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.
polisci-prelaw:
I forget about reality sometimes. It’s so easy to, since I haven’t ventured out of my house too many times for the past month. I understand that these problems that we fight do exist but only in an abstract sense. I forget how real they are. And that’s a personal failing, I realize, but it’s one so easy to commit.
Tonight was the 65th Annual Tony Awards, and my friend was once again hosting a party for theater-interested people. There were mocktails, and we streamed the nominee videos and then watched the actual broadcast. By all accounts, it should have been a lovely evening, and by many standards, it was. It was nice to see these people again.
But.
And there’s always a “but,” especially for posts like these.
Society is a disgusting place. Even for people that I expect to be progressive and forward-thinking, it is disgusting. We talked excitedly about going to Seattle Pride and then in the next breath, they completely wrote off the existence of, say, lesbian women who are trans, claiming that sex for gays and lesbians is “recreational” (as opposed to procreative). And that statement also erased the existence of celibate people.
I was very thankful that, however, no one who knew my asexuality mentioned it because in that atmosphere, I could have likely expected “Oh, have you got your hormone levels checked?” and “Were you abused?” and “LOL THAT’S NOT REAL!”. The thought makes me want to cry because these were the people, just one year ago, that I thought I could trust with anything.
Not to mention one of my guy friends is very friendly in a physical way, draping arms around people, and I was highly uncomfortable because he’s straight and I think he might like me, and I don’t really want to explain that I am not sexually or romantically attracted to him. Or really attracted to him in any way. And it made me very uncomfortable, and I didn’t feel safe to tell him to stop touching me.
And it makes me wonder why I hang out with them at all.
They also made fun of sex workers and delightfully (sarcasm) reinforced gender stereotypes and ideas about gender. Apparently gay men aren’t really manly because they date other men, and apparently being girly is a bad thing, and I just wanted to rip their faces to shreds.
I hate the world.
oh my god. so I had told myself that I had washed my hands of this woman, because she’s obviously hopeless, but I just can’t with her. it’s awful that she’s uncomfortable about her one guy friend; i wish she and the rest of us women didn’t have to worry about the often intimidating romantic and sexual advances of our male friends. I really, seriously feel her on that one, and I am legitimately sorry.
it’s just that I have no sympathy for her that her friends all seem to be your typical homophobic liberals. maybe because I’m, you know, directly affected by all that homophobia her friends spew (that she, judging by this post, could not contradict until she got back to the safety of her obscure echo-chamber tumblr - where she does all of her activism, by the way). oh, and there’s also that thing where she, a straight asexual, tried to shout down numerous queer voices (mine included) for daring to contradict ms. straighty mcstraighterson on the definition of the slur we’re trying to reclaim. and characterized us as bullies and emotionally manipulated us and accused me of enjoying the purity of my oppression as a lesbian woman living in a homophobic society. and have we forgotten about the time when she laughed at people asking her what she had to be proud of after she’d hurt us all with her desperate flailing to force her way into our community, because obviously all queer people who disagree with her are just nasty vicious horrible trolls who shouldn’t be listened to?
or how about in this post, where she says, “I understand that these problems that we fight do exist but only in an abstract sense. I forget how real they are.” of course she forgets that homophobia exists; that’s what straight people do.
it sounds like she fits right in with her homophobic friends, actually. so yeah, I have no sympathy for another straight woman on tumblr boohooing about the horrible homophobia of her friends in order to get sympathy and ally cookies for noticing something isn’t okay.
polisci, if you read this, I’m sorry you’re in a bind with your one friend. I hope you can figure out how best to deal with that. I also hope that one of these days you’ll come to your senses and see that you would be best serving my community by listening to our voices and, rather than stealing our words and sitting around on tumblr doing absolutely nothing meaningful, standing up to those friends of yours and telling them that you won’t be party to their homophobia.
of course, you should work on yours, too.
(via mindyshabibti-deactivated201111)
aceslutshamers:
queersecrets:
![[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)
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.
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.
The last time people in this society cared about my rights was when I was a fetus.
Sara Cytron, quoted in Glamour, May 1992. (from Lesbian Quotations, Rosemary Silva)
(Source: dykesanddykery, via spacegay-deactivated20120225)
graftversushost:
Tumblr: where the historical context of centuries of Greek roots finding their way into various places in the contemporary English landscape doesn’t change the “fact” that homos using the word “homophobia” is now an act of cultural theft from people with diagnosable specific or social phobias, yet hardly even two decades of pontification from detached academics and their lazy-minded offspring means that actual dykes and fags have nothing of value to say about what the slur “queer” means to us. Unless, of course, it’s to grant our approval and allegiance to demiromantic quirkyalone otherkin straight people.
(Source: saltmarshhag, via heartinakiln)
graftversushost:
desliz:
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)
Among the dire results of my “unnaturalness” I had been told that I should go blind and go mad. I believed this. In a kind of cold reasonableness, I tried to teach myself to type and play the piano with my eyes shut, against the time I should be blind.
Valentine Ackland, in the aftermath of her parents’ discovery in 1922 that she and a school friend, Lana, had been lovers. She was forbidden any further communication with Lana. For Sylvia: An Honest Account, 1985. (from Lesbian Quotations, Rosemary Silva)
(Source: dykesanddykery)
ace-azaelia:
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.
subtlefire:
ace-azaelia:
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)
