If Your Article Can Be Summed Up As No, You Shouldn't Be Writing It

CW: repeated use of the Q-slur by someone who can't reclaim it
Yeah, so, I found another one. And I don't know why straight people insist on writing these ridiculous articles about being single or polyamorous and how they're supposedly oppressed for it, but they piss me off so I intend to dissect every single one just to tell them how utterly insipid they all are.


It's called "Is There Something Odd About Being Single?"

"I had wanted to cut off all my hair and drive across the country, alone, in celebration of my singlehood — not because being single was new to me, but because it was, I had decided, O.K. Better than O.K., if a single person lived as I would: at large, roaming, free....Naturally, I started seeing someone a few weeks before I was set to leave. Then I chickened out and didn’t cut my hair all the way."

I can relate, actually. So much of the pressure on me to be feminine, including in the way I cut and style my hair, is not only about looking like a cis woman, but also to be attractive to straight men and to be with straight men. Whenever I'm attracted to a man, I find myself accidentally acting more feminine because, from childhood, that was what I always saw women doing with men in the media. Disney Princesses. The female leads on my favorite sitcoms. The heroines of the books I read. And it was so uncomfortable - it made me feel like I was in the body of a stranger. A lot of this has to do with me being bi, but there's no reason it wouldn't also affect cishet women - which I can only assume Helen Rubinstein is, because she's dating a man and the only claim she apparently has to being LGBT is that she feels uncomfortable around man/woman romance - she doesn't mention being trans or nonbinary in this article and she doesn't mention being bi.

"At the campground, a young couple frightened me by virtue of being the only other people around. They had tethered their barking dog to a stake and hung a set of prayer flags from the open trunk of their S.U.V., but now they were packing up — silently at first, and then with hard, fighting words."

Obviously they would frighten her. They startled her, they're strangers, and she's a woman alone in the middle of nowhere with a phone that doesn't work. That's not a fun situation to be in, especially when - judging by her name - she's ethnically Jewish. But being startled doesn't make you LGBT. I don't really care how "queer" she felt by being alone or how marginalized she is in ways other than homophobia and transphobia - someone needs to wash her mouth out with soap or some shit so she never says that fucking slur again.

"They could see me as clearly as I saw them, though, and when I looked at myself through their eyes, I saw a person who couldn’t possibly be having a good time."

Maybe because she wasn't. She was scared and had just been cut off from a conversation with a good friend. That's not really a recipe for a fun day. Also, truthfully, this couple probably didn't really care much about some random woman camping in the woods. Helen is not a mind reader. She didn't know what they actually thought of her because they did nothing to indicate it.

Even if they actually did assume she wasn't having a good time because she didn't have her boyfriend with her, that probably has more to do with misogyny than anything. When, after all, do people assume that straight men aren't having a good time because they don't have their girlfriends with them? Especially since men are so proud of spending time away from women, complain about how their girlfriends nag and irritate them for no reason, and refer to their wives as their 'ball and chain'. Or, you know, it could have just been a normal observation of theirs - nothing can be truly completely separated from politics, but not everything is inherently political or oppressive either. Sometimes human interaction is just neutral.

"The request accommodated varying sexualities but left the possibility of singlehood unacknowledged."

She's talking about a work meeting here, where everyone attending had been asked to talk about their partners and interests. But even though that kind of request vaguely leaves open the possibility that not everyone is straight, talking about your partner publicly to someone you don't know is always treacherous territory for gay and bi people in same-gender relationships.

When we were talking about marriage and relationships in my anthropology class a few weeks ago, we were asked if we were dating anyone and whether we were looking for marriage. I said yes to the first question and no to the second. The teacher asked why I wasn't looking for marriage if I was dating someone. I was about to answer but then stopped, realizing how vulnerable my answer could make me to this group of predominantly cishet people who I had no reason to trust.

The reason was that at the time, I had been dating a woman. It was my first time doing so, even though women have shown interest in me several times before and since, and I was acutely aware of how people might react if I talked about her. Finally, I phrased the question in a way that sounded straight enough. "I'm dating someone, but we just started seeing each other. It's way too soon to think about marriage."

I have never had to stop and think about how people might react if I told them I was single. Even if they speculated about my sexuality because of that and my appearance, telling someone I don't have a boyfriend - even, at twenty years old, that I've never had a boyfriend - had never been as difficult or scary for me as the few times when I had to tell people that I had a girlfriend - even if that wasn't totally accurate, because I broke up with her before we ever got to the point where I would have called her my girlfriend (personally, I would wait at least a month before referring to someone as my boyfriend or girlfriend or datemate). But whatever. She was a woman. We dated. I don't think most homophobes really care as much about what we called each other as they do about the fact that we were two women who were mutually attracted to each other and doing things together that they would say we are going to hell for.

"'I’m single and I like long bike rides,' I finally declared, wondering if these strangers pitied me or if they saw my singlehood as the sign of something unpleasant and uncooperative."

Again, this is misogyny and it affects women of all sexualities - even straight women who are dating but not looking for marriage. I remember talking about one of my favorite female teachers to my family. My grandpa called her "Mrs." and I corrected him with "Ms." because even though she was living with her boyfriend, neither of them wanted to get married. He looked annoyed and irritated at these younger women - even though she was well into middle age - who didn't settle down and start popping out kids by the time they reached 25, the way women were expected to when he was young and the way women are still often expected to today.

Any rebellion against that narrative of cis heterosexuality, getting married young, performing acceptable gender roles and feminine sexual purity, and having kids is frowned upon for women. But that doesn't mean that nuns are LGBT, or women who work while their husbands stay home with the kids, or single moms, or women who propose to their husbands.

There's also the fact that singlehood is usually something temporary. Helen Rubinstein eventually got into a relationship. I'm single right now, but looking for a relationship. My mom was single after my dad died. Most people are single for awhile when a relationship ends. It's not a permanent state of being that materially affects your privileges throughout your life, the way that being bi or a woman or disabled or nonbinary are permanent states of being for me.

"Later, when new friends in that town effused about having me over for dinner but failed to follow through, I felt queer again. I suspected they felt awkward inviting me when everyone else would arrive in twos."

Really. She's queer because she got left out. Because she got flack for something that someone else didn't, not because there's actual structural violence against her purely for being single.

I honestly think people like Helen Rubinstein assume that oppression just means that people are mean to you.

"When I heard of an acquaintance who, running for local office, worried that her singlehood made her untrustworthy in voters’ eyes, I could empathize. There was something queer about being single: queer in the sense of 'strange,' yes, but also in the sense that connotes a threat to the conventions around which most people arrange their lives."

Again. That's called misogyny. A single straight man would never encounter this kind of obstacle.

"'I’m so old to be single and so young to be divorced,' she said. 'What will people think?' Her husband had been abusive and she knew she would be better off, but she still feared that something was wrong with her for not making the relationship work."

Misogyny and abuse culture. There is so much pressure on women of all sexualities to make relationships with men work at any cost and none at all on the cishet men they date. This even extends to the point that people defend abusive men at women's expense and blame the women for not 'making it work' even if making it work means putting your mind and body in danger and constantly sacrificing everything of yourself for men's approval.

"The shame of having 'failed' at marriage isn’t unlike the 'failure' of being single, if you consider the congratulations offered newlyweds the sign of a universal goal achieved."

Misogyny. All of this is just misogyny, abuse culture, and people being shitty but not oppressive.

"Mine was a shame I only recently had begun to inspect. How much of the feeling arose from my own desire to couple up, and how much from the sense that, by not doing so, I was confounding family and friends? How much came from the suspicion that, when colleagues asked whether my new apartment was spacious enough, they were actually wondering if I lived alone — but found the prospect too tragic to name?"

[Image description: that scene from SpongeBob Squarepants where Mr. Krabs is playing a sad song on the world's smallest violin]

Yeah. I'm so sure they found being a single straight person just as tragic and confounding as a bi or gay person in a same-gender relationship. Very queer.

(/sarcasm in case anyone couldn't tell.)

"And when I viewed singlehood as akin to queerness, I felt grateful for the queer community’s reminder that convention shouldn’t dictate how relationships are defined. The opposite of shame, of course, is pride."

One, we're not "the queer community." We're LGBT.

Two, none of that is for you, straightie. It's for us, to combat internal and external homophobia.

"'When I was a young person coming out, it was like I signed up for this crazy, marginal life,' a lesbian in her 50s once told me. She is married now and rarely feels queer. Her sexuality hasn’t changed, but her life had mainstreamed."

Mainstreamed?! Since when is it widely considered mainstream for two women to get married?!

"The history and the present of queer people’s marginalization are far more severe, but the strides they have taken toward having their lives recognized are proportionally as vast. Meanwhile, queer or not, single people are treated with a mild exclusion and a bafflement that feels centuries past."

Singlism: the new homophobia, apparently. Except that it doesn't actually need to be combatted because it doesn't fucking exist.

"How could I not, when even a Supreme Court justice would declare, in a decision that ruled all bans on same-sex unions unconstitutional, that to be unmarried was to be 'condemned to live in loneliness'?"

The straightie is offended by a speech supporting gay marriage. How quaint.

"Another friend reminds me that to reclaim singlehood the way queer people once reclaimed 'queer' is a means of seizing power."

Oh yeah, I'm so sure that every LGBT person with trauma around the q-slur would agree. I'll consider that next time I see my single relatives and remember that their disgust around the idea of attending my wedding or meeting my girlfriend or even acknowledging the possibility of me having a girlfriend has nothing to do with homophobia - they're just poor oppressed cishets who don't want relationships shoved in their faces. How dare I question their revolutionary, queer singleness.

There Are Actually Several Words For It...

...and none of them are "amatonormativity".



So yet another website has decided that gay relationships are more normative than friendships and I'm tired of it. Which is why I'm responding.

The word amatonormativity is defined as “the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types.”

Yeah, a central, exclusive, amorous relationship between cis men and cis women. The way my romantic relationships would play out - the titles I use, the gender of the people I'm most likely to date and marry - isn't considered normal and sure as hell not more so than cishet people's friendships or polyamorous relationships. If you asked the cishet people in my life, they'd definitely say they would rather I was celibate and dateless for my entire life, or that I dated multiple cis men at once, than for me to prioritize monogamous, healthy romantic relationships with women.

"Amatonormativity labels the structures that assume exclusive, romantic relationships are the be-all and end-all, and that everybody should organize their lives around securing and maintaining such relationships. Love conquers all, et cetera." Right. Because it's not like anyone is told that their exclusive romantic relationship is evil and demonic and sinful and going to doom them to hell or anything. It's not like gay men in Russia are being tortured because of the romantic relationships they want, like there's a history of SGA people being physically attacked for pursuing romance, or like anyone has ever been disowned, lost custody of their children, been fired, been harassed, been stalked, or been murdered because of their romantic relationship. Homophobia is over, everyone can go home now.

"It frames national debates, too: Jenkins points to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion on same-sex marriage, which reads that the petitioners “not … be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions” and find “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.” While that very paragraph set liberal hearts aflame, Jenkins is cautious: There’s also the message that without marriage, one lives without dignity, in lonely condemnation, as with some kind of Old Testament curse." Not everything is about #woke single straight people. The U.S. Justice system is corrupt and has a long history of white supremacy and classism, but marriage equality is something to celebrate - for aces and aros too, considering that their American LGBT members gained an important civil right in June of 2015. But as the ace and aro communities have made clear over and over again, LGBT aces and aros don't matter to them.

Seriously, though, there is pressure for women to prioritize exclusive romantic relationships with men over friendships with anyone, especially other women...mostly because of misogyny and capitalism. Which The Cut acknowledges, but somehow it doesn't occur to them that it really is just...misogyny. So, to Drake Baer, writer of this horrendous article who is evidently neither a woman nor gay, you can say that! You can say the word misogyny! And patriarchy! And compulsory femininity and coercive heterosexuality and abuse culture! No need to act like gay people are accepted and loved by everyone, especially when lesbians and bi women - especially the ones who aren't cis - are the people most heavily affected by "amatonormativity".
You can talk about how people are pushed into cis man/woman relationships for the purpose of preserving heteronormativity. You can talk about homophobia. You can talk about how all of this is for the purpose of ensuring the nuclear family, a new generation of workers to be exploited, and the commodification of romance - all for the purpose of furthering capitalism. You can talk about how all of this affects trans people, who are frequently unable to have biological kids with our partners, experience pregnancy dysphoria, or are coerced into being sterilized.


There is, in fact, a word for the assumption that everyone should be in relationships. There are several words for it. But none of them are amatonormativity.

No, Couple Privilege Doesn't Exist

Fucking...even when I was at my worst in MOGAI hell, I never believed in that shit.

But, of course, when I was at my worst in MOGAI hell, I was still just a seventeen-year-old trans kid with a boatload of internalized homophobia, some mental issues relating to attraction, and a giant, unrequited, should-have-been-painfully-obvious crush on an ace girl who I just wanted to please. And I've changed since then. Not that any of this excuses my past words and actions, of course.

I wasn't, you know, a grown-ass twenty-something cis aroace homophobe who compares trans people to TERFs and thinks she gets to kick actual LGBT people out of our own community for telling her she doesn't belong in it. No, that would be Ettina.

Here's my response to this...this absolute headache of a woman and her ridiculous blog post.

First of all, Franklin Veaux's definition of privilege is way too vague. Privilege isn't just "unearned benefits"; if it were, tall privilege would exist because tall people have the unearned benefit of always being able to reach the top shelf. Or, I don't know, something equally as ridiculous like extrovert privilege or right-handed privilege.

I mean, Ettina probably believes in all of those too so....

Here's what oppression ACTUALLY is: systemic, long-term social, institutional, and political bias and marginalization against a coherent class of people.

This bias must be widespread, affect politics and people's daily lives, and result in material obstacles against members of this aforementioned social class, such as bigoted laws, hate crimes, medical abuse, housing discrimination, social ostracization, hate groups, and employment discrimination. This bias also must yield social, economic, and political benefits, called privilege, to people not affected by it.

Transphobia, homophobia, ableism, racism, misogyny, classism, intersexism, and (in the west) Christian hegemony are all examples of oppression. Aphobia and singlism are not, because LGBT people don't benefit from them, whether we're single or "allo" or both or neither.

That should explain everything. But I have a feeling it won't. So I'll continue.

Ettina says next that gay couples have been fighting for marriage for so long because it comes with a long list of legal benefits. Which is...kind of true but, the fact that Ettina really needs to shut up about gay people aside, there's two things she's not considering:

1. Our need for those legal benefits comes from a long history of oppression. In America, the fight for gay marriage has roots in bar raids and the AIDS crisis.

When LGBT people were unjustly arrested and imprisoned during bar raids, their partners could be forced to testify against them because they weren't married. When gay men were in the hospital with AIDS, their boyfriends couldn't visit them because they weren't married. When gay people died, whether from homophobia-related causes or not, their bodies were turned over to their homophobic families and their partners could be banned from the funeral - something that took an even heavier toll on trans people, since it almost always meant that they would be buried under their deadnames, given eulogies that talked about them as a gender they weren't, and shown them at their wakes in clothing they never would have worn when they were alive.

Those things don't affect cishets, whether ace, aro, or neither, the same way because their relationships are seen as loving, real, and important whether they are married or not. A non-LGBT person's primary partner, even if that partner is ~kweerplatonic~, will likely be able to access them when they need to - even if the two aren't married.

2. We can't always access the benefits of (man/woman) marriage even if we are married.

Imagine me, five or ten or fifteen years down the road with my wife. We're trying to rent an apartment together - and are denied a lease because we're a gay couple.

Or maybe we move into a new neighborhood and have neighbors preaching at us about what horrible, hellbound sinners we are. Maybe our house or apartment gets vandalized.

Maybe we adopt a kid together, and our kid gets bullied for having two moms. Maybe we get banned from participating in school activities because suburban straight white mom Karen with the I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager haircut complained to the PTA about how she doesn't want her little Jimmy being exposed to such depravity.

Maybe one of us gets fired for saying "my wife" in conversation with a coworker. Maybe we can't go to family reunions together - god knows my cousins aren't going to want their future kids to see two women happily married, especially when at least one of them isn't cis. Maybe we get ostracized at our house(s) of worship for showing up together. Maybe we can't even kiss in public without worrying that someone is going to get angry and shoot up a gay nightclub because they saw us. Maybe we get followed home for holding hands. Maybe our families won't even come to our wedding. Maybe every little flaw we have, every argument, every mistake we make, is exploited by straight people and used against us to say that we don't belong together and should have just married men like everyone wanted in the first place.

And even if that doesn't happen, we'll still be outing ourselves every time we actually try to access those benefits. That means we'll be at the mercy of the (presumably straight) people who are providing them for us, and we'll have no idea how accepting they are. Some of those straight people have the power to hurt us and we won't necessarily be able to stop them.



"Only recently did Canada allow a mother's best friend to undergo a second-parent adoption."

You know who that would mostly affect, for the majority of Canada's history? Sapphic couples.

It wasn't until 2005 that sapphic Canadian couples could even get married, and if a lesbian or bisexual woman doesn't WANT to get married, it would have affected her even after gay marriage was legalized there. The same wouldn't apply to straight women who wanted their boyfriends or male friends to co-parent with them.

Not to mention polyamorous sapphic women, aromantic sapphic women, or sapphic women trapped in relationships with men but still finding ways to date women anyway.

If it affects straight or aroace women (which it doesn't to the same extent), I don't really care honestly unless they're trans or nonbinary. Sorry.


"Speaking of gay couples, next, they bring up how many of these couple's privileges aren't available to non-heterosexual couples. I'll acknowledge that point, although I'd argue it soon won't be true anymore."

I promise, it will still be true. Sorry, Ettina, but gay and lesbian couples won't ever be able to oppress you.


"Just because a certain set of privileges isn't afforded to everyone of a certain identity doesn't mean that identity isn't privileged. After all, trans people can be straight, but they certainly don't access straight privilege."

One, a cis person is in no way qualified to talk about this.

Two, straight people who aren't cis can still conditionally access straight privilege. They can access it when they are able to pass as cis, which I admit is generally the only way they can access it over cis LGB people.

But even before then, they still have privilege over trans/NB people who are also LGB. A straight trans man is often going to have an easier time getting a referral for HRT than a gay trans man. A straight nonbinary woman who otherwise expresses their gender similarly to how I do - same pronouns, same clothing taste, same desires when it comes to social and medical transition - is still going to be less likely than I am to face job discrimination and will generally have an easier time navigating their material reality than I do.

Now let's apply that analogy to couple privilege. Straight trans/NB people are to SGA people as SGA people are to heteronis without cheese.

In this analogy, straight trans/NB people still DO have some privilege over cis LGB people. They also have privilege over LGB trans/NB people.

Gay and lesbian couples don't have privilege over single straight or aroace people, obviously. They also don't have privilege over me, and when I have a girlfriend I won't have privilege over single LGB people either. If I get a boyfriend, our relationship would be privileged over an SGA one, but that's not couple privilege.

If couple privilege existed the way Ettina thinks it does, SGA people in monogamous relationships would still be able to oppress single and polyamorous SGA people. But the reality is that they can't.

Straight people in monogamous relationships can't oppress straight people who aren't, either. This especially applies to disabled people, women, trans people, intersex people, people of color, undocumented people, and religious minorities.

Which means that "couple privilege", much like "allo privilege", is almost entirely exclusively accessed by abled, dyadic, cishet, white Christian men - who already had privilege over the entire goddamn world anyway and whose "couple privilege" (and "allo privilege") is actually just an amalgamation of the privileges they have that actually, you know, matter and exist.



So after all of this I decided to check out the article Ettina references. It's excellent, by the way. It's called "Five Reasons Couple Privilege Doesn't Exist" and the author, Lola Phoenix, is a nonbinary bisexual person who constantly notes their own experiences and those of their lesbian mother throughout their article. I definitely recommend Googling it because it, unlike the trash that Ettina writes, is actually worth looking up and reading.

Happy Pagan New Year

October is a big months for me. My birthday, Halloween, the month it actually starts to feel like fall...and Samhain, Pyanepsion, and Maimakterion.

Samhain is the holiday on which Wiccans and Celtic polytheists celebrate the last harvest, the beginning of the winter, and the end of the year.

Pyanepsion and Maimakterion are a series of Hellenic holidays surrounding purification, libations to like 20 different entities, and the new year. In Ancient Greece, this was the transition to the new Olympiad, or one of the four-year cycles (marked by the Olympic games) which Hellenics used to measure time. This year is #669.

I don't really have time to do much but I'm trying to veil more often and wear devotional jewelry, as well as cooking.

So I'm collecting some recipes based on traditional Greek cuisine and Samhain festival foods to share. I'll probably drop some off at my work too, like I did with the apple-pumpkin muffins I made for Mabon...I just won't tell them that it's a religious thing. After all, free food is a much nicer way to share your religion than, say, throwing a fit when your child who is turning twenty in three weeks, has attention issues, and isn't even Christian, mother doesn't want to go to church with you.

Anyway.

Samhain:

potato artichoke soup

Mini meatloaves, green beans, and potatoes

Shepherd's pie

Chicken bowtie pasta with sage and nutmeg

Veggie tostadas with cauliflower mash

Ham and sweet potatoes mini flatbreads

Triple veggie pasta

Fall vegetable fajitas
Grilled vegetable succotash salad
Mashed potato soup
Potato nests with sour cream and smoked salmon
Potato croquettes




Pyanepsion and Maimakterion

Greek salad

Chicken kebabs
Grilled chicken and two bean salad
Sauteed fish fillets with tomatoes and capers
Grilled clams with garlic
Spinach salad with figs and warm bacon vinaigrette
Chicken thighs with mustard-citrus sauce
Savory lamb stew
Falafel burger with hummus
Baked eggplant with couscous and feta
Pasta with broccoli and ricotta
Sauteed chickpeas with broccoli and parmesan
Pita bread and pea salad
Tomato-basil tart
Zucchini-potato frittata
Vidalia onion tarts
bruschetta with minted pee puree
Avocado and mango salsa crostini
White bean dip
Spicy crunchy chickpeas




I tried to keep everything under $3 a serving and to include vegetarian options. Enjoy.

Nonbinary Identity and Patriarchy

I want to preface this by saying that absolutely nothing I write in this post is intended for cis consumption and I won't welcome or tolerate input from anyone except other nonbinary people - and, because of the subject matter, the voices of woman-aligned nonbinary people of color will be centered.

There's been a lot of discussion in the trans community on the subject of patriarchal alignment among nonbinary people - that is, the way that we articulate our relationship to patriarchy and misogyny and how we relate to the experiences of men or women. I've mostly stayed out of it, but I think it's time I contributed.

Binary alignment among nonbinary people includes:

• woman-aligned, or nonbinary people who exist under the class of womanhood, who identify with women, and who are directly harmed by misogyny
• man-aligned, or nonbinary people who exist under the class of manhood, who identify with men, and who have male privilege
• Dual-aligned, or nonbinary people who identify with both men and women
• Non-aligned, or nonbinary people who do not at all identify with the binary

So first of all, let's consider how we define alignment.

Obviously, being perceived as a woman or man is going to lead to either being affected or not being affected by misogyny. 

Who gets catcalled? Who suffers under gendered wage gaps? Who is expected to be soft, sweet, and accommodating even when they're treated like shit? Who has to fear being murdered for saying no? Who is targeted by compulsory femininity, suffers disproportionately from sexual violence, has their body and sexuality policed from childhood, and is ignored, overlooked, underestimated, and not taken seriously in virtually every academic and professional field they participate in?

But on the other hand...trans men also suffer under gendered wage gaps and far more than cis women do at that, considering that not only do they have to worry about being paid less and dismissed in environments dominated by cis men while in the closet, but they also have to worry about being fired when they come out.

Men of color suffer under the wage gap - more than white women do. They're also expected to be kind and simpering to white people or they are perceived as threatening, intimidating, and violent.

And both groups of men have to fear being murdered if they say no - "no, I'm not a woman" to government officials and religious fundamentalists; "no, I'm not subhuman" to police officers and fascists.

But...trans women, woman-aligned nonbinary people, and women of color (respectively) all have to deal with the same things to an even greater extent because they are simultaneously oppressed under misogyny and racism or misogyny and transphobia. So it's not like trans men and men of color have no privilege at all.

Male privilege is an incredibly complex subject and is conditional for many men, but what remains is that alignment with manhood is something that grants privilege.

And, of course, there's the other end of the spectrum. Even if a trans woman doesn't come out until she's in her forties, her fifties, her sixties, even if she has spent most of her life being read as male, even if she has reached a position of wealth and power because of that, she still doesn't have male privilege.

Externally, it may look like she does, but how is it a privilege to hide one's true self out of fear? How is it a privilege to learn self-hatred from an early age, to constantly feel inadequately feminine but also be punished with physical, sexual, and economic violence if you perform femininity? To know that everyone sees you as a joke, a plaything, or a fetish? To swallow your fear and discomfort while listening to men talk about you as though you are subhuman and never being able to find refuge among other women because they think you are a predator?

Not to mention how humiliating it is, as a woman, to be told that you're similar to men. That you have man hands, a boyish body, that you dress "mannishly", that you're basically a creepy man for being a bisexual woman or a lesbian. It's seen as shameful for a woman to not come across as perfectly small, sweet, soft, and submissive. For us to not want children or not be able to have them. And trans women deal with that shame every day, whether they're out or not.

Is the psychological toll of transmisogyny really worth the conditional safety granted by this ~male socialization~ that TERFs constantly screech about?

And trans women aren't the only women who are read as male.

I am, as a GNC woman-aligned nonbinary person. I've been called sir, young man, "that guy" when my hair was styled in a certain way or when I was wearing a shirt that obscured my chest. I've had people stare at my body and undress me with their eyes; it just bothered them that much when they couldn't tell because I deliberately didn't make it obvious. And when they found out my "real" gender, I didn't dare correct them no matter how much it hurt. Doing so would mean being outed, usually in an environment where the potential backlash against me would be maximized.

But the point is, yes, I have been read as male. Yes, that has occasionally protected me from unwanted advances and sexist condescension. But it sure as hell is not a privilege.

So clearly patriarchal alignment isn't determined by being read as male or female.

What else could determine it?

Well, the main reason I identify with womanhood is that I'm bi. Cishet women's experiences, after all, say nothing of mine. In fact, I think that if I were exclusively attracted to men and had been given a chance to explore my gender, I would probably have ended up not identifying with womanhood at all.

And that's something you'll hear a lot from LGBT people. I've met a lot of nonbinary lesbians and bi women who only align with womanhood through their attraction to women. Gay trans men who lived in denial because they were too scared to imagine a future with another man. Trans lesbians who figured out they were women because they were repulsed by m/w relationships and, even before they knew they were women, suffered under coercive heterosexuality and compulsory femininity.

Even though I presented feminine for safety reasons when I first realized I was bi, it didn't take me long afterward to start associating attraction to women with womanhood and attraction to men with manhood. There have even been times when I just...forget that straight people and m/w relationships exist, especially since I don't generally pursue men.

Like men, even bisexual men, will mention their girlfriends to me and I'll just be confused for a moment because girlfriends are for girls. Or straight women, women who've confirmed to me they were straight, will call another woman their girlfriend and it still takes me a moment to realize that no, they're not in a romantic relationship with another woman but are just entitled hets who either don't realize or don't care how terrifying it is for sapphic women to publicly call other woman our girlfriends.

Anyway. The reason I'm talking about this is because as much as we talk about how "gender, gender expression, sexuality, and biological sex are all very different things and totally separate from one another" and sure this is a good way to give The Cis™ a decent intro to gender, they are actually intertwined. Really, one of the only times in which I feel relatively comfortable living as a woman is when my reference point is other women, when I'm surrounded by women, when I'm friends with women, when I'm attracted to a woman.

With men, there's...there's more pressure to be feminine because of heteropatriarchy giving me no framework for what it would look like to be gender variant while in a relationship with a man (because of the pressure to please men), and also because of the whole misogyny thing, but I also don't as much think of myself as a woman in that context.

I am one in relation to patriarchal oppression, of course, and obviously interacting with women doesn't mean I still don't want to be treated as nonbinary by them...but, like, I would be somewhat more comfortable with a woman calling me her girlfriend than I would be with a man doing the same. With a man, I would be his datemate or his partner.

So part of the reason I identify the way I do is how I feel in terms of relationships: whether I picture myself as a woman, a man, or neither when I think about my future and the prospect of romantic and sexual relationships.

And neither...isn't really an option that's set up in our society's framework. Which is kind of my point.

Because there are gray areas to all kinds of oppression/privilege dichotomies. Like white ethnic minorities experiencing xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and misdirected racism but still being able to use white supremacy to their (our? Apparently being Italian puts me in this category but stigma around that is really not prevalent in 21st century, metropolitan America the way it would be in, say, an upper-crust, WASP-dominated area of England) advantage. Or straight trans people still suffering from state-funded institutionalized homophobia, even if it's misdirected. Or gender nonconforming and/or intersex cis people experiencing misdirected transphobia. Or the complicated, intersecting relationship between race and class.

Or trans and nonbinary people's complicated relationships with patriarchy.

Under patriarchy, though it doesn't work the same for everyone, we are all sorted into categories of oppressor and oppressed and no one can fully separate themselves from that.

I'm still formulating my thoughts on this, and of course as a white gentile I really don't know enough about culturally specific genders to talk about them, nor would I be entitled to an opinion on them even if I was more educated, but I'm becoming skeptical of whether it is, in fact, truly possible to be non-aligned or dual-aligned.

Gender as a whole is ridiculous and arbitrary social construct, but it's also a very powerful and important one. As long as gender exists, we will not be free of gendered oppression. Therefore, I would like to create a world in which gender either doesn't exist or is so arbitrary, economically, socially, institutionally, politically, and systemically, that it simply doesn't matter and anyone could just completely opt out of it at any time.

But that fantasy, unfortunately, isn't going to come true any time soon. We still have to live in this world and acknowledge our material realities, and our current material reality is that gender very much does matter.

To me, "nonbinary" not only reflects an experience of oppression under transphobia, but also and more primarily that:

• I did not consent to being assigned a gender at birth, am not comfortable with the fact that I was, and would be happier if I hadn't been
• I have a complicated, nebulous, nuanced, and fluid relationship with gender but still exist under the social class of womanhood
• I don't want to be socially gendered unless it's in the context of a relationship with a woman
• My primary connection to binary gender is through being attracted to women and especially through being a disabled, gender nonconforming bisexual woman
• My identity is heavily rooted in gender nonconformity and bisexuality
• I express this outwardly, i.e. through dressing in an aesthetically androgynous way, using he/they pronouns, using a name that is considered gender neutral, making my chest seem flatter, and medically transitioning, in order to feel more comfortable with the binary

What "woman" means to me is a member of the social class exploited and subjugated under patriarchy, threatened disproportionately by sexual violence, and expected to perform femininity. While I'm generally not comfortable calling myself a woman or even woman-aligned (binary alignment has been used to misgender me, so I prefer to stay quiet about mine usually).

I think the reason behind the fallacy that it's possible to just completely separate oneself from the binary or identify with both sides of it is cis feminism.

Liberals promoting a completely flimsy view of gender that doesn't hold up in real life, and uncritically squeal about "masculine privilege" and "femmephobia" and "weaponized femininity". Radicals, both deliberately trans exclusionary and not, describe male privilege, misogyny, and patriarchy in a way that only reflects the realities of cis women and do everything possible to alienate us and frame us as predatory.

So trans/nonbinary people look at this shit that the cis women who domineer feminist spaces are promoting and assume that because we don't experience misogyny or male privilege exactly like cis people do, we must either not experience either of those things at all, or experience both of them even though by definition they're mutually exclusive.

Again, I'm still exploring this and I'm also not going to dictate to others how they should identify if they're happy and comfortable considering themselves dual-aligned or non-aligned. I also don't expect anyone to use terminology they're not comfortable with.

My perspective as a white nonbinary person, especially a white gentile, is really not going to be significant or accurate when it comes to cultural genders. That's why I'm prioritizing the voices of woman-aligned nonbinary people of color, as well as Jewish woman-aligned nonbinary people - though, of course, I'm willing to welcome any nonbinary person's comments. Feel free to give constructive criticism if you want to and tell me your own perspective.

The Push

Recently I've seen a lot of discussion in wlw and feminist spaces about how some women are told they're not allowed to be women. Obviously, that's true for trans women, but these people weren't talking about trans women.

It's also probably true for intersex women, but I don't know enough about being intersex to form an opinion on that. And even if I did, my opinion wouldn't mean anything because I'm dyadic.

And it might be true for women of color as well, but...see above. I'm white, my opinion on that doesn't mean anything.

The women I'm talking about, the women usually talked about in these discussions, are gender nonconforming women and wlw who are transmisogyny-exempt.
Given that I'm both and also that I'm nonbinary, I thought I should offer my two cents on it.

This post is entitled "The Push" because it refers to being "pushed out of womanhood."

So, first of all, it's fucking hilarious that there are cis people implying that there is a systemic, societal problem in which they are pressured into being trans or nonbinary and that this is somehow seen as preferable to being a cis person - even a cis butch or cis tomcat.

Except it isn't, really, all that hilarious, because it leads to trans/nb people thinking their gender is just a sign of internalized misogyny and/or homophobia. It also leads to other people thinking that, including parents and guardians of trans kids, romantic and sexual partners, and the professionals who we rely on to provide us with the hormones and surgeries we often need to survive.

Second, I can sympathize with being "pushed out of womanhood". Developmental disability, and disability in general, is seen as a white boys' club, which leads to anyone who isn't a white male, especially a bourgie cis white male, having difficulty accessing diagnosis, accommodations, and medical care. Not to mention, disabled women and girls are excluded from "girl time" type things and solidarity with other women because of how we are unable to perform proper traditional femininity (i.e. not wearing makeup or dressing a certain way because of sensory issues and lack of energy, coming across as cold and callous because of low empathy, not showing adequate interest in feminine things).

Of course, there's also homophobia. There really isn't any room under compulsory femininity for same- and similar-gender attraction. Not only because of the misogyny enacted from how men take it as a personal insult that some women center other women in their romantic and sexual lives, sometimes preferring each other over men, but also by how we're excluded from bonding and forming friendships with straight women.

As women, we're socialized to be affectionate. That's why in female friendships, straight women will kiss each other on the cheeks, hug, sleep in the same bed together, compliment each other's appearances, slap each other on the ass, tell each other they love each other, and call each other girlfriends (kill me now). But I haven't felt comfortable doing any of that with straight girls in years because when they find out I'm bi, they immediately distance themselves and get suspicious that any of that is a sign I have a crush on them.

Would it be the end of the world if I did? Plenty of straight people are in m/w friendships where one person has an unrequited crush on the other, and they still remain friends, still hug one another, etc.

And wlw tend to be a lot more respectful of other women's boundaries than straight men are, so why is it that when we have a crush on a straight woman, we're the ones seen as predatory? It's not like we go around whining about the friendzone when a woman won't fuck us, or wax poetic about women being shallow sluts if they're not interested, or cry about how it's unfair because we're Nice Girls™. We know what it's like to have our boundaries disrespected, so I have no idea why straight women would rationally think we're more likely to disrespect theirs.

Beyond that, femininity and womanhood are so defined in relation to men, which alienates lesbians, bi women who don't want to date men, women who are questioning between lesbian and mga, and wlw in any of those categories who simply happen to currently be in a relationship with another woman - especially if they're butch.

Other effects of this include bi women being told that our sexualities will inevitably revolve around men (and thus alienated from the LGBT community and denied resources to deal with homophobia, since other LGBT people believe this too), does and femmes being oversexualized for the male gaze, bi/mga tomcats being told we're not really mga because mga women aren't supposed to look "ugly" and obviously being attracted to multiple genders means our first priority should be to make ourselves appealing to men, and mga women who used to identify as lesbians being tokenized to "prove" that all women secretly want and need men.

It's not like all of that comes from men or straight women either. I've seen countless femme-identified wlw get sucked into liberal, choice feminism and then use their platforms to alienate butch, tomcat, and gnc wlw from womanhood. Even gnc women ourselves sometimes do it, which is just sad.

So. Uh. Yeah. I can understand what these feminists, these wlw, are talking about when they claim some non-trans women aren't allowed to be women.

But at the same time, it's really badly phrased. None of this is really about me being told I'm not really woman-aligned or that I HAVE to identify as transmasc. None of it is about cis women being pushed to identify as trans, and honestly every cis woman who says it is is just promoting TERF rhetoric. It's not about not being seen as a woman. It's about not being seen as a PROPER woman, due to compulsory femininity and its intersections with other forms of oppression, homophobia and ableism in my case.

Non-trans women aren't pushed out of womanhood. In fact, in the case of woman-aligned nonbinary people who are coercively assigned female at birth, we're pushed into it.

While I'm not seen as a "proper" woman for being disabled, gnc, and bi, a woman is also the only gender I'm allowed to be. Because, you know, transphobia is a thing and I'm not strictly that. As demonized as disabled gnc wlw are across the board, it's still preferable to be all of that while being cis than to be all of that while being nonbinary or a trans woman.

As much as I'm alienated from femininity and as much as those things complicate my gender, no one is stopping me from saying "I'm a woman" while doing any of it, while being any of it. No one is preventing me from using she/her pronouns for being a disabled tomcat - instead, those pronouns are forced on me because of cissexism.

Sure, there are cis wlw who used to identify as nonbinary and/or transmasculine because they had complicated relationships with femininity and were confused about what dysphoria was, but that doesn't make it a systemic problem and it doesn't mean that ANY cis person is persecuted for being cis. They're still cis and they're not pushed into NOT being cis. They still have privilege over non-cis people of any gender alignment and any assigned sex, and the conflation of female birth assignment with womanhood works in their favor at our expense because, even with the existence of patriarchy, it's still seen as more favorable for those assigned female at birth to be women than any other gender.

Even if they struggle with gender roles, cis women are not going to be oppressed for STRICTLY identifying with womanhood. Not when nonbinary people can also face misogyny AND are oppressed and marginalized under transphobia, something cis people created in the first place, on top of that.

This doesn't really translate the same way for woman-aligned nonbinary people. I have questioned whether I was actually woman-aligned and received discrimination from other nonbinary people for being binary-aligned.

But I also recognize that's more of an intracommunity problem among nonbinary people than an actual force of oppression coercing me into distancing myself from my assigned sex, and cis women are apparently incapable of doing that - or they think we need them to save us and then butt into conversations where they don't belong.

The discrimination I receive from other nonbinary people comes from their internalized transphobia. Because of our androcentric society, masculinity is seen as neutral and a blank slate and is therefore considered the default when it comes to androgynous presentation and identification. Because of gender roles, it's also associated with men while femininity is associated with women. Thus, because I'm nonbinary and aligned with womanhood, I'm seen as trying to distance myself from being nonbinary and not fully accepting my gender.

There is a very long history of cis women pretending trans people are persecuting them. From TERFs screeching about the cotton ceiling and how "genderists" take everything away from cis women, to conservative women supporting bathroom laws because trans women (and people perceived as trans women) will supposedly rape them while pissing, to "pure" Christian women rallying for trans people to be burned as witches for violating the norms of Puritan and medieval European society, to white female imperialists daintily fanning themselves while their husbands, fathers, and brothers slaughtered black and brown people and destroyed their systems of gender, cis women's irrational fear of trans people has always been used to force us into submission and self-hate and provoke violence against us.

So no, I really don't care about cis women who feel like they've been "pushed" into being trans or who once identified as trans to distance themselves from misogyny, as if transphobia is a minor problem that's hardly worth worrying about, as if being a cis woman is the absolute hardest thing in the world, as if being trans/nonbinary and a woman are mutually exclusive.

Cis women don't give a fuck about me or what I or any other woman-aligned nonbinary person has to say on the subject of internalized misogyny and compulsory femininity leading to women feeling like they're inadequate as women. They'd rather pretend they're uniquely victimized while woman-aligned nonbinary people are somehow totally unaffected or like any experience common among non-cis women is theirs to claim.

And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of their entitlement, their whining, their victim complex. It's irritating as hell and they don't even care that forcing people into strict gender roles is a double-edged sword with the ability to benefit them even as they're harmed by it - meanwhile, woman-aligned nonbinary people and trans women are harmed twice over because it's used to enforce both transphobia AND misogyny.

There is no "push" forcing non-trans women out of womanhood, whether we're cis or nonbinary (but ESPECIALLY not for cis woman). The closest equivalent would be gender roles, heteronormativity, ableism, intersexism, white supremacy, and patriarchy sending societal messages that some women are Women Lite™ or not properly feminine - and that, contrary to popular cis belief, doesn't only harm cis women.

This obviously hits trans women harder because of transmisogyny. They, along with intersex women, the only ones who are widely, institutionally told they're not allowed to be women because it's not only about telling them they can't be women. It's about telling them they have to be cis.

Despite what cis women's privileged, entitled ignorance tells them, they're not ever told they CAN'T be cis just because they're oppressed under misogyny. Not only that, but to varying degrees they benefit from being told that everyone assigned female at birth HAS to be strictly a woman. After all, it's what they already are.

I'm So Tired Of This Transphobic Bullshit

CW: transphobia, transmisogyny, F-slur, Q-slur, homophobia

Another trash post from Ettina of Abnormaldiversity. This one is called Comparing You to Your Oppressors.

When will she stop?

I was told once that comparing a trans aphobe to a TERF...was transphobic.

Ettina, I know you're talking about me. And again, I'm not an aphobe. I just don't want cis, non-sga people in spaces for people who are either trans, nonbinary (or other non-cis identities, i.e. two-spirit people who don't identify with western-centric genders), or attracted to their same and similar genders.

Trans women are women, I'm not saying they don't belong in women's spaces. But you have stated that you are for all intents and purposes a cis woman (maybe a gnc one with hyperempathy I'm guessing?) who isn't attracted to other women. You objectively do not belong in a coalition for gender divergence and same gender love and I'm not stating anything false about you or disrespecting you by saying that.

Furthermore, trans people have been involved in the LGBT community since its birth. Leslie Feinberg, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major, Marsha P. Johnson, Osh-Tisch...and that's just off the top of my head. TERFs have no place saying we don't belong in a community that was built on the labor of our forebears, specifically for our liberation from oppression.

But how many aces were involved in that? What did they have to lose for being ace? Was there a three-fucks law requiring demisexuals to have sex with at least three strangers a day lest they be socially, politically, and professionally ostracized as well as arrested, beaten, and raped? Was turbo virgin screamed at ace elders in the streets? Were ace bars forced underground? Did the national decriminalization of NOT having sex take place less than twenty years ago, in a country that applauds itself on freedom and human rights? Has there ever been a genocide against aros?

...their similar gatekeeping tactics
...

First of all, gatekeeping refers SPECIFICALLY to the practice of denying trans people life-saving healthcare. It's disrespectful and appropriative to use it for cis people, especially when you yourself are cis.

Second, TERFs don't only "exclude" trans people. They stalk, bully, harass, manipulate, misgender, dehumanize, and out us. They side with fascists and homophobes in order to deny us human rights and put us in danger. They have been responsible for the deaths of an estimated thousands of trans women specifically because they frame them as violent predatory males out to rape cis women.

TERFs are literally a violent, dangerous fascist cult, but me? All I do is tell straight people not wanting to fuck/date doesn't make them less straight, and tell non-LGBT people not to use homophobic and transphobic slurs.

TERFs don't actually care about women or feminism. They reduce womanhood to a set of body parts and an incoherent concept of socialization that looks different for literally all women. They demonize other women for their sexual histories, humiliate and reject bi women, fetishize lesbians, trample over women of color in their quest to worship cis white women, patronize and infantilize Muslim and Jewish women, and criminalize sex workers - and, of course, they endanger women and woman-aligned people who aren't cis.

Meanwhile, I'm...just more focused on protecting LGBT people, especially trans people - who TERFs, you know, hate - than coddling my oppressors.

But sure, exactly the same.

Personally, I don't think so. But I'm not trans.

Which means you don't get a fucking opinion on transphobia! And I, a trans person, do and I'm telling you you're transphobic! Funny how that works! 😂😂😂

How would I feel if a similar comparison was made with an identity I experience? *insert irrelevant babbling about curebies here*

I technically don't know if I'm autistic, since autism and ADHD are cousin disorders, I've never been diagnosed, and most medical professionals don't take autistic women seriously so there are also financial and gendered barriers in place when it comes to having my accessibility needs met, but I do fit the diagnostic criteria perfectly.

So, you know, there's that. Which makes this a false analogy. Ettina is a cis person actively comparing a trans person to TERFs because they don't think being aroace makes her LGBT - not, they think aroaces are violent and predatory and should be denied human rights. Not even that they don't think aroaces are real. Just. Just fucking that I think aroace isn't an LGBT identity.

And she's equating that to me, a fellow autistic person, comparing her to a curebie. Which I've never actually done and don't intend to.

Similarly, if you start gatekeeping who belongs in an oppressed category...

Even if the concept of gatekeeping could be watered-down and defanged enough to mean what Ettina thinks it means, I wouldn't be "gatekeeping" anyone. History already did it for me because historically, ace and aro weren't LGBT identities and didn't even exist the way we think of them now.

You know how non-LGBT acomm people decided they were LGBT? In the early 2000s, David Hell Jay, cishet ace misogynist homophobic transphobic creep extraordinaire who chronicled his sex life and how physically repulsed he was by his wife for the entire internet to see, joined his college's GSA and strong-armed them into changing their acronym from LGBT to LGBTTQQFAGBDSM. And yes, the F-slur in the middle was intentional.

The thing was, they probably couldn't ask him to leave. GSAs have to let in pretty much anyone who asks or they get shut down for not being inclusive enough. Members who are deemed not inclusive enough can be asked to leave as well.

Hell Jay also developed a victim complex over the fact that nobody cared whether he liked to fuck, so he founded AVEN. And from there, threads formed about changing the acronym to LGBTA, LGBTQA, LGBTQIA...you get the idea. Those discussions on AVEN had two initial effects. One, the false idea that ace was an LGBT identity began to seep its way across the internet. Two, it also influenced the way people talked about LGBT politics in real life.

It was essentially propaganda, and propaganda is a powerful thing. Through this, along with bad politics, countless logical fallacies, emotional manipulation, tokenization of bi and trans people, weaponization of internalized homophobia and transphobia, and the rewriting of history, parts of the LGBT community changed to include cishet aces, cishet aros, and cis aroaces.

Most of those organizations, resources, clubs, whatever...they don't have a choice. If they say straight up, "Hey our services are ONLY for trans/nb people and those who are attracted to their same and similar genders", they can lose important financial and political support from the people who are the reason these organizations exist in the first place - cis people who aren't attracted to their same gender.

Unfortunately, since so much of our community is poor, closeted for safety reasons, or otherwise unable to openly advocate for ourselves for reasons specifically related to our oppression, we need that support.

Now keep in mind that all of this began less than twenty years ago. I was already born back then, and I'm just starting my sophomore year of college this fall. That's pretty recent.

But the LGBT community has been around for centuries because we needed to band together against our oppression. Oppression, Ettina, from people like you. Oppression that, unlike aphobia, has gotten millions of our people killed.

...based on the argument that the majority wants to infiltrate your "safe spaces"...

They literally do. It's not like it's only non-LGBT aces and aros either. You're not special.

There are cishet kinksters who think they're LGBT. Cishets who think they're LGBT for dating a bi or trans person, for being polyamorous, for being GNC. I've met a cishet woman who claimed she was LGBT for being celibate. I've met cishets who honestly believed, out of entitlement, that the LGBT community was open to anyone.

I've met cishets who felt entitled to call me queer. Cishet men who joked that they were "male lesbians" for fetishizing wlw and cishet women who tried to turn being a "secret femme f*g" into a sexually empowering feminist identity. Cishet women who claimed to be "straight butches/femmes". Cishets who treat gay love as a joke while gawking and giggling at gender variance.

Do you think you're better than them, Ettina? You're not. Not only do you still have institutional and systemic privilege over us, but you also feel entitled to our community, use our slurs, are creepily obsessed with us, think experiencing homophobia is a privilege...and compare trans people to TERFs for disagreeing with you.

And the sad thing is, most cishets will come to your defense over this faster than mine. So much for that allo privilege, right? They will see a sad cis aroace woman rejected by the vulnerable community whose oppression she perpetuates. And they will see an angry, scared, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, bi woman who is everything they hate, and equate the fact that I don't worship my oppressors to violence against them. Cishets will rush to your comfort, Ettina, simply because I refuse to kiss your feet.

Not to mention, let's talk about the fact that "safe spaces" is in scare quotes.

Safe spaces are GSAs, yeah. And gay bars. And Pride. Places that we could theoretically survive without if we really had to, but that are also important because they let us be ourselves.

There are very few places that I would feel safe kissing a woman in public, Ettina. There are very few people with whom I feel comfortable talking about beautiful women. There are very few times when I feel okay saying the words "my girlfriend" or "my wife". And I'm almost always too scared to introduce myself as Ari or ask for he/they pronouns or correct people when I'm misgendered. I have virtually no legal protection from homophobia or transphobia.

Around cishets and cis aroaces, my guard is always up. Those LGBT safe spaces that you so readily dismiss are the only places that I can relax and put it down. But not with aroaces rambling on about "amatonormativity" or cishets complaining that me being affectionate with my girlfriend in front of them makes them uncomfortable or cishet men hitting on me or cishet and cis aroace women whining about me being a predatory aphobe because I don't know they're not into women if they're IN A SPACE FOR SAPPHIC WOMEN (and yes, I know not all trans women and women-aligned nonbinary people are sapphic either. They're not the ones doing this).

And those aren't the only safe spaces the LGBT community has. We have homeless shelters, youth centers, support groups, soup kitchens, services for survivors of domestic abuse and rape, suicide helplines, addiction recovery resources, houses of worship, scholarships, schools, networks that help people out of dangerous situations. LGBT safe spaces SAVE LIVES specifically because LGBT people often don't have access to mainstream equivalents or using them can put us in danger.

But you, Ettina? You can use those mainstream equivalents just fine.

You, a cis person, don't get to decide what is or is not transphobic. You don't get to compare me to a TERF.

You, a cis aroace specifically, do not need the LGBT community. You never have. You'll be fine without it. Exclusionists denying you space in it won't actually hurt you.

But the same doesn't apply to trans women. They need shelter among other women and being denied that by TERFs doesn't just hurt their feelings or make them feel invalidated.

Ettina, I'm not comparable to a TERF because TERFs get trans people killed.

The Gender Tag: One Year Later

This month is the anniversary of my response to The Gender Tag, so I'm posting an update so I can see any changes.

1. How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that definition mean to you?

I'm a woman-aligned genderfluid person. This means that my internal relationship with misogyny, femininity, womanhood, and patriarchy is complicated, that my needs and comfort regarding presentation, pronouns, gender labels, and dysphoria vary from day to day, and that while I don't identify AS a woman per se, I do identify WITH women and womanhood in terms of lived experiences and political solidarity.

Other labels I use for my gender are nonbinary, gender variant, and transgender. And words that aren't genders themselves but are extremely relevant to mine are butch, tomcat, and gender nonconforming.

These words mean that I'm a woman-aligned person who loves and prioritizes women, who has a complicated and tenuous relationship with femininity, and expresses myself in a gender-defying way that indicates both of these and also that I center myself, my comfort, and my love of women over what men find attractive, what they think women should look like, and what they hold dear in terms of aesthetics and fashion. In addition to this, butch also tells them that I don't want to be with them for the foreseeable future, that I don't care if they're attracted to me because I'm not interested and their feelings on that are completely insignificant, and that I'm not dating a man and don't need to in order to be fulfilled because women are my priority.

Another gendered term that I've seen and liked for myself is androfeminine, which from what I can tell means something similar to women-aligned nonbinary.

I like it because it indicates what I'm going for and how I feel very well. I assume the first part comes from androgyne, and because of my gender nonconformity and use of he/they pronouns and the way I want my body to look, I do feel like that fits - that I'm between male and female, not quite either, maybe a mix of the two. I relate to trans men and cis women about equally, but neither of them as much as women-aligned nonbinary people, non-aligned nonbinary people, and trans women.

I also consider myself feminine, in an odd way, and aligned with womanhood and femininity.

And I like it because it doesn't actually have the word woman in it. A lot of people, especially cis people obviously, assume that if a nonbinary person identifies with anything from their assigned sex, they're basically cis and are completely comfortable with the gendered terms associated with that - and oh so mysteriously (*cough cough* it's misogyny) they will apply this to nonbinary people who identify with womanhood most often.

It's like they salivate over the opportunity to reduce trans people to our assigned sex and act as if our perspectives and thoughts don't matter, especially if they can frame this transphobia as radical and progressive. Actually, it's not even LIKE that - it IS that.

I've literally seen cis people refer to AFAB women-aligned nonbinary people only as "women/lesbians/wlw who identify as nonbinary", "dysphoric women", or "women who have a complicated relationship with gender" rather than our actual genders. I've stated that my pronouns are he/they, that I'm trans, that I'm not a girl, only for them to disrespect it five minutes later and act like I was oversensitive when it upset me - even if they considered themselves allies to trans people.

So, yeah. There's that. I like the term androfeminine because it looks and sounds obviously trans. Most of all, because it doesn't say anything about my assigned sex.

People usually assume that woman-aligned nonbinary people are AFAB until proven otherwise and act as if I don't immediately make this clear and essentially tell them what my genitals look like I'm somehow predatory. Totally not transphobic to expect that of a nonbinary person, right? Honestly the only time it's ever necessary or acceptable for anyone except my doctor to ask my assigned sex is when the topic of discussion is transmisogyny and a trans woman present wants to know if I'm speaking from a position of privilege. Any other time, except maybe if I'm discussing something like birth control with a partner, it's completely unacceptable and inappropriate to ask that of me.

Anyway...

2. What pronouns honor you?

He/him and they/them. I use she/her for safety reasons when I'm not out to someone.

3. What style of clothing do you most often wear?

As of late, skirts and dresses because of my internship. I also took a yoga class last spring (with an Indian teacher if you were wondering) and a lot of my clothes leftover from that are feminine so I wear them because they're comfortable.

But normally? Tomboyish mostly. There are times where I'll go all out and wear a dress or something, but my favorite clothes are skinny jeans, sweatshirts, t-shirts, ribbed tank tops, beanies, denim and cargo and khaki shorts, plaid flannel shirts, button-downs, sweaters, leather jackets (bisexual clothes, of course), and Keds or Converse or other shoes in that style.

I'm vain as hell honestly and put a lot of effort into looking good. Just not good in a way straight men like. Good like a '90s bisexual who can steal your girl and look hot doing it.

Also, I really want ties. And waistcoats. And suspenders. Like half my Tumblr is fashion (the rest is social justice, paganism, fandom, humor, and hot people of various genders whose pictures show up on my dash) and so much of that is formal or dapper menswear.

It's really hard to make a veil look good with that kind of thing or to look GNC or androgynous in a veil in general, so usually I wear feminine clothes on religious holidays. Also would someone please help me figure out fashion for religious GNC women who veil because I am Begging You.

4. Talk about your choices with body hair. How do you style your hair? Do you choose to shave or not? What do you choose to shave or not to shave?

My hair is being impossible to style. It's thick, wavy, honey blonde, and growing out from an undercut because I want to experiment and see what I can handle in terms of long hair and looking visibly nonbinary with it. So far it's like three and a half inches long and fugly. I'm trying to be patient.

I haven't shaved my legs in maybe a month, but I did fix the hairs growing between my eyebrows and I've shaved everything else because I don't like the itching. Take that how you will.

5. Talk about cosmetics. Do you choose to wear makeup? Do you paint your nails? What soaps and perfumes do you use, if any?

I almost never wear makeup, partly because of my allergies, partly because of my sensory issues, and partly because I just can't be bothered.

I don't ordinarily paint my nails, but my toes are currently a sparkly blue that's getting pretty chipped. I'm planning to just leave it there until the paint chips off on its own.

I use only non-scented, hypoallergenic soap because after the Great Hives Fiasco of 2016, I'm afraid to use anything else. Which means I don't use perfume either.

6. Have you experienced being misgendered? How often?

What trans person hasn't, really?

Being closeted means that it happens pretty often, yeah. I do tell people that I'm uncomfortable being called miss or anything similar, but not the reason why. Doesn't stop them from disrespecting it, though, and giving a weak half-assed apology - if they apologize at all - but then doing it over and over and over again because cis people are exhausting and apparently have no sense of boundaries.

It's not even always that I'm not out to them and they don't know, either. This happens even when I'm out to someone, which is partly why I rarely come out. They don't fucking care about trans people. For crying out loud, they're quicker to apologize for misgendering an animal than for misgendering a trans human being. If they even see us as fully human.

7. Do you experience dysphoria? How does that affect you?

Yes, both physically and socially.

Physically, it's mostly my chest. I almost never wear anything except sports bras because I immediately feel sick when I wear underwire, push-up, etc. It looks way too feminine, way too womanly.

I did try to bind last year but it was so physically painful and didn't fix my dysphoria, so I stopped. If I'm going to be dysphoric either way, I might as well be comfortable.

What I want to look like physically is like a gender neutral version of a stereotypical twink, basically. Like a cross between that and a stereotypical butch or one of those skinny androgynous cis women who keep telling me they wish they had my curves. Very lean, but also muscular, with great biceps, narrow hips, an angular face, and a small enough chest that I'm read as ambiguous in just a sports bra, jeans, and a t-shirt.

Like I'm not male or female and honestly kind of stereotypically "skinny white AFAB nonbinary", but also like the kind of suave, sexy butch who would be equally at home on a hiking trail, in an expensive suit and leather jacket, in a grease-stained tank top under the hood of a car (not that I actually know how to fix a car), or charming a lovely femme right out of her dress in a booth at Denny's.

I get that this desire is very rooted in being thin and the fact that I'm not thin. I get that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Blame societal fatphobia for that, then shut the fuck up and let me transition how I want to transition.

Socially, I can tolerate being called a woman or girl because that is something I identify with. Other than that, it varies, but feminine-coded pet names are really dysphoric for me, as is being perceived as a cis woman or being read as female by a stranger when I'm not trying to be.

I can tolerate she/her pronouns and being called by my birth name sometimes, but my issue is that because of transphobia those are the ONLY words that people use for me.

So don't be stupid or anything, like don't out me at work, but if I'm out to you already and we're in a situation where it would be safe for people to know I'm trans, call me Ari and use he/him or they/them pronouns.

8. Talk about children. Are you interested in having children? Would you want to carry a child, if that's an option for you? Would you want to be the primary caretaker for any children you have?

I don't currently want kids and am DEFINITELY not interested in getting pregnant. I think I might have tokophobia because the thought of pregnancy actually makes me viscerally shudder and almost start crying, and I honestly think that if I ever found myself with an unplanned pregnancy, I would hurt myself if I couldn't get an abortion. This is one of the reasons I'm pro-choice, actually.

It sounds like sensory hell and it would be a huge dysphoria trigger as well, and even if it weren't for my possible phobia, there's no way in Elysium or the Fields of Punishment that I'm putting up with that for nine months. Not to mention the excruciating process of childbirth, and for what? An expensive tiny screaming box that shits itself, sucks on your tits, and wakes you up in the middle of the night when you're already an insomniac? No thank you.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate kids. You can't be a social worker and hate kids. Even if I did, I wouldn't let them know, because they're impressionable and are just being themselves. I just prefer them in small doses, that's all.

There's other factors going into this. I'm terrified of holding babies, for one thing. And I don't really want to bring a small human into a world like this, especially when I don't feel emotionally equipped to help them navigate it.

So if I ever do have kids, I'm going to either adopt an older one or co-parent my friends' and partner's kids.

I feel like we'd put an equal amount of primary parenting into the kid, just because that's healthier and more balanced.

9. Talk about money. Is it important to you to provide for a family financially if you choose to have one? Is it important that you earn more than any partner you might have? Do you prefer to pay for things like dates? Are you uncomfortable when others pay for you or offer to pay for you?

I mean, as a social worker, you can't really be a breadwinner most of the time in a family or a relationship, and I'm okay with that.

I would totally want to spoil my girl, though, and take her out to nice restaurants and shit occasionally just to see her smile. But I've never actually dated and mostly want to blush and hide around hot people, so this is all just theoretical and I'm not sure how I'd handle it.

10. Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

Yes, two things.

One, even though I've known on some level that I was trans from a very young age, I do think there are other factors - specifically, being a fat, neurodivergent GNC bi woman - that inform my gender.

Two, I just want to talk to my fellow wlw for a moment. Specifically the ones that aren't trans girls, because being a trans woman isn't an experience I can fully relate to.

There's been a lot of hoopla in our community, especially on social media, about being a "dysphoric wlw" (especially for butch lesbians) or a "woman/wlw who uses he/him (or they/them) pronouns". And I know it's easy to get swept up in that as a young, newly out wlw struggling with gender.

Which is why I want to tell you - unless the person talking about it is non-cis (specifically AFAB/TME nonbinary) themselves and unless it's focused specifically on wlw who aren't cis, take all of it with a grain of salt.

Sure, being a wlw can complicate your sense of womanhood. Sure, you can want top surgery or T or to use he/him pronouns and still be a woman or woman-aligned - just look at me.

But the fact is, things like pronouns and dysphoria ARE socially gendered and they don't exist in a vacuum. So if you find yourself honestly feeling like you might be dysphoric or wanting to use pronouns other than she/her, question your gender. 

When I was younger, I had those feelings too. I still do. And if this kind of #radical #discourse had been so present within the LGBT spaces I interacted with when I was sixteen, if I had approached someone with my questions about gender and some cis woman or cis LGB person had strong-armed their way in and yelled about how it was misogynistic and homophobic and reinforcing gender roles to tell me I might be nonbinary or trans, my dysphoria would have been so much worse today because I never would have confronted it and recognized it as a sign that I'm nonbinary.

Gods, Not This Shit Again

CW: corrective rape, Christianity, homophobia, biphobia, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, rape, abuse, racism, transmisogyny, bimisogyny, lesbophobia, spiritual abuse, stalking, intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, job discrimination, intersexism, q slur, b slur



Yet another trash post from everyone's (least) favorite homophobic aroace, Ettina. It's called I Am Not Straight and I'm going to counter it here.


I see a disturbing tendency for people who hate asexuals and aromantics to equate aroace with straight.


This should have been firmly established by now, but the people Ettina is talking about are exclusionists, who usually don't hate aromantics or asexuals, who are almost always barred from the exclusionist community if they genuinely do, who are sometimes aromantic or asexual themselves, and who just don't want people who benefit from homophobia and transphobia to be in LGBT spaces.

You know how I became an exclusionist? I identified as grayromantic at the time and for months, I had been uncomfortable with the rampant, unapologetic, unchecked homophobia that made me feel unsafe in the aro community. I felt that acomm mlm and wlw, along with so many other vulnerable acomm members such as people of color, disabled people, trans/nb people, etc., were being denied sanctuary in the ace and aro communities and I wanted to make those communities better for us. So I began calling out homophobia within asexual and aromantic spaces, just like I would do with transphobia in feminism or misogyny in disability activism - after all, not only was homophobia wrong in general, but those spaces were no longer safe for asexuals and aromantics with homophobia in them. They were safe only for asexuals and aromantics who weren't sga.

When I did that, straight asexuals, straight aromantics, and aromantic asexuals were immediately furious. They screamed at me that I was an acephobe, that I was invalidating aces, and that I was basically the worst person on earth. They acted like homophobia was an inherent aspect of being asexual or aromantic. And all I was doing was making the ace and aro communities a better place.
I quickly got tired of this, especially when at the same time as I was getting all this hate, ace lesbians and aro bisexuals and the like would come up to me in private and thank me for standing up for them when they were afraid to stand up for themselves. And why wouldn't they be? They'd seen what happened to me when I did it.

I started befriending these other acomm sga people who were as sick of the shit as I was. We talked about common experiences and fears, and eventually I noticed a pattern. We had all been more severely affected by homophobia than by acephobia or arophobia. Acephobia and arophobia upset us and made us uncomfortable, but homophobia made us fear for our lives. Furthermore, the aphobia we'd experienced was always tied to misogyny, ableism, or racism and barely seemed to affect white, abled, cis aroace or het aro/ace men at all. Meanwhile, the homophobia we'd experienced could and often did intersect with other axes of oppression, but it could also stand on its own. I'd seen that, while sga people who were oppressed in other ways were impacted more severely (i.e. how fetishization of wlw by cishet men lead to an enormous porn industry and sexual violence for women all over the world while fetishization of mlm by cishet women was mostly an internet subculture, how LGBT people of color were more likely to experience hate crime than white LGBT people, how trans/nb people of all sexualities had to fear discrimination laws even in places where cis LGB people were protected, etc.), there was also evidence that sga people were hit hard by homophobia across the board.

This made me think. Aphobia was its own thing, right? Its own axis of oppression, faced only by aces and aros? Yet clearly "allo" LGB people, who didn't experience aphobia, didn't benefit from it and weren't privileged over me, a sapphic aro. Did that mean that straight people weren't privileged over hetero aces and aros?

Well...let's consider it. Hetero aces and aros could choose to identify as straight and, because they were m/w attracted and not sga, could reap most of the benefits of that identity. But I couldn't do that without lying about who I was attracted to, and even if I only ever dated men I was still at a higher risk of mental illness, poverty, and intimate partner violence than a straight woman. Regardless of my relationship status, I was still vulnerable to homophobic violence when coming out - not, of course, that being closeted had completely saved me either. I couldn't escape homophobia no matter what I did, and I was impacted by political and social discrimination because of it - as sga people had been for centuries.

Had aphobia existed for centuries? Well, no, because aromanticism and asexuality were fairly new concepts while people had been loving their same gender or gender alignment for as long as humanity had existed. But there had been people, hundreds of years ago, who would fit our modern concepts of asexuality or aromanticism and many of them had lived their lives just like anyone else of their respective sexualities. So what was the difference, then, between a heteroromantic asexual man in 2016 (because this was last year) and a straight man who simply hadn't wanted sex in 1516? Between a heteroromantic asexual man in 2016 and a straight man in 2016 who didn't want sex but for whatever reason didn't identify as asexual? One of them called themselves ace and the other didn't? What rights was one denied just based on the fact that they called themselves ace? What systemic bias was there against people just for calling themselves ace, and how did that affect politics or harm people in their daily lives?

The same thing didn't apply to other forms of oppression. I thought of victims of homophobia, transphobia, racism, misogyny, and ableism. Every woman who had been killed, mutilated, or beaten for saying no to a man. Every trans person who was murdered, only for their death to be dismissed by the media. Every autistic woman whose social difficulties had been taken advantage of by a rapist. Every lesbian who had been correctively raped. I thought of Matthew Shepard. Cece MacDonald. Leelah Alcorn. Amber Heard. Sasha Fleischmann. Brandon Teena. Everyone who died in the AIDS crisis. Every LGBT person who had been institutionalized, whipped, imprisoned, raped, tortured, shot, kicked out, or abused for loving their same gender or being trans. I thought of how my friend Chris was terrified of Trump being elected because it could mean that her family would lose everything of the life they'd made in America.
How my friend Stephen's family had nearly been killed by American militarism in Iraq. How my friend Kian (not his real name) had been beaten up for being bi. How two of my other friends had been suicidal because of transphobia. How all of this was backed by institutional, political power.

I thought about white privilege, one of the few I had. How even though I, a white person, didn't want Chris to be deported, I would still benefit from the fact that the government would more likely choose to deport Chris's family of financially struggling Mexican immigrants than my own, wealthier, white family. How my family, several of whom were in the military, could have very well been complicit in an attack that could have killed the family of one of my best friends. How, centuries ago, my ancestors had been founding fathers and colonial settlers. How my family might never have gotten the financial success it did and how I might never have even been born if they hadn't been quietly complicit in slavery and genocide. How my other relatives were Irish and Italian, and how even though those ancestors had doubtless been discriminated against when they came to the U.S., they had assimilated into whiteness and secured for their descendants a position of power. How often white men assumed I was innocent and had good intentions because I was a nice white girl - how often they had, instead, turned their anger and frustrations on black people with the intent of protecting a nice, "helpless" white girl like me from nonexistent danger. How the fact that I supported  people of color didn't impact the fact that I still had white privilege and no matter how good my intentions were, no matter how good my activism was, I was still going to benefit from that.


No matter how good your intentions are or your activism is, if you're in a position of privilege, you will benefit from the oppression of those who aren't.

Did that apply to aces and aros who weren't sga? Did that apply when het aces/aros could deny their privilege but I couldn't escape oppression? To cis aroaces who chose whether to call themselves queer when it hadn't ever been systemically applied to them?

It was around that point that I became an exclusionist.


I'm not straight. Nothing about me is straight.

Most exclusionists agree with that, because the definition of straight is someone who is m/w attracted and not sga.

Ettina, being not attracted to men, doesn't fulfill the first qualification. But because she's not sga, she still has power over people who are.

She might feel inferior or have her self-esteem harmed by how straightness is shoved in people's faces and women/women-aligned people are told we can't be complete without a man, but no one will fire her for being aroace.

There has never been genocide against aroaces. There is nothing preventing her from adopting children for being aroace. Banks will not deny her loans for being aroace. She won't be evicted for being aroace. It's not assumed she's a sexual predator for being aroace. There has never been anti-aroace propaganda or anti-aroace laws.

None of that applies to mlm and wlw. She still benefits from our oppression and we are allowed to call her out when she's actively spreading homophobic rhetoric.

I actually feel closer to being bisexual, because I feel equal attraction to males and females.

[Image description: a screenshot from Pixar's The Incredibles where IncrediBoy, who would later become the villain Syndrome, is being taken away in a police car and Mr. Incredible/Bob Parr is pointing at him and yelling "you're not affiliated with me!"]

What a perfect reaction image.

This aroace woman, who has privilege over bisexual people, is claiming affiliation with us. Odd, considering that I'm actually bi and when I've informed her that she's homophobic, she called me an "abusive aphobe".

In The Incredibles, the plotline kicks off because Buddy Pine, who isn't at all qualified to be a superhero, tries to pretend to be one by attaching himself to Mr. Incredible, with whom he's creepily obsessed. When Mr. Incredible rejects Buddy's demands to be his sidekick, Buddy selfishly turns against the actual superheroes of the world, putting them in danger and trying to give all the non-superhumans powers. In his words, "Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super...no one will be."

The metaphor doesn't translate perfectly, of course, because of Ettina's gender, but you get the idea.

Just like Buddy Pine and superheroes, Ettina and many other aroaces only "care" about bi people (aka, they use us as pawns, tokenize us, and drive us into self-hate by pitting us against gay people and convincing us we're privileged for being "allo" and hurting them by openly celebrating our sga) until we tell them that being aroace doesn't mean they're like us in any way, until we choose solidarity with gay and lesbian people over those who oppress us, until we don't let them get away with behavior that hurts us or other sga people.

Ettina is not bisexual or like one in any way whatsoever.

Blah blah bi, gay, and straight aces/aros have more in common with each other than with aroaces.

Again with the biphobia and homophobia. Now here's two absolutely ridiculous lists of everything gay, bi, and straight aces and aros have in common with each other. Because, you know, "people who experience what Ettina subjectively perceives as a uniformly socially acceptable, yet immeasurable, amount of sexual and/or romantic attraction" is totally a cohesive social class.

The first one is for aces.

• Blah blah "involvement in the dating scene".

Okay but as a self-described cupioromantic asexual, isn't Ettina also involved in "the dating scene"? Not to mention gray-(ace/aro) people.

And it's not like all "allos" are. I'm turning twenty in three months and I've never dated. I have a cousin who is twenty and hasn't dated either, because she's a fundamentalist Christian who believes in the Duggar family's (gross and unhealthy) concept of "courtship". There are priests, nuns, monks, women religious, godspouses, and other celibate religious people who don't seek out romantic relationships but also don't identify as aro.

And she also seems to assume that navigating "the dating scene" (who even says that anymore?) looks the same for everyone who doesn't identify as aro. Which um...no.

• Greater recognition of their greatest desired personal bond.

I know I don't talk about this much, but I have two gay uncles. They live together, they come to our family's Eating Day and Christmas Eve dinners together, they raised a dog together until it died. They've been together as long as I can remember.

But I didn't know for sure that they were together until I was seventeen. No one ever told me and they never kissed or held hands at our family parties, so I always just assumed Uncle Ron (not his real name, I'm just trying to protect his anonymity) was some distant cousin or family friend.

Sure, okay, when they did come to parties I was mostly interested in their dog (who accompanied them and loved me), but that's true of everyone because sorry but dogs are better than us all. And the presence of a dog has never totally stopped me from knowing when its owners are together because the determining factor here isn't a dog.

It's that m/w couples, especially cis m/w couples, are allowed to be more open about their relationship than sga ones.

My straight aunts and uncles would call their spouses honey and sweetheart. My straight grandparents would kiss in public. My straight cousins would tell stories about how they'd met their boyfriends and girlfriends and would talk about how in love they were. But my gay uncles have never had the privilege of doing that, so their bisexual nonbinary niece (nephew?) had no idea he wasn't the only LGBT family member.

There was never any confusion about whether my straight relatives were romantically involved with someone and who that someone was because straight people, including straight aces and aros, are allowed to be openly affectionate and proud of their relationships and to have those relationships recognized. Gay people aren't. Bi people aren't.

Also, my paternal grandmother's next-door neighbor is a gay man. I've been swimming in his pool and gotten candy from him at Halloween. He does yardwork and home repairs for my grandma. He fed her cat when she went up north to visit my cousins. His late mom was one of her best friends. I first met him when I moved back to Michigan at age six.

On a related note, a huge portion of my relatives on that side are Republicans. Several of them are specifically Mike Pence type evangelical Christian Republicans who believe it's a sin to be LGBT. You remember my cousins Ella and Lili? Those are their parents, and if these girls had been fictional characters they would be Marianne Bryant from Easy A and Lynette from Freak Show mixed with a hint of Ivanka Trump and Michelle Duggar, only not rich. You get the idea.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the first time I met Tim's (again, not his real name) boyfriend was after those relatives moved away. No need to worry about frightening the poor fascist cishets to death by seeing two men hold hands, you know. And god forbid the little ones be exposed to such depravity. (I'm being sarcastic, if it wasn't obvious.)

Don't think I'm exempt from their homophobia either just because I'm blood family. The little kids, Ella and Lili's five younger siblings I mean, look up to me, so the gods only know how their parents will handle it if I ever bring my (sadly nonexistent) girlfriend home or ask Charlotte to be a bridesmaid in my wedding.

I try to leave the kids out of everything because I'm worried about losing contact with them (which would mean they'd lose not only their big cousin but also the only leftist, trans adult they know), but it's pretty much inevitable. I love these kids and I'm not going to avoid introducing them to a woman who could one day be part of their family. Nor will I avoid inviting them to the ceremony that would make it official.

Speaking of my wedding, until two years ago I thought it would be decades until I could legally marry a woman in my state. Even now, there are social and institutional obstacles preventing me and my future wife (gods, my future wife is a healing phrase) from adopting children or getting a home together.

In the here and now, I still have no idea if it's safe to come out to my co-workers. Which, like, after almost a year at this place you'd think I'd know, but very recently my franchise got an almost entirely new staff, management included, and I'm one of the only ones from before that who stayed on. Don't get me wrong, I like the new people, but I'm still learning their names and that's not a situation you want to be in when coming out.

And I know if I was just, like, straight and talking about my (also sadly nonexistent) boyfriend I wouldn't think twice. My manager was talking about his girlfriend today and he did it like it was nothing because to him, it was.

I don't really think I would be fired for it, talking about my girlfriend I mean, but I'd still have to deal with that uncomfortable phase when people would think I meant my platonic female friend and it should be obvious that no, I mean my actual girlfriend who is the woman I'm dating and that's what a girlfriend is, but it's not because fuck straight women and the way they de-legitimize sapphic attraction by using that word incorrectly. Or I'd be accused of "throwing my sexuality in people's faces" for doing something cishets do all the time. Or I'd deal with a male co-worker making gross fetishistic comments. Or some straight or aroace female co-worker could get it into her head that every interaction I have with another woman is sexual and then I'd be in an incredibly awkward situation that could end with me being accused of, and reported for, sexual harassment over something completely innocent.

I have so much more to say on this specific topic, especially concerning Pulse and Chechnya and the AIDS crisis and religious freedom laws and corrective rape and conversion therapy and the fetishization of wlw, but this is getting long-winded so I'll end with this: receiving systemic benefits for the recognition of your desired primary relationship is something mostly exclusive to cishets. It's not a privilege gay/bi/pan people have.

It is, however, a privilege aroaces have. An aroace's primary relationship, outside of their family, is going to be with their best friend. So like...sorry nobody cares how kweer and valid your special friendship is, I guess, but it's a bit hard to sympathize or even give a shit when there are people actually being oppressed here.

• A tendency to perpetuate and buy into stereotypes that equate romantic attraction with love and humanity, and not be personally hurt by these stereotypes.

Oh man, that is...that's hilarious. What a funny fucking joke, really.

You know what else is a funny joke?

When I was still trying to get some conservative "friends" who essentially stalked me for months to care about and accept me by convincing them that sga love is, you know, not evil, they told me that "there is no sin greater than sexual sin" and also that romantic love between two men or women didn't exist, and if it did it would be more like friendship.

I identified as Christian at the time, so this continued misuse of my religion against me by fellow believers damaged my ability to trust, instilled self-loathing, and left emotional scars that still haven't really healed years later.

That sure doesn't sound to me like I'm seen as loving or human for experiencing attraction of any kind, but what do I know? I'm just a disgusting, slavering allo bisexual busy preying on sweet innocent aroace women and uncontrollably wanting to fuck everyone I see; I can't be expected to think critically.

So yeah, again, friendship is seen as more valid and worthy of respect than sga romantic love. Again, aroaces aren't fucking harmed at all while wlw and mlm are continuously dehumanized under homophobic oppression. But if it wasn't obvious, Ettina doesn't actually know shit about oppression so why should any of us be surprised?

• Increased tendency to be pressured into having sex they don't want or having sex more frequently than they want to.

This...isn't really an ace thing because it affects a lot of people who aren't ace just as much, including:

*Women

*Sex workers

*Sex repulsed people, especially mentally ill and developmentally disabled women

*People of color, especially in relationships with white people

*Teenagers and young adults, especially women, girls, and women-aligned people

*LGBT people, especially wlw and trans/nb people

*Disabled people

*Intersex people

*Rape, especially (CO)CSA, survivors

*Abuse survivors

And it's not always an issue of oppression either - which should be obvious because ageism isn't its own axis of oppression.

It can affect men because toxic masculinity tells them they have to sexually degrade women in order to be real men - and rape culture excuses them and celebrates their behavior when they do. But toxic masculinity doesn't actually oppress men and the way male rape isn't taken seriously is not evidence that misandry is real.

• Increased risk of corrective rape.

Stats, please? Sources? Anything?

Also, "corrective rape" is also called HOMOPHOBIC rape now. And there is a reason for this. So someone who benefits from homophobia should not be using it as a prop to "prove" that non-ace LGBT people are privileged over our ace counterparts.

• Increased likelihood of being accused of withholding sex, tricking their allosexual partners into a sexless relationship, or shaming or abusing their partners by refusing sex

Has it ever occurred to Ettina that most of the aces who are victimized by this are women in relationships with men? And therefore it might, you know, be an issue of misogyny and rape culture rather than acephobia?

It's something affecting ALL women, whether ace or not.

Plenty of bi and straight women are accused of "abusing" their boyfriends if they aren't interested in group sex, blowjobs, BDSM, or anal sex - or if they just don't feel up to sex at any particular moment. And on top of that, bi women, especially bi women of color, face increased sexualization that frequently leads to IPV from their boyfriends.

Not to mention closeted lesbians and lesbians dealing with coercive heterosexuality. Or how any of this intersects with the fetishization that intersex women, trans women, and women-aligned nonbinary people face from dyadic cishet men. And sexualized racism for women of color and sexualized ableism and romanticized inspiration porn for disabled women...


Well, you get the idea. So like, I don't get why Ettina thinks this, but emotional abuse for having sexual boundaries is an issue of MISOGYNY and is best handled by intersectional feminism - NOT by falsely claiming that ace women are uniquely oppressed.

It's not always abusive or an issue of misogyny, though. People are allowed to want sex and to reject potential partners for not being sexually compatible with them.

I'm open about what I want and need in a relationship because I want to be absolutely sure that everyone involved is satisfied.

I let people know that I have low empathy and alexithymia and that I will need to be left alone a lot and might get upset about being touched. I let them know that I have sensory processing issues that can make sex overstimulating. I let people know that I also crave validation, pleasure, and affection and what this means for a relationship. I expect honesty from my partner and it would be damaging for me to have sex with someone, an incredibly intimate and trusting act, one of the most vulnerable things human beings are capable of, something that is sacred to me, and then find out they didn't actually enjoy or want that sex but were essentially humoring me.

I would break up with someone for that. If someone who I'm dating or having sex with isn't open to me about how they feel, they're lying to me. After I've been unbelievably vulnerable with them, they're suddenly telling me that during sex they don't actually find me attractive. That they knew and they lied. 

Or they would know exactly what I wanted in a relationship and they would be deliberately misleading from the start about the fact that our desires are incompatible. And then if this bothers me and they guilt me for wanting to break up? That's emotional abuse - and yes, aces can be abusive. Not wanting sex doesn't make you a cute little cinnamon roll who can't do any harm.

Either of those scenarios would fuck with my mental health and make me feel unsafe and unwanted with my partner, which is a toxic combination in a relationship. Why should I put up with that? Why is it acephobic if I don't want to and I avoid this by simply refusing to date asexuals altogether?

• An increased likelihood of having their identity medicalized and targeted by therapy.

I assume this refers to hypoactive sexual desire disorder and other mental conditions, including PTSD, anxiety, sensory processing disorder, depression, schizotypal personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, autism, and ADHD, that can cause sex repulsion and/or lack of interest in sex.

First of all, these disabilities have NOTHING to do with asexuality.

Second, misdiagnosis doesn't actually equate to oppression.

Third, HSDD (the disability that is most often thrown under the bus by this rhetoric) is an actual serious medical condition that causes distress in people who have it.

If you tell a doctor you identify as ace, they won't put you in treatment because then your hypoactive sexual desire isn't causing distress and many doctors now know that asexuality and HSDD are not the same thing.

Even when telling a doctor you were ace meant HSDD treatment, that treatment was not abusive. It sure as hell wasn't comparable to conversion therapy, which is what Ettina seems to think.

• An increased tendency to be treated like or feel like they're just "bad at being" an orientation other than asexual, or like their ace identity reflects incompetence at sex

First of all, in this case they ARE an orientation other than asexual. A bi ace is just as bisexual as I am, because they're attracted to multiple or similar and different genders. A gay or lesbian ace is just as gay as a non-ace gay person, because they're exclusively sga. A straight ace is just as straight as a non-ace straight person, because they're m/w attracted and not sga. Ace is not their orientation and says nothing about who they're attracted to. It's a modifier for their orientation.

What this means, ironically enough, is that exclusionists aren't treating aces like they're a lesser version of their sexuality. MOGAIs, inclusionists, and het apologists are.

Second, I don't really care about straight aces feeling like they aren't straight enough. Straight people are already so gross to sga people.

They accuse bi women of being fake party girls who will inevitably run back to men, try to guilt lesbians into liking men, treat butches and tomcats like we're Straight Men LiteTM, tell femmes they're too pretty to be gay, fetishize does. With mlm, they completely dismiss the idea that men can be bi altogether, treat gnc gay men like lapdogs, and make gross invasive sexual comments to masc gay men.

And for trans/nb sga people, it's even worse than for cis sga people because it's amplified and also comes from cis LGB people, who frequently treat us the way their oppressors treat them. Trans wlw are more likely to be targeted by TERFs than anyone else in the world. Trans mlm are fetishized and infantilized and bear the brunt of fujoshis' selfish, fetishistic homophobia toward mlm. Nonbinary wlw and nonbinary mlm are treated like we're either sexual predators invading both trans and cis people's spaces or insipid fakes whose genders are just for show, faced with a similar but far harsher version of the prejudice cis gnc LGB people, and constantly screeched at and accused of being misogynists and homophobes if we try to help someone overcome possible dysphoria and internalized transphobia and tell a young wlw or mlm that they might not be cis because their struggles with gender are so reminiscent of our own.

Don't think it's only cishets either. I almost never feel safe in trans/nb spaces because of how straight people (and generally non-sga people) within them act like they get a free pass on homophobia just because none of us are cis. Or they act like being a butch lesbian is a privilege even while appropriating wlw identities. Or they think gay men and lesbians aren't oppressed anymore and act like trans and nonbinary gay people don't exist and couldn't possibly have anything to say about it. Or they invade wlw spaces and violate the boundaries of women, including trans/nb women, in them and call themselves lesbians while being trans men. I've even seen a straight trans woman come into a trans support group dominated by gay, bi, and pan trans/nb people and arrogantly inform all of us that being trans meant you could only be "a straight boy or straight girl and that's it."

Cishets are definitely worse, yeah. They're the ones passing laws against my existence, limiting my civil rights, denying me access to necessary resources and freedoms.

But there's a reason that my first priority as a feminist and leftist is trans/nb bisexual and mga women (and after them, trans/nb lesbians and wlw who identify as neither), rather than trans/nb people in general or wlw in general.

Getting off that soapbox (by the way, I just switched to a new medication and am still getting used to it)...

The point is, it's fucking laughable to expect a nonbinary bi tomcat to have an ounce of sympathy because someone feels like they aren't straight enough.

Third, do aces REALLY think they're the only ones who feel that way?

What about lesbians who struggle with coercive heterosexuality and feel like they're fake lesbians the minute they find a man moderately attractive? Hypersexual gay people who have had impulsive, self-destructive sex with men/women due to their mental illness? People who have a hard time telling the difference between genuine attraction and symptoms of trauma or mental illness? Sex-repulsed people? Gay trans people who are secretly afraid they're faking?

What about me? I'm not ace, but I have a lot of issues and insecurities and fears surrounding sex. I can understand what it's like to feel as if I'm failing at sexuality and I have a lot of common ground with ace bi women. Not only does EVERYONE have some insecurities around sex, but most of mine are rooted so heavily in being a bisexual woman and that's a bond that I share with all other bi women, ace or not. But straight aces, heterosexual aces, aren't going to understand this, because it's not about being ace.


Now here's the list about being aro.

• a desire for a sexual relationship, and tendency to seek out sexual partners, often leading to involvement in the dating scene.

I already talked about this on the ace list.

• a tendency to be stereotyped as predatory and manipulative for wanting sex without romance, and sometimes to struggle with internalized shame for this.

Okay, yeah, when I identified as grayro, this happened to me. But it wasn't actually the grayro part anyone cared about. It was the fact that I was a teenage girl who was taking control of my own sexual needs and satisfaction in a way that didn't fit misogynistic social norms. It was also the sexual double standards I faced under homophobia and how any attraction I dared show toward a woman was perceived as predatory, not because it wasn't romantic or I didn't label it as such, but because it was to someone else of my gender alignment.


Yet I've seen countless (cis, usually white) straight guys talk ostentatiously about sex, even to the point of making people around them uncomfortable. Men don't stop them, and any woman who tries is simply called a bitch and told to shut up. And then they would turn around from that conversation and call girls and women sluts for something as simple as wearing a low-cut shirt.


This is what exclusionists mean when we say that aphobia is rooted in misogyny. Any amount of attraction that cis white men feel is fairly socially sanctioned, as long as it isn't directed toward other men. But there is a long history of women being burned, literally and figuratively, for things men are applauded for. Sex, especially "unladylike" sex, is one of those things.

• a tendency to get drawn into unwanted romances or one-sided romantic pursuit by people they desire sexually

Again, mainly an issue of misogyny - not to mention racism and (occasionally misdirected) homophobia. Because you know which aros are going to be hurt the most by this? Aros of color, aro women, and aro gay men who are faced with predatory behavior from fetishistic white people, entitled men, and obnoxious straight women (respectively) who refuse to take no for an answer.


If an aromantic cishet white man has to deal with women falling for him after having sex with him, he can easily dismiss them as giggling fangirls who just can't stay away, or weak-minded bitches who don't really know what they want, must be their time of the month. And other cishet men will join him in laughter if that's what he wants, mocking some poor woman who really thought she was deserving of love. He'll be a stud or a player, known for being able to get any girl he wants. Other men might even look up to him for it. And even if this particular cishet man isn't a total piece of shit and doesn't take advantage of this power, what matters is that he could.

• a desire for a sexual queerplatonic relationship, in other words, a relationship characterized by strong emotional bonds and sexual activity but not romantic attachment; and ongoing difficulty finding people willing and able to be friends and sexual partners without falling in love with the aromantic person

So friends with benefits, you're saying? Because if you're cis and not sga nothing you do is queer. Ever. A nonromantic sexual relationship is called friends with benefits. And there are lots of people who want that and have difficulty finding it.

• less tendency to have their identity medicalized, because asexuality is more often seen as a medical issue than aromanticism is

Tell that to aro LGBT people who have been through conversion therapy. It doesn't have anything to do with being aro or ace, but they sure as hell have their identities medicalized.

• an increased tendency to be treated or feel like they're just "bad at being" an orientation other than aromantic, or that their aro identity reflects incompetence at romance

Again, I wrote about this when I was countering the section on asexuality.


Conversely, among people who don't accept the split attraction model, we're the only a-specs whose orientation might be respected.

A lot of people who "don't respect the split attraction model" do, actually, support "a-specs" (a term appropriated from 'autistic spectrum'; acomm is a perfectly acceptable substitute, but I digress) who use it. I have nothing against aromantic pansexuals or gay aces and I know they're no less pan or gay, respectively, for being aro or ace - nor are they any less aro or ace for being pan or gay.


Aro and ace are identities, modifiers, that describe how one is attracted rather than to whom. That's why you can be simultaneously straight and asexual or straight and aromantic. And it's why words like "h*moromantic", "biromantic", and "heteroromantic" are unnecessary. An asexual who uses those words to describe themselves is simply a gay man, lesbian, bisexual, or straight person who simply happens to also be ace.

It's fine for aros and aces to use the split attraction model. It's not fine to force it on people, coercively label them (especially women, disabled people, LGBT people, people of color, and people at the intersections of these groups) as allo if they don't want to use it, or pretend it's possible to be, say, bi and straight at the same time.

There's just one more thing I want to say before ending this post:

Ettina is a hypocrite. She made an entire post about how people equate her sexuality to straightness...

Then she repeatedly grouped gay and bi people, including other aces and aros, with straight people. She equated gayness and bisexuality with straightness and implied that not only do bi and gay people have the ability and structural power to oppress her, but we also have more in common with straight people, based on whether we're ace, aro, or neither, than we do with each other.

Ettina is a creepy, selfish, willfully ignorant hypocrite. She's made it clear before and is doing so again: as long as her feelings remain the slightest bit wounded by sga people "invalidating" her (which usually comes in the form of us not entertaining her weird obsessive oppression fantasy), she will only see homophobia as a minor issue - if she bothers to care about it at all.