Some Things We Need To Address

CW: bimisogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic slurs; mentions of Christianity; discussion of homophobia, transphobia, racism, intersexism, misogyny, rape culture, classism, wh*rephobia, fatphobia, ableism, sexual violence, and sex shaming


I wasn't planning to break the hiatus again but I need to say some things.

1. First, we obviously need to change the blog's name. I don't believe that aphobia is an axis of oppression, only three of us are a-spec, and I don't really bring that I am anymore because 1) I think my a-specness is caused by low empathy and a lot of issues with human contact and neurodivergency so I interact with it differently than neurotypical a-specs and 2) the a-spec community has been so homophobic to me that I only really mention it nowadays if I need to put other a-specs in their place because apparently I'm not allowed to call out homophobia if they think I'm an evil amatonormative allogay.

I'm thinking Rebels of Sappho or something along those lines. As far as I know, all four mods are sapphic, though I don't know if Frey is aroace or bi/polysexual, and I don't know if Cosima is woman-aligned. So if you two could elaborate on that, that would be amazing. Any other ideas are welcome.

2. We're still hiring new mods. If you're interested, please comment below.

3. I was looking in the 'stats' section on that one page where we handle all the technical stuff like writing and editing posts, modifying the blog's appearance, hiring new mods, etc. One part of the stats section lists all the Google searches that people have made in order to find us.

Three of the searches listed pissed me off. Here they are and here's why:

•  'lesbian bihet dating'.

Bih*t is a biphobic, misogynistic slur in the same vein of "bi women are sexually available to men". First of all, saying that any woman (including straight women) is sexually available to men is misogynistic and reduces her to a sex toy for men's consumption as well as shaming her for her sex life. Second, saying it specifically about a bisexual women implies that bi women are 1) basically straight and 2) faking their attraction to women for straight men's attention - or that their attraction to women is frivolous, trivial, and shallow. When we imply that bi women, regardless of relationship status, are less sapphic than lesbians, we throw them to the wolves and deny them community - something that can be vital for many, especially women of color.

I know that I've talked about monosexism in the past and that was fucked-up and incredibly homophobic and I'm so, so sorry. I realize how wrong I was now, the place of internalized homophobia I was coming from (though that is no excuse), and I'm trying to build up solidarity with other wlw and with mlm and make amends for my past actions.

But hating bi women is just as bad as hating lesbians. And if you even fucking think that gay and bi people can oppress anyone on the axis of sexuality, you can get the hell away from this blog. Homophobia has no place here, and biphobia is a subset of that.

• 'aro aces are queer.'

It seems like cishet aros, cishet aces, and cis aroaces are fucking fascinated with anything that has to do with gay people, including slurs that are used to hurt us, and it's so creepy. And when we express that, they throw a goddamn tantrum and co-opt our solidarity with bi people, painting us as anti-radical and oppressive, trying to turn them against us - which is what happened to me when I was in MOGAI hell - and denying their cis privilege.

I just want to know: why? What about gay people appeals to you, especially when some of you seem to be so uncomfortable with us providing sex education to our young people, kissing in our own goddamn spaces, fighting back against our oppression, or feeling sexual attraction and expressing it with our freaky deviant sex lives and Evil Dens of Sin (aka gay bars).

Why would you even want to reclaim a slur, especially one that has never been systematically used against you? I barely reclaim slurs even when I'm part of the group they're used against.

And I definitely don't call myself a f*g, even though I don't have privilege over gay men in any way and they actually do have privilege over me because they're men. I don't call myself tr***y because, even though I'm not cis and people have called me that while mistaking me for a trans girl, I realize that it's not a slur applied to AFAB nonbinary people. I don't call myself cr***le because, even though I'm definitely (mentally) disabled and I have joint pain that's starting to worry me, I'm not currently part of the physically disabled community and have no right to claim a slur specific to them. I don't use or call myself racial slurs of any kind because I'm white and not only have those words have never been applied to me, but people of my race (including, without a doubt, my own family) are the reason they're slurs at all.

I don't appropriate violent words that have been used to hurt oppressed communities that I'm not part of because I'm not a completely disgusting human being. And if you can't say the same, fuck you.

• 'examples of acephobia'

The fact that you have to Google it says something. 

Because with homophobia? God, I can think of so many examples. Reagan. Pence and Trump. Conversion therapy. Mike Huckabee. The AIDS crisis. Parents who kick their gay and bi kids out. TERFs who tokenize lesbians' sexuality. MOGAI Tumblr. Uganda and Russia. Corrective rape. Heteronormative sex education. When straight people assume that everything their mlm and wlw friends and family do is sexually predatory. The stereotyping of gay people as pedophiles. The "not ALL feminists are hairy butch lesbians!" rallying cry of cishet women in order to make feminism look more acceptable to cishet men. The fact that gay youth are so often bullied into substance abuse and suicide, then told that being gay inherently leads to these things. Gay and bi people being fired from jobs. The assumption that gay and woman are mutually exclusive. When gay trans people are asked what the point of being a woman is if they like women or what the point of being a man is if they like men. Straight people's repulsive fantasies of raping and abusing us. The fact that people still debate our right to exist. Centuries of violent persecution all over the world that will NEVER compare to anything aces or aros have experienced for being ace or aro.

Furthermore, if acephobia existed as an axis of oppression (because I do think it exists, but only as discrimination and lateral aggression) then "whether or not you have sex" would be an axis of oppression and everyone who has sex would be privileged on that axis.

WLW and mlm obviously don't benefit socially from having sex. Women are sex shamed and told we're impure and deserve to be raped for it. People of color are fetishized and subjected to stereotypes like "yellow fever", "BBC", "Latin Lover", "Native Warrior", etc. and even white Latinxs have to deal with the Spanish language being sexualized, with non-Latinx people calling their partners mami and papi. Intersex, trans, and nonbinary people are objectified by chasers and porn categories like futanari. Fat people are either constantly sexualized and told it's only okay to be fat if thin people think they're hot or told they're unfuckable and therefore worthless and laughable. There is an incredibly long history of disabled people being denied sexual agency by those who are supposed to be caring for them. Poor people are perceived as sexually volatile - just look at how rich white women lock their cars or cross the street to avoid poor men, especially poor black and Latino men, or at stereotypes of rural poor people being into incest and beastiality. Sex workers are reduced to unrapeable objects or victims, here only for the pleasure of anyone who wants them and undeserving of any say in their own sex lives.

Only white, dyadic, upper/middle class, abled, thin, cishet men who have never done sex work are privileged for being "allo" and if you think otherwise, please stay away from me. I'm a disabled nonbinary wlw and will never be able to oppress you or anyone else by being the dirty, dirty allo that I am, and I will laugh in your ignorant, homophobic face if you suggest that I will ever be able to.

Unapologetically Art

Most of you didn't know that I have OnDemand service at my house, or that episodes of this high school sitcom called 10 Things I Hate About You are back on there.

To fill you in, the series is a loose adaptation of a movie by the same name and both are loosely based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.

The main characters, Kat and Bianca Stratford, are fifteen and sixteen year old sisters who recently moved to California with their widowed father, an obstetrician named Walter who apparently thinks that abstinence-only sex education is a good idea.

Kat is the older sister, an opinionated feminist (because, you know, women who stand up for themselves = shrewish, angry, unlikeable, undateable, and irrational) who I thought would be my favorite character. That assumption ended when I discovered that Kat is racist, selfish, transphobic, kind of pretentious, rude to people for no reason, emotionally neglectful to her best friend, and assumes that all Muslim women who wear burka are meek and helpless and need her little white girl ass to save them from themselves. And she slut shames other girls, her own sister included. She has all the emotional and moral maturity of a 13-year-old...wait, no, worse actually because I've met some awesome 13-year-olds. She was obviously created to be a Straw Feminist trope and it's so bad.

So I hate her. Even though she does look so hot that I got weak in the knees in episode 18 when she's getting ready for her date with Patrick (and you'd think he'd have better taste, because he's actually a really cool guy and I feel like we'd be friends if he were real).

Meanwhile, younger sister Bianca is one of my favorite characters. She can be incredibly sweet and caring, is probably the most non-judgmental character on the show, is ambitious without being manipulative or deceitful, wears her heart on her sleeve, and will fight you if you're rude to her or her loved ones. She has a boyfriend, Joey, who I don't like for some reason, and she worked her ass off to become a cheerleader. 

Bianca Stratford is a fucking cinnamon roll who is entirely too good for this world and reminds me of this girl I had a crush on for over a year when I was in high school and might still have feelings for (it's complicated). So that, you know, might have something to do with why I like her. *cough*

The reason I'm talking about this is that it made me think of the way women and girls are depicted in children's media and how those depictions condition girls to see themselves and other women. Like how "evil" versions of female characters are usually more scantily clad than "good" versions, how they're flirtatious toward women even though the "good" version is straight.

 How teen movies with female leads pit female characters against each other, usually for the sake of some boring guy's attention. How the protagonist in these movies is almost always tomboyish without actually being GNC (because god forbid) and has one close female friend at the most, while the antagonist almost always wears makeup, has multiple female friends, is a cheerleader, and is hinted - if not explicitly shown - to be sexually active. How they immediately see each other as competition, as if that's just how teenage girls automatically are - needlessly mean and spiteful. How any show of solidarity, friendship, or affection between two girls is either to help one of them get a boyfriend or to hurt another girl. How all of this conditions trans girls to deny their gender and hate themselves, GNC and nonbinary girls to distance themselves from other girls under the assumption that other girls are inherently evil and hate them (the fact that I, a nonbinary butch girl, am bringing this up is not an excuse for cis and/or feminine girls to pull a "#NotAllCisPeople, "#NotAllFeminineGirls), and sapphic girls to distance themselves from other women and mistake their love of girls for envy and hatred.

That's starting to change. The T*witches movies were always pretty great, for example - two WoC leads with magical fucking powers joining together to save their home and family. But this does nothing for wlw, as the only major relationships between women in the movies are familial and the only romances the female characters have are with men. And how many movies are there that aren't like these? How much damage have they done to the self-esteem of impressionable young girls who viewed them?

And it's not just movies either. TV shows do this too, and they're often racist in their execution of it.

Like how in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, there are only three WoC characters who are featured in more than one episode: London, an Asian girl who is coded as neurodivergent and is vapid, spoiled, selfish, and shallow, Nia, a Sapphire trope, and Barbara, a stereotypical Asian nerd who exists solely to be the girlfriend of the white male lead - yet the female character we're most encouraged to like, emulate, and find relatable is Maddie, a white Christian whose Irish Catholic heritage is demonstrated in multiple episodes. But it's only acknowledged in one episode that Barbara is Japanese, and even then the episode isn't about her - it's about Cody trying to impress her grandmother. The first time London is shown having anything to do with her Thai background in the Suite Life universe, it's well into the spinoff series and a big part of the episode is about how London's white best friend Bailey, who is portrayed in much the same way Maddie had been, feels more at home in Thailand than she does. I'm not even sure if Nia or her uncle Mr. Moseby are ever actually called black or African-American, by themselves or any other character. Nia, the only black character with a stereotypically black hairstyle and the only one who ever uses AAVE, takes over a white character's job soon after her first appearance. And we're supposed to sympathize with said white character when she immediately wants it back after having been gone for months.

Or how the two female protagonists of Hannah Montana were white girls who were shown as funny, likeable (apparently? I watched an old episode of this show last year and Miley came across as kind of a brat honestly), intelligent, and hardworking. Meanwhile, Amber and Ashley are girls of color who are constantly shown as mean, spiteful, shallow, insipid bullies. Only Amber is ever given any emotional depth, and only in one episode, and only to make Miley look good because she deigned to not humiliate her in front of millions of people. The only other female character of color on the show is Roxy, who is only a recurring character and who embodies the Mammy trope.

In Danny Phantom, every female protagonist is white. Maddie. Sam. Jazz. Danielle. And Sam has no female friends besides Jazz (who she mostly hangs out with because of her friendship with/crush on Jazz's brother). Meanwhile, Paulina and Valerie are the only women of color. They're both far more sexualized than Sam is and their main roles in the show are to serve as villains and antagonists when they're not being love interests to a white boy. And Valerie's anger at Phantom is demonized. Think about that. The token black girl is rightfully angry because a white person, who already had a bad reputation and was understandably believed to be a threat by most of the populace of their hometown, caused her family to lose their money and home. And we're not supposed to sympathize with her when she fights back and seeks vengeance. Then the next girl her ex-boyfriend dates is rich and white.


I'm not saying any of this, any of these shows, were intentionally racist or sexist, but we all have internalized biases and the connotations are there.


So after all I realized all of this, lines of poetry started flitting through my mind. And the reason I broke my hiatus again is that I felt like sharing them.

                  Unapologetically Art

I want girls in screens to be unapologetically art
Beautiful - 
Simply because they say they are
Protectors - 
Of their sisters
Comrades - 
In solidarity
Warriors -
Against injustice
Lovers -
Kissing to the whisper of Sappho's words
Diverse -
With bodies of all colors,
All sizes,
Missing pieces,
Riding as queens on wheeled thrones
Laughing -
Because women can create joy
Flawed -
Because they are human
I want an army of girls in screens
To be as much unapologetically art
As the girls who watch them

The Election

CW: rape, sexual harassment, conversion therapy, AIDS, serophobia, homophobia, misogyny, racism, transphobia, mention of vomit, war, forced pregnancy, guns, tear gas, bombs, violence, alcohol, drugs, family, homelessness, abuse, ableism, terrorism, suicide

Well. I thought it was time to address this. Some things are important enough to break hiatus for.

For those of you who didn't know: the United States had its presidential election last Tuesday. There were two main candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, an amazingly progressive longtime politician and possibly the most qualified presidential candidate in history, lost to a racist, sexist, homophobic cheeto (I'm serious - if you somehow haven't seen Trump in the news, look him up on Google Images) with no political experience whatsoever, who has admitted to sexually assaulting several women, has a running mate who wants LGBT kids subjected to electroshock therapy, is planning to build a wall between the US and Mexico and force Mexico to pay for it, is endorsed by the KKK, and wants all Muslims (and probably Sikhs, because everyone fucking knows that racist bastards don't know the difference) to register in some kind of government database because apparently all Muslims and only Muslims are terrorists. Somehow.

And on the same day, I realized that I probably should have called in sick to work because, the entire time, I was so scared that I felt like I was going to throw up and couldn't focus on anything, which resulted in my register ending up six dollars short because I fucked up giving people their change. I'm not going to be fired, but I might be written up.

Ahem.

If you don't know much about American government, the good news is that Trump and his vice president-elect, Mike Pence, are far from dictators. The American government is run by three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, and each branch keeps the power of the other two in check.

The bad news is, Trump will, come this January, have access to nuclear codes, be the Commander-in-Chief of the US Military, and be able to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. Who can do shit like maybe overturn Roe vs. Wade and who will be in power for the next several decades. The other bad news is, the presidency isn't the only political position that was chosen last Tuesday. And thanks to the results of the election, Republicans (the political party known for destroying the economy and hating poor people, women, non-Christians, LGBT people, disabled people, immigrants, and people of color) now control all three branches of government.

Also, the US president can be reelected once. That means that, in most cases, the president will be in power for a maximum of eight years. However, if the vice president takes over halfway through the president's second term, they can be in office for a maximum of ten years.

And since Trump, who is more than repulsive enough on his own, is a political buffoon, Pence will probably be running things from behind the scenes. Which means that we will have a maximum of sixteen years with Mike Pence running the country. Anyone who's old enough to remember Reagan? Imagine that happening again, and that's what the US - and the rest of the world - is looking at.

Our only hope at this point is the members of the electoral college. They don't officially cast their votes until December, and while they rarely vote against the majority of the people they represent, they're technically allowed to do so. But I have two concerns about that:

1. Even if every single elector votes against Trump, will it be enough to deny him the presidency?
2. Clinton conceded already. I'm fairly new to voting, but doesn't that mean she basically forfeited? Would she even be able to be president now? This is a serious question.

What all of this means is that we might be looking at World War Three and also America turning into a sci fi dystopia, possibly reminiscent of Panem from The Hunger Games.

And even if Trump and Pence can't do any of the disgusting, mostly illegal things they intend to, their supporters are going to - and, only two and a half days after the election results were revealed, already have - see that Trump won the election, even against popular vote. They're going to see that they can sexually harass and assault women, that they can physically attack and institutionalize LGBT and disabled people, and that they can shoot and tear gas and bomb Muslims and Jewish people and PoC. They're going to see that they can get away with it, because half the country is behind them.

Until Trump is sworn in, our biggest enemies are the people around us. The cishet white male classmates I kind of want to punch because it's so infuriating to me that they don't understand why people are protesting and are angry and afraid. The neighbors who made racist jokes about Obama when he was elected, then tell us that we have to respect the new president. The grown men who catcall underage girls while they're walking home from high school, still wearing their backpacks or uniforms. The special ed teachers who claim to support disabled people (or "people with disabilities" as one of them once corrected me when I referred to myself as disabled), but then donate to Autism Speaks. The cis men who make rape jokes, think that women who drink or do drugs or wear skimpy clothing are "asking for it", and voted for a rapist for president, but have the nerve to stereotype trans women as sexually predatory. The straight cis people and cis aroaces who sexualize everything LGBT people do or say. The cishet aces, cishet aros, and cis aroaces who see LGBT Americans facing the possibility of being shocked into cis heterosexuality and arrested for applying for a marriage license, and yet still dare to appropriate our slurs, take up space in our community, deny our history, demand usage of our desperately needed resources, and insist that a Trump victory will harm them the way it will us.

Ever since I found out that Trump won, I've been making plans to protect myself and others. Tomorrow, I'm going shopping for pepper spray. Since my appearance is pretty stereotypically butch, I'll wear hats when possible to cover up the shaved side of my head. I'll volunteer at a soup kitchen or warming center or homeless shelter. I'll be very careful about who I come out to, how I talk about women, and where and when I wear my binder. Maybe fake a crush on a guy to avoid suspicion. Force myself to make eye contact and not stim in public, if necessary. Since most of my friends are PoC, disabled, female, GNC, LGBT, Muslim, Jewish, or some combination of the above, it might be a good idea if we got together and set up some sort of system to keep in touch. If I have a girlfriend by January, I'm going to call her my friend and not kiss her when we're in public. And I'm definitely not introducing her to my family, not when most of them are Republicans and several think my gender and sexuality are sinful and evil.

After all, roughly half the adults I encounter voted for a president who opposes my right to get married and who thinks I should be punished if I have an abortion and who used a mass shooting against my community as a chance to spew islamophobia and who has said that some of the best people I know are rapists and drug dealers and terrorists, and for a vice president who thinks I should be subjected to electroshock therapy until I'm straight and cis.

If they would do that, why should I believe they wouldn't do worse?

To conclude:

If you voted for Trump, fuck you. If you voted third party or willfully didn't vote, fuck you. I hope you'll remember this election when your undocumented neighbor is deported and forced to leave their five-year-old kid behind or your gay nephew is forced through conversion therapy or your HIV+ cousin is denied healthcare or your partner is forced to carry a pregnancy to term (something that the UN defines as torture) or your disabled sibling loses their healthcare or your Muslim coworker stops wearing her hijab because she's afraid of being killed for it.

If you're thinking of harming yourself because you are the undocumented neighbor or the gay nephew or the HIV+ cousin or the pregnant partner or the disabled sibling or the Muslim coworker, and you know very well how fucked you are, please don't. You are precious and deserve to live and love. Donald Trump is in his seventies, he's got thirty years left at the most. Outlive him, if only out of spite.

Look at Republicans pulling hijabs and turbans off Muslims and Sikhs and grabbing women's asses and screaming at Latinxs to go back to Mexico. Look at how utterly disgusting they are, and show radical kindness to people in pain because you are so much better than they could ever hope to be.

Save each other's lives. Give money to the homeless man on the corner and don't worry what he's going to use it for. Intervene when someone is harassing a trans woman. Sit next to a Muslim or black person on the bus when it looks like some white fuck is about to get in their face. Volunteer. Donate to charity if you can. Even if all you can do is smile at a stranger, do so. Anything helps.

Show radical kindness to yourself too, and engage in self-care.

And if that doesn't convince you to live, here are some suicide hotlines:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline

suicide.org

Snopes Crisis Textline

txt4life

Now Matters Now Helpline

Hotline List from dosomething.org

Lifeline Crisis Chat