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#like i very very rarely find myself attracted to cishet men/women
heehoothefool · 3 months
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"Are cishet ace/aro men queer" holy fuck you people are just awful huh. Really just showing that we haven't moved past the Basically Straight ideology.
As a cisgender, heteroromantic ace individual myself, allow me to tell you a little bit about myself.
I spent most of my life wondering what was wrong with me. I knew very quickly that many of the people who confessed their love for me would not want me the moment they found out I was averse to sex. I would daydream of various men I'd had crushes on over the years spending time with me in ways I was comfortable, but rarely did I confess my feelings because a simple saying rang in my ears.
"You'll never find a man who will love you without sex."
And the people in my Instagram DMs who would call me baby and then ghost me after they figured out the flag in my profile picture spoke volumes to that. I was only desirable because I was physically attractive. No one wanted to love my personality, not if they couldn't also fuck me. It just wasn't an option.
I have been ostracized. I have been told I don't belong. The straight community does not want me because I do not actively desire sex. The very people you're trying to lump me in with because I'm "basically straight" will not claim me because I am not like them.
I am The Other. I am Less Than. I am Strange. I am Queer.
A person born male, who identifies as a man, and is attracted to women exclusively but only in one way (romantic) or the other (sexual) is queer.
That is a man who either does not desire sex, and is therefore Not Really A Man by society's gender standards and expectations, or does not desire a romantic relationship/wife/girlfriend and is called a manwhore dirtbag who sleeps around or is asked eternally by family and maybe partners who don't get it When He's Going To Get Married.
To be straight requires you to identify with your gender assigned at birth, to feel romantic attraction to the opposite gender exclusively, to feel sexual attraction to the opposite gender exclusively, and to only desire monogamy in that relationship.
A man, born a man, who is not romantically attracted women, but sexually attracted to them, is not straight.
A man, born a man, who is romantically attracted to women, but not sexually attracted to women, is not straight.
There is no debate. Yes, even the Demisexuals and Demiromantics. Yes, even the ones who are capable of feeling these things only under the right conditions.
They're all queer. Every single one. Because they deviate from the idea that Every Man Wants To Fuck A Woman And Be A Loving Husband By Default.
If you disagree with any part of this post get the fuck off my blog. If you try to start shit in the notes or in my asks you're getting blocked.
We're here. We're queer. Fucking deal with it.
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raytaku · 2 years
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So I think I finally figured out Why despite me being Very attracted to irl women, I rarely find myself attracted to fictional women, where with my attraction to irl men/nb ppl is roughly the same when compared to fictional men/nb ppl
It's bc most of the time they feel So bland to me. Like they're cut from a "Girl/Woman" template and given a slightly different paint job each time
Like you know with how most (western) media you have the Main Guy, The Main Guy's Best Bro, The Comic Relief (also a Guy), and then The Girl. Sometimes they try to spice it up by splitting the Girl into two characters, The Tomboy and The Princess Girly Girl type, but they all somehow feel the Same. They're Women first before they're characters (and a lot of the time they're made to appeal to the lowest common denominator of cishet (white) guys, so she's scrubbed of all personality in favor for Hotted Boobs)
So whenever I find a girl who deviates from the Girl Formula I always lose my shit bc Fuck Yes! A girl that seems Real and not some rich old cis white guy's idea of a girl. Someone who exists for Herself and not to pander to cishet white guys
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faerie-fang · 4 years
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yes i’m bi — that means i’m attracted to men, women, nonbinary folks, and any and all other genders out there — but honestly? i find i’m really only attracted to other queer folk
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rotationalsymmetry · 2 years
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Let's talk about exclusionism for a moment.
Let's say there's a group of people who have a lot of differences but also certain things in common. They don't experience attraction the way they were "supposed to". Some don't experience attraction on a first date or second or third, but it'll suddenly show up months in after developing an emotional connection. Or it won't. Which makes dating different from how it is for "normal" people, who generally do know whether they've got sexual chemistry or not on the first date and generally do develop romantic feelings relatively quickly. Others experience attraction but very, very rarely. Others notice they experience sexual attraction but not romantic attraction, or they fall in love but they don't feel sexual attraction. Or they experience neither. Or they experience something, but it doesn't seem to neatly fall into platonic/non-platonic categories and "I want to be your friend" doesn't actually feel any different from "I want a relationship."
This is not straight. We know what straight is. Straight is "his eyes met hers across a crowded room". Straight is locker room talk and which boy band musician is the cutest. Straight is getting married and living in a house in the suburbs with 2.5 children. Straight is "these people are possible friends, and these people are possible lays." We know what straight is, and that is not straight.
Now let's say, though, that you think your ideal community is a group of women loving women and no one else. If that's what you want, you might find some ideas threatening. Bisexual women who don't promise to have nothing to do with men. Nonbinary people. Maybe trans women, if you're not willing to take people at their word when it comes to their gender. And any aces who want to hang with queer women but either don't want to promise to not date men, or who insist on still talking about their asexuality as though it's something separate from lesbianism.
(This post is not an objection to being a lesbian. Lesbians are fine. Lesbians are awesome. Lesbian communities, resources, fluffy romance stories, etc are awesome. This is an objection to a specific way of interacting with the world that some lesbians and lesbian communities have. Lesbian separatism. Good grief, the whole point of this is that it drives me up the wall when I want to connect with queer people on here but some queer people make that impossible because they keep being fucking exclusionists, I'm certainly not going to turn around and be one myself.)
But there's a problem. Bisexual, as a concept, has mainstream acceptance. Nonbinary, as a concept, doesn't really have mainstream acceptance yet but we're working on it, and it's fairly accepted on tumblr. And if you just come out and say "asexuality isn't a real orientation", you're going to get a lot of people going "wtf are you talking about."
So you learn to encrypt what you say. To say a less objectionable version of what you want to say that still lays the groundwork for what you actually believe. You can't say "asexuality isn't real", but you can say "cishet aces aren't queer," which amounts to the same thing. You can't say "bisexuality isn't real, you're either straight or gay" without getting a lot of pushback, but for some reason when some people say "bi lesbians aren't real" a lot of people don't realize that's the exact same thing. There's no reason to push back on someone calling herself (or whatever pronoun) a bi lesbian unless your problem is, fundamentally, with bisexuals. With the idea that someone can be a woman who likes women, and also a woman who sleeps with men. (Or something in that general ballpark. I'm not always sure how to do the nonbinary-inclusive language. And being inclusive of nonbinary people doesn't actually mean someone isn't doing the "keep out the men and people who like like men out" thing. Or even that they're not a terf -- the idea that nonbinary people are all just afab people who like using different pronouns for some reason, is fairly pervasive, even within the queer community.) If you don't have a problem with bisexuals, at worst the "bi lesbian" thing is an oxford comma problem, someone saying something that's technically not correct but basically harmless.
Except there also are reasons, good solid reasons, for people to identify as bi lesbians. But my point is: I do have terminal open-mindedness and I did look for an actual reason at first, to oppose the "bi lesbian" label, and I found a lot of emotionally charged absolute nonsense in place of genuine reasons. And when people use emotionally charged nonsense in place of actual reasons, that means they don't want their real reasons to be known.
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dgcatanisiri · 3 years
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This is too long for me to be comfortable to put out without a cut, but dear god, did I need to rant and ramble on this subject...
I always feel awkward when I want to complain about how video games portray and fandom reacts to queer men, because I feel like the conversation (at least here on Tumblr) gets focused on the female protagonists - you know, the Commander Shepard or Alexios/Kassandra debates and that sort. The things where there’s valid comments to make about how important these female protagonists are, especially in an industry that is deeply misogynistic, and, in the case of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists, keep being developed with an eye towards the female-only protagonists, only to have a male protagonist shoved alongside them, if not upstaging entirely (such as Jacob being the center of Syndicate’s marketing, or how Bayek was originally going to die and Aya be the central protagonist of Origins, or the creation of Alexios and probably male Eivor on the basis of “women protagonists don’t sell.”)...
BUT, when I want to talk about my perspective as a gay man, as wanting to play these games for that empowerment, get to enjoy these games for representing me as a gay man, because Shepard, Ryder, Alexios, etc. get to be played as such, that having these male characters who are able to be played as attracted to other men means something to me, and that leads me to not just play the male characters, but prefer them to the female characters, or even to talk about the subject of homophobia in both the games themselves and the fandoms surrounding them... I do feel like there’s this pressure to just effectively shut up and stay quiet and let the women have their empowerment, that the moment needs to be theirs, not mine, that “fandom” (meaning the monolithic entity that is ‘the fandom’ and not necessarily any singular individual who I’m referring to or anything) is pressuring for anyone who enjoys the male protagonists for whatever reason to be silent and let the women enjoy their win, even if there’s a win for underrepresented men in there as well, or even a need to address the problems of homophobia by not representing queer men. That in its way, it’s effectively saying that a win against the sexism against the industry is outweighing or more important than any win against the homophobia. (Or, since I brought up Shepard, racism, considering that Shepard, Ryder, any game with the character creator, can be different skin tones as well, but that’s outside my lane.)
Like, this isn’t a callout post or any kind of directed screed against anyone, just... I suppose it’s a cumulative effect, based on the fact that I remember what the internet in the corners I frequent was like when Odyssey dropped, focused very much (and understandably - let me be clear that I have no desire to step on anyone’s victory or enjoyment of these games here) on Kassandra, and it felt like the fact that I got to play a character I could portray as gay (don’t start me on the bloody DLC though...) was a victory celebration at a table set for one, while (to really stretch my metaphor) seeing this massive party happening across the dining room at the same time, and that (and again, I’m really straining my metaphor, I’m aware), if I wanted to join that party, they would not combine our celebrations, I would have to join in theirs, and, in my wanting to pay attention to my victory, getting laughed at for it. It’s one of those things that makes fandom feel a little alienating, because I don’t particularly have much of a place that feels like it’s a space for me to celebrate my victories, rare as they are, and on occasion, even end up with the impression that, so far as fandom at large cares, that victory I want to celebrate is somehow less important. That the importance of Alexios, playable as a gay man, meant less than Kassandra, period. And, with Valhalla and Cyberpunk’s release on the horizon, along with (maaaaaaybe?) a Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, I find myself bracing myself for this to start up all over again.
And I know some of this is based in the fact that Tumblr and the transformative elements of fandom in general are more of a space that is dominated by women in fandom, who are going to celebrate the wins for them. That’s just how things shake out, I understand that it’s as much the place I’m going for involvement and interaction with fandom at large as it is anything else. Just... I obviously don’t fit in to the areas of “straight male” fandom, and then getting to the places in the “marginalized” segments of the fandom, it still feels like I need to find my way over to the margins of the margins to feel like I have a place in fandom more generally.
Like, I understand that I have male privilege and that is a factor in things - the male characters are probably more likely to be the ones in the marketing, so I get to see that idealized image of myself individually all over the covers and posters and trailers. BUT that doesn’t remove the straight privilege of the people who are shutting down conversations about the importance of the male PCs being portrayed in M/M relationships, even starts going into the realm of casual homophobia - because no acknowledgement of how important it is for the portrayal of gay men, or bi men, IS homophobic. I mean, how often do these companies have their official accounts post images of the M/M pairings? I’ve seen BioWare account retweet FemShep/Garrus and FemShep/Kaidan things, on top of the MaleShep/Female LI pairings. I’ve even seen FemShep/Liara content, which... We could go into the way that F/F pairings get fetishized and tend to be there as either fodder for cishet male titillation or just because the female PC gets swapped in for the male PC (in the way of Peebee riding a non-existent dick in the FemRyder romance scene in Mass Effect Andromeda), I don’t mean to discount that being a thing, so queer women are getting a short stick too. But where’s the M/M relationships? Hell, remember the whole #MakeJaalBi thing? After we got that notice about the patch for his romance would come... Has any official Mass Effect account actually SHOWN content of BroRyder and Jaal?
I mean, remember the Citadel DLC? The appearances of Kaidan’s romance material included FemShep, and Cortez’s content included a split second shot of just him and Shepard holding hands, and since it was blink and you’ll miss it, that means that it doesn’t even make any effort to portray the M/M relationships. And since I brought up Jaal already, BioWare had to be publicly shamed into offering M/M relationships in equal amounts to the other pairings in Mass Effect Andromeda. Like, it’s bad that Peebee’s romance for FemRyder just had the model swapped in for BroRyder, sure. But at least that content was THERE, at release. For gay/bi men who wanted to romance male characters, we have to make sure that we get that patch downloaded (meaning if you play the game without an internet connection, you can’t get access to his romance) - and only because the outrage actually GOT a response, which is not necessarily the norm in this industry.
Hell, the disparity there actually GOT noticed - if you include Scout Harding as a romance, M/M romances are the lowest numerical romances in Dragon Age Inquisition as well, with only Dorian and Bull as options. And I didn’t even realize this until this past year, despite being disappointed in those two options. Even recognizing that Harding is more of a fling than a full romance, it’s still more than M/M romances had. The closest we got was being able to flirt with Cullen twice before he shuts it down (and the rants I’ve had on THAT subject...). 
And that’s just the focus with BioWare - I saw it all through the initial release of Odyssey, while I know that the official metrics are all saying that Alexios saw more play than Kassandra, Kassandra got a lot of positive response in the fandom that was often framed in opposition to Alexios, that she was the “better” protagonist. 
Like, I’m bolding this for emphasis, and so if anyone is TL;DRing this it’s eye-catching enough: My issue is the dismissal and denigration of the male PCs when building up the female PCs. It is not being against celebrating the female PCs. It’s just the way that people will, in their positivity towards a female PC, dismiss the audience who relates to and connects with the male PC. The way that I’ve seen since day one the common “joke” that male Shepard is unnecessary, condemning the voice acting, even asking why he’s there when female Shepard is “the real Shepard”.
It makes fandom a hostile place to be when you’re looking to that character as your representation, your inspiration. Yeah, it’s a joke, but when it is coming from all corners, or at least feels like it, all the time, the humor dies, and you’re left with just the words. The words telling you that this mirror for yourself is something that people don’t care about.
Again, it’s that feeling of already being on the margins and then being pushed further. You are the freak among the freaks. 
But it feels like saying any of this, like I have, is opening the door to be dismissed as being sexist, or misogynistic, or lesbophobic, or anything like that, because people want to boil down what I’m saying to no more than “but what about MEN? Why aren’t you talking about MEN?” in that dismissive way that so many MRA trolls attempt to derail the conversation - except, no, I am TRYING to have a genuine conversation, about men who aren’t represented, men who need these male characters as much as women need the female ones - queer men get the short stick in a lot of cases, like this goes back to the representational matters in a lot of kids TV shows - while we can absolutely talk about the bad representation it was broadly, I remember when Voltron concluded, having Shiro, having arguably the lead male character of the show, end the show marrying and kissing another man... That was heavily ignored by Tumblr. Meanwhile Tumblr EXPLODED for Korra and Asami or Bubblegum and Marceline. 
It’s seeing what is representation for me as a queer man being played down or ignored while the queer women are praised. And, again, I’m not trying to take anything away from queer women, or women in general, but... Where, exactly, am I supposed to look for that same empowerment? And, more importantly, when the same media offers the empowerment for both groups, like video games do, why does it seem almost expected that I as a queer man back off and allow this to just be for the women in general, when the whole point of a variable protagonist is that it allows that empowerment for EVERYONE?
I mean, I say it feels like “opening the door” to these comments because it has happened before, and likely will again. Because saying “this joke feels hostile to me, as a member of an underrepresented group, can we please not?” or speaking about my individual experiences and feelings - often even just in my own space, on my blog, frequently only tagged with my individual tags for organization in my space, rather than publicly shouting it through a megaphone by putting it in public tags, and somehow STILL getting attacked for these comments - is apparently all those things... That’s been the response I’ve gotten to saying things like this in the past. 
And, in case I haven’t been clear with the repeated comments and the bolded statement above, it’s not about me, a man, trying to take away this thing for women. Rather, it’s me, a queer person - and fine, yes, a queer man - who wants to celebrate being seen, wants to celebrate what is still not a common thing of seeing myself in my media, and then feeling like I’m being shoved out of the way because other people celebrating their representation is considered more important, to hell with me and my mirrors.
Like, I’m not saying any of this is anything actively conscious or even intentionally malicious. It does seem like a reflexive defensive position - “men have tried to take this from us, so we’re not letting ANY man through.” I don’t want to come across as flippant or not aware of the fact that this isn’t a walk in the park for women. I get it, I really do. I’m just... It does feel like my struggles are something that I’m being told to downplay in the name of allowing others to have their celebration.
Thing is, my own experiences as a queer person already leave me feeling like I’m getting that as well - I mentioned before (and have elsewhere) that Dragon Age Inquisition’s M/M romances didn’t work for me. But I have often felt like I need to downplay the fact that I don’t emotionally connect to Dorian as a character - in the immediate aftermath of the game’s release, you could not say ANYTHING negative about him without getting shouted down as either a homophobe or dealing with internalized homophobia. Meanwhile, I’m here, pointing out that, hey, the previous games did not really have any direct homophobia, and the little bits that did lean in that direction felt more like the writers living in a homophobic society and not able to wholly divorce that in their writing than anything in-universe. To me, Thedas was a place where being gay was a difference that made no difference. And then Inquisition tore away that escape from homophobia so bluntly.
So, Dorian doesn’t empower me, you ask, so what about Bull? Yeah, I identify with “queer man” because while I’m a man romantically attracted to other men, I’m also asexual - just regular vanilla sex is in the fringes of my comfort zone. Bondage is an outright catapult out of there. At mach three. So I’m left uncomfortable by both of my “options” in Inquisition. And the response I have always braced myself for when I bring this up, when I do add my voice to the conversation about the M/M options, is “well, they can’t please everyone, and this was good for some people, so you should be content with that.” Being told I can’t have everything, so feeling uncomfortable at best is just something I have to live with, because hey, THOSE OTHER PEOPLE got satisfied, and so you should just be happy for them.
It’s that pained metaphor I offered earlier - the victory celebration isn’t for me, I’m on the outside looking in EVEN STILL. I am the freak among freaks. 
Where is my place to belong, in all of this? Because it’s honestly hard to find, when all the spaces deemed “for me” still feel like an exclusionary party?
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mr-kamiyama · 4 years
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A Word for Zoomers Who're Told They're "Making Up" Genders and Orientations.
I'm an Xer.
Well, actually I'm in that b.1977-85 throe where no two people can agree what I am. I'm Post Dankai Junior in the old country, but I was too old to be a kid for Pokémon, Harry Potter, I caught Digimon 02 during its premiere US run a rare Saturday the firm I worked at, that normally had Saturday hours, was closed. I met Windows Millennium Edition because a housemate, as back then, I'd realised I wanted to live with company, wanted to upgrade our computer to the newest version of Windows (and I promptly made AMVs using GIFs and lost them to the sands of time all before YouTube even existed) So that gives you an idea of my age.
I came out for the first time in high school. I came out as bi.
In Japan, transness, like here had different words we no longer use, but unlike here, wasn't a secret.
If I'd stayed in Japan just one more year, in '95 politician Kamikawa Aya began advocating on NHK for trans rights.
Maybe I'd've learned that transition *to* male and actual medical treatment like HRT to make that possible existed a whole lot sooner.
But I didn't. And so, I didn't realise it was actually something I could *do* and I wasn't doomed to be stuck until about 2010.
I claimed "bi" in the '90s, and mistook "you're a really cool person and really nice to me when few people are and so I really like you in a platonic sense" +aesthetic attraction for crushes of a romantic and sexual nature.
The SAM model was developed by bi people in the '70s, but where and when I was, there weren't exactly highly visible LGBT centres where I could learn this. So I thought any orientation had to be "x-sexual"
And I only knew about straight, gay/lesbian, and bi.
Which, the term "laaaaaaaabelllls" was coined by biphobic people my age. See, we weren't like people today, who literally can't live because of unfettered crony capitalism. You could get a nice studio on the nice side of town for eight days' work at minimum wage (of course, being POC, you had to find the right realtor), which back then was under four dollars an hour. You could get a 2br/1.5ba rowhouse for about two weeks' worth, which is half a month, but these days, that much work will get you a barely-studio in shoot-you-in-the-face-in-broad-daylight territory.
But we were still plenty suspicious of marketing. So queerphobic Xers went "don't make me acknowledge your filthy non-mono sexuality! What if I told you naming what you are is dehumanising, like labelling a jar of mayo, and you're the product!"
Which is no different that queerphobic Millennials claiming "Queer is a slur uwu call it gay because cisgay and cishet are the only valid IDs uwu Gay has never ever been used as a pejorative uwu"
Which is also bunk because back in the '90s, if one young man did ANYTHING another didn't like, the other one could call it and him "gaaayyy" and that would be a homophobic attack via toxic masculinity on the first young man. Heck, I don't listen to much grunge, though I did at the time, but it's used this way in some Nirvana song. I just can't remember which one.
Anyway, so I claimed bi and spent the next 23 or so years fighting for it even against physical violence to make me claim something in the false straight/gay binary
All along, I thought "the mushy stuff squicks me because I'm a guy (insert ways I justified things before I realised that yes, I actually am male for prior to 2010)" which, yeah, I'm still sorting through the myriad manifestations of toxic masculinity and learning to spot them. What that actually is is romance repulsion.
I'm actually aroace.
To go further, I actually have very strong platonic affection feelings, and "idemromantic" is not necessarily my actual identity, but that, and at least some idea, if even wrong, that the other party was interested, was how I sorted whether I should approach the other person as "friend" or "potential partner" subconsciously.
Plus to further complicate things, I'm sex-favourable ace/cupiosexual, which meant that just hearing limited definitions of things like sex repulsion in aces didn't clue me in. It wasn't until discussing what sexual attraction was with a newly-realised gay first wave Xer last year that I realised I had no idea what that was and had never felt it, and was therefore asexual. Which after the discussion with that guy, I dove into readings by you all on Tumbler first.
And I only realised I'm aromantic last month, though I've been questioning for actually a year this month.
Now, I'd say my aesthetic attraction is definitely bi, and yes, I accept the redefinition made with the info we have now of two or more genders including your own" which *I read* as "but not necessarily all genders, and perceived gender is a factor" whereas pan seems to me like "perceived gender is not a factor in attraction" ??
Now, I still actually don't have an idea about my potential aesthetic feelings towards people who present NB. The men and women I feel it towards tend to have this or that decidedly masculine or feminine traits, and I may never, because people my age are less likely to come out.
Whether orientation or gender, people my age are products of a very binary 20th century. We were really all sorts of shape pegs, but many of us were and still are dodecahedrons and whatnot with choices of only square, circle, and mayyybe triangle holes.
Naturally, the dodecahedrons and the hexagons all tried to jam themselves in circle and square holes, whichever ones it looked like we could maybe wedge into.
This means plenty of us are going around thinking things like "I guess I don't like sex because I'm a woman" or "I guess I don't like the mushy stuff because I'm a man" or "I don't feel female so I guess I'm a man because I'm AMAB and that's all I got" etc.
Those most likely to come out are those with very strong NB/aro/ace feelings WHO BECOME INFORMED. And some may still not, or those with feelings they can't sort, because they've lived so long the previous way, they may at least feel they have too much to lose.
There's also people like me that need a lot of info to realise they were misreading their own feelings due to decades of amatonormative/heteronormative/binarist/toxic masculine brainwashing.
(I still don't like the term "toxic masculine" because I really want a term where we have more room to redefine "masculine" as decidedly masculine but wholly without the toxic stuff that's so married to "manliness," room to reject that stuff and revision manliness, but whatever)
THE REASON OLDER GENERATIONS DON'T HAVE THIS STUFF IS NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE INVENTING IT. IT IS BECAUSE OUR TIME DIDN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT.
Yes, I think it's funny imaging how lost you'd be trying to use an 8-track player, or a library card catalogue actually made of index cards.
And had I not miscarried in December 2003 and had a sixteen year old, I'd have had them set up the internet TV device I got instead of three hours barely restraining myself from breaking it into pieces just like I was the only one who was able to figure out how to set the VCR clock and VCR+ timers when we got one when I was young. Which my difficulty with this stuff is more like a Boomer than an Xer. Most of my peers are pretty savvy. Sometimes my friends can tele-help me.
And I think new music,which I define as post-Y2K, stinks.
So I'm not hip and new. Plenty about me is just like your parents.
But no, you aren't making this up. And you're informing a lot of us. You're waking us up to how truly diverse humanity is. You're waking some of us up to who we really are.
And as for those of you who have crummy and even Karen parents, two things:
A. The Latino kids took me and the other Asian in in high school. There aren't many Asians in FL. (The "Another Chinese Family" bit on Fresh Off The Boat is so real) There are definitely some crummy Xers out there, and that's been true all along. There was even a right-wing youth org called "young republicans." There were Regean-loving racist queerphobes all along. They made my life miserable in high school, too.
B. There are also others like me that believe in you. That actually need you. You're bringing *back* a diversity that was smothered by colonial Europe. Historical precedent is actually on your side.
Thank you. I mean it. You're doing good, you're legit, and there are a lot of us who believe in you, too.
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zalrb · 5 years
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OK! So.
The first thing I did for this post was look for gifs of romantic relationships between black people on relatively popular TV shows outside of 90s sitcoms
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I’ll add all three of Issa’s love interests because Insecure, for the most part, navigates romance through black relationships 
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(and I do note the serious lack of dark skinned couples) 
Compared to:
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Now to the point, I high key wish there was as much investment in onscreen relationships between black people as there is regarding interracial, specifically wm/bw, romances and more critical thought as to why it’s so rare to see black love in television shows.
While it’s very much still progressive to see [...] leading women who unapologetically wear their Blackness onscreen, pairing them each with a Black man of similar or complementary virtues is apparently a no-no [...] It appears that the only place Black couples can be seen regularly on prime time is via reality TV. Shows like Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta and VH1’s Love and Hip-Hop almost exclusively showcase Black men in relationships with Black women. The only problem is, nearly all of these relationships are based in gross disrespect, betrayal, dismissiveness, and even violence. And since these are real-life couples, it further promotes Black love and Black rage as different sides of the same coin.
Like I get the fact that fandoms are anti-black and that when white male characters are paired with black female characters, they go crazy because how dare a black woman sully a white fave and they’ll find every excuse to render the ship non-romantic or toxic or abusive or whatever else, I get that, but legit, it’s as if people fail to see the systemic anti-blackness in the fact that a well-written, earned love story between two black people is so rare to find in television in general (but teen television specifically) and most of the time if a black relationship is portrayed, it’s along the lines of:
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Bonnie and Jamie share one kiss in 3x20 and then Jamie is just never heard from again and he was clearly a rebound after Jeremy and after Jamie, Bonnie and Jeremy reconcile and then it’s on to Enzo.
Or Edison and Olivia 
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where his purpose was basically to reveal to her how much she wants to be with Fitz.
Michaela and Aiden were engaged when the show started but it turns out he didn’t really love her and she didn’t really love him
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she’s attracted to Caleb but oh wait, he’s a psychopathic murderer
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A one night stand with Marcus that doesn’t lead anywhere.The framework here is basically Michaela has a idea of her “perfect black man” but the only relationship that actually fulfilled her that we had seen on the show is the one she had with Asher.
The erasure of black love is even in background details like how in The Good Place when you see the “soulmates”, it’s white couples or interracial
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same in The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s either white couples or interracial couples 
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(and I didn’t even put gifs of all of the ww/bm relationships there are) 
Another example of this is when it comes to the representation of LGBTQ relationships. 
So often, gay lives in America are coded as white, and the forces that shape the lives of queer people of color – say, how immigration affects being Chicano and gay in Calfornia, or how police surveillance affects being black and gay in the New York – are ignored, as gay identity is usually swept up into whiteness.
For instance, in The Get Down we have a predominately black cast, a narrative that explores the rise of hip-hop and disco through the perspectives of black teens but when it comes to Dizzee exploring his sexuality, the show goes to a white space as if New York in the late ‘70s didn’t have a black gay scene. Even in Black Lightning, we see Anissa with another black woman for all of two seconds and then that relationship is shunted to the side in favour of an interracial one,
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which is why Damon and Ricky in Pose were such a refreshing dynamic to see (as well as Chiron and Kevin Moonlight and Kena and Ziki in Rafiki but those are movies and I’m focusing specifically on television).
There is a dismissiveness or a refusal to look at the fact that the only way to see black characters in loving relationships or relationships that are meant to have substance is when they’re married to whiteness or non-blackness:
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Added to that, I feel like there has been this unspoken yet spoken idea that for [cishet] black women to be desired and loved onscreen, the goal is to pair her with a white man.
To find a black woman as a love interest for a white man in which a stable and loving relationship follows is rare when relationships with white women are staple. A black woman paired with a lead white male in a giant franchise is almost non-existent in media. Uhura is breaking stereotypes and showing that black women are desirable, in which one is so desirable that the most popular and loved Star Trek character, Spock, falls in love with her.
Clearly the above section is from a tumblr post defending Uhura and Spock specifically but I think the ideas here permeate the way bw/wm relationships are viewed as being the Golden Standard for black female characters because she inhabits a role white women usually inhabit, because popular, typical white leading men are intrigued by her, there’s a form of validation there that I think we should unpack because I find this idea myopic because whiteness is still centered. I’m ready to move on to more Nakia and T’Challa, Ziki and Kena, Damon and Ricky relationships as being staple relationships, to seeing functional, romantic, lustful, healthy, playful nuanced black relationships onscreen. 
And this isn’t a call to stop shipping interracial ships, I have quite a few myself, I love Ashburn and I love Micasher and Silvermadi and Sasil and Jesus and Lafayette and Alisha and Simon and Chris and Jal and Kevin and Raymond etc. I have breakdowns and “love letters” to a lot of these ships, but this has been bothering me for a while so I decided to just post about it.
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saintdollyparton · 6 years
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Okay, I have wondered about something for a while, and while it is not specific to you, I wonder if you can give me your opinion. As someone who identifies as a lesbian, and thus not bi or pan, are you open to dating trans people? And, if so, are you more likely to find yourself dating a trans man or a trans woman? That is to say, would you date based on gender or based on sex assigned at birth?
Ohhh wow okay so this is a very easy question for me to answer for myself, but you will find loads of different answers throughout the LGBT community and in the cishet community.
First of all, trans women are women and trans men are men. Think of the gender as a noun and “trans” as an adjective. So a lesbian (someone who is attracted exclusively to women) would probably not date a trans man. And if the lesbian isn’t transphobic, they probably wouldn’t mind dating a trans woman. 
I identify as gay, for the most part. But I also personally have a very fluid view of sexuality. This doesn’t apply to everyone, necessarily. It’s just how I see attraction. I sometimes find myself attracted to men but I have hardly ever (since I came out) thought for more than a brief moment about pursuing a relationship with one. Women are pretty much where it’s at for me. You will find a lot of people like this, and you’ll find people who are strictly 100% one or the other, or 50/50, 75/25, etc. So I fall in line with the person I described earlier. I date women, be they cis or trans. And I would also date a nonbinary person. I date people, not genitalia. The people I happen to be mainly attracted to, though, are typically women or woman-aligned.
The community can rarely have a discussion about this without getting into an argument, but it is undeniably true that some people have a preference when it comes to genitalia. (Whether you think it is right or not, it happens.) It’s why you’ll always find more people willing to date a trans person who has already medically transitioned. A lot of lesbians for example view trans women as women, but still don’t want to date someone with a penis, even a pre-op trans woman. That being said, they probably wouldn’t date a trans man either even though they had a vagina. Because trans men are men. But again I can’t really speak for all lesbians or wlw here. And I believe you should always date someone based on gender, not what they were assigned at birth. Because if they don’t identify with what they were assigned at birth, it is NOT their gender and it is unfair to date/not date them based on that. Of course no one is gonna make you date anyone, but still. As a society, we really have to work to separate the concepts of sex (genitalia) and gender.
I try not to shame people for their preferences, because people do have them. But still... some things just reek of ignorance and stuff. Whether it’s pre-op or post-op or a trans person who doesn’t feel the need to medically transition, a trans man is a MAN and a trans woman is a WOMAN. 
So yeah that was long-winded but it’s a sensitive topic.
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soupsandwichpizza · 5 years
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Clueless And Okay With That
 One of the things that I keep running into that has been a source of angst in the past has been my complete lack of sexual attraction to anyone or anything. Now, I know that this is a completely foreign concept to others. I’ve attempted to describe my situation in the past and I’ve never really been able to get people to understand. I’ve finally come up with something though, and I think you may start to understand. So, stick with me here.
I want you to imagine that everyone else in the world is a house plant. Each of us is different, varied, unique. Even if we are alike in one way, we are still not exactly the same because we all grow different, we get planted in different pots. Now, imagine if all these house plants are hooking up. Like, a cactus is chatting up a fichus, and you’re just standing there going WTF? So, this is how the world of sexuality looks to me. NONE of it makes sense!! I watch people interacting and I have learned how to imitate and blend in. But in reality, I don’t get it, I never have.
Just like what happened today. I had lunch with a friend. The guy taking our order gave me a free Mojito. I thought he was just being cool. My friend told me after we left that the guy was into me. I had no idea. I was clueless and didn’t understand anything about his interaction with me. My friend pointed out other things than just the free drink. Again, all of that blew right past me. It absolutely NEVER occurred to me that this guy could be into me. And when I think about before my transition, my “flirting” was simply learned behavior, repeated and refined based on what I’d seen and learned. I was flirting with people because it was the expected thing to do. I never really understood what I was doing which is the reason why I sometimes was told that I “flirted too much” or “wasn’t flirting at all” or that “I was flirting” when I didn’t think that I had been. You see, I never knew what I was doing before, I was imitating others and trying to fit in.
To understand just how much I’ve become a chameleon, let me tell you about my martial arts past. I was considered a prodigy. No ego there, those were the words of not one, but several of my instructors. I could watch them demonstrate something only a couple times, then repeat every movement they did, almost exactly. I only needed minor corrections. My supervisors at work have all said that they don’t have to repeat themselves, that I learned what they were teaching immediately. You see, I’m a mimic. I can do what you do in a matter of minutes instead of a matter of years… for the most part. There are limits.
Now, I’ve been TRYING to understand the simple art of “flirting”. I was told that this art was “simple” by several people. For me, it’s anything but SIMPLE. To me, the art of flirting is a god damn viper pit and I don’t have any burning torches or a whip and a cool hat to save myself with! I’d rather just stay topside with the Arabs and the Nazis so that I can foment chaos and panic in their supply chain at every opportunity… Okay, enough Indiana Jones. But you get my point, right? I have NEVER understood this! It’s like being at a Middle School dance and you don’t know how to dance! So people keep coming up to me, trying to dance with me and I flail around like an idiot or just stand there wondering what I should do! And now that I’ve transitioned, it’s even MORE confusing! I learned how to mimic the behavior of cishet men in order to blend in. I DID NOT learn the behavior of cishet women! And I wouldn’t understand it even if I knew what to do!
So, occasionally, this situation changes for me. I don’t know how it happens, why it happens, or when it will happen. But one day, out of the blue, someone will stop being a house plant. It’s like magic to me. One minute they are a house plant and I don’t understand them or the rest of society, the next minute they suddenly resolve into someone that is inexplicably attractive to me. It’s a complete mystery to me and I really wish I understood it better. It’s like I suddenly want to dance with someone, and I kind of have a clue how to dance, but I’m awkward AF because I don’t do it very much and I suck at it!
You have to understand how rare this is for me. It’s been two years since the last time I felt like this and at that time, I felt attraction to a Transgender woman. AHEM! Ya’ll. I’m straight. Yeah, I still maintain that. Because *IT’S THE SAME FOR ME* both sexual attraction and deep emotional connections like friendship. I literally can’t tell the difference. It’s taken me A LONG TIME to sort things out and to discover that I prefer men. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can dig women too. It’s just that men are physically more attractive to me and they are who I want to physically be with. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT TOOK FOR ME TO DISCOVER THIS!! Everyone is a house plant… remember?
Maybe I feel attraction and deep friendships so rarely that the two are intertwined? Maybe it’s because I can’t feel physical attraction like other people, so I get confused about my emotional connections being the same thing? And ya’ll, society seriously fucks with a mind like mine. Like, EVERYTHING is subtly geared towards us finding a mate and having a family and popping out some kids. Do you think I EVER believed that I could be something other than ATTRACTED to someone else in this world? MY GODDESS! Just take a walk in a grocery store! Don’t get me started on department stores!
My dilemma is this. Do I go back to that sandwich shop and try to awkwardly do the flirting dance in the hope that I get it right and he wants to ask me out so that I can MAYBE feel a connection to him one day? Or should I continue to ignore this shit and go on doing my damnedest to have a good time for the few years I have left on this world?
For the longest time my answer would have been to pursue the possibility of a relationship. I would have thrown caution to the wind and even have changed my plans simply to sit in the restaurant and wait to see if he was working that day. Now, I’m not sure it’s worth my time. I’d hang out with this guy, going on date after date, just for the hope of a connection. So, I’m trying to decide my next step. Part of me wants to ignore it and continue finding cool and fun things to do with my time. Part of me wants to not throw away the chance at a connection and a chance to finally know what it’s like to have sex with a guy the way that I’ve always wanted to. I’ve been afraid that I’d never have that experience and that I’d die never knowing what it’s like to be with a man that way. And now I’ve come to the point in my life that I don’t care about that. I don’t care about having sex. I’m pretty sure that I’m better at giving myself orgasms than any man could ever be. So why do I want to deal with a man?
See my problem? I’m clueless and okay with that, I’m just not sure that I should be.
Image blatantly stolen from: https://planamag.com/confessions-of-a-demisexual-d945920d59ee
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i’m a dirty rotten ace inclusionist, and here’s why
so against my better judgement and some advice from friends, ive decided to make a post about ace discourse
because it just kinda... hurts to see shit about it every day. and i feel like a broken record saying that, but it hurts. 
if youre reading this, and youre an exclusionist, please read the entire thing and don’t come storming into my inbox to tell me hurtful shit because odds are, ive seen it already and im sure im not gonna cover everything, just some of the stuff ive seen today
So, me. ill tell my story even tho no one asked for it, because unfortunately on this website people demand proof of person in order to give someone validity or some shit. im asexual. and i stick to that, because i don’t really experience attraction or arousal at all. that changes sometimes, but rarely. im genitals-repulsed as well. but i am still intimate with my partner sometimes, and sometimes i force the candle to light, because idk i get bored. 
but when i figured out i was ace, i was texting my best friend. and he suggested it, and immediately i felt broken and wrong thinking about the fact that i could be ace. I had to be convinced that it was okay. that’s something that non-ace people dont seem to get. not feeling sexual, or sexual about other, real people, can make you feel broken. it makes me feel like shit, and i have some dysfunction with partners as well. i have trauma in my past, but im convinced that doesn’t have too much to do with it. And maybe it’s a temporary thing, and ill change in the future. But that doesn’t change the fact that it makes me feel like less of a human being when i think about it. and i have no doubt that the idea has crossed other ace peoples’ minds before. “am i broken?” i ask my girlfriend that question so much. because my body doesnt do this thing that both science and the modern media and society tell me that it should do, and should do very easily. my FAMILY tells me its weird and ill be fine. my FRIENDS don’t get it. my mother thinks it’s horseshit. and there’s another thing.
i kinda feel like, if someone is gonna go excluding ace people and shoving them out, will i be shoved out for being closeted, or straight-passing when im not with my girlfriend, as well? it’s a legitimate fear and it feels really bad. and then, can you imagine how it feels having a portion of my identity actively shat on by this website? every fucking day of this month? the pride month?
another thing that non-ace people dont seem to understand or consider, either, is the dysphoria that ace people experience. ace people frequently hate their bodies, feel like they don’t belong in them, or feel separated from normalcy by what they are. 
it’s not a “whose suffering is worse” game, though we can still understand that people face greater harm and trials in their life by being different parts of lgbt, and allow people who suffer less, like say people who are closeted, bi or pan people who are “straight passing” dating the opposite gender, etc, to be a part of it. in my experience, lgbt+ is about acceptance and love, and ill stick to that. yes it’s possible to recognize that say, a trans woman would suffer more than a cishet ace. but that doesnt mean that one should be less allowed to be a part than another.
“ace people aren’t oppressed” well no maybe not to the degree that the typical lgbt person is, but around the world people are forced into obligatory sexual situations they may or may not want, and if they refuse or cannot perform, they can be labeled as broken, thrown out of their home, or r*ped. there is social pressure from the intensely sexual modern media; there is social pressure from society and family; there is social pressure from significant others and partners to perform, and then, especially for women, there is pressure to accept things, and there is pressure to perform sexually in order to have a happy life; IE: having children, families, satisfied partners, and so on. no, these aren’t as significant outwardly as “getting stabbed to death for existing” ((which yeah, does happen, but is an extreme example that someone i know loves to use to win arguments by playing the manipulative “of course this means you care less about the human lives of gay men than the thing you’re arguing for” card. im not saying that situations are equal here, jesus, im saying that oppression exists in many forms)). and, for a society where sex is a function that bodies easily perform, it seems easy enough to go along with things. But for some people, bodies either do not or will not perform. or there is repulsion, or other things and i lost my train of thought. got distracted, my apologies
ace people might be cishet, yeah, but that doesnt mean they belong any less in my opinion. no, i dont think they should be able to call themself qu**r, thats stupid. they aren’t allowed to reclaim any slurs that dont belong to them. that’s also really fucking stupid. and im sorry, but no decent person will try to do that. and why not let them come to the club, okay? they still face problems. like i say maybe fifty billion times in this post, yes, they don’t face the same problems, but they still have them. 
“start your own community” where? how? if you can give me a legitimate answer on this without frothing at the mouth, please do. But i have no idea how ace people are going to go into starting a community without being ridiculed, shoved aside and stuff. i have no idea how they are all going to bond and meet over a lot of different pipelines of communication, like the ones in communities they are already a part of. shoving people out, putting a stake in the middle of the cracks in the floor, it does nothing to strengthen our community. 
“well this person treated me badly” yes and that exists everywhere on this hellsite. I’ve seen a lot of shit, im sure you have too/
the split attraction model, in my opinion, is useful. but mainly for ace people, or aro people, to make describing themself easier in a shorthand. that’s what the model is best for. and if you come into my inbox and say stuff about how “someone forced the split attraction model on me” that was an individual person and does not lend to the usefulness of the model. and then if you come into my inbox with something about “the split attraction model harms people who arent ace and lets people deny their sexuality”. it is a tool. no one forced you to use it. im certainly not saying everyone should use it. in fact, maybe a lot of the people who do use it, should not. but i like the split attraction model, especially for myself. because i can easily identify and people know what im talking about. that simple. 
okay, that’s all i wanted to say. i wish i had a concrete conclusion but i am just. really tired. i need to unfollow some people. i just wanted to get it off my chest, and say my peace in a place i can find it. again, sorry for my mobile people
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cerullos · 7 years
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You don't have to answer. Reading the responses to that reblog about ace struggles made me really sad. The way you talk about the ace thing in general makes me sad. And I really like you, actually. I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. And a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist. Ad infinitum. This doesn't have to be the oppression olympics. Intersectionality is the only way out of this mess.
And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence. Is that as bad as being electrocuted? No. But is that the point here? Why say that? Why amplify that kind of divisive message? We just want to belong somewhere. You can believe this or not, but we’re dying here. The LGBT community has been the only safe place I’ve known my entire life. To figure out years later that I was labeling..
myself wrong? It was the most terrifying feeling I’ve ever experienced. It still is. It’s like we don’t exist. One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.
Straight people see us simply as gay, and treat us that way. So we’re getting electrocuted too. Sexual, gay people tell us we’re ‘cis/het’ liars trying to steal their community. So we have no safe space. We can’t find partners. Our friends, family, and fellow LGBT ppl don’t understand us or even believe in our existence. We are constantly questioning out own existence. I don’t mean to flood you. I realize that’s what I’m doing. But I’ve seen this kind of post coming from your direction a few…
times now. And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly. You’ve got a lot of followers. And being ace has made me full on suicidal in the past. So just. Think about it. Gay ace is a real thing. Can you see how you might have…
privilege over a person like that? everyone in my life sees me as gay. I fall in love with women. and yet here we are. can’t you see how I might want to be in your shoes? At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.
Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.
okay, this is long but i’m going to try to keep my answers as succinct as possible. i don’t know if this was your intention, but elements of this message feel vaguely guilt-tripping, despite the fact that none of what you’ve mentioned here presents an argument i haven’t already seen and strongly disagreed with.
“ I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist […] This doesn’t have to be the oppression olympics. ”
two things: one, you’re referring to lateral aggression in every instance but the first. what i mean by lateral aggression is that it occurs between two people–within the same community–who experience oppression along different axes (e.g. a straight trans person and a cis gay person). in contrast, a cis straight ace man who engages in homophobia and/or transphobia is not “laterally aggressing” his victim, he’s oppressing them. the reason LGBT people have become so vocal against inclusion of cis straight aces is because their oppressors are now gaining entrance to their exclusive spaces, and speaking over them. and whereas a lesbian can voice her discomfort with this on tumblr, she’s forced to stay silent at her local GSA for her own safety.
two, this isn’t an issue of a “handful” of violently homophobic people in the ace community. the founder of aven–david jay–was a homophobic white cishet man, and the platform on which he built his activism was homophobic. moreover, oppression against (straight, cis) ace people is not enforceable, because who is and isn’t ace depends entirely on the decision to identify as such! there are (as the ace community has been told many, many times) plenty of LGBT people (if not most) who have a complicated relationship with sex and sexual attraction due to abuse/assault, compulsive heterosexuality, dysmorphia, etc. none of these people can be considered “allosexual,” even if they (for perfectly valid reasons) decline to share this information publicly! these people deal with many of the same issues you’ve mentioned here (e.g. choosing between getting dumped or engaging in sexual acts when they would rather not), although they would likely attribute this to homophobia, misogyny and rape culture, not aphobia.
also: the “oppression olympics” is nonsensical and offensive and i wish y’all would stop passing that term around. yes, the LGBT community’s history is absolutely rooted in oppression of same-gender attracted and trans individuals! and yes, the community exists to actively oppose legislation that exists to oppress them, and to provide resources for those affected. the community was not founded in order to provide comfort to people who feel outcast from society for [x] reason. when you make this claim (or when you sarcastically liken the community to an exclusive “club” one gains entrance to by virtue of being oppressed) you miss the point entirely. it’s watering down the mission statement and end goal of this community, plain and simple.
“And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence.”
i find this argument (which is repeated often) to be ridiculous when the LGBT community has years of coherent history, and AVEN (and the popularization of identifying as asexual in the first place) has only gained prominence within the last decade or so. on top of that, as any oppressed individual will tell you, (and, again, something that has been repeated very often and rarely acknowledged) hypervisibility is dangerous to the oppressed! black and latinx trans women and gay men are the most endangered members of the LGBT community because it is impossible for them to “hide” themselves.
this alone should make it clear to you that what the LGBT community want and what the ace community want are two very different things–so what exactly would their shared goal in activism be? what purpose would expanding the community to include straight cis aces serve other than comforting individuals who resent being excluded? LGBT people may share the ace community’s desire for representation in media, but visibility–within the context of their everyday lives–is exactly what’s getting them killed. the pulse shooting is obviously the most recent example of this, but it’s one of many.
“One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.”
you’re introducing a very different argument here, and one i obviously don’t agree with. if you’re a gay ace, you belong in the LGBT community. i’m sorry you’ve been told otherwise. but if this entire passage (and the several paragraphs following it) are meant to convince me of this, i don’t know what to tell you? i’ve said before that–based on my history and  relationship with sex and sexual attraction–i could easily identify as an ace lesbian. i don’t, for some of the reasons listed above, and personal reasons of my own–and i don’t benefit from failing to identify as ace in any material way.
“And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly.”
i’m genuinely sorry you’re feeling this way, but again, if you think this is an experience LGBT people (ace or otherwise) don’t share, then i’m not the one turning a blind eye here.
“At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.”
you need to consider that you are making assumptions about what i want from a relationship based on the fact that i don’t publicly identify as ace. this is another thing we’ve been repeating constantly: you cannot do that, and therein lies one of the issues with asexuality as a framework for oppression. also, even on the off chance that i had a perfectly healthy relationship with and desire for sex (which–as i’ve said–very few people in the LGBT community do) none of us can just “get a girlfriend.” to suggest it’s more difficult for ace people is ridiculous when LGBT people have had to resort to dating apps and LGBT-exclusive spaces in order to find people to date in the first place. and before you say that similar spaces don’t exist for aces: they need to be built, just like ours were. the onus is on adult aces, not “allo” LGBT people.  
and, again, what an ace person would potentially want from an ace-exclusive space is not what an LGBT person (provably, historically) would want from an LGBT-exclusive space. ace condemnation of sex and sexuality is valid at the individual level, but it can be suffocating (and, yes–oppressive) to LGBT people who have fought long and hard to take pride in their sexuality. telling LGBT people that their love and “PDA” is “dirty” and “impure” is nothing new or progressive, it’s textbook homophobia, and those attitudes are damaging to us.
“Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.”
look…i hate to tell you this because i don’t think you mean any harm, and i’m not trying to attack you–but, as i think i said earlier, none of the arguments you’ve presented here are new to me. these are arguments that have been addressed and derailed by LGBT people (many of them ace themselves) multiple times, to no end. what you’ve mentioned here highlights an important point, and that’s “hurt feelings.” those are the stakes for straight cis aces–those are not the stakes for LGBT people (and i include LGBT aces in this statement). but i haven’t “learned” anything from these messages–i’ve never plugged my ears and ignored the arguments of straight cis aces, i’ve listened to them very carefully. and they’ve informed my opinion on this matter–an opinion that hasn’t changed and will not change. if that’s upsetting to you, you can unfollow–i won’t hold it against you!
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pridemonthpsa · 5 years
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Fetishism of Queer Men Pervades the Shadowhunters Fandom
Alright, I’ve been asked to do a piece about the fetishization of mlm in fandom. This is something that makes me very uncomfortable as I navigate most fandoms, but it’s on a whole other scale in the shadowhunters fandom.
I’m going to try and make this as inclusive of non binary people as I can, but of course, there’s nuance here. I want to emphasise that. This issue isn’t simply mlm vs women. I guess as beautiful enbies, I’ll leave it to you to decide where you fall in this issue.
While it is certainly possible for mlm themselves to engage in fetishizing behaviour, this often comes from internalised homophobia and it is NOT the place of non mlm to call them out on it. I want to make that clear.  Following on from this, if an mlm makes you (a non mlm) uncomfortable with the way he talks about his own sexuality, then… Do I need to finish that sentence? 
So, to make it clear: if cishet women (or men, though that’s less likely) engage in ANY of the behaviour I’m going to describe, then they are a mlm fetishist and should not be considered a good ally or be supported in fanart, fanfic, or discourse about mlm relationships. If a queer woman/enby engages in this behaviour, it can be hard to figure out what the deal is. Lots of queer women/enbies in this fandom engage with Malec as representation for them as well, since they are the only canon MAIN queer couple in the show. And that is TOTALLY valid. But sometimes, queer women/enbies can overstep too. My rule is if an mlm feels uncomfortable about the way you as a queer woman/enby talk about or interact with Malec, then you need to evaluate what you’re doing.
The main issue with the fetishization of mlm in fandom is that actual mlm involved in these fandoms are ignored, their voices aren’t boosted, and their fanworks are paid dust while cishet women are glorified for their ‘ally’ voices and fanworks. To illustrate just how much mlm get spoken over in fandoms, get this: I literally googled ‘fetishization of mlm’ to research stuff for this thread and the first thing that came up was a thinkpiece by a cishet woman. https://www.themarysue.com/fetishizing-slash/ Now, the article is pretty inoffensive as far as articles on mlm fetishization go, but why on EARTH is the most viewed article on fetishization of mlm written by a cishet woman? Don’t you find that interesting? Why is it that even when talking about an issue where we are objectified and cishet women are the objectifiers, cishet women’s voices are the ones overwhelmingly boosted? The truth is that REAL mlm aren’t wanted or desired in fandom, because the only thing mlm are needed for in fandom is to provide a cute otp that non mlm can project their sexual and romantic fantasies onto. Real mlm are more complex than a cute otp, so we are eschewed. 
So other instances/examples of fetishization? One of the classics that makes my blood boil, personally, is the way that non mlm write PWP about mlm couples. I thought about looking for an example, but I couldn’t bring myself to look through AO3 tags. But we’ve all come across those fics where two men in an established relationship flirt for 200 words and start stripping (in the sh fandom, helpfully hastened by Magnus’ magic). In these fics, the ‘top’ (more on that later) will either not prepare the ‘bottom’, or they’ll stick two fingers up there with one coat of lube, magically find the prostate and reduce the ‘bottom’ to a whining mess. Always a whining mess. After a couple of lines of prep (max), the ‘top’ will stick his dick in the ‘bottom’ and wait for a moment, then start fucking the absolute shit out of his ‘bottom’. Now, anyone who’s EVER had anal sex, no matter the gender, will tell you that this is not generally how anal sex goes. So why is this the way cishet women write about m/m sex? The simple reason is because these cishet women are projecting themselves into the position of the ‘bottom’. Vaginal sex, as I hope we know, is practically a lot easier than anal sex. By oversimplifying and straightwashing (for lack of a better term) anal sex, they’re assisting their female readers in their fantasies of being under this queer male top. This particular quote from this article - https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/oped/08/19/the-fetishizing-of-queer-sexuality-a-response/ - struck me: “The edict for writing has always been: Write what you know. Alas, that is what the M/M writers are doing–they are writing straight male/female relationships but putting them in gay male bodies.” These fanfictions are not meant to celebrate queer men, they are not aimed at queer men, and they aren’t concerned with the reality of queer men. Instead they’re projecting themselves into the more desirable (internalised misogyny, much?) queer men’s bodies. This is similar to the way most mainstream ‘lesbian porn’ is aimed at cishet men. These videos show a version of sex between women that is palatable and ‘sexy’ for the male gaze, and these PWPs written by cishet women work the same way. I wish I didn’t have to point out why that’s harmful, but honestly… The shit I’ve seen in these fandoms I feel like I need to spell it out. Treating mlm as props for you, a non mlm, to get off to, is dehumanising and disrespectful. It is not allyship. It is not flattering. Stop it. Now I know that the sexuality of women, and teenage girls specifically, is judged and policed. I understand that. However, the oppression you face is not an excuse to throw another oppressed group under the bus for your amusement and titillation. That’s it. I said what I said. This article - https://versusthefans.com/2014/07/08/fetishizing-homosexuality/ - goes a little deeper into this issue, but here’s a quote that I thought summed it up: “While I certainly understand being thought of as weird, being scared or worried as [...] she feels about shipping Johnlock, for LGBT people they aren’t just scared because of who they ship, but who they love in real life. At the end of the day, [...] straight women [...] will legally marry a man anywhere in the world she wants and get off while dreaming of gay men together.  Must be nice to have your cake and eat it too. It’s not fiction for LGBT people.”
The second classic part of mlm fetishization in fandom is top and bottom discourse. There are a few issues conflated in this facet of fetishization. Firstly, being a ‘top’ or a ‘bottom’ is not generally a thing. The overwhelming majority of queer men do not strictly adhere to either the ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ position in the bedroom. Some of us joke about being one or the other, but it is not a law that we ALWAYS must bottom or ALWAYS must top. Sometimes you fancy something different. It’s human nature. We’re not one stereotype or the other. Ever. To assume as such is to reduce an entire human being to a sex position, just because they’re queer. Does that sound like good allyship to you?
Next, the very fact that people are so invested in whether a fictional character (or, god forbid, a real person, but again, more on that later) is a ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ is creepy and bizarre. Do you also debate on whether the female lead in your show prefers doggy or the reverse cowgirl? No? Then why do you, a non mlm, spend so much time and energy ‘headcanoning’ the ways m/m couples in fiction have sex? Is it because it’s somehow ‘hotter’ than m/f sex because it’s two men? Why is that? Take a look at your feelings here. Ask yourself why you find the idea of two men having sex so interesting. Is it because you’re only attracted to men, so it’s double the fun? Is it because two men banging is ‘taboo’ or ‘sinful’ or ‘naughty’? Is it because taking it up the ass is not a ‘manly’ thing to do, and is therefore inherently kinky? Unpack these things. Think critically. If it is any of the above things, then address it, because it’s wrong. Once again, queer men are not props for you to manipulate for your enjoyment. One mlm I found on tumblr here - http://bluethisisforyou.tumblr.com/post/162753965120 - had this to say on the issue: “[it] is NOT healthy at all bc, in my case, it makes us feel as if we only exist for entertainment and that our relationships are seen as wrong and/or dirty”. Do you intend to make mlm feel that way? If yes, then… Bruh, what the fuck are you do pretending to give a shit about mlm in the first place? If no… Maybe adjust your behaviours accordingly.
Because apparently it’s necessary, I’m going to lay out some facts for you, here. Taller man =/= top. Stronger man =/= top. Leader =/= top. Masculine man =/= top. Shorter man =/= bottom. Weaker man =/= bottom. Follower =/= bottom. Effeminate man =/= bottom. Everyone needs to stop using physical and personality traits to ‘argue their case’ as to whether a queer man is a top or a bottom. These things do NOT impact what kind of sex you like. To imply as such is homophobic and, frankly, misogynistic as well. By painting a more effeminate, smaller, weaker man as the bottom in these scenarios, you are implying that bottoming, and therefore submitting/yielding to ‘masculine’ penetration, is feminine and a sign of weakness. Having said that, you are not more progressive if you make the effeminate man the top for brownie points or because it’s ‘hot’ that the smaller one can weaken the larger one. It’s still creepy and rooted in harmful stereotypes. In the context of the shadowhunters fandom (that this essay is mostly aimed at), both Magnus and Alec are tall, strapping, formidable men who are powerful and badass, and yet in almost every fanwork by a cishet woman, one of them will always be shrunk or feminised. And on the rare occasions where they aren’t, the emphasis will be on the fact that the power struggle between them is hot. And people wonder why I have the vast majority of fanartists blocked.
The last thing I want to talk about as a symptom of mlm fetishization is RPF, or ‘real person shipping’. There are ALWAYS, ALWAYS people in a tv show or movie fandom where they’ll ship the actors who play queer (or perceived queer) characters. It happened with Darren Criss and Chris Colfer after they played Klaine in Glee, it happened with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman after they played Johnlock in Sherlock, it happened with Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins after they played Destiel in Supernatural. In every single instance except Chris Colfer, these actors have had female partners. I’m not going to say all of them are straight, because I don’t know their lives, and I don’t care about most of them enough to research, but all of them (except Colfer) is attracted to women. Most of them have expressed discomfort at the fact that they are ‘shipped’ with their co-star and friend. And yet so many people continue to write fanfiction about them and even harass their ACTUAL partners about a ship that only came about because of their acting jobs. The most confusing thing about this is that there are quite a few m/m couples in the spotlight these days that don’t get nearly as much attention from the RPF shippers. Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black, Colton Haynes and Jeff Leatham all are openly in love, posting adorable snapshots of their lives together, and yet… Somehow, for these RPF shippers, that’s not good enough. It’s only good enough if these real man have been seen in fictional embraces together, if they’ve kissed in giffable high quality, it they’re (in their fucked up fantasies) cheating on a poor unsuspecting female partner in order to be together. M/m couples are only valuable to these people if their most intimate moments are visible, and palatable. It doesn’t matter if real love exists between them, all that matters is that they’re hot together, that their relationship is oh so wrong it’s right.
We as queer men deserve to be celebrated, and we deserve to be celebrated for the diversity and vibrance that we bring to the world. We deserve better than to be reduced to a sexual fantasy, to a cute little otp to squeal over, to something that is inherently taboo or naughty. We deserve to be respected. We deserve to be loved. We deserve a platform in a fandom that exists because of characters that reflect us. We deserve to be heard.
Further reading: http://thewoesofyaoi.tumblr.com/
https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/oped/08/19/the-fetishizing-of-queer-sexuality-a-response/
https://versusthefans.com/2014/07/08/fetishizing-homosexuality/
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