme view that shouldn’t be taken too seriously - that had me doing double takes and started changing my mind. I’ll back up and try to explain how my mind changed and why I struggle with this topic. I agree with you that women are not a monolith and that women in general have different experiences. I also agree that being born with a vagina does not mean we all share the same experiences of how being female relates to the world, but I disagree with what that implies and how you’ve interpreted that - those different experiences are because of the different cultural takes on what that vagina means. The presence of the vagina is inherent and necessary. The fundamental principle of feminism that I grew up with is that the category of woman is given to people with the female reproductive system, and that category was seen and treated as inferior for no good reason in all cultures. What ‘woman’ actually is (gender roles, gender expectations, treatment by wider society etc ie “gender”) is culturally malleable and constructed and varies slightly from place to place; the universal consistency is that this category is placed upon people born with the female sex (distinct from gender) in order to control and oppress them. Like, it’s key to feminism that the sex provokes the ‘woman’ category, and females are socialised into the ‘woman’ role. The oppression women face isn’t due to a demonstrable lack of intelligence or capability or physiology, it’s because someone looked at our genitals as babies and went 'okay, this is what we call and how we treat people with this biology.’ So that’s my understanding. Women are historically oppressed due to abitrary negative stereotypes placed on them because of their biological sex. How that oppression manifests is different according to culture, geography, ethnicity, religion. Where intersectionality comes into it, for me, is acknowledging all those differences in experiences and including them in feminist progress in dismantling these stereotypes and the unequal treatment and discrimination resulting from them. (some) Trans women state that they are women because they essentially 'feel like it’. They claim an internal sense of 'womanhood’ and this means they are women. When I saw this I was like “:/ okaaay, but how do you measure that, what does that actually mean.” This internal sense seems to be explained in terms like “I preferred pink and playing with dolls as a child, and I always got along better with girls, I preferred doing girly things.” This is more of a call on gender stereotypes than a satisfactory explanation - identification with the performance of the arbitrary, cultural construction of gender, something which changes over time and with which many (cis) women do not identify (yet are still discriminated against - their feelings don’t matter to people who look at them and treat them differently). They have this idea of womanhood and identify with that. I know trans people say that cis people don’t understand that internal sense of 'manhood’ and 'womanhood’ because in them it’s all aligned with their sex - I disagree. If there’s this strong of an internal sense of being a woman or being a man, surely a reasonable proportion of all women and men would report experiencing it. Again, I’m falling prone to the anecdote thing, but in my case, I don’t 'feel’ like a woman. I’m a person in a meatsack who is treated unfairly because of stupid ideas about the meatsack that have nothing to do with my qualities as a person. My female and male friends report the same kind of feeling. If I woke up tomorrow in a male body, I’d probably miss some things about my female body, but I’d be able to go through life in a male body without too much concern. I would then be a man and not a woman, despite my previous few decades in a female body; the concept is a nothing concept so it doesn’t matter. I am open to the idea that people have an innate sense of womanhood or manhood, but it’s so subjective it’s not very useful as a key identification measure for a political group. This is a very different definition of 'woman’ and to me, it completely undermines the key principle underlying feminist discourse. What is also confusing to me is that the transgender community seems roughly split into two groups - those, like above, who *feel* aligned with the opposite sex; and those who say there is a physical miswiring somewhere that causes a mismatch between their internal sense of themselves and their sex, this is a medical condition called gender dysphoria, and the best treatment is transition. Ie you’re trans if you think you are, you’re a woman if you think you are, and you’re a man if you think you are, versus you are trans if you have gender dysphoria, you think you are a woman but biologically you’re a man and you can’t expect to be treated as a woman (or a man) until you physically transition, which will ease your dysphoria. These are two quite different experiences underpinning the definition of transgender. To me, all this confusion over what it even means to be transgender doesn’t represent a cohesive front or group to meaningfully discuss this stuff with. The big thing that got me criticising the issue of inclusion of trans woman is the above realisation, that that definition undermines the ideological foundation of feminism that has brought so much progress to women. It’s an ideological difference that’s fundamental. Other things that bolstered it was accompanying rhetoric I saw online. - eg it’s transphobic/exclusive to discuss things like uteruses (uteri?), menstruation, FGM in feminist spaces, if you do it, you’re a bigot. That doesn’t feel like progress to me, to tell women they can’t discuss the bodily stuff that is the basis of their oppression, and still is for girls and women around the world, in the context of their experiences as women and as people in the world. It feels like misogyny by another name. - eg it’s transphobic to have genital preferences. I think this is a horrible thing to say. Some people do not care what genitals are involved in the sex they’re having, that is fine. Some people do, and that is also fine. Dating and who you have sex with is inherently exclusionary - not everyone is attracted to every person in their identified pool - and it involves bodies, it involves hardwired preferences, and these things can’t be changed if you just think about it really really hard. 'Preferences’ is not a good word for the concept, it implies a choice that I don’t think is there. I really don’t think people choose what they’re attracted to and what turns them on in sex. Examining your sexual self to understand how you operate and what you like and don’t like is an excellent thing to do. I also agree that trans people find it hard to date people. But calling people transphobic - especially lesbians, this seems to happen more with lesbians and trans women than gay men and trans men - because of something innate is just shitty behaviour. I was really disgusted by this. No one is owed sex. - eg there are no real differences between trans women and cis women. Any differences noted in discourse are a result of the person stating them being transphobic. A person who says they’re a woman has female biology because of this statement. This is an attitude I see a lot - any criticism of things like the above, any reference to any differences between trans woman and cis women, and suddenly you’re a bigot, a terf, a transphobic asshole, wrongthink in action! This worries me. Because there ARE differences, and shouting them down is not the way to bring people to your way of thinking. - eg gender dysphoric children should be encouraged to transition or go on puberty blockers. There’s a study out there that states something like 70-90% of gender dysphoric children desist by the end of puberty. Telling them they’re trans and putting them on drugs is not the right way to treat these kids, sensitive and appropriate counselling is. This in particular really worries me. - eg detransitioners exist and have a lot to say, but because it’s critical of transgenderism, they’re ignored. This rubs me the wrong way - they have insight into the interplay between self-understanding, sex, gender and culture, that’s valuable to general understanding of the self, sex, gender, and culture. I could go on, but this is so long. So I was originally supportive - I really was. I’m now more critical, because I don’t see a clear cohesive movement that is, ironically, inclusive, or that supports feminist issues, I’m seeing something that aggressively undermines the one movement that has truly progressed women’s rights. It strikes me that women and feminists are arguing about this more than men are, that men aren’t saying 'trans men are men’ in the same way women are expected to say 'trans women are women’. That also says something to me about the overall issue, and it’s not a good thing. It’s entirely possible that I’m hanging out in the trans part of the internet that has the assholes in it. Every group has its assholes. I also acknowledge that radical feminist groups have their hateful assholes too - but the reason I went into radical feminist spaces was to see what those evil terfs are saying and why they’re so bad, and I didn’t find evil, I found them addressing the concerns I had. They’re talking about the above things, whereas in the supposedly inclusive spaces with trans people, those topics weren’t allowed to be discussed. But I haven’t seen many answers to some of the problems trans people face - violence and discrimination in employment and housing is a real thing, and that does need to be addressed. By feminists? I’m not sure. Trans people are more than capable of organising in their self-interests - if they could find a common ground and common interests. I do think trans women face violence in male spaces and can be accommodated in female spaces - within reason. The case of Karen White in the UK is a good example of how that’s not a good rule of thumb. There’s also a domestic violence shelter in Canada that’s being sued by the women who were in it for allowing a trans woman inside, because the trans women acted in a very predatory way that caused the women distress in a place where they expected safety. I also know of one trans woman in Vancouver who tried to have a rape crisis shelter defunded because it didn’t support sex workers - that’s a valid criticism, but defunding it isn’t the action I would hope to see from any woman; it’s pointedly aggressive coming from a trans woman. For me, I do wonder whether people such as yourself are seeing the same stuff I’m seeing. I guess not. I find it very difficult to go back to the whole 'oh yeah, trans women are women and share our oppression’ stance, because I just don’t see that in evidence. In our conversation I notice that we’ve got a really fundamental difference in how we interpret and approach the world, for example the exclusion thing. Perhaps it’s too fundamental a difference and we won’t find much to agree on. I don’t know if you’ll take the time to respond to this, because it’s so long, but if you could articulate why this inclusion makes sense to you, I would actually really appreciate it. If not, that’s fine, we’re both busy people. Thanks for reading anyway, and thanks again for the conversation and for engaging with me. I *am* sorry about the length :S

DW:

For me, it’s not a matter of “transwomen are women and share our oppression.”

It’s a matter of “transwomen are women and are oppressed because they are transwomen.”

Their oppression might not be exactly the same as mine, but neither is the oppression of a 12 year old child bride on the other side of the world.

Simply put, it intersectional feminism can make room for all the different types of experiences of women–cultural, and economic, and religious, and social, and geographical–then why not widen the umbrella to include transwomen?

There’s also a domestic violence shelter in Canada that’s being sued by the women who were in it for allowing a trans woman inside, because the trans women acted in a very predatory way that caused the women distress in a place where they expected safety. I also know of one trans woman in Vancouver who tried to have a rape crisis shelter defunded because it didn’t support sex workers - that’s a valid criticism, but defunding it isn’t the action I would hope to see from any woman; it’s pointedly aggressive coming from a trans woman.

There will always be anecdotes, and there will always be assholes, but judging all transwomen by the actions of a few is not helpful to anyone.

When it comes to women’s shelters, there are plenty of shelters who don’t allow boys to stay, forcing families out onto the streets in cases of domestic violence because a mother doesn’t want to be separated from her son–who is a child. I think that’s unfair and wrong, but I’m not going to claim from that that all feminists are anti-child.

I’ve taken calls from women’s shelters before where women were being threatened by other women and the workers were requesting the police. The women there also had an expectation of safety, but gender doesn’t come into it, and the implication that the transwoman was predatory because she is trans is drawing a very long bow.

In the case of the Vancouver rape crisis shelter, why aren’t sex workers supported? That seems discriminatory. Also, why it is more “pointedly aggressive” coming from a transwoman than from anyone else? Given that transwomen are over-represented in sex work, why wouldn’t a transwoman have every right to want to fight this?

And you can bring up Karen White if you like. And I can counter with articles about transwomen who have been raped in male prisons, which I hope you would agree is just as heinous.

In the end, nothing is going to change my mind on this. I think that being a woman is more complicated than a biological function, and I think that transwomen, while not oppressed in the same way as ciswoman, still face oppression because of their gender. And I think that there is plenty of room to be inclusive.

#t #submission

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rotationalsymmetry · 3 years

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Oh, that’s what the dress thing is about.

You know, I think it’s really fucking annoying when Democrats don’t stand by their alleged convictions. When they refuse to stand by “defund the police” and instead use “tough on crime” language. When they refuse to stand by the vision of a less militaristic America and talk about wanting America to be “strong”. I think it’s annoying when they refuse to challenge the idea that the stock market doing well is the same as average people having secure, well-paying jobs, and I think it’s annoying when they buy into the idea that people should have to earn necessities through working for them, rather than things like food and shelter and health care and education being inherent rights. I think it’s annoying when they play up their Christianity to avoid offending religious conservatives, when they talk about how abortion should be “rare” to avoid offending conservatives, when they engage in the pretense that racism is primarily a result of poor rural whites getting left behind (granted, poor rural people getting left behind is a very real problem, it’s just… not why Trump got the election in 2016. Nor is that problem fixable by backing off on things like queer rights and immigrant rights. Anyways.)

So when a Democrat does the opposite of that and makes a clear, unambiguous, and indeed controversial statement about what they’re for? That’s a good thing.

AOC can’t win for losing. She’s simultaneously dismissed for being from a working class background (“go back to being a bartender”) and also demonized whenever she wears clothes that are typical of and appropriate for someone in her position. It’s bullshit and regressive, and it’s hard to imagine it’s not connected to her being a woman of color.

AOC isn’t some profound traitor to the cause or whatever. She’s not a demon. She’s not our savior either. She’s a human being like the rest of us with strengths and weaknesses who is attempting to make a certain type of change through the political process. People who are in favor of making that sort of change through those sorts of methods tend to like her and talk her up and that’s good and appropriate and consistent with their worldview. (And…while there are limits to the political process, there are also matters of life and death significance that happen though it whether you are engaging with it or not. There is a difference between someone like AOC being in the House and someone like, idk, whatever conservative is trying to pass the worst fucking laws right now.) People who are cynical about the method do best to give her as little attention as possible and focus on other things — union organizing, protesting, mutual aid, guerilla gardening, sharing info about where to get textbooks for free, figuring out how to show Bezos’ debit card number in Times Square, whatever.

(Obviously I am not advocating doing anything illegal because that would be breaking the law, and breaking the law would be breaking the law. Ahem.)

Realistically most people aren’t radical, and it is as irrational to expect progressives to be radicals as it is for progressives to expect radicals to have the same politics as them.

If you’re following a lot of people who aren’t personal friends and also don’t share your worldview, you’ve got a call to make over whether it’s worth putting up with them expressing opinions based on a different worldview. If there’s someone you have a good relationship with that has a different opinion on the effectiveness of the political process than you, or who thinks it’s ineffective but is stanning AOC anyways because sometimes people are inconsistent, maybe have a direct one on one conversation about that. But there’s really no reason for people on the left to get mad that AOC is making a political statement that at least approximately corresponds to our priorities.

(And there is no way to criticize someone who is making a political statement while doing a normal politician thing that she was going to do in any case, for, you know, wearing an expensive dress or whatever, without it coming across as you’re actually criticizing the statement.)

Sometimes people come to radical politics by a slide from liberal to progressive to radical. (I would have thought that was the only way, but from what some people say on tumblr I guess some people go straight from being raised conservative to radical with no in between? And some people do get raised radical. Anyways.) I think when people slide in the other direction, which can happen, it’s because of things like lack of community support and perceived ineffectiveness. Yelling at progressives isn’t really going to change those issues. Focusing on making the left strong and interconnected and effective is.

“Strong,” just shoot me now. Sigh.

There are some big differences between liberals/progressives and radicals/leftists. I think the core one is liberals/progressives tend to basically trust the system. I think it is actually really important for people with radical politics who were raised trusting the system, myself included, to intentionally unlearn that trust. Maybe for some people that involves a period of demonizing politicians to overwrite a basic tendency to trust the politicians that are on “your side”, idk, maybe this is somehow helpful for someone. For me I think it’s more effective though to take a mellower approach, and go back to core values. AOC is advocating wealth redistribution, and that is a value I share. I also have values that are not anywhere near the Overton window: open borders, land back, police and prison abolition, abolishment of corporations and nation states and capitalism and very specifically the United States as an imperial power, and I’m not sure how many of those AOC is in favor of on a personal level (I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s for open borders anyways), but definitely there is only so far the political process is going to be able to go in moving towards those goals. So regardless of what I think of her as a person or politician, there are some things that she’s not going to be with me on, and that’s ok. Most people aren’t. I can focus on the ones that are, and with the rest I can either focus on other values that we share or I can let them go their own way when they’re not actively standing in opposition to what I’m for. It’s ok.

It’s important to not swing back and forth between “this politician is amazing and the best and is going to change everything for the better” and “this politician is the literal worst” (when they’re actually better/less bad than most.) It’s important to see differences. There is a narrow range of what a given politician is likely to be able to do, and they act within those ranges and can only be sensibly evaluated within those ranges. If you want to go “but fuck all politicians though” that’s fine, there’s something to be said for seeing politicians as a class whose interests don’t align with the interests of people with less power — like landlords, like cops, like bosses. But if that’s your take there’s still no real reason to single out one specific politician who happens to be 1. a woman of color and 2. for that class, about as non-shitty as they come.

I mean, you can fundamentally not like bosses and still notice when a boss who’s a woman of color gets a lot more hate directed at her than the white male bosses, and find that kinda weird and concerning and probably reflective of how people saying those things treat women of color who aren’t in positions of relative power. Same for politicians.

Like yeah “we’re not going to girlboss our way out of this one” sure, but also…how relatively powerful women get treated and how powerless women get treated is not entirely unrelated. And if I can’t dance I don’t want to be a part of your revolution. (=misogyny (and racism and the intersection thereof) within leftism is still a problem actually.)

Anyways: you’ll notice I almost never post about politicians including AOC on here. I’m certainly not going to start stanning her. I don’t think that’s constructive. Democracy, to the extent that it’s a useful concept, isn’t about which horse you back. It’s about organizing and coming together and coalition building and taking to the streets and an awful lot of phone calls and mailing parties and meetings and talking and listening and research and attempting to translate legal text into something that makes sense and figuring out how to phrase things persuasively and supportive infrastructure like local newspapers and hashtags and days of action and petitions and saving your elected officials’ phone numbers in your contacts and showing up. (And so much fucking fundraising, endless fucking fundraising.) It’s often more about stanning laws and policy concepts (“green new deal”, “Medicare for all” etc) than stanning politicians. People who focus on politicians do not know how to do democracy IMO.

#long post #political #discourse

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afearing · 5 years

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since apparently theres no consequences for delivering unto this website extremely long and good takes i will present to you my hot take on the ace d'escourse, with no sources because I Dont Feel Like It. its more words than is reasonable bc i have been stewing in this for like 4 years and if i dont type it out at some point im going to fucking lose it. no, literally, it’s 3 pages long in word about shit no one cares about anymore. please remember to like and subscribe.

some background on me, i id’d as ace for something like 8 years, from the first time i read the wikipedia page on it back in maybe 2009 or thereabouts. i also id’d as aro for about a year in 2016. that is to say, i have a lot of compassion and understanding for asexual individuals and feel i understand the inclusionist side of the argument pretty well, as i never questioned inclusionism until maybe 2014 or so, when the discourse blew up. i took some time off tumblr because i was so fucking distraught to think that, as i id’d as aroace at the time, that i had to come to terms with not being lgbt. lol i was a little too attached to being ‘gay’ because... fun fact, past dumbass self... you are gay. anyway, i really dont want anyone to feel that i hate them, but after i cooled off a little bit i realized that the exclusionist take on asexuality just makes more sense. hopefully i can explain why clearly enough.

i really believe that what is understood as aphobia is 100% of the time simply a manifestation of our culture’s expectations surrounding sexuality. while “expectations surrounding sexuality” as a very broad topic does indeed cover both the lgbt community and people on the ace spectrum, facing these issues does NOT make a person lgbt. i subscribe to the idea that lgbt is for people targeted directly by homophobia and transphobia. ace issues ARE super important to talk about and the whole inclus/exclus nonsense is entirely because this discourse has been put under the wrong category. im aware that probably most people will not care that much about my opinion on the correct framing of asexual activism as i no longer id as ace but i think this is important for everyone. sexual expectations also weigh on straight individuals, especially women, and i’m going to describe a few examples to try to demonstrate why i believe both that it doesn’t make sense to consider asexuality lgbt as well as why it does make sense to frame it as an issue based mainly in misogyny.

call out post for myself, i use reddit, and i think the r/childfree community is a good example of what i think the framing should be like. although it’s acknowledged that not wanting children has larger social consequences for women, both men and women talk about their issues in the forum, including horrific accounts of reproductive coercion and rape, the intersections with race/being lgbt/ageism (although they could do a LOT better with intersectionality, many posters do touch upon it), profoundly cruel comments made by those who have/want children, difficulty finding an understanding relationship partner, discrimination at work, misunderstandings and even hatred from family and acquaintances, discrimination in healthcare, etc.

i think you can tell where i’m going with this. even though being childfree cuts against the expectations for sexuality in most societies, even though it leads to unfair judgment from others, and even though they face discrimination on the basis of the way they express their sexuality, childfree people do NOT frame parenthood/childfreedom as an axis of oppression, nor do they claim that their lack of desire for children makes them lgbt. it’s not even a question if straight childfree people are straight, because duh? nor if the presence of lgbt childfree people makes the whole community fall under the lgbt umbrella, because it obviously doesn’t.

to drive the point home, the reason why this is NOT an axis of oppression is because parents face a ton of issues as well! they also face reproductive coercion as well as judgment over the number of kids they have, constant scrutiny and moralization over every aspect of their parenthood style, judgment based on parents’ age/wealth/sexuality/marital or dating status/race, housing and employment discrimination, especially for mothers, the government hating poor parents and cutting their benefits, and more i’m sure i’m not thinking of. again, this is due to societal expectations of sexuality. to complete the analogy, people who aren’t ace face their own set of challenges and discrimination. part of homophobia/biphobia is tinged with hatred of our sexual attraction; no one except for straight white men is allowed to really express their sexuality without backlash, and even then there is this shame leading to a lack of proper sex ed and horribly unhealthy understandings of sexual attraction in a large portion of the populace. so calling aphobia an axis of oppression is just not right. and in addition, the large proportion of lgbt aces doesn’t make asexuality lgbt, that’s not how groups work.

some more on what i mean by ‘expectations around sexuality’... in terms of my experience in the US, there is some blueprint in many people’s minds of what a person should be like in terms of sexuality, and that is something like “cishet, abled man, who is neither ace nor aro, who gets laid regularly (but not to excess) starting no later than 18 and ending no later than 28 when he settles down with one cishet abled wife, also neither ace nor aro, who has only had sex with up to three committed boyfriends, and they have precisely two children, approximately two years apart in age, whom the parents can financially and emotionally support to the utmost, because they are also moderately to very well off, and the parents work under traditional gender roles to raise their children as conventionally as possible.” and if you deviate from this script in ANY way that’s viewed with moral panic and scrutiny by someone. and the connection to misogyny is that women are seen as sort of the bastions of sexual morality. we are punished especially harshly for nonconformity.

if you’re poor you’re fucked because either you don’t have kids or you can’t send them off to private schools and feed them fancy organic shit. if you’re lgbt or polyamorous or aro or ace? fucked! if you dare to reproduce as a disabled person, and if your disability impacts your parenthood, especially for women, you’re practically crucified even in liberal circles. if you have too few kids or too many (don’t you know only kids turn out weird? / how can you possibly raise 5 children properly?), if you have too much sex or too little, if you split up the work in your relationship not along gender lines, if you do unconventional things in your parenthood, like accept your trans kids or move a lot or any number of other things, the social judgment rains down like the fires of fucking hell. meaning practically no one can escape it!! huge bonus to the screaming crowd with pitchforks if you’re a person of color or a woman, mega ultra bonus to women of color.

but does that make everyone i just talked about lgbt? no! although every single one of the groups i mentioned is tangentially related through this issue, even though all of them face a lot of horrible problems and discrimination, that does not make those issues inherently lgbt. again, they are tangentially related and i could see a good case for solidarity among many of the groups mentioned; all of them are fighting for greater acceptance of different kinds of relationships, greater acceptance of seeking happiness and being who you are rather than pressuring everyone to conform as much as possible to the LifeScript. but all of those groups are equally related to the lgbt community - that is, tangentially only. just as you can be childfree and straight, a stay-at-home dad and straight, a straight woman of color, so too can you be polyamorous and straight, ace and straight, or aro and straight.

that’s it for my main point. ace and aro people? your lives are hard. i’m not going to downplay it in any way because i know there are a lot of people who actually hate your guts. fuck, i’ve seen people full-on shittalk asexuality, in the internet and real life, in the most blatant of ways, so it’s not just something you can necessarily escape by logging off. not as much so for aro people tbh but i predict as much once the Public gets more wind of your existence. i fully believe that you face a higher risk of sexual assault; discrimination in relationships, housing, and the workplace; horrible comments from everyone who thinks their shitty opinion on your sexuality and love life matters; and I believe you that that hurts and is terrible and that you deserve a place to discuss and provide support.

but. those issues are not exclusive to you. they’re not exclusive to lgbt people, or oppressed people, and so those issues don’t and cannot make you lgbt, nor do they make ace/aro vs. allo an axis of oppression. our communities intersect, yes, considerably, but you are not a subset of lgbt. perhaps our rhetoric can help you, but because straight ace and aro people exist you cannot and should not consider yourselves lgb+. i think you understand that the issues you face are a form of oppression, but they are the result of the toxic and misogynistic sex culture in this society, which, yes, targets lgbt people but also, practically everyone, including groups which are definitively absolutely not inherently lgbt, such as parents, gnc straight people, poc, disabled people, the list goes on.

to conclude, what really converted me to being an ace exclusionist was the example of a straight grey or demi ace. how could you possibly argue that someone who falls in love with the opposite gender only, but with more conditions or less frequently than someone not aspec, is lgb+, can call themselves queer, etc.? exactly what material reality does that person share with a gay or bi person? i think that their issues fall in line with aspec community issues but extremely clearly not at all with lgbt ones.

the end but post script since i brought up orientation modifiers: perhaps it isn’t my place to say, but i don’t think that microlabels are very healthy and that it would make more sense for the ace community to work on expanding the idea of what sexuality is than to try to create a label to describe every single person’s experience of their sexuality. not that i think you should necessarily kick grey ace people out of the aspec community or that they’re not valid or whatever, but that perhaps it makes more sense to say that some people experience sexual attraction less frequently, and that’s alright. i don’t know. i spent sophomore year of high school poring over those mogai blogs looking for some new orientation label that would make me go like, oh my god that’s me! and believing that if those labels helped people feel that way they weren’t doing any harm. but what actually finally made me feel like that was expanding my understanding of what attraction is and a better conception of lesbian issues and why i might feel so disconnected from my sexuality and why i might be obsessing over every interaction with a guy looking for signs i was attracted to him but feel super disgusted whenever they exhibited interest in me. i spent so long trying to go like maybe im cupioromantic lithsexual and feeling terrified that that i had such a weird and esoteric sexuality that no one could ever possibly understand enough to be in a relationship with me... like, ok dyke! i know a lot of people have had similar experiences and i don’t think i know a whole ton of people now in college who are still doing that, which makes me think those labels are more harmful than not.

i guess that’s anecdotal but it’s easier for me to believe that a person could cling to those labels due to internalized homophobia than actually have a new form of sexuality heretofore undiscovered throughout all human history, but that’s just me. and so many of them just sound so unhealthy, like dreadsexual. i really wish people would work on expanding what not being asexual can mean and look like and i dont think there would be this drive to create these labels anymore. even demisexual which i think is probably the most mainstream conditional orientation, i think many people who have never heard of it and are perfectly content not to would describe the way they experience sexuality a similar way and just consider it normal. sexual attraction isn’t necessarily having your nethers set aflame upon first making eye contact with someone, it looks different for every person and it’s alright to just be how you are without making it part of your whole identity.

The End II. this is 2,200 words. if you read this far you’re a fucking mad l- *the academy cuts my mic line while looking directly at the camera like in the office*

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