|
Bel Shazar posted:Deepest apologies, I read your prior posts quite differently. all good. I was not as clear as I could have been, I get pretty worked up about this issue for obvious reasons.
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2022 23:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 07:53 |
|
|
Verviticus posted:a discussion i had with an ex a while back was that she was not totally settled on her gender identity at the time. she identified and still identifies as female, but has at different points in her life felt different or unsure. at one point she asked me if she decided that she was trans and identified as a man whether or not i would still date or or be attracted to her. it was a hard question but at the time i felt like the answer was yes. attraction does have a heavy emotional aspect, you have (had?) an emotional connection with this person and that absolutely would effect things. While they say (and I agree) that it would be bi for you, a straight man, to be attracted to another man, things do get funky with trans people sometimes. Sexuality labels are all from way before we were allowed to exist and honestly it depends on person to person. I know a trans woman who says she has been attracted to exclusively women all her life. She married her highschool sweetheart who was the one who talked through gender stuff with them, and then came out themselves 5 years later as non binary trans masc. The two of them are poly and live with a third person, a cis man. All three are more than happy for the trans woman to keep calling herself a lesbian. you will see trans people be incredibly militant that its not gay to be attracted to trans women, and this is because cis men in particular are loving awful. gay cis men are just as awful to trans men as straight men are to trans women. in reality, once you get down to the individual level, things can and do get a bit more nuance. its a similar concept to the "i wont date trans people" being transphobic. individual attraction between 2 actual human beings is a very different discussion to demographic/group level.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2022 23:42
|
|
|
Holy poo poo that this thread is arguing about demisexuality or whatever like it's 2015. Self-identification is a tool and if a particular linguistic object is useful to you then use it, if it's not, drop it and let it go. And also be aware of what "useful" means: does your definition of that include rethinking harmful power structures, etc.? So yeah LGBTQ rights are being rolled back across the United States and it sucks, what are the current nation-level strategies to fight against this? What are the state/local strategies? What are we supposed to do?
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 01:35
|
|
|
Sharkie posted:Holy poo poo that this thread is arguing about demisexuality or whatever like it's 2015. Self-identification is a tool and if a particular linguistic object is useful to you then use it, if it's not, drop it and let it go. And also be aware of what "useful" means: does your definition of that include rethinking harmful power structures, etc.? return to climbing up lamp posts to drop heavy bags through cops windshields like the good ol days of our lady and saviour marsha P
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 07:50
|
|
|
I think on a national level, we are in a little bit of a bind: -Courts have been relatively kind to us, but mostly rooted in Title IX and equal protection which doesn’t speak to issues like the Don’t Say Gay law or the general public health crisis we see for trans people. -On a legislative level, one party tolerates us at best and the other can barely stop Jim Crow from being resurrected. I think there are a lot of things that can happen on a local level though especially when it comes to counties and school boards. I think a lot of it comes from pushing for intersectionality. Queer Justice can never exist without racial justice, but we also need to stop allowing monsters to lay claim to religion. My son is going to a daycare run by Christians and the lady who runs it told me in her heavy southern accent that if an employee ever misgenders me to tell her immediately. A friend of mine who is trans found one of her biggest champions in her brother in law who was a Catholic priest. Our enemies want to isolate us, and I think the way we win is by fighting against that. We need to show up. We need to make sure that we’re building community connections and we not to cede ground. At the end of the day there is one side that has no problem with kids killing themselves and there is a side that wants to protect kids. And I think that is a message that resonates with people when they understand.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 15:45
|
|
|
One again, I wanna thank Timeless Appeal for making this tread. We have been needed a new space to talk about queer issues for this board and hopefully It doesn't get swarmed and forced to be closed. I do wanna try and make an effort post though on some...more abstract queer issues though. I'm not THAT great at it, but here we go. Joe Biden sucks. In fact most of the Democratic party sucks. They seem to be more focused on saving a status quo that the 2016 election, at best, proved to be untenable. It also appears that they never really had a problem with any of the more troubling things the Trump administration did. They had a problem With Hillary Clinton not being president. We still have ICE detaining and keeping children locked up and trying to keep non white people from coming here. There's no real effort to try and address the growing inequality. And simply putting people from marginalized communities in positions of power is not going to fix that. If there is anything the past decade or so of US politics has taught me, it's that electoral politics will not save up. At least not by itself. But even with all that going against them, the Republicans view the existence of trans people as a "Debate". In truth they view the existence of all queer people as a debate and as proof that pedophilia is on the rise but they secede ground to Gay's and lesbians for now. If these are my choices, then yes I am voting Democrat. I may live in a capitalist hellscape, but at least they don't view my existence me as a threat. But ever since the 2020 election I've had other leftists who, after telling them I voted for Biden, have said that I am also partly responsible for the suffering that the Biden Administration is causing. That I am unsympathetic to the suffering of others because I voted for Biden. I even had one guy in a discord tell me that Trump could have been brought around of Trans rights. There was a video made about a certain type of leftist by a trans woman named Sophie from mars that I really recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZyIjBxxpTY It's basically talking about the type of leftists who call everyone else in Left wing movements who are not them as straight up paid CIA assets, Or evil boushie liberals. And other insults like that. The kind of leftists that feel that in order to build a workers revolution, that we need to build a large tent movement that welcomes everyone. Including those that have racists and homophobic and transphobic beliefs. But in practice this usually ends with people from these marginalized communities pushed out of said big tent. And I'm noticing this kind of leftists more and more? Maybe I need to poke my head into C-SPAM again. Or maybe I'm crazy. At best, I think the conclusions that are being jumped to by leftists that are critical of queer rights in general are. "The Democrats and mainstream liberals big corporations are doing more and more to celebrate queer people, even if it is surface level celebration. Therefore the celebration of queerness is neo-liberal, boushie, and counter revolutionary" Like...because Amazon is using a rainbow colored logo on twitter and putting queer books and TV shows on it's front page in celebration of Pride month, Queer people love Jeff Bezos. Or they reach "Bullshit stories and debates in the media that tangentially involve queer people. like Mr. Potato head is now Non-Binary, are a distraction from Real Issues." which is true but without fail, I've seen that evolve into "The concerns of queer people is a distraction from real issues." Or we get to the far end of the spectrum which is straight up transphobia or homophobia. Painting all queer people as only caring about parties and loving. I think a big part of this is that a lot of people are aware of queer people but have never actually interacted with queer people, so their reference point is still pretty, rich white gay people they see on like...People Magazine or are championed by Liberal Politicians (I'm thinking of that guy from the New Queer Eye show. Forget his name). Or it's liberal politicians like Pete Buttigieg who even though they are gay, fit the mold of milk toast liberal politicians. This leads a lot of them into thinking of Queerness as a thing that only exists in rich white people. And that colors their impressions of the entire community, including those in the working class and POC. My overall point here is that Homophobia and Transphobia is not exclusive to the religious conservatives. It exists in Liberal and leftist spaces too. Hello, Bill Mauhr once said during the 2016 elections that Trans people need to shut the gently caress up or were gonna cost Hillary the Election. And more and more of what use to be held up as champions of the left now seem to view the existence of Trans people as a bridge to far. And its...really depressing. Did all this make sense? It was kind of stream of consciousness and I can go back after training to add stuff or clarify.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 22:42
|
|
|
I think the problem here is that you're making a lot of great sweeping generalizations and assumptions about what leftism involves. Some guy on discord is not the left. Dipshits on twitter not the left. Bill Mahr, god help us, is a right-winger. To me, the left is defined by a set of principles intended to make the world a better place and working towards them. Labour organizing, housing activism, LGBT rights activism, actually going outside and doing poo poo, that's leftism. Bitching on the internet about how trans rights are a distraction or pride month is just another way to rainbow-wash capital? Who gives a poo poo. It's a distraction at best. It's true we need a big tent movement, because otherwise we get atomized and crushed individually. And yeah not everyone you bring into the movement is going to have a full set of progressive beliefs, because we all live in a society and you have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be, or you'll get nowhere. But it's like you said, most people's exposure to LGBT people is rich white gays on TV, and once, for example, they join the union and meet non-rich non-white gay etc people and see them as regular people going through the same poo poo as they are it brings home that we're not a different species or anything. That's how you start to shift people out of their harmful beliefs. If they keep saying and doing racist or homophobic poo poo to the point it's pushing people out of the org that's an organizational failure, not an existential one. Sometimes you just got to bang some heads together, metaphorically speaking
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2022 23:55
|
|
|
some plague rats posted:I think the problem here is that you're making a lot of great sweeping generalizations and assumptions about what leftism involves. Some guy on discord is not the left. Dipshits on twitter not the left. Bill Mahr, god help us, is a right-winger. To me, the left is defined by a set of principles intended to make the world a better place and working towards them. Labour organizing, housing activism, LGBT rights activism, actually going outside and doing poo poo, that's leftism. Bitching on the internet about how trans rights are a distraction or pride month is just another way to rainbow-wash capital? Who gives a poo poo. It's a distraction at best. This does make a lot of sense. Its worth pointing out that there's a very big difference between Rowling and someone who just doesn't know anything but grew up watchng Ace Ventura, and whatever other examples are out there for other marginalised groups. We don't have to tolerate queerphobia in the room, but not being able to find a common ground with inperfect but supportive cishetallo people will hurt the cause. You do catch more flies with honey.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 03:32
|
|
|
Miss Broccoli posted:This does make a lot of sense. Its worth pointing out that there's a very big difference between Rowling and someone who just doesn't know anything but grew up watchng Ace Ventura, and whatever other examples are out there for other marginalised groups. Yeah exactly. It's an important distinction, and one that's worth remembering. I work a unionized job, and if everyone who ever said something transphobic got booted from said union would be no one there, not even me. But when we're there and I'm acting as just another voice and another vote same as them it quietly reinforces to a lot of those people that they have a lot more in common with me than with the people trying to screw us out of our benefits. It feels like a lot of the "oh but a big tent means includes people who hate me, personally, it's dangerous to include people who aren't already allies" discourse is driven by people who, not to put too fine a point on it, spend way too much time online and not enough actually interacting with the people they're theorycrafting about. If all the organizing you do is posting on twitter, of course you'd think the worst, because nobody on there is normal. It's where psychos go to say poo poo that would get them locked up in the outside world. Once you step out of the pressure cooker and actually deal with the people you need onside, it turns out that being transphobic etc is way less of a priority than paying their bills and feeding their kids and if they see you helping them do that then some of those unexamined assumptions start to crack I mean at the baseline people who actively, violently bigoted aren't going to be getting involved in left causes- your local proud boy contingent probably aren't showing up at the eviction resistance protest, for example. But if they do? Get them outta there because they're loving up to something
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 03:58
|
|
|
I'm trans myself and knew my entire life. Mere months before I came out I got probed on these here forums for making a helicopter joke. Entirely out of self hatred and jealousy that non binary people get to do fucken wilddddd things with gender and i couldnt be a boring ol' plain woman. It happens
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 04:07
|
|
|
Miss Broccoli posted:I'm trans myself and knew my entire life. Mere months before I came out I got probed on these here forums for making a helicopter joke. Entirely out of self hatred and jealousy that non binary people get to do fucken wilddddd things with gender and i couldnt be a boring ol' plain woman. god yeah I said some absolutely awful poo poo when I was first coming to terms with it as well, incredible how bad self-loathing can gently caress up your sense of basic human decency isn't it
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 04:10
|
|
|
I don't look back fondly on my high school years for the same reason. Growing up in the rural Midwest in the 80's-90's was not a place to develop a healthy attitude towards queer issues and I know for a fact I said a lot of pretty heinously homophobic poo poo to try to blend in and not admit that hearing it hurt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 09:12
|
|
|
I think one thing I try to keep in mind as an educator is how far we’ve come. There is still tons of homophobia and transphobia that you see in kids, but honestly most of the children I teach would never even imagine saying some of the poo poo my friends used to say when I was a kid. V fixed before DeSantis sees my poor word choice there :P v Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Apr 16, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 12:53
|
|
|
Thank you very much for making this thread. But also:Timeless Appeal posted:I think one thing I try to keep as an educator is how much we’ve come.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 13:52
|
|
|
Miss Broccoli posted:I'm trans myself and knew my entire life. Mere months before I came out I got probed on these here forums for making a helicopter joke. Entirely out of self hatred and jealousy that non binary people get to do fucken wilddddd things with gender and i couldnt be a boring ol' plain woman. The other interesting thing about that fairly tired joke is: no one takes it to its logical conclusion. When someone identifies as a man or a woman or a non-binary person, that carries with it certain assumptions about how they wish to be treated, sometimes implied and other times made explicit. Just as one way of dealing with racist jokes as someone who is "supposed" to laugh at them is saying "...I don't get it, can you explain?" perhaps we should do the same thing when people identify as a helicopter or whatever. "Okay, how can we accommodate you in living as your authentic helicopter self?" Be entirely supportive; give them what they claim to want.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 14:43
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:The entire point of "demisexual" is "I do not get sexually aroused by random people being naked." I would just like to say as a "demisexual" (I fit the definition but don't really consider it my identity since I think it's not a marginalized attraction type) who watches porn, no not everyone watches porn because they are aroused by seeing random people naked. I don't feel any sort of arousal from seeing pictures of random naked people, but I do get arousal by inserting myself into the scenario. It's the action more than the visuals for me. I know many people are aroused by seeing naked people, but it's not the only thing that porn offers. I think demisexual is a fine label to use if someone wants to call themselves that. It's a good shorthand to describe how they approach sexual relationships. I don't think it's a particularly oppressed demographic, but I'm not the queer police.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 16:06
|
|
|
some plague rats posted:god yeah I said some absolutely awful poo poo when I was first coming to terms with it as well, incredible how bad self-loathing can gently caress up your sense of basic human decency isn't it While sitting next to my best friend (who is non-binary and had recently come out to me). If I hadn't been apologetic and in a full blown anxiety attack over what I had said, they probably would have severed and I wouldn't have blamed them. I do think it's important to make the point though: closeted trans people often hate themselves (I certainly did) and are jealous of other trans people and, in my case, of cis women. Transitioning has sheared most of that negative emotion away, for me. impossiboobs posted:I would just like to say as a "demisexual" (I fit the definition but don't really consider it my identity since I think it's not a marginalized attraction type) who watches porn, no not everyone watches porn because they are aroused by seeing random people naked. I don't feel any sort of arousal from seeing pictures of random naked people, but I do get arousal by inserting myself into the scenario. It's the action more than the visuals for me. I know many people are aroused by seeing naked people, but it's not the only thing that porn offers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 16:27
|
|
|
I was going off what I remember someone who called themselves that explaining what it was a few years ago, so thank you for the correction. I'd agree with you that they're probably not oppressed, but I can't speak for everyone, and whether oppression exists or not if it's a label that makes them more comfortable to apply to themselves and helps other people understand them, I'm all for it. To get off that subject a bit since someone mentioned it earlier, it's kind of amazing how much casual transphobia there was in the mid 90s played off as comedy. Ace Ventura is the big one of course but you also had Naked Gun, and comedians like Rodney Carrington. I'm sure there's even plenty more I've forgotten or didn't even know about.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:I was going off what I remember someone who called themselves that explaining what it was a few years ago, so thank you for the correction. I'd agree with you that they're probably not oppressed, but I can't speak for everyone, and whether oppression exists or not if it's a label that makes them more comfortable to apply to themselves and helps other people understand them, I'm all for it. Early 2000s too, Chuck Lorre was a habitual offender in his sitcoms. It was occasionally played off more sympathetically than, say, Ace Ventura, but it was still used as a source of comedy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 17:57
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:
I do remember Friends had a few, including one rather gross "Don't you have a bit too much penis to be wearing that dress?" joke. Late 90s to Early 00's loving sucked for trans representation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 18:13
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:To get off that subject a bit since someone mentioned it earlier, it's kind of amazing how much casual transphobia there was in the mid 90s played off as comedy. Ace Ventura is the big one of course but you also had Naked Gun, and comedians like Rodney Carrington. I'm sure there's even plenty more I've forgotten or didn't even know about. If you feel like going through a deep dive, this video covers the topic pretty thoroughly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTMidTLO60
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2022 21:05
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:I was going off what I remember someone who called themselves that explaining what it was a few years ago, so thank you for the correction. I'd agree with you that they're probably not oppressed, but I can't speak for everyone, and whether oppression exists or not if it's a label that makes them more comfortable to apply to themselves and helps other people understand them, I'm all for it. It still happens, Arcane had a man in a dress whore to show how grimy and dirty and immoral Zaun is. i turned it off when I saw that. Same show they also had to fight super super hard to have the canon gay characters use a petname
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 03:25
|
|
|
I am queer but so far life has worked out such that I am mostly in a monogamous mostly heterosexual relationship and I have all the privileges etc that comes with it, also I am a white as a sheet computer toucher so I feel very much not on the oppressed end of the spectrum. I remember being called a fa—— in high school for wearing nail polish to a job and I just walked out and never returned, more privilege in being able to do that. An upshot of all this is that when I join the lbgtqia groups at various employers, people who don’t know me super well tend to assume I am in the ally camp somewhere, and I don’t care because I am not oppressed, and I’d feel weird looking for recognition for something that’s just part of my life and the concern of very few people. I am happy to see a thread around this stuff, anyway Cabbages and Kings fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 17, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 12:20
|
|
|
Twelve by Pies posted:I feel also like there's a larger disconnect between being able to accept a trans person and a gay person to some people. Like "I'm a dude like you, I just like having sex with other dudes instead of women," someone can still see them as "normal" and who that person is dating doesn't really change much about them. This is us reaping what was sowed in the fight for gay marriage. I remember this explicitly being the decision to make same-sex relationships normal/acceptable and I remember a variety of queer activists, including trans activists, sounding the alarm that people who fell out of that normalized category would be further marginalized, and a couple decade later, here we are. The fact that society now sees homosexual as more normal than these other things is a testament to how effective that campaign was. It’s not hard to imagine (if the demographics were different) a movement that had won rights for binary heterosexual trans folks that threw everyone else under the bus, since it preserved the sanctity of marriage being between a woman and a man. In fact, there are (outdated/odious) standards of care for treating transgender people that include a requirement that the person be living as their desired gender and one of the tests of that is their heterosexuality. Hil Malatino writes about this in Trans Care which is short and excellent. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/trans-care
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 13:43
|
|
|
Timeless Appeal posted:I think one thing I try to keep in mind as an educator is how far we’ve come. There is still tons of homophobia and transphobia that you see in kids, but honestly most of the children I teach would never even imagine saying some of the poo poo my friends used to say when I was a kid. Literally, everyone on this forums can look back on how school was for them, and remember how awful it would have been to even have be hinted about being LGBT. Even the hint of it would basically outcast you, let alone make you the target of rampant bullying or even assault or worse. My wife went to the high school in Michelle bachmans district, and they were featured in the rolling stones for the rampant gay bashing and abuse that went on there in a huge expose after several LGBT kids committed suicide. She even has memories of people being assaulted and attacked and kids using targeted accusations to cause harm to anyone they didn't like true or not. She is bi and always was more comfortable with woman, but the fear she had was like this massive drain on her because she was so scarred by what she dealt with. Hell I will flat out admit it wasn't till college and going to a school that was extremely LGBT friendly (hell it was known for the fact that looking like a hippy or a hobo was more popular then any other look) that I started to realize how bad some of my views were. And watching a friend come out, transition and go through everything involved from therapy, hrt, and finally surgery made me realize my own issues and how I needed to change viewpoints because I was able to acknowledge how hosed they were. Society has a whole has come extremely far in the last 15 years, it really can't be stated how bad things were before to people that didn't grow up in the 80s-00s. The fact of it is, LGBT is becoming mainstream and the outcry right now is because of fear and hatred by rabid assholes that are afraid of their fragile masculinity being impaired or their little child potentially not being this idealized figure they are grooming them to be. Biden at least is 100x better then trump ever would be on this, and I won't ever forget that he pretty much defined Obamas agenda on it and forced him to speak out for gay marriage because he went off script and stated his full approval for the gay marriage bans to be overturned without vetting it through the white house. Irregardless, this shouldn't be focused on the federal response, the state governments are pushing this poo poo and it's being led by the same people pushing anti crt legislation because it's meant to make bigots happy and then be used as a platform to try and win federal seats. The side benefit of harassing and driving minorities back into hiding is just there icing on the cake  : It honestly does remind me of the push back in the early 00s of gay marriage bans in the states. Just much more rapid due to how extreme the right has gotten and much more blatent UCS Hellmaker fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Apr 17, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 15:17
|
|
|
And I fully believe part of this push is still the same as most classic transphobia, that fragile egos are absolutely terrified of being sexually attracted to a trans man or trans woman. Because that would mean they are gay!!!!!! It all rapidly devolves into that population thinking that trans people shouldn't exist because then they don't have to worry about possibly being attracted to someone that they feel isn't real. Much of this being fragile male ego which seems to encompass many of the things that develop anymore.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 15:20
|
|
|
doingitwrong posted:It’s not hard to imagine (if the demographics were different) a movement that had won rights for binary heterosexual trans folks that threw everyone else under the bus, since it preserved the sanctity of marriage being between a woman and a man. In fact, there are (outdated/odious) standards of care for treating transgender people that include a requirement that the person be living as their desired gender and one of the tests of that is their heterosexuality. Actually that does remind me, I dunno if it was/is true, but I'd heard that in a Middle Eastern country (don't remember which one) that if they find out you're gay, they force you to undergo a sex change and that way you can still marry your partner since that makes it between a man and a woman. Which I guess would be kind of nice for hetero trans people, not so much for gay/bi cis people. UCS Hellmaker posted:And I fully believe part of this push is still the same as most classic transphobia, that fragile egos are absolutely terrified of being sexually attracted to a trans man or trans woman. Because that would mean they are gay!!!!!! Yeah, that was basically the form transphobia took in a lot of movies, was playing it off for comedy when a guy saw a woman and went "Wow she's hot I want to have sex with her oh no she has a penis now I must run away/vomit because I don't want to be gay!" It also explains why most male transphobes don't really care about trans men. Since they wouldn't be attracted to someone who looks masculine in the first place, it's not really something they're worried about. Well, it's a combination of that and the  stuff, anyway. The idea that men are inherently strong and women are inherently weak, so trans women are viewed as strong men trying to get access to women's spaces to attack them (be it through sexual assault, or just "dominating at women's sports"). But since trans men are viewed as weak women, they couldn't possibly pose a threat to strong men, so there's no reason to care about them (as illustrated in this lovely Skelley cartoon).
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2022 21:26
|
|
|
doingitwrong posted:This is us reaping what was sowed in the fight for gay marriage. I remember this explicitly being the decision to make same-sex relationships normal/acceptable and I remember a variety of queer activists, including trans activists, sounding the alarm that people who fell out of that normalized category would be further marginalized, and a couple decade later, here we are. The fact that society now sees homosexual as more normal than these other things is a testament to how effective that campaign was. I forget her name but one of the first transgender women to go on TV who was treated mostly as a curiosity advocated for exactly that. "Let me transition so I'm normal like the rest of you and not a filthy gay man" E: Iran is the force trans country Miss Broccoli fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Apr 18, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 07:26
|
|
|
UCS Hellmaker posted:Literally, everyone on this forums can look back on how school was for them, and remember how awful it would have been to even have be hinted about being LGBT. Being in high school during Dubya's presidency sucked. I remember the dancing and celebrating in college when gay marriage became a thing in the US, and I had been hoping that nobody else would ever have to grow up being afraid of this aspect of who they are. It's disheartening. The fact that genz is 3x more likely to identify as lgbtq+ gives a little bit of hope though, maybe it's not as scary for them. When I was really involved in activism the older people who were at Stonewall or of the era were crusty and serious. always telling us kids that we didn't know how good we had it, shaking their heads when we were casual about things which had once been taboo, gay handholding in public. Maybe it's just me becoming old and crusty, but sped up.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 09:48
|
|
|
I realized I had to vouch for the validity of the term "demisexual" because it describes something - some people is - I definitely ain't And was actually really helpful in proactively, positively aiding communication between myself and potential partners. If they identified as demisexual upfront I could respect that and know we probably aren't gonna work as sex partners. All while being able to respect they know that about themselves. Sapiosexuality though uhhh I'm gonna have trouble seeing level
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 09:55
|
|
|
aniviron posted:The fact that genz is 3x more likely to identify as lgbtq+ gives a little bit of hope though, maybe it's not as scary for them. I'm just barely gen z and i was bullied from grade 1 onwards despite trying my damnednest to fit it. I graduated in 2012 My brother in law is 14 faces a lot of the same poo poo I did. Its gotten better in that he can be 'he' at school but its still atrociously bad. They were still telling kids gays burned in hell when i was in grade 5. E: Sapiosexual is not a thing. its some wanky stuff. its definitely not a queer thing
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 10:24
|
|
|
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned that the "attracted to intelligence" part of sapiosexuality is not like, "I like people who have graduated college and read a lot of books" but rather, "I'm exclusively attracted to those who are intelligent/aware enough to be able to consent" which is still a bit insufferable as none of the other labels imply otherwise. I suppose you could argue it leaves things open, theoretically speaking, for sex with a consenting, sapient alien race, sort of like an extension to pansexuality, but -- again -- insufferable. Still, all those options are a bit less insufferable than "I only like smart people, actually" which we certainly don't need a label for, and does not strike me as part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Speaking of labels, one thing I notice in this thread is we haven't come across the term of two-spirit or two-spirited, which is pretty commonly seen in Canada now as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. It's not really my place to define exactly what that is, but from what I gather it's basically an attempt by the First Nations to reclaim gender identities which existed within their various cultures prior to being suppressed by colonizers. I suppose our closest comparable term is non-binary, but I think it's really interesting because it's an acknowledgement that the issue of gender identity and specifically trans and/or non-binary identities have existed for thousands of years in various cultures, and this is not a new way of looking at the world that we've reached at this specific point in time because we're just so enlightened and great.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 14:36
|
|
|
I've always interpreted sapio stuff as rejecting the societal focus on 'beauty'
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 14:39
|
|
|
Harold Fjord posted:I've always interpreted sapio stuff as rejecting the societal focus on 'beauty' Yeah, looking at some of the definitions online, I was probably wrong, but in my defense: it seems really ridiculous to call that a sexuality. Kink is not a sexuality, preference for intelligent people or tall people or whatever else, is not a sexuality.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 14:46
|
|
|
I agree but I think posters have done well in expressing how this is a general area of commonality in rejecting the bullshit "baby chiefs first game theory" social and sexual standards imposed by white supremacist patriarchy.
Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Apr 18, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 15:11
|
|
|
I don't think there's some minimum legitimacy threshold that needs to be met before people can use a label to understand themselves. We can just have a whole bunch of micro labels and nothing bad will happen. It will just allow some people to categorize themselves with specificity if they want.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 17:09
|
|
|
The problem with microlabels is, identity and community are inextricably linked, and you really don't want to atomize communities down to the level where there's no community at all. Why? Because there's strength in numbers and size. We're going to need to find commonalities, the things that link the lgbtq community together, because that's important for collective action. Everybody belongs to muliple categories and there's nothing wrong with being specific and individual about what category you're in, but you can't lose sight of the other, larger communities you're also in. And the big communities, when organized, can get things done.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 19:59
|
|
|
But you aren't going to foster a sense of community by telling people they can't identify as [x] they have to identify as [umbrella term y] instead. If people want to spend time talking about the intricate details of their feelings and use words to do that you can't... stop them? If they feel it necessary to do that you just have to let them get on with it, and I would suggest the more important thing is to be supportive so that regardless of the words they use they still think of you as someone worth sticking with/up for. If they spend time exploring those ideas and come to the conclusion that they are happy to be lumped in with a larger group, great, that was a productive use of their time because allowing space that encourages that self understanding is the entire point of being inclusive. If they do it and come to the conclusion that they have irreconcilable differences that necessitate different actions, also good, because then they can bring those needs to wider attention and they can become a part of unified political fronts in exchange for the support of the groups that need them. The idea that that introspective process could, or should be stopped only makes sense if you start from the assumption that people are going to just make up differences that don't exist for fun, which seems a weird assumption, to me. Either the differences don't exist (or are minor) and the result of the process will be an affirmation of that, or they do exist and we should know about them because a liberation that is conditional on suppressing some people's experience and needs for political convenience is no liberation at all, both morally and practically because those papered over cracks in the foundation will always reassert themselves. I do not, fundamentally, believe that people's thoughts need to be managed by some authority to prevent them from introspecting their way into false ideas, nor do I see how this could possibly be achieved even if it were the case, certainly not among a decentralized political alliance such as this. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Apr 18, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 20:01
|
|
|
PT6A posted:Yeah, looking at some of the definitions online, I was probably wrong, but in my defense: it seems really ridiculous to call that a sexuality. I've personally known very few people who identify primarily as sapiosexual but my interpretation has usually been for it to mean someone whose attraction to a person is driven more by their mental attributes than their physical -- someone primarily attracted to people who exhibit high emotional intelligence regardless of body, etc. I think that's, at least to a point, different than just "I prefer smart/tall/[insert specific characteristic here] people." OwlFancier posted:But you aren't going to foster a sense of community by telling people they can't identify as [x] they have to identify as [umbrella term y] instead. Agreed, and it's real easy to feel out of sync in a larger umbrella community to the point where you need to seek out those who might also align to your more granular identities - there are plenty enough articles/interviews/blog posts with demisexuals who cite previously identifying as ace before realizing it didn't quite fit and felt much more at ease with themselves upon discovering demisexuality, and were able to find/build a community from there. They're still under the broad asexuality spectrum/umbrella but some conversations/etc. are easier to have with people who more closely align to your specific thing, especially when it's an umbrella community that can sometimes feel a little too gatekeepy in how much sexual attraction someone can experience before they're no longer allowed to consider themselves ace.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2022 20:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 07:53 |
|
|
I hate to say it but there does come a point where being exclusionary is okay. If you include everyone who is in any way marginalized under the same big umbrella, your movement ceases to become a movement. Specifically there are two problems with being too broad. The first is that your movement no longer has a direction or specific achievable goals, as the various groups tug the movement in opposing directions. The second is that powerful interests which are part of the problem instead of the solution become the dominant voices. Take the US democratic party - in theory it's a large umbrella organization which represents the marginalized voices from many different groups across the country. In practicality, there are a few small groups which mostly dominate the policy agenda to the exclusion of others, and a small number of wealthy interests override the theoretical purpose of the organization on a routine basis. This has already come up in the thread several times, where democrats fail to support trans rights because other members of the organization have louder voices, and aren't concerned with or are actively hostile to trans people. What I am not saying is that you should be hostile to others, that things like sapiosexuality aren't real or don't deserve recognition, or that we shouldn't be allies. I'm also not drawing a line in the sand for who should and should not be a part of LGBTQ+ movements, I don't have a hard and fast answer necessarily. But saying that everyone deserves to be a part of the movement is also not a sensible position to take. Smaller, more focused advocacy exists and should continue to exist because overly large groups often fail to lobby for their smaller constituents.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2022 00:10
|
|