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#we live in a world where being cis het is the default
daniemililly · 1 year
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A post about the things women deserve for International Women's Day. Content note for all the things women put up with in this system
I've had a lot of cis, mostly het men treat me like a non-person over the last few years because I made sexy photos they liked. I've had my boundaries pushed and ignored. I've had so many of them say I hated all men because I said I was fed up with all the shitty messages from some men. I've had to deal with their belief that I owed them whatever they wanted, that my disinterest in them was to be tested, that I should have to hear about and see their genitalia without consent, that I should have to listen to their problems and make them feel better without even knowing them
When you are a woman in public, you are seen as a Non-Player Character in the narratives of many cis het men who see themselves as protagonists because stories have always served them and shown us women to be merely objects for them to rate, be mothered by, and fuck
Cis women and trans women and those who are sometimes women and those who are women-adjacent and women-aligned or are perceived to be women, have to steel ourselves to exist and be seen. We have to take it on faith that to make art, to wait tables, to work in a shop, to do sex work, to have a hobby, is to need to protect yourself from attack, and this only becomes worse when you're not white, or you're queer, or you're a Mincéir, or you're any other kind of marginalised
Women should get to exist without fearing for our bodily integrity, for our lives, for our sanity
Women should get to exist without being traumatised again and again, rarely to receive help because we don't even allow ourselves to admit there's anything wrong
Women and those perceived as such deserve to go to the hospital and have our pain taken as seriously as a cis man's pain more often is. Pain should not be the default condition of being a woman, but it so often is
Women and those who need them deserve to be able to get an abortion without having to jump through needless hoops — Free, Safe, Legal, and Local
Women and all people who have experienced sexual assault and abuse should get to tell their stories without fear for the decorum of our society
Women and all people should have access to whatever hormone balance feels right for their bodies without having to plead their case and wait years for their distress to become intolerable — on demand and without delay
Those who get periods should have access to menstrual leave, free period products, and IUDs
Women, for whom care work most often falls to, should not be made to feel like their work has no value, and should be fairly compensated,. Communities should be supported in building networks of care, so that care doesn't become to responsibility of any individual to do on their own
Neurodivergent people perceived as women and girls should have access to care and support as early as many perceived as boys do
Women deserve to be compensated for the years of oppression, of being forced out of jobs due to marriage, pregnancy, and age
Women should be compensated for the years of being treated as incubators, for the forced labour in religious institutions, for the abuse at the hands of powerful and not so powerful men
Women deserve psychological support for processing trauma acquired from living in a world where they have been made less than
Women and those perceived as such deserve the freedom to travel to any part of the world as safely as any man
Women deserve access to toilets, to sanitation, to food
Women deserve to live.
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cooloddball · 3 years
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I always roll my eyes when people say Jensen is straight. 🙄
Have you watched Boys in the band (2020).
If you haven't please do there's a very interesting scene about a man (Hank) who is married to a woman but has a relationship with a gay man (Larry) on the side.
So someone (Alan) asks about Hank being married and being so close to Larry who is clearly gay. and
Here is what Micheal, one of Larry's friend says something to Alan.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I hope it actually answers this ask.
More in the tags.
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thedreadvampy · 3 years
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ok the thing I'm struggling to find words for in my mind tonight is. a deep discomfort with the framing that complex relationships to sexuality and gender are something exclusive to queerness. that cishet people's relationship to sexuality and gender is by definition simple. and that's a tempting idea and like, yeah, there's much less impetus for a cishet person to examine their sexuality and gender. but that doesn't mean there's no complexity to it. and this isn't intended as a Don't Be Mean To The Poor Straights post it's just. observably not true that no cishet person has a complex relationship to sexuality and gender.
queerness is a complicating factor in people's relationship to sexuality and gender - we are made more conscious of the ways we don't fit what's expected, our sexuality and gender is often what is used to justify marginalisation and it comes with a whole host of pain and joy because of that, and the way that queerness is marginalised forces us into direct conversation with our sexuality/gender
but queerness isn't the only complicating factor in people's relationships to sexuality and gender. like as a woman who is pretty Definitely Cis I still have a huge ongoing wrestle with my gender - it's female, but what that means and how that's expressed and how that affects how i move through the world is still complicated and fraught and often messy and contradictory. that doesn't make me trans but it does feel pretty alienating that in a lot of queer spaces there's this implied assumption that the only type of gender complexity is a discovery of non-cisness.
(and tbh a lot of the time that's fair because a lot of people aren't cis and as I say like. it's much easier to Never Have These Conversations (with others or with yourself) if you're cis. so a lot of cis people never really name their gender troubles because they're not brought face to face with them.)
but there are a lot of things that affect your relationship to your gender. for me, I know I'm a woman, but how I'm a woman is a messy question wrapped up in trauma, in misogyny, in bisexuality, in autism, in body image, in the specifics of who I am and how I relate to the world and how I want to be seen and why. and there kind of is a thing in a lot of IRL queer spaces I hang out in where people jump straight to diagnosing me with Trans of Gender if I try to discuss a complex relationship with womanhood, or a desire to present as GNC, or a discomfort with being performed in certain gendered ways. and for a lot of people that is a step on the route but as far as I can tell it's not for me, I've spent many years trying out the shape of different genders because I had got into a headspace that any complexity in my relationship to genders must mean I was Not Cis, and for me it just didn't fit, womanhood remained the best fit. and I don't regret that, I think in an ideal world everyone should push themselves to question their gender and try out and see what good, and some people are just statistically gonna be cis like. it would be a weird numbers game for absolutely nobody's gender and sex to line up.
but I'm getting sidetracked. I was thinking about how cis and het people have the capacity for equally complex relationships to gender and sexuality as anyone else, and why that's important.
(I've never been straight or even thought I was straight, but I have occasionally talked to straight people and like. I have never met anyone, straight or queer, with a simple and uncomplicated relationship to their own sexuality - is it right, is it socially acceptable, there's shame, there's trauma, there's confusion, there's gendered and racialised and ableist baggage)
and like. it isn't that sexuality and gender aren't less of a fraught space for cishet people as a group than for queer people as a group. obviously in a group that faces a history and present of marginalisation and active violence on the basis of sexuality and gender, those are more intense complexities, and because of that there's also more intense joy as well as intense conflict. we are able to build community through marginalisation. we're brought face to face with our complex relationships to ourselves and because we can't ignore it we have built the language and community and frameworks to explore it and revert in it in a way many cis het people haven't.
but.
understanding intersectionality means understanding that as much as the marginalisation of queerness is bound up in the complexity of our relationships to gender and sexuality, so are power structures of race and gender and health and neurodivergence and wealth and class and geography and culture and language and religion and politics and education.
ultimately sexuality and gender are a huge element in how we relate to the world and our bodies and ourselves. and how the world relates to us. and there isn't a person on earth for whom that's 100% simple.
and idk I think a) to pretend that cishet people can't experience their bodies and themselves in a complex way is just a denial of reality, b) it simplifies out the many intersections of identity and power in all of us (even the straightest cisest manliest rich white dude) that make our social and personal identities messy and intricate and c) it gets in the way of us building meaningful intracommunity solidarity through a shared understanding of the beauty and pain and infinite variety of gender and sexuality
also idk. it's weird to me. to me it posits that to be cis, to be straight, to be allosexual and alloromantic, is a default whereas queerness is a deviation. and I just don't believe that, I don't think there's a 'normal' and uncomplicated Default State and then everyone outside it is a complication. I think there's value in embracing that othering in the world we live in, where we need to find strength in anger and in resistance, but I don't think it represents a truth about the world as much as a reclamation of the weapons used against us.
to me it feels similar to the way that white people thinking of ourselves as aracial and everyone else as racialised is an act of unconscious white supremacy. or the way that people are really keen to draw a sharp line between the Disabled Other and the Healthy Normal People. the idea that there's Normal People and Diverse People isn't...good...really? and this is in itself a messy issue because I do think there's a lot of power and value in taking pride in the complexity and thoughtfulness of queer relationships to sex and gender and I don't think there's some great evil in joking at the expense of the privileged. but when that starts to inform your actual serious thinking I think it can be counterproductive because erasing the complexity of cishet identities and acting as if any complexity in relationship to sexuality and gender means someone's Wrong About Being Straight/Cis is kind of reinforcing the otherising of queerness.
ughhhhh this is why I say it's hard to find words. because to me now it sounds like I'm saying 'don't suggest people might be queer' and like. do do that. we're in a world where that space isn't left open for the vast majority of people and straight or not, cis or not, allo or not, I think pretty much everyone benefits from having the space and community and language to have a conversation with their own identity. but that's kind of my thing like that conversation doesn't have a right answer. the conversation needs to have room for a model of straightness and a model of cisness that doesn't immediately slam the door on further exploration.
(also I've mostly been taking about cishet people here but let's be honest it's really a question of cis AND/OR het. one thing I'm finding really difficult at the moment is that there seems to be a lot of conversations about queerness and gender expression which conflate GNCness and a complex relationship to gender exclusively with being trans, and a lot of the time talk about how being a woman and being sapphic affect your relationship to gender are understood as less authentic explorations where they incorporate cis gendered identities. and a lot of discussions about complex cis wlw relationships to gender and womanhood get coopted by terfs who think that because their complex experience of gender is a cis one that means all complex experiences of gender are cis ones being wishfully misinterpreted (this is because TERFs have. no capacity or will to imagine experiences beyond their own, apparently) and that leaves. for me. often very little room to authentically discuss and explore with others my own identity as a cis wlw who uses she/her pronouns and still has a complex relationship to gender. and indeed as someone whose attraction to men (and no it's not straight but it's different-gender) is as textured and complex as her attraction to women. like it's a long way off the top of the list of Things To Worry About but I think about it a lot.)
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faultlessfinish · 3 years
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Hi, hello, I’m here to talk about people sexualizing Grant Wilson from Dungeons and Daddies and why it needs to stop. This post will include examples of people sexualizing a minor and mocking a gay kid’s sexuality, so heads up for that. 
He gets sexualized by people in the discord server, with no response from mods (unless you count “oof”). (Link goes to a compilation of stuff that includes, well, people sexualizing a minor.) 
He gets sexualized repeatedly in the show. (Link goes to a separate compilation of stuff that includes, again, people sexualizing a minor.)
And Grant’s sexuality,* when brought up, is often the butt of the joke (sources in same link as above).
There’s the stuff in a Talking Dad where Matt says that he found evidence of Grant watching gay porn on the computer, and that he’d “get into it - not like that” to "learn about what Grant likes,” laughing all the while. 
There’s the dad fact about how “Grant has never jerked off in that house” because Darryl cleans the bathroom so rigorously.
There’s the so-hilarious part where apparently Grant begged to get to watch 300 with his dad because of “the frickin hot dudes.”
* (I’m personally comfortable with “queer” but I know not everybody is, so I’ll go with “gender and sexual minority/GSM” for the rest of this post. You know who I mean. Folks who, y’know, know where the farmer’s market is.) Not only does Grant get more of this bullshit than the other sons, but he’s the only canonically GSM somewhat major character in DnDads (and likely the only one we’ll ever get), and that does extra bug me. Not that it would be okay for any of the sons, but it hits different, for me at least, when it’s Grant.  Time works different when you’re not the “default settings” for gender and sexuality. We fundamentally do not get to grow up on the same schedule of milestones – I think you could argue that nobody actually lives that Hollywood nonsense, but I know for a lot of us, it means being a lot older than most cis and/or allo and/or het teens when we first get the chance to be in a relationship, or it means it takes us longer to feel ready for that, or sometimes it means that we aren't ever going to be "ready" because we're just not into dating and relationships and that's a valid way to be. It can mean that the person or people you are in a relationship with live really far away or maybe that there's somebody very special to you and you can't even mention that safely to your family. But then there's this flip side of the coin where as soon as a kid is known to be GSM, some people (whether in the real world or in the stories they tell) act like that kid can't be a kid anymore, like coming out is the same as announcing your intent to be sexual when sexual orientation and sexual identity are not about that.  We're still haunted by all the years when the only visible GSM people on or offscreen were the ones who couldn't hide it because their privacy had been invaded: the privacy of their bedrooms, and then the privacy of their deathbeds. So many writers still don’t know how to tell a story about a GSM person that isn't about them being hypersexual, a victim, or both. I'm not saying healthy expressions of sexuality between consenting adults are wrong, and I'm not saying that harm doesn't happen to our community, but we are so much more than that and we always have been. So for the minors that are listening to this show, so that you’ve heard somebody say it: if you’re a gay kid, you’re still a kid.  If you need to have a training-wheels crush on somebody of an inappropriate age, well, it happens, but it’s not something adults should laugh about or endorse. If somebody is getting undressed in front of you and you express that you’re uncomfortable with it, they should stop.  You don’t need to be interested in sex right now (or ever), and you don’t need to feel like you’re not “really” whatever orientation you are until you’ve engaged in sexual activity with somebody of the corresponding gender(s). The adults who love and support you do not assume that you choose your media based on whether it has people you’re sexually attracted to, and they don’t laugh behind your back about it. They don’t try to infer your preferred sex acts (through looking at your browser history or otherwise), and they don’t obsess about whether you’re masturbating or laugh about it.  Nobody should be talking about whether you’re “good, giving, and game” or whether you’re “into pain.” Nobody should be teaching you about BDSM and kinks when you’re 11-13 or however old Grant is right now.  I know a lot of the minors who listen to this show identify a lot with Grant. I want you all to know that you have all the time that you need to figure out who you are and what that means for you. Nobody gets to rush you, push you, mock you, make you uncomfortable, or invade your privacy.  I’ll be putting some resources in a follow-up post here, but I wanted to make sure that the above point had been said in this space. 
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daxolotl · 4 years
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On Terezi, June, and the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl"
I see a lot of people talk about how in the epilogues, “John was escaping his failing marriage by chasing someone he thought was a manic pixie dream girl, ignoring Terezi’s gremlin nature to view her as the unattainable dream”. See: things like https://twitter.com/tainshir/status/1209537129761521664?s=19 this tweet.
(tweet content: a picture of June Egbert’s default sprite with “I pretend I see it”, with the text reading “john when his marriage starts failing and terezi starts messaging him again and he needs a manic pixie dream girl instead of the depressed and nightmarish girl she is”)
I… really disagree. Not just with the misgendering and the jokes about June being a boring het boy - I disagree for a whole host of reasons.
I don’t view John as a man trapped in a failing marriage seeking a manic pixie dream girl. I view June as a woman trapped in a heteronormative “dream”, seeking something she doesn’t know how describe.
(As a note, those are the only times in this where I will refer to June as “John” or in any masculine ways, except in a brief discussion of her role within her marriage as the “husband” and how alienating she finds that role)
To start, we need to talk about June and Roxy’s marriage in Candy. Other, wiser people have talked about Candy and about its role as Calliope’s sickly-sweet, Narratively Irrelevant dream world. A sickly sweet reality where time races and people get married, have children, and die. A world that clashes and feels unnatural to some of its people, but that they go along with because they feel it’s how things are “meant” to be.
(Rose and Kanaya are the notable exception, with them finding perfect happiness and contentment in that world. That’s a whole other discussion - of how a haunted, mentally ill lesbian found perfect contentment in having a wife and a family. “I never thought I’d get to be happy” is one of the most powerful lines in all of Homestuck.)
June and Roxy’s marriage is the epitome of that. It’s the first thing that establishes itself after choosing Candy. Calliope immediately takes a back seat, pushing Roxy and June together. Roxy and Calliope’s labelless relationship with a broad, fluid approach to gender and presentation is sabotaged before it can begin, pushing Roxy instead into a Perfect Heteronormative Happy Ending. Roxy becomes June’s prize – as, at the beginning of the comic, people viewed Rose. A blonde, femme, pink-themed person for June’s blue masc self to marry and have a Happily Ever After with.
Roxy ultimately finds happiness with what they’re pushed into – because we know they can find contentment as a mother and can view it as something seriously cool. Their approach to gender is fluid and open, and varies based on the circumstances they find themselves in. Roxy is a person shaped by circumstance.
But June? June’s connection with gender is much less fluid and much less open than Roxy’s. Where Roxy can find happiness as a wife and a mother, June fundamentally cannot be a husband or a father. It isn’t right for her, on a deep layer. She just can’t be happy like that.
Enter Terezi.
Terezi is a lesbian (or a bisexual, depending on how you headcanon her) alien who totally lacks a sense of heteronormativity.
Terezi is a chaotic, gremlin-like mess of a woman who doesn’t care about what she’s Meant to be.
Terezi’s most important relationship is to a trans woman, and she doesn’t care about society’s expectations of that.
Terezi’s approach to romance ignores the normal and the accepted. Her love for Vriska goes beyond the quadrants, and whatever feelings she has for June seem to defy labelling, too – no matter how convinced June becomes that Terezi Hates her.
And, finally, Terezi is within the Medium – free of the influence of Calliope’s happily ever after saccharine storytelling.
I want to make a brief aside about Life is Strange and Chloe Price. Chloe is a punky, messy, depressed, chaotic, intensely flawed lesbian who puts up two middle fingers to heteronormativity. And her primary plot arc revolves around her trying to find her former best friend and lover, who went missing before the events of the game. I’m a trans woman. When I first started playing Life is Strange, I hadn’t realised I was a woman or a lesbian. Chloe was a huge part of how I realised both of those things, and how closely tied together those parts of me are. She created this complicated, messy tangle of emotion in my heart. I wanted to be like her. I wanted someone to be as dedicated to me as she was for her lover. I wanted to be her. And I wanted to be with her – but she’s such a lesbian that my interest in her felt...different, compared to my previous, assumed “heterosexual” interest in other women.
In short, my complicated interest in a woman who totally broke all of my expectations of cis heterosexual romance helped me to realise who I am. And that, to me, feels like June’s interest in Terezi.
June isn’t an unhappy husband lusting after an unattainable manic pixie dream girl. June is a closeted trans lesbian trapped in a seemingly-heteronormative marriage, seeing a messy, depressed lesbian who lives and loves far outside of the heteronormative Happy Ending and being filled with a deep longing and melancholy that she struggles to put a name to.
June knows her desire for Terezi isn’t heteronormative. She doesn’t ignore Terezi’s chaotic nature to view her as a manic pixie dream girl – she craves that chaos and that rejection of expectations and gender norms. Terezi’s gremlin nature isn’t an unfortunate reality June ignores, it’s a huge part of WHY June feels the way she does.
She doesn’t know if she wants Terezi or wants to be like Terezi, but in either case, it’s a deeply queer interest. She cares for Terezi in a lesbian way – a way that feels utterly alien compared to cis straight masculine approaches to love and romance with women.
That’s why she keeps her conversations with Terezi secret. That’s why the picture feels like something forbidden that she hides away, close to her (in her wallet, no less – a picture of an unmistakably queer woman loving woman, hidden deep within a symbol of fatherhood and masculinity). Because she yearns for that, in a way she doesn’t fully understand, but that she knows feels forbidden. So she hides it away.
That’s why the scene with her tearing the picture apart is framed and written so dramatically. It’s not an old husband giving up on a creepy teenage dream crush. It’s a closeted trans lesbian giving up on the queer feelings deep in her heart as something impossible. She tears up the picture she held deep within the symbols of masculinity and heteronormativity, and settles for the unhappiness she has as a “cis man”. She accepts that this is her life, and there’s no way she can change it.
Candy June’s feelings for Terezi aren’t that of a husband pursuing a teenage dream. They’re the feelings of a trans woman seeing and adoring Terezi, in a mirror image of the ways that Vriska’s feelings for Terezi are a complicated mess that defy labels.
She loves her. She hates her. She wants to be like her. She wants to be loved and accepted by her.
Her feelings defy any narrow label. Because her feelings for her are the feelings of a trans lesbian who has no real idea of what she wants or how she wants it. She just knows that Terezi is something that she wants, in some indefinable, complex way.
Do I think June and Terezi are a good couple? Not necessarily, and I’m, as always, ride or die for Vrisrezi. I think Terezi is to June what Chloe Price was to me – a complicated crush; a difficult, confusing and wonderful awakening of my feelings as a trans lesbian.
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mostlyanything19 · 5 years
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Gender™
After Neilman actually confirmed that the costuming choices for Golgotha were absolutely deliberate.... God i really want to. write something about Crowley and his gender presentation throughout the ages. Somebody here said something pretty throwaway a while ago about him presenting more masculine in times of high stress & anxiety and more feminine when he's feeling safer, and it doesn't completely track if you look at the show as a whole, but it does track a little and anyway i've been obsessed with the concept ever since.
(An additional factor to "they mostly present as males" that I think should be kept in mind is of course that it is historically SO much easier to live and move freely in the world as a male-shaped being.This would probably contribute to female-presenting being more of an active choice than male-presenting, which is logically easier to default to.)
(I just mostly keep coming back to Golgotha vs Rome and that measly 8-year cut between, and Crowley changing his ENTIRE way of presenting to the world after literally thousands of years of him looking pretty much the same (which is: very androgynous to full-out female-presenting). It’s also the first time we see him in sunglasses, which just adds to the whole “shoring up the defenses” feel of it. Then you have his absolutely MOST cis-het-man look ever in the scene where he asks Aziraphale for holy water for the first time, after feeling scared enough about things going pear-shaped and defenseless enough in the looming face of that for however long it took for him to cave and approach Aziraphale about it. but I bet you it was a good long time. And there’s also something to be said about his playfully gender-y 2007-getup gradually gearing towards something more definedly masculine as the 11 years pass and the “oh angel let’s raise this kid together, what a great plan, this will totally work” starts to seem more and more fraught, and actual armageddon approaches. (And, of course, Nanny Ashtoreth is mixed somewhere in there, but she’s a funny and interesting case bc... on the one hand, yes, it’s Crowley choosing a female disguise when he could have just as well done something else, so that was deliberate on his part. On the other, though, Nanny Ash isn’t really Crowley. It’s him play-acting; it’s a part. could almost make a whole new meta about that))
Conclusion: absolutely none, but that’s where my head is at this morning. Also, gender.
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Love and Whiteness (Part II)
So the last time I wrote a post on this subject it was more directly lamenting the difficulties of loving a white person and the ways in which they fail to see you on a one-on-one level. But as we get deeper into our relationship big things keep coming up. And this is why it has taken me so long to get around to writing part two of that post. Put simply, loving a white partner is not simply about the one on one relationship the two of you have. It is about much much more than that. See, there are the interpersonal dynamics between the two of you, then there are the larger societal power dynamics. Basically, what I have been coming to realise over the increasing course of my relationship is that deciding to build something with a white person is complex, because the advantages they have of being in the world slowly crowd out the little space you have. As a pansexual person in a heterosexual presenting relationship, this is because of the role patriarchy plays - a woman slowly is expected to conform to the culture of her partner, and her partner's family. That is, assimilation. But this is compounded because of the settler-colonist culture in South Africa, whiteness is seen as the highest bar of existence for all, and so with whiteness comes a sense of supremacy and entitlement, and if you don't fit the bar, you guessed it, you are less than worthy of being a part of the family. There are a number of challenges that come up when I think about the costs that being in a relationship with a white cis-het male have had on my psyche. And to speak frankly I am tired. In fact all the women in me are tired. But because it is a release, and because it may help someone else out there I am going to dish them up right now. So sit back, and enjoy (if possible). 1 - Privilege and the associated lack of lived experience. This is perhaps the biggest stumbling block in our relationship. If you are a black woman (or person) dating a white male, there probably is a phase where it is all hunky dory. But sooner or later, one day you wake up and have the earth-shattering realisation that:
"There is no way in which my cis-het, upper class, able-bodied, christian, male partner, has ever been systemically discriminated against in his entire life."
And this shakes you up because all you've ever known was struggle. As a woman, as a person of colour, as a non-hetero person, as a poor person, for me - as a survivor. And for a second you can't reconcile how it is that the two of you are together. For a split second you feel lucky, like maybe you won the lottery. You remember how hard it used to be when you were young, how you struggled through abuse, through trauma, through the vicarious trauma of those in your community, and you think "Ah, how did I get here? That all feels like a long and distant dream." Then you wake the fuck up and realise that you are not lucky. That the boundaries of the prison have just changed, and now while you are able to live and love and exist a lot easier than you were able to before there are constraints facing you that you would never imagine existed and these come in the shape of your partner's privilege. 
Obviously different people are woke to different levels, but white partners in particular tend to suffer from the white liberal affliction. They think that because you agree on the basis of morality and ethics there is no need to do extra work to be a good ally. In fact they may not even know what allyship means. And the burden of educating them is then defaulted onto YOU, the partner. 
Because they are an entitled white male, they get offended when you say that it is not your duty to educate them. They don't understand that you don't owe it to them. If you choose to educate them it is because you love them and you have committed  to your relationship. Educating them is a god damn privilege, not your job.  
In any case, privilege fucks with the power dynamics, and unless your partner is willing to put in the active conscious work, reading, listening to podcasts, watching stuff, reading and reading, he is not going to wake up. Not now. Not ever. 
2- Compounded with class and privilege comes family. In the case of my partner, he is half foreign, and half South African. And I always find that the half foreign aspect is what has saved him. Of the micro-aggressions that I experience at the hands of his family, those from his dad - a white South African apartheid era male - are the worst. To him I am not an individual, I am other. Whenever he talks about black people or indians, or black colleagues, he makes eye contact with me. Needless to say he thinks I am the fucking spokesperson for every Indian person in South Africa. 
And while the microaggressions from him are regular and particularly bad, it is not much better from the rest of the family. While the mum is less problematic she is not unproblematic, and the sisters are so couched in their own privilege that it suffocates me. This is the thing, when you relate to them (the whole family) it is on their terms. You do what they want and expect you to do and you do it in their way. They speak upper-crust english, and because I speak my vernacular I become a fucking cute little joke to them, "Oh, Anne*, did you hear how she said that?". Ha. ha. ha. Big fucking deal. I am sorry I am not a colonist settler who stole land, preserved imperial culture and went to the most expensive private school owned to man. 
So, yeah, white families. And guess what, you tell your partner about it and they accuse you of hating their family? It has actively started causing me anxiety. I can't go there and not get a tummy ache or headache, and a sinking feeling (Queue get out) in my stomach. Worst part is - they don't know it. My partner thinks he is between a rock and a hard place, and to date has only had a discussion with them about how problematic they are on one occasion.  And in this process I am villainised. It becomes me against the family. Well it wouldn't be if they weren't such passively racist human beings. 
3- Friends. I'll keep it short. This post is becoming taxing. The microaggressions are terrible. One of the friends also did the thing all white people do by referring to me as curry! Racist pig. There was no backlash from my partner who then went on the defensive and like a week later forgot it happened. Well, I didn't forget. Then, there are the extremely racist and misogynist friends. He has a friend who had a road rage incident and drove past the woman, rolled down his window and flashed a wad of cash in her face. Then bragged to me and my partner about it, and proceeded to say that he 
was sure that she wanted to fuck him. My partner sees this as a once off isolated incident, and his family says boys will be boys. My partner also thinks he is between a rock and a hard place. 
Don't they understand that these are our fucking lives - oh wait, they don't!
2 - Society. South Africa, and particularly Cape Town is the most racially segregated racist place in the country. It is worse because white liberals who live here go to church and think they are doing their duty unto society. They live in big houses on the foot of the mountain and donate blankets and money to charity but have never paid retribution and will not give back the land. They see no link between the exploitation of black bodies under apartheid and their economic success. And because they are colonist-settlers, they think they belong here and also behave as Gods. They don't make eye contact with you if you are not white, and do not acknowledge your humanity. When they do it is in a patronising way. They don't see black people as people, forget as their inferiors. They are entitled trash. Period. Now think about having kids, black kids, and this is what they aspire to. Nope. 3 - The lack of a reprieve. So, I go to work. It is extremely white, I go to therapy, she is white, I go home my partner is white. My family is scattered. I am alone in this city. My black friends have moved on from this mini-apartheid state to places that will feed their souls. My white friends mostly have the liberalism affliction, and I am isolated. There are very few public spaces that have black bodies in them, and it becomes suffocating. Loving a white person, then, is not about loving that individual. It is about being able to live with the toll that that love takes on your psyche and the price you pay for it. But I've basically decided that I am no longer willing to pay this price for our love. I demand respect from his parents, I will not associate with his friends, and he has to graft for it. I mean I could keep writing about this, the anger, the erasure, but I'll stop here. I love my partner. I really do. When it is just the two of us hanging, I see his soul and I truly feel that he sees mine, and I don't wanna end what we've been building. I dig it. I dig him. I dig our life. But add to the equation the expectation of settling down (I don't want to) and where (Cape Town? City of spatial apartheid?), monogamy (contentious one)  and kids (I am strictly adopting when I decide I am ready - too many abandoned lil puudin' faces ouchea), it quickly becomes a lot. Look, I don't have the answers. Being in a relationship with a non-white male could easily have just as many challenges, there is always patriarchy and religion. In any case, we're investing in something here and I will try to make it work, but the bottom line is this guy is going to have to put in some serious work. I guess if I could speak frankly to him I would say: I know you've never had to work for anything in your life. I know you are hyper-intelligent, so why don't you put some of that intellect to work and research concepts such as wokeness, allyship, feminism, intersectionality?  Oh it bores you? Well listen up... this is the lifeline of our relationship, and it is ALL up to you at this stage. You think that what I have displayed up to now is rage? You have no idea of the leaps and bounds by which it will expand if you don't do something about it. Gone, are the tears and the fear. This is a fight for survival, and you are either going to step up to the challenge or not.
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