#once we accept that gender as a concept is fundamentally broken maybe we can like forgive each other for picking up the pieces

[swampgallows]

Hey I am an ace as well and I was just wondering how you deal with friends wondering why you don’t date/ or feel sexual attraction to people.... like it just doesn’t cross my mind but I’m bad at explaining

i’m lucky in that most of my close friends are accepting of my asexuality and it isn’t an issue. like any of my other boundaries, they are respected. it’s really my family, and people who aren’t very close to me, who don’t understand. I’ve only brought it up with my family once or twice and they’ve been very dismissive of it, so I’m not exactly open with them about it. i wasn’t planning to tell them at all, but my mom confronted me in the car and forced me to come out to her. i tried bringing it up with my sister and brother, and my sister said “you just need to find the right man”. i told her, “well maybe you’re bi and you just need to find the right woman.” then she went onto some tangent about how she thought she was “broken” until she met her boyfriend at the time, who was allegedly very good at oral sex. so, yknow, more of the same bullshit we always get.

my parents make comments about “when” I “find a man” or “start a family”, then stammer “—i-if you want to, I mean, if that’s what you want to do—” as an aside. they continually ask if i “met anyone”, or, when I do meet new people (usually men) if I am “interested”. my ex girlfriend flew out to see me and spent a week at my house (i live with my parents) but my family is still fairly ignorant of my bi identity, and I don’t really have the constitution to care to remind them. (or, it becomes an issue of “well youre not even dating anyone so what does it matter?” as if everyone’s orientations are of no import if they’re single.)

my main mode of coping is deflection; I’ll focus instead on the attributes the people around me are attracted to and agree on just an aesthetic principle. like there was a time where a new guy started working at the coffee cart at my old job, and all of my coworkers were fawning over how hot he was. i asked them to point him out to me sometime (which made them think i was interested), as i didnt really see anyone of particular attractiveness enter the ranks. when i finally ran into him, i agreed that he looked like a pleasant guy, then made a joke about how he “looks like he coaches a youth swimming team”. my coworkers all found it hilarious, and it wasn’t any insult to the guy at all, AND it deflected them from asking my opinion on his ‘hotness’. it was ambiguous enough that they could still assume i was straight. 

it’s very rare that anyone asks me about my personal preferences, but if they do i usually cop out with traits i find aesthetically pleasing. or i deflect by turning it into a joke, or being self-deprecating, or both. (”i’m pushing 30 and still get acne; who wants to date that?” which then becomes a still-awkward but less vulnerable conversation full of well-intentioned but misguided attempts at skincare advice, like “just use soap and water :)”.)

sometimes i am in a situation where i can be open about my ace identity and there are many who bristle against it, but i try to stand my ground. i have lost people who i previously considered friends because i said that regardless of my partner’s gender, i was still asexual. they were of the opinion that “aces are lgbt except cishet aces”, which to me is as dumb as excluding cis bi people if theyre in a het relationship (which is something people actually do, lol. biphobia is still alive and well). because, as i had told them, i was still pretty blatantly ace even when i had boyfriends as when i had a girlfriend. i knew i was ace as young as 12 years old when i went around telling people i had “ithyphallophobia”, or the fear of an erect penis [which, if i’m being real, i kind of actually have]. me having boyfriends didn’t invalidate my ace identity, in the same way many people can go nearly their entire lives in het relationships and later come out as gay. the “gold star” standard is harmful to all. 

i am lucky to live in a pretty progressive, metropolitan area and belong to a fairly open subculture where love is interpreted in many different ways. but i still yearn for representation and acceptance regardless, as many fundamentals of asexuality are misunderstood.

i think often about musician and poet Patti Smith and her relationship with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe. the two of them were a couple, intimate beyond measure, for many years. as mapplethorpe learned more about himself and his interests, the two eventually separated as a couple, and Mapplethorpe identified as gay. he had many partners and a very close and intimate relationship with his curator and mentor, Sam Wagstaff, for well over a decade. but he still maintained a very close relationship with Patti Smith. granted, this was the 70s and 80s, so the cultural climate was a bit different; wagstaff and mapplethorpe couldn’t be too open about their relationship, but that isn’t why patti smith was still in the picture. she wasn’t just a “best friend”; she was a life partner for him, truly. she visited Mapplethorpe in the hospital as he was fighting AIDS, and was one of the last people he spoke with before his death. she was a close and inseparable part of his life. patti smith writes in her book “Just Kids” that she woke up the next morning and instantly knew that he had passed. 

i mention this because people love to ridicule the concepts of quasi- or queerplatonic relationships (also called zucchinis in the ace community) specifically because they’re considered applicable only to aces. but for all intents and purposes, patti smith and robert mapplethorpe were zucchinis. they were life partners in a way that was not as simply cut and dry as just “friends” or “partners”; both mapplethorpe and patti smith had other intimate, romantic, and sexual relationships in addition to the relationship they had with one another, independent of any kind of “polyamorous” context. they had a unique bond that endured until mapplethorpe’s death. 

the isn’t to say that mapplethorpe or patti smith would have identified as zucchinis or anything like that. their relationship already existed as it was, regardless of whether or not they had a name for it, but to deny communities the new vocabulary to talk about these unique experiences is to erase their significance and magnitude. there are many experiences of the ace community and the rest of the lgbtqia community that overlap, and to disown new ideas and concepts just because they are primarily targeted as being ‘asexual’ hurts the rest of the community, as well as the rest of society. dismissing patti smith’s role in mapplethorpe’s life—and his role in hers—purely on the basis of their declared identities and their applicable roles is disingenuous to both parties and narrows our perception of the vastness of human connection. 

part of acknowledging asexuality is acknowledging the diversity and strata of human relationships, yet this seems like a conversation that a lot of people seem averse to having. hopefully once these ideas become more commonplace, we wont be stuck having to explain or hide ourselves so much.

#anon #ask #asexuality #lgbtqia #long post /

[evilelitest2]

What do you think are some of the pitfalls of modern day feminism and how can we improve feminism? I don't think the current feminist movement does enough to help lower class women who are more likely to deal with things like sexual assult, domestic violence and restricted access to abortions. I think the transition from an academic setting to the blogosphere has lead to a lot of feminist terms being misused or overused. What do you think?

Fun fact, I tried to answer this question three times and every time something happened and I lost all my writing.  But yes, great question, but sort of difficult because there isn’t one form of feminism, my critiques of Second Wave Feminism are totally different from my critiques from 4th Wave, or my critiques of Marxist feminism, its like having a single critique of every form of goverment, technically possible but the specifics matter a great deal.  Some forms of feminism focus exclusively on lower class women, others do in fact ignore them.  That being said, there are a few broad critiques I can make of the movement, but a few caveots i want to make clear first.

     Firstly, every movement, regardless of its ideals, are going to have stupid people, simplistic people, and bullies within its ranks, and there is no real fix for “some feminists online are dumb”.  The question when it comes to a movement is “are these just idiots attached to the wrong cause” or “is the cause itself rotten” which isn’t true of feminism the way that White Natioanlism is fundementally broken 

     Secondly, every movement interested in human rights struggles with intersectionality, it is not a uniquely feminist thing, intersectionality is hard both practically and psychologically, and that is something I think all of the movements are struggling with, feminism has done better than some with its active efforts to incorporate queer efforts into its larger movement.  

Ok so actual critiques 

1) Branding.  Feminism has major major problems with its image, one thing I notice constantly is that various feminist ideas and terminology might be easily accepted by people because they are objectively useful, but when people hear that they are feminist, suddenly people are like “eww no” .  Feminism really needs to rebrand itself to try to be more approachable, especially in regards to the usefulness of the ideas, because many of these concepts are just make life objectively easier to understand, but also there need to be active attempts to countermand the way feminists are depicted in the media, especially that sort of man hating militant 

2) Clarify terms:  THis is actually for the larger left wing movement, but the reason why the right can so easily strawman/co-op our rhetoric is that we aren’t specific about it . I mean take privilege for example, the fact of the matter is every person on the planet has some privilege in some context, a trans lesbian lower class black women in the Us still has privilege of being able bodied, or American citizenship.  A wealthy white man might still have down syndrome, privilege isn’t like a bioware morality system with most privilege vs. least, its a complicated interconnected system of power relationships.  

Or the Bechdel test, it isn’t just a scoring system for sexism, its a way of measuring an observable reality of the film industry, its a measurement of a larger trend rather than a condemnation of any specific movie.  The more vague these terms are, the more they can be strawmanned and approprated by reactionaries.

3) Tell Terfs to fuck off: Terfs suck, end of story 

4) Drop the moon goddess shit: This is more of a 2nd wave feminism issue, but i notice a lot of people perception of feminism comes from things like feminist fantasy or the sort of 2nd wave rements online, and its just utterly absurd.  All of the sacred femininity, primordial matriarchy, feminine nature magic stuff is extremely dated and makes the whole movement come off as a neo pagan nonsense movement.  Facts are on the side of feminism, embrace those 

5) Embrace complexity.  Again this doesn’t really apply to academic feminism, but more the way it is understood by tumblr folks, but we need to be more comfortable with larger complexity.  Bad people can make good art, somebody can be problematic in one regard and useful in another, simplicity remains as always a tool of the right, so that needs to just be abandoned. 

6) Explain utility: How is Feminism useful to me?   Yeah this one kinda sucks, because when it comes to basic human rights, there is something kinda upsetting about having to be like “oh yeah, these people are being fundamentally oppressed but here is how caring about their plight can help men” like that fucking sucks.  Problem is though, a lot of people are selfish, and if we can’t get them to support this cause, they will drift towards reactionary causes.  Fact is, for men, it is beneficial to them to support sexism on the surface, they benefit from it, and feminism is never going to win out if you don’t draw more men away from opposition.  So as much as it sucks, feminism needs to explain how patriarchy hurts men, how toxic masculinity is actually really destructive for men, how many of the issues that MRAs pretend to care about are issues caused by patriarchy rather than by feminists, how embracing gender equality is actually better for everybody involved.  

7) Finally and maybe most importantly, embrace humor, I think the “humorless angry feminist” sterotype  is one of the greatest weapons of the reactionary right, so we need to drop it.  I admire what Anita Sarkeesian is trying to do but beyond the fact I think her videos are simplistic, she is really really boring and utterly without humor.  Which i think weakens the movement as a whole, if feminism is funny and approachable, it can win adherents, cause again, the facts are on itself, it doesn’t need to hide its core identity the way that reactionary movements do.  

Bonus Round: Feminism should not be equated with other causes, feminism isn’t necessarily communist or pacifistic, 

Edit: 

Ok one thing I think I should add here, and this isn’t really the task of feminism but I think this needs to happen for Feminism to figure out where it go next.  There needs to be a clearer way for men to relate to the world feminists hope to build.  Now I don’t mean that in the sense of “oh no feminism hopes to oppress me and leave men obsolete” and all that conservative nonsense, I mean that when patriarchal gender norms are challenged and broken down (as they should be) it isn’t necessarily clear where men should go.  And many times they return back to reactionary hyper conservative gender norms, because those are simply and easy ad all that jazz.  Like, this isn’t the fault of feminism, its more of an unintended consequence that happens when change comes a calling, like how ebay has been putting malls out of work.  But while men should be able to come up with their own purpose once masculine identities are torn down, creating new identities based upon themselves rather than vague socialist expectations...that clearly isn’t happening, so feminism would do well if they could offer suggestions and try to address those anxeities.  Which....isn’t fair.  I mean its totally not fair at all that feminists have to both care for the needs and interests of a systemically oppressed under class....AND spend time trying to address the emotional needs of the oppressive class but you know...life isn’t fair.  And its just easier, if men, episodically young boys, can’t find a new purpose and identity, they are going to drift back to conservatism, this is how MRAs recruit.

   Honestly, a Men’s movement focusing on how to address men’s issues within the context of feminism and addressing the legitimate issues facing men (suicide, toxic masculinity, sexual insecurities etc) would be a really great thing, but that has largely been co-opted by MRAs as a way to recruit troubled young men into a reactionary hate group.  It shouldn't’t be feminist job, but finding answers for the anxieties of these young men will help them greatly in the future, its just more practical to address that from the outset rather than let them be corrupted by simplistic conspiracy theory narratives about the castration addicted matriarchy bent on white genocide.  

#ask evilelitest2 #feminism #social justice