emotional manipulation.
it sounds pretty bad. I doubt that there is anyone reading this who would feel the need to contest that no, emotional manipulation is awesome.
unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped it from becoming something of a widespread problem on tumblr. maybe people don’t know what it is, I don’t know. for those of you who don’t, or for those of you who need a refresher, emotional manipulation is an attempt to make someone else feel bad about themselves and/or behave in the way you want them to by convincing them that they are responsible for your extremely unpleasant feelings.
i have had trouble recognizing this in the past. I grew up in a household where this was the norm, where I was made to feel that my parents’ happiness was my responsibility, that I was responsible for their anger or their disappointment. my parents have even explicitly told me that my brother and I are responsible for my mother’s depression and alcoholism. what I’m saying is, I’m intimately familiar with emotional manipulation; I’ve been trained since before I can remember to believe that others’ emotional needs come before mine.
imagine my surprise when, while in the middle of my struggle to figure out all this shit with my family and with my screwed up ideas of what I need to prioritize, I stumble into tumblr and discover that it is practically crawling with people who fall back on emotional manipulation when they want to win an argument. no, let’s be specific here. I stumble into tumblr to discover that people will attempt to emotionally manipulate me when I get into an argument with them.
when a queer person is telling you that your actions are appropriative of their identity and generally oppressive and your response is to cry all over your tumblr about how upset you are about this and how this has convinced you that you are a horrible person, you are trying to emotionally manipulate that queer person into shutting up. there is no way that, after you have explicitly stated that you are hating yourself for being oppressive and are so upset that you no longer know how to identify, a queer person can continue to argue in favor of their position without appearing cruel to observers and feeling pretty horrible about themselves, even as you continue to reblog people who argue in favor of yours. this is emotional manipulation. this is holding queer people responsible for your feelings so that they are not free to be honest with you.
this is wrong. because I am not responsible for anyone’s feelings, beyond my basic responsibility to be a decent human being to each person I meet and to avoid unnecessarily harming anyone. and your feelings are not more important than mine, especially not when I am trying to tell you about how you are harming me. the only person responsible for your feelings is you. if an argument on tumblr is upsetting you that much, get off of tumblr. or at the very least, stop participating in that argument by posting about it and by reblogging people who agree with you.
this is one example. this has happened multiple times since I first informed polisci-prelaw that I did not appreciate her appropriation of my identity. every diatribe accusing people or the discussion of making a person feel like a disgusting human being is an exercise in emotional manipulation. every melodramatic scribe about what a horrible worthless person someone feels like they are written in response to someone daring to speak out against them is emotional manipulation.
and it’s not okay.
this sums up the entire debate we’ve been having. this is exactly how much concern for queer people’s feelings i’ve observed throughout this whole thing. this is what straight privilege looks like: being able to completely disregard everything queer people have been telling you when you behave oppressively (calling them trolls, in fact) and to then laugh and laugh when someone reminds you that your actions are hurting real people.
i don’t want to hear a single word about how (not at all, actually) cruel the queer people asking straight people not to appropriate our identities and experiences are, not after this. not after this succinct, appalling summation of the homophobia that’s been running rampant across this little section of the internet for the past few days.
queersecrets refused to post this so i’m sharing it for a friend
don’t forget, they also put up a post about how they don’t want ~hateful secrets and aren’t a place to just spread your message around. but when there are secrets about how asexuals are TOTALLY oppressed and HOW DARE YOU say straight aces can’t be queer, they go up with no problems.
basically, they suck.
And then they threw you a ticker-tape parade and baked you a key lime pie, right? You poor, poor brave person, standing up to those awful queers to defend your right to fall in love with and not have sex with members of the opposite sex.
![[Image: A three layer chocolate cake with pink, white and chocolate frosting. A wedge is cut out and placed to the side. Text: I recently came out as asexual to my campus LGBTQ group. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged to something. Like I was part of something tangible. For once in my life I fit in. It's hard to express how much happiness I experienced. Everyone was so kind, so supportive and loving. That is until two girls decided I wasn't queer enough for them. They said I wasn't welcome in their space because I'm heteroromantic. They constantly made fun of me, it was a constant game of 'queerer than thou' and I just couldn't win. Always snickering and gossiping. It was awful. But then something amazing happened. The leader came out in support of me. Eventually the two girls were asked to leave the group if they couldn't accept me. So they left. They would rather hate me that tolerate my presence. It was painful. But now I know that I have people who love and support me, people who will go up to bat for me. Most importantly, people who believe in the validity of my identity. I also know that having gone through the abuse and policing those girls subjected me to I've come out stronger. I want to thank them for that.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpw516Gvwl1qcpj7wo1_500.png)
I hope you’re proud of driving two queer women out of their group, secret maker. my queer club did this, too, but they didn’t even have the advantage of making up some kind of asexual oppression to justify it - they just stood up for straight “allies” and their right to never ever ever be excluded from anything.
so I left, because I no longer felt safe or welcome in a space that prioritized straight people’s comfort over queer people’s.
in conclusion: they’re not the villains here.
huerca zafada: Why you can't have this word.
I think I’ve been courteous, relatively speaking, regarding the recent push on Tumblr to appropriate the word “queer” and render it meaningless via relentless whining from “heteromantics” and pukeworthy sunshine-sphinctered essays about how anybody can be queer! anybody! Straight white boys, your dog, you, even if you recoil inwardly at the thought of same-sex physical relations, because really it’s all about acceptance! There are kids with their heads up their damn ass telling us about how “queer” isn’t a slur anymore, because a bunch of academics have decreed it otherwise, and God knows there’s no group of people more trustworthy and in touch with the plight of the common people than tenured academics. I read shit like this:
“My hope in providing a definition of queer is that people gain awareness of the reclaiming movement for ‘queer’ and recognize that the word ‘queer’ is not always intended as a slur by those who say it. Once people understand that intention, then we can discuss whether or not ‘queer’ should be used as a reclaimed word or if it will always be a hateful slur.”
…and lose all hope that people understand what the problem actually is, what reclamation actually means, and that intent means damn little when we are talking about oppressive language.
So here’s an example:
A young man was recently beaten to death by people shouting gay slurs.Just days ago! We don’t know for sure what was going through the minds of his assailants, but one can bet it didn’t have a goddamned thing to do with heteromantic demisexuals. Here’s another point: how many of these self-assigned heterosexual/asexual “queers” would want to be called a faggot? or a bulldyke, or a cocksucker, a carpetmuncher, a he-she, an it? They seem to get damned upset about someone mistaking them for gay, and are pretty grossed out about gay sex* , so I’m guessing not very many. Why is queer different? Why is queer, out of all the possible words of violence that could have been chose, being forcibly torn from the communities who are actually targeted by it, washed and repainted and made to stand in for any ambiguous concept its captors desire?
It’s a damn long answer, going back decades. I’m not going to go through all of it when there are dozens of books out there that lay it out in great detail. But it does bring me to the second point; these would-be queers have no concept of history. All those riots, those forcible stripdowns, those police raids, those police beatings, gay cancer, murder acquittals, the fear and the need which led to the development of close-knit and intensely secretive queer communities - all of these things I have never seen one of the wannabes mention, or even try to articulate how the hell they think their experiences relate. Because they can’t. Because they don’t know. Because they don’t care.
People die everyday because of homophobia and transphobia. People go homeless everyday because of them, they are raped every day because of them, they are denied basic human kindness because of them. They are diseases of the present. When people say “queer is a slur”, it is not because they don’t understand what reclamation means, it’s because they understand that reclamation means confronting the words that oppress you personally and threaten you personally. It is walking in the lion’s den and spitting in the eye of the lion. Attempting to “reclaim” a word that was never directed at you and the demographics you belong to demonstrates only that you understand even less than the bigots who use those words pejoratively. You were never in danger; you have no right to to pretend you ever were.Attempting to sever a slur from its past and its present is an act of violence. It is an act of erasure. It tells the targets of the slur that you intend to interfere in their attempts to confront their oppression and render their work meaningless. The slur becomes a bland, tame plaything for those it never was meant to harm. It still kills out in the real world, but we queers are not permitted to recenter the focus there. We are called cunts and bigots for trying to do so. We are accused of using power we do not possess. Meanwhile, actual queers, the “queer” people mean when they rape a lesbian or murder a trans woman or beat a young man to death, they go on suffering.
I do not give a shit about academic blathering about the evolution of words when what I see is appropriation. Words cannot be divorced from their contexts, especially when the context is ongoing suffering. Trying to unfaggotdykequeen “queer” is homophobia; those who attempt it, homophobes who prop up a system or marginalization and erasure for their own self-gratification, to “win” a fight they were never on the losing end of. This is becoming more and more apparent every day this ludicrous argument goes on. Who benefits from an environment where screaming about how awful the world is for not validating every aspect of your mundane life is more important than respect for victims of oppression?
(*If you’re thinking “but I get grossed out by straight sex too!”, here’s my answer: you live in a homophobic society. That sea of homophobia you swim in is coloring the way you feel about gay sex, whether you think you’re beyond it or not. No declaration of disgust about gay intimacy can be disentangled from it. I am not interested in your personal touches.)
Actually, I think they intellectually know about the entrapment arrests, the riots, the murders, the plague that got ignored for a decade, etc. They just don’t care. And why should they? It’s not about them, so it’s just an abstraction.
(via saltmarshhag)
Demisexuality: Revised Ace Prom Invite 3.1
There was a typo.
What: Ace Prom!
When: Friday September 9th, 2011. All day. Log in when you want/can and log out when you want/can. And if you can’t make it at all, you can still post things related to ace prom when you get a chance if you’d like.
Where: Tumblr, and wherever you physically…
This is literally some of the stupidest shit I have seen in a while.
they forgot to include the all-important why
why does this entire stupid event exist
(Source: , via rare-basement)
Anonymous asked: Why did you even reply to the Ace Prom post in the first place, seeing as you obviously don't even care about it. It's nothing to do with you. Oh, I know. You just wanted to spew your hatred on it. I hope you found it sufficiently entertaining.
no, mostly I answered because the whole ~ace prom thing seems entirely too much like it’s supposed to be partially some kind of second chance prom and based in the idea that all aces, even the straight and aromantic ones, couldn’t go to or enjoy prom.
which is bullshit, and co-opting the very real problem that queer kids have with being able to attend any public function with their significant other, including prom. both because schools won’t let them (and don’t think that every instance of that shit gets reported on, let alone taken to court) and because some kids don’t feel safe being out in that way.
why didn’t I say all of this then, you’re probably going to ask. so I’ll cover that right now: because sometimes I’m too tired and cranky to write out a big long thing about why 99.99% of the shit tumblr ace activists~ pull sucks.
thanks for asking!!!
ETA: oh I also forgot to mention that part where it’s also apparently supposed to be some celebration of asexuality to bounce back from all the “trolls” and “ace-hate” that I can only assume is 99% people with valid grievances bringing them up and the ace tumblrsphere losing its collective shit. so maybe instead of some “self-congratulatory hooray asexuality and all of the asexuals on tumblr we’re fighting the good fight totally!” little tumblr “prom,” you all should be taking a step back and evaluating what about your little corner of the internet has so many queer people and women pissed off at you.
I’m seeing some circular logic here
Okay, entirely putting aside my own personal opinion on asexuality and whether it’s a queer identity and how big the queer umbrella is/should be and whether passing privilege has as much effect as certain people are arguing it does…
I’m seeing logic circles in this argument, going like such:
-Asexuals are not queer
-Therefore the ostracism and marginalisation they face is not queer
-This ostracism and marginalisation they face isn’t queer because they’re not queer
-They are not queer because the issues they face aren’t queer issues
-The issues they face aren’t queer issues because they’re not queer
-They’re not queer because…(ad nauseum)
At least, I haven’t seen an argument as to why asexuals aren’t queer that doesn’t either start playing oppression olympics or say it’s because the issues they face aren’t queer (and starting the loop). Maybe passing privilege is brought up, but that argument discredits the fact that a lot of the time, the passing privilege is due to invisibility and erasure, and does a lot of damage internally for the damage it supposedly spares externally.
And as long as the one side is stuck in a logic loop, nothing the other side says is going to get through. And as long as both sides are speaking from a place of pain, neither side will be able to step back and say “oh, this is a better way to get the point across.”
And I don’t know how to fix these problems outside of a miraculous epiphany.
(This is why I’ve kind of been staying out of the argument these past few rounds, because I don’t have anything to say that I haven’t already said and from what I’ve seen what I have to say won’t be accepted anyway)
listen, you deliberately obtuse, disingenuous brat. I’m going to explain this once more for you in the simplest terms I can imagine.
queer as a pejorative term has historically been used against people who experience romantic or sexual attraction to the same gender. it still is today. it is the verbal essence of the hate, disgust, and derision that straight people and homophobic society feels about us.
in recent history, those it has been used against have begun the hard work of reclaiming that word. reclamation of “queer” is the empowering process through which we take control of a word that has been used to hurt us and to turn us into queers rather than human beings. this process is not complete. people still use these words against us. in the mildest cases, angry men scream QUEERS out their car doors as we walk from parking to the gay club that is celebrating pride that very night, all because two women were holding hands. in the most severe cases, the psychological violence of that word is backed up by physical violence. there are still many people who wince when they hear “queer” and would rather not make it part of their identity. and even those of us who do use that word to describe ourselves do it gingerly, conscious of the ways in which that single syllable can suddenly turn poisonous in the mouths of even the most “progressive” straights.
and then suddenly, a group of people who does not share this history and this present with us come clamoring in, demanding that they count as queer because a few academics who were horribly disconnected from the “real world” decided to change the definition to “not normal.” these people - hetero- or aromantic asexuals, in this case - have never and will never experience the oppression that is inextricably linked to this word. in fact, they carry with them the privilege of being able to choose ”queer” - to want ”queer,” even - while those of us who actually are queer had it shoved on us by a society that refuses to see us as anything more than queers and hates us for it.
the logic isn’t circular. it’s simple. “queer” has always been a slur aimed at us, people who are somehow attracted to the same gender. and so it is our word and no one else’s, just as it is our pain and no one else’s.
I’m seeing some circular logic here
Okay, entirely putting aside my own personal opinion on asexuality and whether it’s a queer identity and how big the queer umbrella is/should be and whether passing privilege has as much effect as certain people are arguing it does…
I’m seeing logic circles in this argument, going like such:
-Asexuals are not queer
-Therefore the ostracism and marginalisation they face is not queer
-This ostracism and marginalisation they face isn’t queer because they’re not queer
-They are not queer because the issues they face aren’t queer issues
-The issues they face aren’t queer issues because they’re not queer
-They’re not queer because…(ad nauseum)
At least, I haven’t seen an argument as to why asexuals aren’t queer that doesn’t either start playing oppression olympics or say it’s because the issues they face aren’t queer (and starting the loop). Maybe passing privilege is brought up, but that argument discredits the fact that a lot of the time, the passing privilege is due to invisibility and erasure, and does a lot of damage internally for the damage it supposedly spares externally.
And as long as the one side is stuck in a logic loop, nothing the other side says is going to get through. And as long as both sides are speaking from a place of pain, neither side will be able to step back and say “oh, this is a better way to get the point across.”
And I don’t know how to fix these problems outside of a miraculous epiphany.
(This is why I’ve kind of been staying out of the argument these past few rounds, because I don’t have anything to say that I haven’t already said and from what I’ve seen what I have to say won’t be accepted anyway)
Emphasis mine. Will the real Spock please step up and enforce some logic out of all this emotion?
ah, yes. the old dichotomy between the overemotional queers and the very rational, obviously objective outsiders (straight people).
how original of you.
btw, the logic has been enforced. here.
oh, and just fyi, despite what star trek may have taught you, emotion and logic are not mutually exclusive.
(via sirperceval)
Not that it will work, but let’s try this again
Straight = heterosexual = sexually attracted to the “opposite” gender
Not heterosexual = not straight
Aromantic heterosexual = sexually attracted to the “opposite” gender = heterosexual = straight
Aromantic a/bi/pan/homosexual = not sexually attracted to the “opposite” gender = not heterosexual = not straight
[*romantic] asexual = does not experience sexual attraction to any gender = does not experience attraction to “opposite” gender = not straight
more like:
straight = attracted exclusively to the “opposite” gender
not-straight = not attracted exclusively to the “opposite” gender
p.s. “straight” is a slang term that originated in the queer community to refer to people who got with people of the “opposite” sex so we’ll decide what it means, condescending asshole.
(Source: sirperceval)
