#this is erasure and oppression and being closeted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

left-the-room · 1 year

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Hi there! I saw you in my notes and wanted to welcome you into the community :) if you don't mind my asking, how did you peak?

I like peaking stories so here we go

I got into identifying as nonbinary along my readings in feminism/LGBT topics using tumblr back in 2014, feeling understood in the sense of not wanting to be seen as a woman, since being a woman has made my life so difficult and I never fit. Most trans people I'd seen up until then were female and one specifically closer to me was a gay identifying one that introduced me to tumblr, along with destiel, hannigram, marvel slash fandom... I cut contact with that person for unrelated reasons but that pattern stuck in my mind.

I was never sold on the erasure of sex as an axis of oppression- I just thought we could compromise and have it analyzed as AFAB and AMAB and that fellow activists were just being dumb/ having surface level internet understanding of things. But then I started seeing people all around making posts on how "dangerous" it was to talk of "AFAB" oppression and being hyper cautious around talking of uteri and menstruation art and how trans woman "don't have male socialization they have closeted trans woman socialization" like there's some sort of witch-hunt of anything remotely indicating that trans women are male human beings. That made me anxious and angry and I thought we were failling the sex discussion as well as other critiques of porn and beauty culture in name of " gender euphoria and having fun expressing yourself"

Then there came the trans women I came to know in real life. They all presented as, at most gnc, long haired men. Not to suffer a hate crime- they'd say.

They were gamers, deep into cutesy anime girls that give me fight or flight instinct, deep into porn and talked of being a woman like they knew something while idealizing those anime girl version of what they thought being a woman would mean. All that while being pretty assertive... about them being woman and speaking over other people in the room.

I knew the trope from reddit memes and thought thise were rather ironic or weirdos or problematic ones but once I started seeing the patterns of male behaviour I knew what was happening

#radstagg #ask #peak trans

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nonbinarymlm · 2 years

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Has anyone ever used "straight passing" in a way that doesn't stigmatize being closeted, erased, and/or misgendered? "Perceived straight" may be a better term as it doesn't act like it's something a queer person is inherently doing, and it's a term that can apply to anyone because almost anyone can be perceived as straight in a society erases everyone that isn't straight.

We need to be able to talk about the treatment of different relationships without making assumptions about that the treatment of the relationship inherently means privilege for the people inside the relationship. It's more complicated than that. Bi (and probably other mspec) women and men often face higher rates of abuse than straight or gay women and men respectively. I don't know specific stats on nonbinary people, but trans people in general also face higher rates of abuse. Trans people who are being misgendered by being perceived as straight are literally being misgendered. That's. Not. A. Privilege.

It's time to retire "passing" language from sexuality. If someone is intentionally misrepresenting their LGBTQ+ sexuality to be seen as straight, that's called being closeted. If they're being been as straight without intentionally trying to be, that's called being erased.

#pass #loving queue #critique #biphobia #transphobia #misgendering mention #erasure #like it doesn't make any sense!#a gay couple might pretend to be friends and as straight or gay people might fake straight relationships #and yet they're never ever called straight passing #a gay couple might be perceived as two friends and pass as straight without trying because straightness is treated as a default #this is erasure and oppression and being closeted #it doesn't become privilege for bi and trans and mspec and ace people to be closeted and erased #it might be a helpful tradeoff for physical/financial safety but making tradeoffs for physical/financial safety isn't a privilege!!!#there's nothing necessarily about a person that will determine if they're ~straight passing~ or not besides being gender non-conforming #and we've already got a word for that #~straight passing is all about the relationship someone is in but the relationship privilege does NOT determine the privilege of the person #i am trans and my boyfriend is cis and i am white and he is not and i don't have cis privilege now and he doesn't have white privilege #that's not how this works???#and my interracial relationship is not privileged but that doesn't mean i lose white privilege #people are not just the relationships they're in!!!

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rantingcrocodile · 2 years

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The reason that there are so many bisexuals who lash out when it comes to the truth about biphobia and then double-down on “bisexuals can only sometimes experience homophobia and that’s it!” is because they know that the only times that we get taken seriously are when our experiences match with lesbian/gay experiences.

There’s a real fear that if they accept that we face biphobia for being bisexual individuals, then they’ll lose the tiny amount of extremely-conditional “acceptance” that we have as a group now.

Instead of recognising that one point of systemic biphobic oppression is that bisexuals are locked out of any real language that describes our lives and experiences, (the world being either “straight” or “gay,” with no space at all to accurately describe ourselves, which leads directly to bi-erasure and biphobic beliefs), they cling to the half of the binary language that “allows” them to be LGB.

For example, biphobia erases bisexuality to “half-straight-half-gay,” and “bisexuals in same-sex relationship = gay couple = homophobia,” because the biphobic world can’t conceive of bisexuals simply being bisexual. We have to be described as “one or the other.” Never ourselves, but shoved into either the “straight” or “gay” binary box. Half-oppressor-half-oppressed, not a full person, only a set of mechanical actions.

So when society is literally built as a “straight” or “gay” binary, where everything "not straight” is presumed “gay” and everything “not gay” is presumed as “straight,” bisexuals are left out in the cold to be hated as inhuman.

The result of that, where bisexuals know to their cores that there is oppression against us, even if they don’t understand what oppression really is (i.e. automatically fearing coming out as bisexual etc), the best that they think they can do is cling to the “gay” box to vent about their oppression, or at worst, hate themselves even more and deny their and other bisexuals’ experiences by shoving themselves in the “straight” box.

Pointing out the very obvious knowledge that there are only two boxes that exist automatically excludes us and is a neon sign to our lack of acceptance and oppression then challenges the extremely conditional part-acceptance of bisexuals, because that takes away the “bisexuals experience homophobia!” protection, since we know that no one other than bisexuals who have peaked about biphobia takes biphobia seriously.

And all of this? It’s cowardice. It’s capitulation.

It’s taking the barest scraps and upholding a biphobic system and latching on to lesbians and gay men to hope that, if we pretend we can be just like them, then someone else will care about us. But that’s not how it works.

That does nothing but support the systemic biphobia in place that denies our individual sexuality, denies our oppression as individuals and keeps us merely as objects dependent on validation through a partner. It denies bisexual class consciousness. It supports straight oppressors that want us closeted and abused unless we can be used and abused as sex dolls instead or denied as “a lying lesbian/gay man.” It denies a real space for understanding and solidarity between the LGB. It denies a true understanding of what sexuality-based oppression really is and undermines the fight against it, because no matter how different the oppression that bisexuals and lesbians and gay men is, none of us can be free from oppression unless oppression based on sexuality is completely destroyed.

Most bisexuals are so incredibly defeatist. Some think that there is no way that anyone will ever care about biphobia, so it’s somehow important to still uphold the false belief about “homophobia” while whispering about “please maybe think about biphobia being real if it isn’t too much trouble?” and others will be furious that the truth takes away the tiny scrap of security blanket that they have that protects them from reality.

That’s why there’s so much anger and hatred towards bisexuals who do talk about full bisexual experiences and the scope of actual biphobic oppression. That’s why there’s a shying away of saying too much about biphobia.

The fact is that too many bisexuals are choosing to be weak. If all those bisexuals stopped clinging to that false belief and stopped attacking the bisexuals telling the truth, if they took a deep breath and accepted reality and we stood together on the platform of this truth, then we would be able to make serious change. All it takes is some courage and the ability to ignore the biphobes desperate to silence all of this. That’s all.

#crocodilian ranting

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nothorses · 4 years

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This thread on Twitter (also give @Azure_Husky a follow!!)

Linked Article Transcript below

Content warnings for transphobia against transmasculine people, including violence and harassment It's easy to say that transmasculine people get male privilege and face less oppression than many other trans people, but only if you don't actually listen https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/9/1877651/-There-is-a-hidden-epidemic-of-violence-against-transmasculine-people

I hear pretty constantly from transmasculine people about the violence they face from cis people and the erasure, condescension, and "suck it up, you're the oppressor now" attitudes they get from other trans people.

We are failing the transmasculine parts of our communities. We are failing our brothers and masculine siblings. We need to get better at listening to transmasculine people's concerns and working together rather than fostering hierarchies of oppression within transness

Once transness is involved, shit gets complicated. Simple responses of "misandry doesn't exist because men have the power" assume transmasculine people have access to the same privileges as average cis men when frequently they don't.

One of the saddest things about being someone who talks about this is that i regularly get transmasculine people giving heartfelt thanks for the smallest mentions of their needs & concerns bc they're so used to transfeminine people ignoring their existence or being antagonistic

We need to do better. I refuse for some of us trans people to base our fights for equality and justice by stepping on the needs of other trans people.

I see transfeminine people I care about and respect who will sometimes share "let's make a world without men" type things and like I have had these feelings too, I struggle under misogyny and have a bunch of bad experiences with (cis, especially but not exclusively) men. *and*-

- i've seen too many of my transmasculine siblings' hurt as they are constantly lumped into "just as bad as cis men" baskets (which I also have feelings about but is a larger topic I think) & have heard from too many transmasculine people who have spent years in denial bc of this

I've heard from too many transmasculine people who have put off transitioning, tried to avoid accepting their gender, because they internalized the constant stream of this shit. And I love trans people too fucking much to keep letting it go.

I get that for many of our communities there can be some incredible trauma around masculinity, either because it was enforced on us against our will or due to violence and/or sexual assault. And i don't debate the validity of that trauma.

And also we can't extrapolate our trauma into "this segment of trans people, by virtue of their gender, is worth less (or worthless)".

I mean if we want to dig into it, a lot of us transfeminine people get attacked by transphobes under the auspices of trauma regarding specific genitals or gender expressions or body types. And most of us can agree that their trauma doesn't mean they get to denigrate us.

Honestly I'm tired. And also I acknowledge that my tiredness about this cannot be even a mild fraction of the exhaustion of the trans people targeted and erased by this must be.

So I'm calling on y'all and asking you to please do better by *all* trans people. I get the joy and relief in venting about men. I do. We live in a misogynistic society and a lot of us suffer under the hands of a specific gender and sometimes we need an outlet.

But at the very least please be aware of when your venting is in a public space where it *is* going to harm and affect others, and specifically other trans people (since I don't have the spoons to get into a larger discussion about cis men currently)

Know that every time we make vent-jokes (or not jokes) about how everyone who is masculine is worthless to us, we are directly damaging other trans people, and possibly painfully forcing some to deny themselves or stay closeted because who would want to become The Enemy, right?

And I feel like I *have* to keep talking about this because if transmasc people stick up for themselves, I see how often they get shot down as just another "not all men" concern troll or like they're trying to talk over feminine people

Hell I've seen threads where a transmasc person starts the thread to talk about transmasc issues and *still* people have declared it derailing or speaking over others. How do we address their oppression if they aren't allowed to discuss it anywhere?

So as a transfeminine person I've got allyship privilege here where I may be condemned as having internalized misogyny or being an assimilationist or something but at least I can't be seen as just another dude talking over women

(i use the binary language there thoughtfully bc a lot of these Us vs Them dichotomies tend to erase nonbinary people or pretend that all nonbinary people are centre or feminine of centre on the gender spectrum)

Just. Do better. Please. Like. Just listen to transmasculine people with an open heart for a bit and hear the intense transphobia and discrimination they also face and consider the impact of your words on them.

It sucks to see people who are generally caring and thoughtful about many types of oppression just.. Let it all go when a chance to lump transmasc people in with The Enemy comes up.

Addendum: I've had a couple people express concern that I'm saying that transfeminine people shouldn't address when they are facing transmisogyny from transmasculine people and I hope that it is clear that isn't what I am saying at all.

Transmasculine people can be transmisogynistic, absolutely! I've had experiences with that too. What this thread is about is the fact that for *some* people, transmasculine people as a whole are considered less marginalized by dint of their masculinity and it isn't that simple.

So saying broad statements about transmasculine people isn't "punching up". Its horizontal violence if it's coming from other trans people or can be punching down if it's coming from cis people. That is what this thread is meant to address.

By all means we should be discussing and addressing transmisogyny. But transmasculine people discussing the specifics of their own concerns isn't in and of itself transmisogyny. We do no one any favours by trying to silence that.

This thread isn't about transfeminine people never speaking ill of transmasculine people or vice versa. Its about calling-in a specific subset of transfeminine communities for treating transmasculine people as a whole as disposable and The Enemy.

#trans #trans rights #transmasc #transgender #trans man #not horses

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gettin-bi-bi-bi · 2 years

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I've always heard that bisexual people have some kind of privilege for being able to "pass" as straight or whatever, I believe that and never questioned it really. But then, I read it somewhere here on your blog somebody saying that's not true, that this "passing" doesn't exist. Is it true? That privilege was just a lie? Can you elaborate more on it?

Everyone can "pass as straight" if they hide enough of themselves. Even gay people. "Straight passing" is just a woke and biphobic way of saying "being in the closet".

The straight-passing argument is often brought up by biphobes who want to play oppression olympics but it's inherently flawed because it works under the assumption that bi people like it when people assume we are straight. The truth is that the majority of bi people do not enjoy that one bit because it completely erases our queerness. It means as soon as we out ourselves as queer, as soon as we dare to date someone of our own gender any "support" or "acceptance" that we experienced before now falls flat because it hinged on the condition of us being straight. Which we are not. So there never was any true support and acceptance to talk of.

Being bisexual in an m/f relationship might bring some superficial safety on the outside but biphobes love to ignore the statistical facts that bi people are more often suffering from mental health problems than straight or gay people (in part because of bisexual erasure coming both from straights and gays) and that bi women are more often victims of domestic and sexual violence than straight and gay women. Add to this that many bisexuals feel so alienated by the LGBTQIA+ community and don't dare to seek out queer resources or help because internalised biphobia makes them think they don't really belong in LGBTQIA+ spaces.

After all bisexuals have a choice, don't we? We could pretend to be pass as straight, right? if we just silence that queer part of ourselves enough then we can fool the world into thinking we are straight and never have any problems. That doesn't sound toxic and unhealthy at all! I'm sure we can keep that up without doing any damage to our mental health in the long run. (/sarcasm)

So you tell me if there's a "privilege" in being bisexual and "straight passing"? Let me rephrase: Is it a privilege to only be accepted if someone thinks you are straight? If you answer that with "yes" then you would also have to argue that a closeted gay person is privileged. But would anyone say that? Or don't we all agree that being closeted (even if necessary for safety reasons sometimes) fucking sucks? And if that counts for gays then it counts just as much for bisexual people!

Maddie

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scriptlgbt · 3 years

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I'm wondering about bad tropes/stereotypes when writing an LGBTQ+ character being married to a non LGBTQ+ character?

Helpful term: Lavender Marriage

A lavender marriage is a [usually] male–female mixed-orientation marriage, undertaken as a marriage of convenience to conceal the socially stigmatized sexual orientation of one or both partners.

(Definition edited from Wikipedia)

Do you mean like a beard relationship (eg. a lesbian marrying a straight man for social appearances) or something else (like a bi woman marrying a straight man for love, or a trans person marrying a cis hetero person)?

Those aren't the only options either, this could be a peach fuzz relationship (where a QPR is referred to as a romantic relationship for social appearances).

Each of these things kind of come with slightly different implications. If you send an ask about more specifics, we can hone in on that better.

If I'm making a list of my Biggest Beefs with rep for this stuff in general, here's some no-nos:

allocishet characters using a partner's identity as a bargaining chip for something/otherwise weaponizing it against them. This can ofc be done if you want to make an easy villain, but it's wildly over-represented in media. I even see it depicted in relationships between two LGBTQ+ characters way too often. "Are you ashamed of me or something? People should know" is just so... Done. It's toxic. And usually closeted folks in relationships find ways to live as their true selves separately from people they want to be closeted to, at least if they have any privacy from those folks. This may be my own biases as someone whose parents aren't a part of my life anyway, but it doesn't actually seem like, at least in my experience, we deal with the same "meeting the parents" social obligation, at least overall. It might be important to a given individual and that's totally fine and normal and valid, but domestic tenderness and family is different for me.

referring to bi women in relationships with men as having "straight passing privilege" I know this is controversial for a lot of people: but this is just biphobia. (This is not up for debate here.) Hypervisibility and erasure are both shitty things with a lot of drawbacks. Even if there are situations where one acts as a variable in a good way, it's not the same as real privilege, because that variable will snap back into oppression in a different circumstance. For example, domestic violence rates against bi women are astronomically higher than both lesbians and straight women. I'm not saying this in order to say that there's any kind of WLW that has privilege over a different kind of WLW. I'm just saying that it's ignorant to call one group privileged over another just because of their relationships. We are oppressed for who we are on a fundamental level, for our desires, wants, needs, for our identities. A lesbian who never dates is still a lesbian. We don't gain privilege when we become single. It just doesn't work that way.

chasers and other fetishizers of LGBTQ+ people being treated as a good thing, or in any way condusive to a healthy relationship. [a chaser is a term for someone who fetishizes trans people. The term is sometimes heard as "tr*nny chaser" -- but I rec avoiding that version of the term unless you're reclaiming the t-slur for yourself and are qualified to do so.] It's okay to be attracted to trans people, but fetishization is subhumanizing. I wrote this article in 2016 a few years after a relationship with a chaser, covering red flags that indicate when a partner is fetishizing you. I haven't read the article over in a few years, so take it with a grain of salt, but I remember it as having some good examples of that. If you want to depict this kind of relationship as a problem, there are ways to write it responsibly. But I would strongly rec a sensitivity reader who has experienced this kind of thing, since it's easy to fuck up.

There's also just a Lot of complicated stuff around trans people in relationships with allocishet people. For even the most well-meaning, there's stuff to learn.

There's also just something different about the ways that being connected to queer culture impacts the way our relationships are carried out. I've heard a lot of bi cis + binary people talk about how their relationships with other bi people feel different on a fundamental level to relationships with straight cis binary people. (I've never dated a straight person so I can't speak to comparison, but if anybody wants to add on their own experiences, please feel encouraged to do so!)

- mod nat

#mod nat #relationships #also rec looking thru our relationships tag in general bc I think we've covered some more specifics related to this in the past #mixed orientation marriages #mixed orientation relationships #lavender marriages #beard relationships #peach fuzz #peach fuzz relationships

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idiealotdontworry · 3 years

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alloromantic people will never ever accept that aros have it as bad as them yes even if they are gay because they don't wanna acknowledge that society GENUINELY would prefer you feel love the "wrong way" than to not feel it at all. and don't fight me on that because i have EXPERIENCED IT, as a gay aro person i have experienced it.

alloros will call us homophobic for pointing out our own oppression + it's similarities (and differences!) to homophobia bc they don't wanna accept that "freaks" like us even exist (and in their own spaces, too! gasp, shock!), let alone that we have it bad too and that maybe they should acknowledge that, bc to do that would require them to deliberately reject their power over us and they don't want to. they LIKE having someone below them. they enjoy being able to justify their existence with "love is love!!" without having to acknowledge us or the damage it causes to aros. they don't want to acknowledge that they aren't the bottom of the barrel. they don't want to acknowledge that, for all the violence and hate they face, aros face all of that and then complete erasure on top of it.

this aro week, I'd like to remind alloromantics that the reason you don't hear about aro people being "beaten in the street" (as yall love to point out we don't face, to shut us up bc you think you have it worse) is because nobody cares enough about us to even report on it. the only reason you don't hear about aromantic people being threatened, beaten, killed, assaulted, and subjected to conversion therapy is because nobody acknowledges that aromanticism is a real orientation instead of a medical problem. there is no research being done on us because alloromantic people don't care and aromantic people are scared. our numbers are small because we are scared and closeted. resources for us (that yall love to claim we stole from you) do not fucking exist unless WE make them. and making our aromanticism known puts us at a risk that alloromantic people will never understand.

alloromantics, learn to fucking stand with us. learn to care about us and our struggles and our pain as much as you care about everyone else's. learn to understand us, learn to give a shit, learn to help us. care. all we ask is that you fucking care.

#aro #aro week #aromantic #lgbtq #conversion therapy mentioned #assault mentioned #violence mentioned #tw

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terfetuloa · 3 years

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woman (ˈwo͝omən)

noun: an adult female human being.

Hello, Radblr,

I’m another (very tired) lesbian who had to turn to a side blog in order to be able to fully speak about womanhood and what it means to be female in this penis-loving world. Once I was a true believer of liberal feminism, raising flags of diversity and praising those courageous enough to seek for their “true identity”. I was one of those brainwashed young girls shouting how evil terfs were and avoiding reading anything written by terfs as if I was committing heresy. But I’m lesbian and when you’re a woman who loves women you’ll eventually notice that the current LGBTQI+ community just isn’t a safe place for you and your woman-centered love life.

While posting about lesbian struggles and the absolute hysteria that’s the current LGBT movement on my main blog (the one I had for nearly 10 years) I came across such violent reactions from people I knew (online) for a long time that it left me not only dumbstruck but afraid of sharing my beliefs. After a while it kinda enrages you. As I was searching for women sharing the same concerns as I had, I came across radical feminists, the evil terfs. And I agreed with them. Maybe this is why “kweer” people ask you not to interact with terf women, right?

So as a way to avoid getting doxxed and to be able to fully express what I feel, I decided to start a new blog, meet women that won’t hunt me down like a criminal, and just share & learn. I’m 24, lesbian, mixed-raced, and fully out of the closet since 2009. I’m anti-prostitution (not anti-prostitutes), anti-porn (A.K.A. broadcasted rape) and anti-BDSM (sex is not about violence). I don’t believe trans women are women, as they’re biological males, there’s no “lady brain” and ‘woman’ is not a feeling. Speaking of biology, I’m not a science denier or a relativist, biology is real and not something randomly assigned. I believe gender is oppression.

I do believe trans people deserve civil rights as I believe in Human Rights, but 1) not at the cost of female rights and 2) sex is not a human right (hello, cotton-ceiling). I don’t believe all transwomen are predators, I truly believe there are transwomen minding their own business and trying to live their lives in peace and I’m willing to use their preferred names and pronouns in a well-mannered discussion, but I don’t trust the political aspect of the trans community and their political agenda, as I was constantly exposed to their violent replies to women with different world views, the systemic denial of science, the crusade to destroy sex-based rights, the erasure of language, their blatant homophobia and lesbophobia (modern conversion therapy) and the obnoxious online grooming of gnc gays and lesbians.

I respect people’s pronouns as a way to show courtesy to people that respect me and civilly discuss with me, even tho I believe that non-binary women are females with I’m Not Like The Other Girls Complex taking male stereotypes as the default form even for gender-neutral language and aesthetics, while throwing other women under the bus because “they identify with their assigned gender” (news flash: gender is oppression, no women identifies with their oppression). I believe this non-binary trend is a way for women to escape internalized misogyny and the pain of being female, also, lots of teenagers mistaking personality traits for gender. Wearing pants and a short haircut doesn’t erase your material reality as a female.

I wouldn’t say I’m a radical feminist (yet), but a lot of Radfem's ideas are in accordance to my world views. I’m well aware that the term “terf” is a slur but I couldn’t avoid the pun (tervetuloa = welcome, in Finnish). Anyways, these are some of my beliefs. I know I have a lot to learn and to be able to find women with similar mindsets would be awesome :)

#terf safe #terfs please interact #terfs please touch #text post

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somethingmissingthiswaycomes · 4 years

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Hi, so, I’d just like to say,

It’s not bigoted to exist.

Hot take I know, but hear me out.

I’m not incredibly well read in history, and I tend to forget my sources when absorbing new information, so please do take this with a grain of salt, but I’m certain I know that it’s a common phenomenon for oppressors to weaponize the idea of oppression in order to turn the marginalized into a villain.

We have the history of white women accusing black men of harassing them.

We have the history of gay people being called predators.

We have white supremacists and the myth of “white genocide.”

We have fascism in general and the propaganda inherent to it of hostile outsiders.

Not just that, but I’ve noticed... a lot of people in the queer and LGBT+ community tend to do something similar to other queer and LGBT+ people.

Aces are taking up resources, trans women are predators, mspec lesbians make straight men more predatory - pansexuality, nonbinary identities, euphoric trans people, using the split attraction model, and anything on a spectrum is making cishets not take us seriously.

All of that is bullshit.

If the crime you’re committing is existing, you’re not a villain. If the threat is you refusing to stay closeted as something more commonly understood, you’re only threatening your own erasure.

I’ve been called homophobic for being asexual panromantic (edit: aspec biromantic). In the same conversation, I was called sexist for being transgender.

Bullshit.

Now here’s the thing I wanted to get to.

I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between the validity of one viewpoint and an opposing viewpoint. I won’t go into the therapy session that explains why, but I worry that I am the villain, that I just don’t understand, because these evil people seem pretty convinced they’re the good guys. What if I’m the wrong one??

I know there’s people who relate, and I know there’s a lot of people who get in the trap of “all viewpoints are as valid as another.”

(All opinions are valid so long as you define an opinion as harmlessly subjective. For instance, “homosexuals are predators” is objectively wrong, and it’s harmful. It’s not an opinion.)

So how do we know for sure that all of these statements about the harm asexuals, nonbinary folk, the S.A.M., and so on does to the LGBT+ community are bigoted bullshit?

Because it’s not bigoted to exist.

Racist white women threatened by the existence of black men.

Homophobes threatened by the existence of homosexuality.

White supremacists threatened by the existence of diverse cultures and racially mixed families (and POC in general).

Fascists threatened by the existence of the “other.”

If your only crime is being true to yourself, you’ve been falsely convicted.

I didn’t expect this post to be this long. I rambled.

Uhhhhh for mental health reasons I’m blocking assholes. <3

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rantingcrocodile · 2 years

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Have you’ve noticed a pattern of whenever monosexuals shit talk about us being in OSA relationships, they NEVER seem to give shit about the bisexuals in SSA relationships at all? Zero acknowledgment, zero sharing of resources, zero fucks if the couple gets hate crimed… in fact they’ll make it about LG people when the hate crime story gets brought up. I even heard some say that a bi in a same sex relationship STILL has zero right in being in a LG/B space because they’ve been tainted by OSA or had a prior OSA relationship. So in other words: single bi people should just go fuck themselves for not picking a side that moment, bis in OSA relationships should also go fuck themselves for being privileged, and bis in SSA relationships should also go fuck themselves for thinking they’re oppressed anyway. 🥴

Of course!

Biphobia is incredibly normalised, and it's just as incredible that we're all so used to it that nobody notices the obvious signs in average, day-to-day life of our deliberate erasure, even though there are constant biphobic claims that we're "the loudest" and somehow "have control."

The terms for relationships are "straight" and "lesbian/gay." Based on the two sexualities that society believes are real. The language right there is designed to erase us into the two boxes of "straight" or "gay."

If we were "privileged" for being in opposite-sex relationships and were "basically straight," then bisexuals would be completely out of the closet and wouldn't face any bigotry or oppression just for being bisexual, but the science and our own experiences prove otherwise.

The fact that bisexuals don't know exactly how we're oppressed is because there has been a deliberate erasure of bisexual history, both from straight people and the LG.

Whenever Section 28 comes up (the British law that stopped "promotion of homosexuality" for years), that's rightly called a homophobic law. But there's no mention of how councils across the UK allowed gay spaces to continue existing, because you couldn't "promote homosexuality" to someone who was already gay, while they denied bisexuals access to supportive spaces at all because we "weren't gay" and therefore accessing support meant "promotion of homosexuality," which deliberately targeted us.

Or how the Church of England in the early 1990s talked about how there could be good gay couples, but how bisexuality was always bad.

We talk about the AIDS crisis and how homophobic that was, but there's no mention of how bisexuals were blamed for it spreading because we were all "dirty, diseased whores" who supposedly were the link between gay men and infecting poor, innocent straight people.

When it comes to biphobia, it really does come down to monosexuals having no clue what it's like to be attracted to both sexes and treating us like half-and-halfs who can't be trusted and can't be human. That we're some kind of monstrous abomination between the two "actual" sexualities based on some broken hypersexuality that makes us devoid of humanity. And then bisexuals with internalised biphobia believe that, but because they aren't like the biphobic stereotypes, they hate themselves and hate the rest of us because we're somehow "giving them a bad name" because we're supposedly as evil as we are.

The idea that the worst we get is "you're confused" or "you're probably a cheater" is a slap in the face to every single bisexual. The sheer rage I feel when some ignorant biphobe knows nothing and shrugs off a couple of stereotypes to erase actual history, actual bisexual suffering, all the stats and figures that have bisexuals looking at them and going, "Oh, I've been there, too," the bisexuals who have been raped and sexually assaulted thanks to their bisexuality, the bisexuals treated as criminals for being bisexual, all of it just washed away because it's easier to simply hate all of us is sickening.

The people that do that on purpose are evil.

#crocodilian answers

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all-things-lgbtqia · 4 years

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JK Rowling continues to spout TERF ideology, continues to say she’s not a TERF.

JK Rowling, best known as author of the world-renowned Harry Potter series and the decider of who is and isn’t gay, took to Twitter within the past 24 hours to make what I can only assume was supposed to be a joke in response to a Tweet about efforts to help create a more equal world “those who menstruate” in a post Covid-19 world, saying that “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.”

When called out for her erasure of trans men, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people - all people who can be assigned female at birth but do not identify as women - Rowling went on the defensive, criticizing the idea that “sex isn’t real”.

Here’s the thing, Rowling: sex is real. Trans people know this. That’s kind of what makes most of us trans. Their biological sex, which is a real and tangible thing, does not match the identity they see for themselves, which is also real although it can be a lot harder for us outsiders to see. This is why many trans people opt for modified clothing (such as binders and gaffs), hormones and surgeries to make the exterior body match the internal sense of gender. Granted, many trans people will not do this, and they are not obligated to do so, but the vast majority of us will opt for such measures, not just to make ourselves more comfortable in our skins, but also so people like you don’t keep misgendering us and then pretend to be the victim when we call you out on it (which you’re doing right now). Absolutely no one is arguing that biological sex isn’t real.

She then goes on to say that saying women like her, “who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”, hate trans people “because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense”.

Like I said Rowling, sex is real and absolutely no one is saying otherwise. You’re the one who keeps saying it. You said it during the Maya Forstater debacle and you’re saying it now. “Woman” is not a term that refers to someone who is biologically female. An overwhelming amount of the time it does, but not always. “Female” and “female-bodied” are somewhat controversial terms when it comes to afab transgender people, but they always refer to someone who is biologically female. “Afab” is an acronym for “assigned female at birth”, which can even refer to cis women. So as you can see, there are better terms to refer to someone with female reproductive organs than “women”. And believe it or not, a lot of those “lived consequences” are often the same for a lot of afab people. Not everyone has the privilege to transition at 6-years-old, before the horrors of the real world affect most of us. Many afab trans men (I would like to quickly acknowledge that some trans men may be biologically intersex), non-binary and gender-nonconforming people will have lived as females or a somewhat “female experience” up until they come out of the closet and begin their transition, if they do so at all. Pre-transition afab people are still subjected to the same amount of sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment and general dangers that come with being a woman because even though they are not women, society sees them as women. And yes, these people will even menstruate, because they have a female reproductive system (although it is worth noting that some people born with these parts may not menstruate at all, because biology is weird and sometimes things don’t function the way they’re supposed to). And on top of all that, trans women will also face the same hazards during and after the main stages of their transitions. In fact, statistically speaking, transgender women are even more likely to experience male violence than cis women, so let’s not pretend they aren’t involved in this whole conversation at all.

And just a quick sidebar, like I said, some people with female reproductive parts don’t menstruate because their body just never kicks that system into gear. If a cis woman never menstruates because she’s one of those people, is she no longer a woman, J?

I would also like to take the time to comment on how she pretends trans people don’t exist when she wants the spotlight and only references them when she gets called out for it. This is a lot like the, “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” “argument”. We’re not tools that you can use and then put back in the closet when you’re done (only we can decide if it’s time to go back in the closet, and I would rather not do that again, thank you very much). We’re not accessories you can flaunt to show how accepting you are. We exist even when you’re not making exclusionary remarks and pretending that the issue at hand is exclusive to cis females only.

She goes on to claim she would support trans people if we are discriminated against. I don’t have a Twitter account so I can see only very limited Tweets online, but so far I haven’t seen her comment on the proposed UK bathroom bill that would force trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with the sex marker on their birth certificates. If she has commented, let me know and I will update this section of this post appropriately.

She tries to justify herself by saying she is well-read in scientific journals and transgender experiences, so she knows the distinction between sex and gender. But if this was the case, she wouldn’t still be using “woman” to refer strictly to cis women, and she certainly wouldn’t be using it to describe all people who menstruate.

She says, “Never assume that because someone thinks differently, they have no knowledge.” And she would make a good point, if saying that only women menstruate and implying that if you menstruate you are a woman, plain and simple, wasn’t TERF rhetoric. Listen, you can know all about a subject as complicated and relatively new as gender identity, but knowledge and acceptance are two different things. Just because you major in Africana Studies and can name just about every major figure in black history doesn’t make you less racist when you clutch your purse tighter when you see a black man jogging down the street. Having a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t make you any less sexist when you tell a woman to make you a sandwich because you disagree with her opinion. And reading scientific papers about transgender people and what it all means doesn’t make you less transphobic when you make sweeping claims that only women menstruate, and that transgender people don’t understand the struggles of being a woman.

In what is her most damning move so far, Rowling then Tweets out, “‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong...

I get it, there are plenty of terms and phrases used with the intent of shutting up women you don’t agree with. TERF is not one of those terms. TERF is in the same category as racist, misogynist, neo-nazi, etc. NOT the same category as women-silencing words like ‘bitch’ or ‘feminazi’. A TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, someone who discredits the existence and experiences of transgender people (primarily trans women) because they feel like it (the transgender experience) doesn’t belong in discussions of women’s rights, or even that it threatens their identity as women. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Calling someone a TERF is not a silencing behavior, and you’d figure a feminist would understand this. Calling someone a TERF is calling them out for behavior, while also letting the transgender community know that this is not a safe person to be around. If anything it’s a warning label.

And look, don’t take this all to mean I hate women. I don’t. I only hate it when we pretend that an issue such as menstruation is exclusive to cis women. It isn’t. Women’s issues typically aren’t restricted to cis women. Trans women will experience violence and hate, usually at a disproportionately high rate when compared to their cisgender sisters. Trans men will often experience discrimination pre-transition, and maybe even post-transition from people who still see them as women. Not only that, but trans men typically experience the issues that come along with being biologically female (again, those that are afab). Most transgender men will menstruate and experience all the absolutely wonderful symptoms that come along with it. Some transgender men even get pregnant and have babies. No one is arguing that women have it easy. Transgender people - regardless of if they’re trans women, trans men, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, or gender-nonconforming - don’t want to erase women’s experiences throughout the years. We just want to live our lives in peace like everybody else. I just wish Rowling would stop pretending otherwise.

Is JK Rowling a terrible person? I don’t think I can go that far. She has made some serious contributions towards the acceptance of LGB (although notably not T) themes in children’s media, supports the Black Lives Matter movements, and even showcases fan art from very young fans on her Twitter. Although, she did share an article talking about the lesbian experience with discrimination and erasure, which is very important (hell, I admittedly don’t come across a lot of lesbian content on my Tumblr feed so I don’t get a chance to reblog a whole lot of it), but it also says that “ask my pronouns” is decidedly anti-lesbian, and paints the entire LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as “LGBTQ” with the quotes) as greedy, money-hungry, well-supported, and even predatory against children. Is this just a subject I’m not all that knowledgeable in? Perhaps, but I have a really hard time taking your arguments seriously LGBTQIA+ community is decidedly predatory against children, but I digress. I will say, however, that I am just disappointed. I’m disappointed someone who has been all about standing up to bullies and fighting against oppression has been using her platform to side with bullies and take part in said oppression. I’m disappointed she lumps “TERF” in with “Feminazi” and other terms designed to discredit women with opinions. And above all, I’m disappointed that she claims to offer us support when her actions support just the opposite. But, after all we’ve seen over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised.

#JK Rowling #rant #transphobic #terf #menstruation #terf ideology #transphobia

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nansheonearth · 5 years

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“Okay here we go. I have waded through one google alert after another the last two weeks about the controversy surrounding the film "Adam", a story about a male who poses as a trans man to get with a lesbian. It comes up in my google alert because every article tags michfest as it discusses the character’s trip to Camp Trans in 2006.

Some version of the following is being said in the articles: "Rather, the film demonstrates an authentic desire for dialogue and exploration as it depicts the internal struggles of the LGBTQ community—in the various “closets” some of the characters inhabit and in their community trip to Camp Trans, where we get a quick (though not totally thorough) education in how trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) refused to allow transwomen to attend the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

"Let's talk about that "authentic dialogue". I guess it applies to everyone in the alphabet except womon-identified womyn. Particularly womon-identified womyn who were/are part of the michfest community. Because our truth is left out by the constant regurgitation of the reductive one-liner that the gay/queer/alphabet-obsessed community has used to dismiss us with for 25 years - “Refused to allow transwomen”.

So let me be clear. We did ask one trans woman to leave the festival in 1991. Period. No other trans women were asked to leave or not allowed to purchase tickets before or after that time in 1991. Prior to this, and after this transgression, we had a commitment to not question anyone’s gender…. long before hipsters were giving their preferred pronouns in every possible moment. You see, Michigan was actually populated by one of the most gender diverse communities on the planet, brimming with gender outlaws from around the world, breaking the binary for 40 years.

In 1994, the year of the first Camp Trans, a group from the camp came across to the festival, bought tickets, walked through the festival in protest, had a gathering, and returned to camp trans. Friends and workers I knew and loved were part of the walk through festival with camp trans, and attended the workshop with Leslie Fineberg and Minni Bruce Pratt. In Michigan we lived with the tension of differing opinions without shutting each other down or shaming each other to hell.

As we stated in our August 18, 2014 press release/email/fb post: “The truth is, trans womyn and trans men attend the Festival, blog about their experiences, and work on crew. Again, it is not the inclusion of trans womyn at Festival that we resist; it is the erasure of the specificity of female experience in the discussion about the space itself that stifles progress in this conversation.”

Michigan was focused on the experience and rejuvenation of females. And we believed that the biological and political oppression of womyn was real, through the times that saw so many radical peoples look the other way as females lost hard fought protections and rights - the right to choose what happens with our bodies, the right to name our bodies, the right to gather among our peers. This was our grave “error” in a time when it became essentially outlawed to be concentrated on womyn, on females - especially lesbian womyn who are focused on womyn. We had the audacity to say our gathering was intended for womyn who were born and lived their lives as females. We left the onus up to each individual to decide what they did with our intention, and moving forward, didn’t question anyone about how they handled that.

Back to the “authentic dialogue” that is heralded as the way the LGBTQI community talks about gender. Every damn reference to our gorgeous, inter-generational, radical and diverse community that pops up in the press is a monologue, an echo chamber, a party line that leaves out our truth. Furthermore, that “authentic dialogue” perpetuates the disappearance of lesbians and the diminishment of womyn. On this, the anniversary of festival week, I break silence on this issue to once again tell the truth of our story.

I call to you to tell your truth about Michigan whenever these reductive lies are the single line with which our culture is referenced in articles, text books or conversations. It’s not easy, I know. I have taken to writing my stories of the festival, a memoir of sorts, a herstory of a certain flavor. I love telling the fun and animated stories, the beautiful happenings and the craze-ass things we did, as well as the struggles that made us stronger together. Yet I am most driven to tell the painful and difficult stories of how the Festival was one of the first institutions attacked for loving females, and how for 25 years we were ground zero demonstrating to the rest of the community what kind of attack you will be under if you do not capitulate to your own disappearance. I am compelled to make sure that when our sisters of coming generations look for stories of what we created together for 40 years in those beautiful woods, they will find us, and our truth will be so clear. Time will wear the rock away.“

- Lisa Vogel, Michigan Women’s Music Festival

#lisa vogel #quote #sisterhood #solidarity #female only #safe space #michfest #women's festivals #o

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thinkingdelicately · 4 years

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Aloha, my name is Lani Ka’ahumanu, and it ain’t over til the bisexual speaks... I am a token, and a symbol. Today there is no difference. I am the token out bisexual asked to speak, and I am a symbol of how powerful the bisexual pride movement is and how far we have come. I came here in 1979 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights I returned in 1987 for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights I stand here today on the stage of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equal Rights and Liberation. In 1987 I wrote an article on bisexuality for the Civil Disobedience Handbook titled, “Are we visible yet?” Bisexual activists organized on the local, regional and national levels to make this March a reality. Are bisexuals visible yet? Are bisexuals organized yet? Are bisexuals accountable yet? You bet your sweet ass we are! Bisexuals are here, and we’re queer. Bisexual pride speaks to the truth of behavior and identity. No simple either/or divisions fluid – ambiguous – subversive bisexual pride challenges both the heterosexual and the homosexual assumption. Society is based on the denial of diversity, on the denial of complexity. Like multiculturalism, mixed heritage and bi-racial relationships, both the bisexual and transgender movements expose and politicize the middle ground. Each show there is no separation, that each and everyone of us is part of a fluid social, sexual and gender dynamic. Each signals a change, a fundamental change in the way our society is organized. Remember today. Remember we are family, and like a large extended family, we don’t always agree, don’t always see eye to eye. However, as a family under attack we must recognize the importance of what each and every one of us brings to our movement. There is strength in our numbers and diversity. We are every race, class, culture, age, ability, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation. Our visibility is a sign of revolt. Recognition of bisexual orientation and transgender issues presents a challenge to assumptions not previously explored within the politics of gay liberation. What will it take for the gayristocracy to realize that bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and gay people are in this together, and together we can and will move the agenda forward. But this will not happen until public recognition of our common issues is made, and a sincere effort to confront biphobia and transphobia is made by the established gay and lesbian leadership in this country. The broader movement for our civil rights and liberation is being held back. Who gains when we ostracize whole parts of our family? Who gains from exclusionary politics? Certainly not us... Being treated as if I am less oppressed than thou is not only insulting, it feeds right in to the hands of the right wing fundamentalists who see all of us as queer. What is the difficulty in seeing how my struggle as a mixed race bisexual woman of color is intimately related to the bigger struggle for lesbian and gay rights the rights of people of color and the rights of all women? What is the problem? This is not a competition. I will not play by rules that pit me against any oppressed group. Has the gayristocracy bought so far in to the either/or structure, invested so much in being the opposite of heterosexual that they cannot remove themselves that they can’t imagine being free of the whole oppressive heterosexist system that keeps us all down? Bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people who are out of the closet, who are not passing for anything other than who and what we are all have our necks and our lives on the line. All our visibility is a sign of revolt. Bisexuals are here to challenge the bigots who have denied lesbian, gay and bisexual people basic civil rights in Colorado. Yes, Amendment 2 includes bisexual orientation. Yes, the religious right recognizes bisexuals as a threat to “so called” family values. Bisexuals are here to protest the military ban against lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Yes, the Department of Defense defines bisexuals separately as a reason to be dishonorably discharged. And yes, out bisexuals are not allowed to be foster or adoptive parents, And yes, we lose our jobs, our children, get beaten and killed for loving women and for loving men. Bisexuals are queer, just as queer as queer can be. Each of us here today represents many people who could not make the trip. Our civil rights and liberation movement has reached critical mass. Remember today. Remember that we are more powerful than all the hate, ignorance and violence directed at us. Remember what a profound difference our visibility makes upon the world in which we live. The momentum of this day can carry us well into the 21st century if we come out where ever and when ever we can. Remember assimilation is a lie. It is spiritual erasure. I want to challenge those lesbian and gay leaders who have come out to me privately over the years as bisexual to take the next step, come out now. What is the sexual liberation movement about if not about the freedom to love whom we choose? I want to encourage bisexuals in the lesbian, gay and heterosexual communities to come out now. Remember there is nothing wrong with love. Defend the freedom to express it. Our visibility is a sign of revolt. We cannot be stopped. We are everywhere. We are bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender people. We will not rest until we are all free; We will not rest until our basic human rights are protected under federal law; We will not rest until our relationships and families are not just tolerated but recognized, respected and valued; We will not rest until we have a national health care system; We will not rest until there are cures for AIDS and cancer. We deserve nothing less. Remember we have every right to be in the world exactly as we are. Celebrate that simply and fiercely. I love you. Mahalo and aloha.

Lani Ka‘ahumanu’s speech the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation full article here

#i am tired but lani's speech & whole article is so good #i love the way she links together bisexuality and transness #bisexuality is truly so full of love and appreciation for all differing forms of gender expression and expressions of intimacy and care #i hate that it gets reduced to this troll and terf-fueled misinformation campaign #makes me want to drop everything and start doing queer education for everyone who cant access or encounter queer community and history #anyway nothing has taught me how to love myself and other like being real about my sexuality #queer love is good! gay love is good! lesbian love is good! trans love is good! bi love is good!#y'all need to stop slandering bisexuality with the pansexuality is more inclusive bullshit #if you like the distinction and specificity of pansexuality then that's amazing!! embrace that shit!!#but not bc u think bisexuality is morally inferior. it's big! and inclusive! and fluid!#you can't nail it down to ANYTHING less than attraction to those of the same gender as one's self and those of other other genders #so many people want us dead!!! we can't do anything other than love and support each other without reservation.#lani ka'ahumanu didn't march for that #ok i'm done!#lani ka'ahumanu #march on washington #march on washington for lesbian gay and bi equal rights #lgbt #lgbtq #bisexuality #bisexuals #blessed be the mystery of love #and i bless you: more life #edit: did NOT realize the font was gonna be this big bu ti'm too lazy to redo it. my b.#bi visibility day #bi visibility week

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