CW: bimisogyny, transphobia, abuse, sexual assault, homophobia, anti-LGBT slurs (used by someone who can reclaim them)
While I've been into guys before, this is the first time it's happened as an adult and I have Feelings about it.
While I've been into guys before, this is the first time it's happened as an adult and I have Feelings about it.
Let's just temporarily ignore the fact that there's approximately a 90% chance that Danny and I will never actually date because reasons and go from there.
Prometheia (Hellenic summer solstice) is coming up and for me, that means veiling. And I'm actually just...weirdly self-conscious about veiling in public right now.
I only started veiling last winter and I'm lucky that I live in one of the only places in Michigan where being visibly a religious minority won't put you in danger and my college has had shit like a witchcraft course, a teacher who practices curanderismo, and that one girl from like 2015 who tried to found a school coven. Like I get that I personally am not going to be as materially harmed under Christian supremacy or put in danger for covering my hair the way that, say, a hijabi would be.
But at the same time, I rarely feel more pressure to be discreet about my paganism than when I'm attracted to a Christian - which Danny apparently is.
It's irrational, self-hating bullshit, I know. I would be okay dating someone who straight-up didn't at all believe in the Theoi or in magic, as long as they were supportive of my right to do so. But that doesn't mean religion wouldn't be an issue for me at all. I wouldn't date a Christian who expected me to go to church with them or thought premarital sex was a sin, for example. And like, what if that relationship turned more serious? Am I supposed to refrain from veiling on festival days if their parents are coming to visit? What if I want an altar or shrine and they have a problem with that when we move in together? What about marriage - how am I as an Aphrodite devotee supposed to get married if I can't incorporate religion into the ceremony? What if we have kids together, and they have their heart set on raising their kids in their family's religion?
That actually sounds really creepy and obsessive and actually kind of juvenile. I've never even dated and I'm already thinking about marriage and kids? But it's not a literal these-are-serious-plans thing. I'm not even sure if I want marriage or kids, and since I'd rather adopt an older foster kid they'll probably have their own beliefs when they arrive.
It's just a practical concern because as a member of a relatively uncommon religion, odds are that most of my relationships are going to be interfaith and I need to consider how I'm going to make that work - especially when there's a power imbalance involved. If I'm dating a Christian, how comfortable will I be with someone whose religion is privileged over mine - especially if that someone is a cis man? If I'm dating, say, a Jewish person, how am I going to navigate being a good ally to my partner without compromising my own beliefs for the sake of our relationship?
Also...odds are, any relationship I'm in is going to involve one of us being privileged over the other in some way - what am I going to do, only date other non-cis, woman-aligned/non-man-aligned, sga, disabled religious minorities? Because there's so many of those, right? And even if I were going to do that, I could actually be the one with more privilege. I could date a trans woman, a Jewish person, a sex worker, or a person of color, and they might not be interested in dating someone who is a non-transfeminine, civilian white gentile.
Or I'd be dealing with lateral aggression: biphobia and bimisogyny from a lesbian partner, nbphobia from a trans partner, anti-Hellenic sentiment from a pagan partner, lateral ableism from a disabled partner, misogyny from a non-aligned nb partner.
Back to the veil dilemma. I don't know if this is a common experience among pagans or religious minorities in general who veil, but I feel really self-conscious doing it in front of a Christian that I'm attracted to. Which I know is bullshit, because if I can't even bring myself to be open and honest about my religion around this guy then clearly I shouldn't be dating him.
If it explains anything, I should mention that my medication has pretty much entirely stopped working. I have a doctor's appointment on the 30th but until then, I'll be relying pretty heavily on Mountain Dew and Starbucks for the stimulants my brain needs to remain semi-functional.
But like...this whole thing, this self-consciousness around veiling, brought me to another train of thought about how it intersects with gender and sexuality, how being able to pass as your own oppressor (I.e. being bisexual in a m/w relationship, being a cisgender femme lesbian who is read as straight when she's not with her girlfriend, being a trans person who passes as cis, being a closeted trans woman who is read as a man, being a "mildly" disabled person, being a pagan who appears to be Christian to those who don't know better) can be life-saving sometimes. I am way less likely to experience street harassment and to have my relationship disrespected and fetishized if I'm dating someone who is read as a cis man than if I'm dating someone who is, or is read as, a woman.
But it also tends to put you in proximity to your actual oppressors, who constantly expect to be accommodated at your expense. It forces you to constantly prove how radical you are - and the emotional exhaustion of doing that deters you from actually being radical, antifascist, or leftist. And it can exacerbate internalized self-hate resulting from oppression and deny you the resources you do still need - though I admit that experiencing increased externalized violence is probably worse and also puts you in danger. I may be denied space in the trans community more often due to nbphobia, but a non-passing trans woman is going to need those resources more than I do AND is just as capable of having internalized transphobia.
I digress. Not to pull any "LG vs. BT" shit, but the main way I conceptualize this is by thinking of the common experiences between how I'm treated, inside and outside of the LGBT community, as a nonbinary person and a bisexual woman.
Constantly being infantilized - I often feel like people see TME woman-aligned nonbinary people as silly girls who are going through a phase and don't actually know what it is to be trans, but they humor us at their leisure. And I feel like gay/lesbian people, straight people, and bi men see bi women as naive, giggling, perpetual children who are playing at loving women before we inevitably end up with men and live heterosexually ever after.
I often feel pressured to "pick a side" in terms of both my gender and sexuality, especially when I'm around cis women. And actually, especially with cis wlw, there's so much pressure to hide my gender fluidity and passively accept when they completely ignore and disrespect it, to be a woman and a wlw first and a nonbinary person second, to make my gender fluidity a mere afterthought. It's inconvenient to cis women, to have to respect nonbinary wlw.
And I can't put up with that. My womanhood is inseparable from my gender fluidity is inseparable from my bisexuality. I cannot feel safe in feminist spaces that don't include nonbinary people. I can't feel safe in bisexual spaces that don't prioritize bi trans people. I can't feel safe in trans spaces that are misogynistic.
Constantly being fetishized and oversexualized. Dealing with cis sga people who think they can't fetishize me because they're not straight either, with bi men who guilt wlw into fucking them, with gay and lesbian people who accuse me of being a "hasbian" or a tainted party girl who is faking it for attention because I'm a young bi woman who has never been with a woman before and is currently attracted to a man, with cis people who assume my gender fluidity is a paraphilia.
Constantly being seen as "not enough", by gold star gays, by truscum, by TERFs, by people who think their transphobia and homophobia against me is somehow radical leftist praxis or helpful to trans women and lesbians.
Constantly being seen as Not Enough, because it's not really homophobia if I also like men. Because when lesbians are demonized in the media, I'm not allowed to talk about how this negatively affects me, but with shows like Chasing Life - where Greer is portrayed fairly but Brenna is depicted as a slutty, indecisive stereotype who refused to call herself bisexual for the entire first season, or in The Fosters, where two lesbians are the heroes who get a happy marriage and kids while Monty, a bi woman, is constantly fucked over and deceived and also apparently has no respect for boundaries and rarely gets a smidgen of happiness or any healthy depiction of her attraction to women - I'd better just shut up about bimisogyny and be happy that wlw are being positively represented at all, because bi women are supposed to smile and be happy and accept whatever treatment we get and cut off little bits of ourselves, one and two at a time, in order to make ourselves palatable enough for the consumption of everyone except ourselves. How did we taste? Did you enjoy eating us alive? Here, let me give you another piece - would you like a finger? An eye? Or maybe something that's easier to sexualize, like a breast, because clearly sex is all anyone thinks bi women are good for. I should keep my mouth shut unless I'm using it to please you.
But no, wait, I stand corrected. Sex isn't all bi women are good for. When we marry men, we're useful as conservative tokens because we've been "fixed" and had our attraction to women sucked out of us by Prince Charming - even if Prince Charming is abusive, as cishet men so frequently are to their bisexual girlfriends and wives.
We're useful as liberal tokens as well. We're fluid and open-minded, unrapeable bodies available to anyone who wants us. We're useful as tokens to acomm people who aren't sga, because what do you mean those dirty allo bihets will always have more right to LGBT spaces than some cishet guy who calls himself lamvanosexual because he can't be bothered to pleasure his girlfriend but thinks she's useless unless she's willing to suck him off?
We're useful as pawns to straight women, for them to manipulate and groom into liberal feminism, guilt away from learning about LGBT leftism, and pit against lesbians because it's easier for straight people when we're fighting with our natural allies rather than banding together with them in order to achieve equity and liberation.
We're useful to straight men. We're useful as their punching bags, their sick fetishes, their toys, their way of fulfilling some disgusting fantasy about fucking a wlw and they often don't particularly care whether we consent. And when we're not useful as sex objects, we're useful as dirty, sinful queers for them to inflict violence on.
And queers...that word. We're useful because it's expected we won't be traumatized by it. Because we can't take pride in bisexual and sapphic, only queer. Only a slur. We're the "libqueers" you love to hate, to conflate with liberal publications that shove that word down our throats as if bisexual is too dirty, too tainted, too sexual, to dare say out loud - and we so often internalize those beliefs. I was useful yesterday, when a cishet woman called me that, assuming it was her place to reclaim. I was useful until my glare made her uncomfortable because don't you fucking dare use that word for me. I'm useful, as a nonbinary bisexual woman. I'm a token. A pawn, a fetish, a toy, an object.
And sure, I gain superficial, conditional benefits while in a relationship that's read as straight. But being perceived as fluid, open-minded, flexible, whether for my bisexuality or my gender fluidity or my paganism, isn't a privilege.
It mostly just means I'm denied the right to having boundaries.
It's irrational, self-hating bullshit, I know. I would be okay dating someone who straight-up didn't at all believe in the Theoi or in magic, as long as they were supportive of my right to do so. But that doesn't mean religion wouldn't be an issue for me at all. I wouldn't date a Christian who expected me to go to church with them or thought premarital sex was a sin, for example. And like, what if that relationship turned more serious? Am I supposed to refrain from veiling on festival days if their parents are coming to visit? What if I want an altar or shrine and they have a problem with that when we move in together? What about marriage - how am I as an Aphrodite devotee supposed to get married if I can't incorporate religion into the ceremony? What if we have kids together, and they have their heart set on raising their kids in their family's religion?
That actually sounds really creepy and obsessive and actually kind of juvenile. I've never even dated and I'm already thinking about marriage and kids? But it's not a literal these-are-serious-plans thing. I'm not even sure if I want marriage or kids, and since I'd rather adopt an older foster kid they'll probably have their own beliefs when they arrive.
It's just a practical concern because as a member of a relatively uncommon religion, odds are that most of my relationships are going to be interfaith and I need to consider how I'm going to make that work - especially when there's a power imbalance involved. If I'm dating a Christian, how comfortable will I be with someone whose religion is privileged over mine - especially if that someone is a cis man? If I'm dating, say, a Jewish person, how am I going to navigate being a good ally to my partner without compromising my own beliefs for the sake of our relationship?
Also...odds are, any relationship I'm in is going to involve one of us being privileged over the other in some way - what am I going to do, only date other non-cis, woman-aligned/non-man-aligned, sga, disabled religious minorities? Because there's so many of those, right? And even if I were going to do that, I could actually be the one with more privilege. I could date a trans woman, a Jewish person, a sex worker, or a person of color, and they might not be interested in dating someone who is a non-transfeminine, civilian white gentile.
Or I'd be dealing with lateral aggression: biphobia and bimisogyny from a lesbian partner, nbphobia from a trans partner, anti-Hellenic sentiment from a pagan partner, lateral ableism from a disabled partner, misogyny from a non-aligned nb partner.
Back to the veil dilemma. I don't know if this is a common experience among pagans or religious minorities in general who veil, but I feel really self-conscious doing it in front of a Christian that I'm attracted to. Which I know is bullshit, because if I can't even bring myself to be open and honest about my religion around this guy then clearly I shouldn't be dating him.
If it explains anything, I should mention that my medication has pretty much entirely stopped working. I have a doctor's appointment on the 30th but until then, I'll be relying pretty heavily on Mountain Dew and Starbucks for the stimulants my brain needs to remain semi-functional.
But like...this whole thing, this self-consciousness around veiling, brought me to another train of thought about how it intersects with gender and sexuality, how being able to pass as your own oppressor (I.e. being bisexual in a m/w relationship, being a cisgender femme lesbian who is read as straight when she's not with her girlfriend, being a trans person who passes as cis, being a closeted trans woman who is read as a man, being a "mildly" disabled person, being a pagan who appears to be Christian to those who don't know better) can be life-saving sometimes. I am way less likely to experience street harassment and to have my relationship disrespected and fetishized if I'm dating someone who is read as a cis man than if I'm dating someone who is, or is read as, a woman.
But it also tends to put you in proximity to your actual oppressors, who constantly expect to be accommodated at your expense. It forces you to constantly prove how radical you are - and the emotional exhaustion of doing that deters you from actually being radical, antifascist, or leftist. And it can exacerbate internalized self-hate resulting from oppression and deny you the resources you do still need - though I admit that experiencing increased externalized violence is probably worse and also puts you in danger. I may be denied space in the trans community more often due to nbphobia, but a non-passing trans woman is going to need those resources more than I do AND is just as capable of having internalized transphobia.
I digress. Not to pull any "LG vs. BT" shit, but the main way I conceptualize this is by thinking of the common experiences between how I'm treated, inside and outside of the LGBT community, as a nonbinary person and a bisexual woman.
Constantly being infantilized - I often feel like people see TME woman-aligned nonbinary people as silly girls who are going through a phase and don't actually know what it is to be trans, but they humor us at their leisure. And I feel like gay/lesbian people, straight people, and bi men see bi women as naive, giggling, perpetual children who are playing at loving women before we inevitably end up with men and live heterosexually ever after.
I often feel pressured to "pick a side" in terms of both my gender and sexuality, especially when I'm around cis women. And actually, especially with cis wlw, there's so much pressure to hide my gender fluidity and passively accept when they completely ignore and disrespect it, to be a woman and a wlw first and a nonbinary person second, to make my gender fluidity a mere afterthought. It's inconvenient to cis women, to have to respect nonbinary wlw.
And I can't put up with that. My womanhood is inseparable from my gender fluidity is inseparable from my bisexuality. I cannot feel safe in feminist spaces that don't include nonbinary people. I can't feel safe in bisexual spaces that don't prioritize bi trans people. I can't feel safe in trans spaces that are misogynistic.
Constantly being fetishized and oversexualized. Dealing with cis sga people who think they can't fetishize me because they're not straight either, with bi men who guilt wlw into fucking them, with gay and lesbian people who accuse me of being a "hasbian" or a tainted party girl who is faking it for attention because I'm a young bi woman who has never been with a woman before and is currently attracted to a man, with cis people who assume my gender fluidity is a paraphilia.
Constantly being seen as "not enough", by gold star gays, by truscum, by TERFs, by people who think their transphobia and homophobia against me is somehow radical leftist praxis or helpful to trans women and lesbians.
Constantly being seen as Not Enough, because it's not really homophobia if I also like men. Because when lesbians are demonized in the media, I'm not allowed to talk about how this negatively affects me, but with shows like Chasing Life - where Greer is portrayed fairly but Brenna is depicted as a slutty, indecisive stereotype who refused to call herself bisexual for the entire first season, or in The Fosters, where two lesbians are the heroes who get a happy marriage and kids while Monty, a bi woman, is constantly fucked over and deceived and also apparently has no respect for boundaries and rarely gets a smidgen of happiness or any healthy depiction of her attraction to women - I'd better just shut up about bimisogyny and be happy that wlw are being positively represented at all, because bi women are supposed to smile and be happy and accept whatever treatment we get and cut off little bits of ourselves, one and two at a time, in order to make ourselves palatable enough for the consumption of everyone except ourselves. How did we taste? Did you enjoy eating us alive? Here, let me give you another piece - would you like a finger? An eye? Or maybe something that's easier to sexualize, like a breast, because clearly sex is all anyone thinks bi women are good for. I should keep my mouth shut unless I'm using it to please you.
But no, wait, I stand corrected. Sex isn't all bi women are good for. When we marry men, we're useful as conservative tokens because we've been "fixed" and had our attraction to women sucked out of us by Prince Charming - even if Prince Charming is abusive, as cishet men so frequently are to their bisexual girlfriends and wives.
We're useful as liberal tokens as well. We're fluid and open-minded, unrapeable bodies available to anyone who wants us. We're useful as tokens to acomm people who aren't sga, because what do you mean those dirty allo bihets will always have more right to LGBT spaces than some cishet guy who calls himself lamvanosexual because he can't be bothered to pleasure his girlfriend but thinks she's useless unless she's willing to suck him off?
We're useful as pawns to straight women, for them to manipulate and groom into liberal feminism, guilt away from learning about LGBT leftism, and pit against lesbians because it's easier for straight people when we're fighting with our natural allies rather than banding together with them in order to achieve equity and liberation.
We're useful to straight men. We're useful as their punching bags, their sick fetishes, their toys, their way of fulfilling some disgusting fantasy about fucking a wlw and they often don't particularly care whether we consent. And when we're not useful as sex objects, we're useful as dirty, sinful queers for them to inflict violence on.
And queers...that word. We're useful because it's expected we won't be traumatized by it. Because we can't take pride in bisexual and sapphic, only queer. Only a slur. We're the "libqueers" you love to hate, to conflate with liberal publications that shove that word down our throats as if bisexual is too dirty, too tainted, too sexual, to dare say out loud - and we so often internalize those beliefs. I was useful yesterday, when a cishet woman called me that, assuming it was her place to reclaim. I was useful until my glare made her uncomfortable because don't you fucking dare use that word for me. I'm useful, as a nonbinary bisexual woman. I'm a token. A pawn, a fetish, a toy, an object.
And sure, I gain superficial, conditional benefits while in a relationship that's read as straight. But being perceived as fluid, open-minded, flexible, whether for my bisexuality or my gender fluidity or my paganism, isn't a privilege.
It mostly just means I'm denied the right to having boundaries.
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