CW: rape, abuse, guns, mass shooting, serophobia, violence, transphobia, ableism, racism, homophobia, biphobia, bimisogyny, lesbophobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, ableism, rape culture, fetishization, sexual harassment
I'd been planning to take a hiatus for a few months to handle some personal issues, but Abnormaldiversity has decided to piss me off again and I'm not going to put up with anyone acting like being LGBT is a privilege - even if that person is LGBT themselves (she's recently revealed that she's probably nonbinary, and uses she/her pronouns).
I'm not going to link and give her a platform, but the post is called Better or Worse? and it's about how for LGBT people homophobia and transphobia apparently lessen as we age, while for acomm cishets and cis aroaces aphobia increases.
Here we go. Buckle the fuck up, kids. We're in for a wild ride.
And for many, this is true. LGB adults have more freedom to seek romantic partners regardless of gender, and less likely to depend on homophobic people in order to survive.
Tell that to bi women who are trapped in abusive relationships with cishet men.
Tell it to closeted people.
To people who can't access sexual healthcare or whose sex education was mostly applicable to straight cis people.
To trans/nb mlm and wlw who can be denied hormones and surgery if it's revealed they're not straight, on top of dealing with fetishization and oversexualization from cis people both inside and outside of the LGBT community.
To people in conservative towns, worship communities, and political climates.
To college students who lose their scholarships based on their sexualities.
To people who have lost their jobs because of their sexualities.
To people who are assumed to be inherently pedophilic because of their sexualities.
To LGB sex workers.
To LGB adults who still live with their parents because it's either that or starvation and homelessness.
To mentally ill LGB people who get the drugs they need in order to stay relatively stable from homophobic therapists.
To disabled LGB people who use aides, interpreters, and caretakers and face homophobia from the people who provide them with accessibility.
To bisexuals who frequently deal with gay and straight people refusing to date us because they think we'll cheat or we're not radical enough - and to bisexuals who are fetishized by straight people who think a bi partner means they'll get threesomes. To gay people who put up with lateral homophobia from bi people who believe in monosexual privilege.
To lesbians whose boundaries are violated by trans men who think being trans means they're less misogynistic. To trans mlm who are fetishized by cis lesbians and rejected by cis gay men, and to trans wlw who are fetishized by cis gay men and rejected by cis lesbians. To trans/nb gay men and lesbians who are erased by cis bisexuals who believe that gay people are more transphobic than they are. To trans/nb mga people who deal with cis gay people thinking they oppress them or are inherently liberal.
To mlm of color who look at a white man's Grindr profile only to see that he's only interested in white men. To wlw of color who deal with white feminism in every sapphic space they share with white women.
To Muslim, Sikh, and Jewish LGB people who constantly hear that their religions are inherently more homophobic than Christianity. To LGB pagans and polytheists who don't know if we'll ever find a relationship where we're not expected to hide our religious beliefs in order to make our partners comfortable.
Tell it to Lisa Trubnikova, who was killed for being a lesbian. Tell it to Matthew Shepard. To everyone shot at Pulse, and to the two gay men whose love angered Omar Mateen so much that he killed dozens of people. To every gay and bisexual man in Chechnya. To Amber Heard. To survivors of corrective rape. To the 61% of bi women and 43% of lesbians who have experienced domestic violence. To LGBT people who lived during the AIDS crisis. To the LGBT people who didn't survive it.
Transgender adults are more likely to have access to tools of medical transition, as well as less likely to depend on transphobic people.
First of all, most of the above - about losing jobs, being fetishized, being abused, facing increased accessibility hurdles - also applies to trans and nonbinary people. It's often more likely to apply to us, actually.
Second, not all trans people want to medically transition.
Third, that increased access doesn't apply to:
As I got visibly more adult in appearance, straight cis guys have gotten pusher about their advances.
Have you ever heard of a little thing called rape culture, perchance? Misogyny? Sexism? Patriarchy? Male entitlement? Hypermasculinity? The virgin/wh*re dichotomy? Sex shaming?
Aro/ace women are seen as having less of an 'excuse' - we're not taken, and we're not gay.
Asexual and aromantic lesbians exist, first of all. So some acomm women are gay, but in order to acknowledge them you'd have to acknowledge that acomm people can also be straight. That aces and aros aren't oppressed. That allo privilege isn't real.
And that just won't do.
Second...since when do men universally take "I'm a lesbian" as a valid reason not to sleep with them? Because it's often more like "I can fix that", or "Can I watch?", or "Well that's because you haven't had sex with me yet." Sometimes it goes beyond that. Sometimes it ends in the lesbian being raped or killed.
Third, the same can be said of non-acomm straight and bi women who are celibate, sex-repulsed, or who just don't particularly feel like being hit on by annoying men all the time. But straight women aren't oppressed for their sexualities, and bi women are oppressed for being attracted to women and discriminated against for being attracted to multiple genders - not specifically for being attracted to men.
Besides that, one group of women being uniquely affected by something doesn't necessarily mean that other women in that group are privileged over them. For example, just because Roman and I aren't impacted the exact same way by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia as an agender femme lesbian and genderfluid tomcat bisexual, respectively, doesn't mean either of us is privileged over the other.
Differences in privilege do exist between women, i.e. white privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, class privilege, abled privilege, dyadic privilege. I'm not saying they don't.
But there are also cases where a woman will be impacted in a specific way by patriarchy, and then will mistakenly assume that every woman who isn't has privilege over her.
For every man who disrespects that you aren't and will never be interested in sex and romance and pushes your boundaries, there's a man who thinks that women who do like sex are dirty, tainted sluts who are "asking for it".
And in any m/w relationship, there is going to be a power imbalance - though this gets a lot more complicated when the relationship contains, say, a bisexual black man and a straight white woman. So while they're just as homophobic as their male counterparts, straight women's desire to exclusively date men, especially if they're not white, abled, dyadic, and/or cis, doesn't give them the ability to oppress you or any other woman who isn't sapphic.
From what I've heard, this is especially true for aro/ace women of color
That's called racialized misogyny. And it impacts all women of color, not just ace and aro ones.
Besides that, a lot of people of color, women, and LGBT people have actually stopped identifying with the acomm because rampant unchecked racism, misogyny, homophobia, and/or transphobia made them feel unsafe in that community. They're not ace or aro (so in your eyes they're "allo"), they're just people who don't want sex or don't want romance. And yet their experiences with oppression haven't changed for better or worse because of it.
Tell me again how this makes them privileged? And as long as we're discussing racialized misogyny...tell me how a woman of color who doesn't identify as acomm is privileged over a white man who does.
For male-presenting aros and aces, the pressure often comes from other men
That's called toxic masculinity. Men are supposed to be dominant toward women (especially in relationships), and aren't seen as properly fulfilling their role in the patriarchy if they're not. And ace and aro men are not really any more harmed by this than:
None of those men are oppressed either.
Societal pressure makes it harder for new partners to discuss sexual compatibility
That's a result of sex-negativity and purity culture, which harms everyone.
One of the most common contexts for asexual corrective rape is being raped by a romantic partner, especially for female-presenting aces involved with men.
Ace women are not the only ones harmed by rape culture, misogyny, abuse, and violence - nor are they uniquely harmed by it or more harmed by it than other women. The same goes for aces feeling obligated to have sex with a romantic partner.
Rape is always traumatizing and tragic, but this is not an example of aphobic oppression and it is not corrective rape.
I'm not going to directly quote the rest because it basically amounts to "aros are oppressed because they're lonely" phrased with entirely too many words. And uh...no.
Anyway, Ettina, your post is homophobic, transphobic trash and so are you.
I'd been planning to take a hiatus for a few months to handle some personal issues, but Abnormaldiversity has decided to piss me off again and I'm not going to put up with anyone acting like being LGBT is a privilege - even if that person is LGBT themselves (she's recently revealed that she's probably nonbinary, and uses she/her pronouns).
I'm not going to link and give her a platform, but the post is called Better or Worse? and it's about how for LGBT people homophobia and transphobia apparently lessen as we age, while for acomm cishets and cis aroaces aphobia increases.
Here we go. Buckle the fuck up, kids. We're in for a wild ride.
And for many, this is true. LGB adults have more freedom to seek romantic partners regardless of gender, and less likely to depend on homophobic people in order to survive.
Tell that to bi women who are trapped in abusive relationships with cishet men.
Tell it to closeted people.
To people who can't access sexual healthcare or whose sex education was mostly applicable to straight cis people.
To trans/nb mlm and wlw who can be denied hormones and surgery if it's revealed they're not straight, on top of dealing with fetishization and oversexualization from cis people both inside and outside of the LGBT community.
To people in conservative towns, worship communities, and political climates.
To college students who lose their scholarships based on their sexualities.
To people who have lost their jobs because of their sexualities.
To people who are assumed to be inherently pedophilic because of their sexualities.
To LGB sex workers.
To LGB adults who still live with their parents because it's either that or starvation and homelessness.
To mentally ill LGB people who get the drugs they need in order to stay relatively stable from homophobic therapists.
To disabled LGB people who use aides, interpreters, and caretakers and face homophobia from the people who provide them with accessibility.
To bisexuals who frequently deal with gay and straight people refusing to date us because they think we'll cheat or we're not radical enough - and to bisexuals who are fetishized by straight people who think a bi partner means they'll get threesomes. To gay people who put up with lateral homophobia from bi people who believe in monosexual privilege.
To lesbians whose boundaries are violated by trans men who think being trans means they're less misogynistic. To trans mlm who are fetishized by cis lesbians and rejected by cis gay men, and to trans wlw who are fetishized by cis gay men and rejected by cis lesbians. To trans/nb gay men and lesbians who are erased by cis bisexuals who believe that gay people are more transphobic than they are. To trans/nb mga people who deal with cis gay people thinking they oppress them or are inherently liberal.
To mlm of color who look at a white man's Grindr profile only to see that he's only interested in white men. To wlw of color who deal with white feminism in every sapphic space they share with white women.
To Muslim, Sikh, and Jewish LGB people who constantly hear that their religions are inherently more homophobic than Christianity. To LGB pagans and polytheists who don't know if we'll ever find a relationship where we're not expected to hide our religious beliefs in order to make our partners comfortable.
Tell it to Lisa Trubnikova, who was killed for being a lesbian. Tell it to Matthew Shepard. To everyone shot at Pulse, and to the two gay men whose love angered Omar Mateen so much that he killed dozens of people. To every gay and bisexual man in Chechnya. To Amber Heard. To survivors of corrective rape. To the 61% of bi women and 43% of lesbians who have experienced domestic violence. To LGBT people who lived during the AIDS crisis. To the LGBT people who didn't survive it.
Transgender adults are more likely to have access to tools of medical transition, as well as less likely to depend on transphobic people.
First of all, most of the above - about losing jobs, being fetishized, being abused, facing increased accessibility hurdles - also applies to trans and nonbinary people. It's often more likely to apply to us, actually.
Second, not all trans people want to medically transition.
Third, that increased access doesn't apply to:
- LGB trans people
- Gender nonconforming trans people
- Nonbinary people whose primary pronouns aren't he/him or she/her
- Neurodivergent and mentally ill trans people
- Poor trans people
- People with culturally specific genders
- Intersex trans people
- Trans people living in Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.
- Trans people who didn't always know they were trans
- Trans people in abusive relationships
And even being able to transition isn't always a privilege, considering that trans women of color are one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.
Not to mention that what you're failing to consider here is that even in the best of cases, EVERY LGBT person depends, or has depended, on homophobes and transphobes to survive. Transphobia and homophobia are ingrained in everyone by society from infancy. Sure, not every cishet is Mike Pence, but to some degree all cis people are transphobic and all non-sga people are homophobic, and they need to spend their entire lives unlearning that. And even when they do, every cis person who isn't sga still oppresses everyone who is LGBT.
That's how oppression WORKS. Institutionally and systemically, people with privilege are socialized to dominate those they oppress. White people are given beauty standards and racist stereotypes that teach us we're superior. Men are taught that women are inherently submissive, weak, and exist for their pleasure. Abled people are taught that disability is weakness and that weakness is to be eradicated. Cishets and cis aroaces are taught that LGBT people are sinful, predatory deviants who go against nature, and cis LGB people are taught all of that about trans/nb people as well.
These realities are built into our society. They lead to dehumanization, harassment, violence, unequal access, abuse, criminal profiling, rape, hate crimes, poverty, oppressive laws, and genocide, and none of us can totally escape that.
I'm not like you, Ettina. I don't escape oppression for my sexuality when I go offline. And I know better than to think that being trans will get easier for me as I get older.
In our teens, we're often seen as "just a late bloomer" or "not ready yet"
Because that's what frequently happens! Teenagers are still growing and developing. Their bodies and hormones are still changing, so it's unreasonable to expect them - children who are as young as thirteen, still in middle school - to feel the same level of sexual attraction as an adult.
And a lot of teenagers don't feel emotionally ready for sex or dating. Or they have body image issues. Or they just want to put it off until life isn't so stressful, because being a teenager is hard enough as it is.
That doesn't make them aro or ace. It makes them kids, and kids should be allowed to just be kids. They don't need some twentysomething stranger on the internet telling them that their lack of interest in sex or romance is abnormal for their age and scaring them into thinking they're oppressed for it.
As I got visibly more adult in appearance, straight cis guys have gotten pusher about their advances.
Have you ever heard of a little thing called rape culture, perchance? Misogyny? Sexism? Patriarchy? Male entitlement? Hypermasculinity? The virgin/wh*re dichotomy? Sex shaming?
Aro/ace women are seen as having less of an 'excuse' - we're not taken, and we're not gay.
Asexual and aromantic lesbians exist, first of all. So some acomm women are gay, but in order to acknowledge them you'd have to acknowledge that acomm people can also be straight. That aces and aros aren't oppressed. That allo privilege isn't real.
And that just won't do.
Second...since when do men universally take "I'm a lesbian" as a valid reason not to sleep with them? Because it's often more like "I can fix that", or "Can I watch?", or "Well that's because you haven't had sex with me yet." Sometimes it goes beyond that. Sometimes it ends in the lesbian being raped or killed.
Third, the same can be said of non-acomm straight and bi women who are celibate, sex-repulsed, or who just don't particularly feel like being hit on by annoying men all the time. But straight women aren't oppressed for their sexualities, and bi women are oppressed for being attracted to women and discriminated against for being attracted to multiple genders - not specifically for being attracted to men.
Besides that, one group of women being uniquely affected by something doesn't necessarily mean that other women in that group are privileged over them. For example, just because Roman and I aren't impacted the exact same way by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia as an agender femme lesbian and genderfluid tomcat bisexual, respectively, doesn't mean either of us is privileged over the other.
Differences in privilege do exist between women, i.e. white privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, class privilege, abled privilege, dyadic privilege. I'm not saying they don't.
But there are also cases where a woman will be impacted in a specific way by patriarchy, and then will mistakenly assume that every woman who isn't has privilege over her.
For every man who disrespects that you aren't and will never be interested in sex and romance and pushes your boundaries, there's a man who thinks that women who do like sex are dirty, tainted sluts who are "asking for it".
And in any m/w relationship, there is going to be a power imbalance - though this gets a lot more complicated when the relationship contains, say, a bisexual black man and a straight white woman. So while they're just as homophobic as their male counterparts, straight women's desire to exclusively date men, especially if they're not white, abled, dyadic, and/or cis, doesn't give them the ability to oppress you or any other woman who isn't sapphic.
From what I've heard, this is especially true for aro/ace women of color
That's called racialized misogyny. And it impacts all women of color, not just ace and aro ones.
Besides that, a lot of people of color, women, and LGBT people have actually stopped identifying with the acomm because rampant unchecked racism, misogyny, homophobia, and/or transphobia made them feel unsafe in that community. They're not ace or aro (so in your eyes they're "allo"), they're just people who don't want sex or don't want romance. And yet their experiences with oppression haven't changed for better or worse because of it.
Tell me again how this makes them privileged? And as long as we're discussing racialized misogyny...tell me how a woman of color who doesn't identify as acomm is privileged over a white man who does.
For male-presenting aros and aces, the pressure often comes from other men
That's called toxic masculinity. Men are supposed to be dominant toward women (especially in relationships), and aren't seen as properly fulfilling their role in the patriarchy if they're not. And ace and aro men are not really any more harmed by this than:
- gnc/feminine men
- male kinksters who are submissive
- men in polyandrous relationships
- celibate men
- men who cry easily or are soft-spoken
None of those men are oppressed either.
Societal pressure makes it harder for new partners to discuss sexual compatibility
That's a result of sex-negativity and purity culture, which harms everyone.
One of the most common contexts for asexual corrective rape is being raped by a romantic partner, especially for female-presenting aces involved with men.
Ace women are not the only ones harmed by rape culture, misogyny, abuse, and violence - nor are they uniquely harmed by it or more harmed by it than other women. The same goes for aces feeling obligated to have sex with a romantic partner.
Rape is always traumatizing and tragic, but this is not an example of aphobic oppression and it is not corrective rape.
I'm not going to directly quote the rest because it basically amounts to "aros are oppressed because they're lonely" phrased with entirely too many words. And uh...no.
Anyway, Ettina, your post is homophobic, transphobic trash and so are you.
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