Tag: discourse

callout post for @yall-aphobes-need-to-stop, asserting that trans men should be allowed to ID as lesbians. this is transphobic, as it’s basing who can or can’t be a lesbian on birth assignment instead of identity as a woman. this attitude is especially harmful against trans women, who are frequently told we can not ID as lesbians because of birth assignment. for context, YANTS is not a lesbian, they are nonbinary and questioning if they’re a trans man as of the time of writing.

[caption: two images from yall-aphobes-need-to-stop’s blog. First image reads: “anonymous asked: men cant be lesbians.  yall-aphobes-need-to-stop answered: There are a lot of men who, before they came out as trans men, identified as female and as lesbians. Then, as their identity changed and they realized they were trans men, they held on to the lesbian label.I personally don’t think those people are invalid. Why do you, anon?”

the second image contains the same post as the first, as well as another. Anonymous asked: If you say trans men can be lesbians, that means cis men can too. YANTS answered: That’s not how it works, brah]

callout post for rainbowgoddamnunicorn for misleadingly using gay as as an umbrella term where it doesn’t apply.

[text reads: Oh my fucking god. Literally by the fact that you’re aro/ace you are gay. Gay is literally the most general umbrella term for ANYONE who is is any way not 100%cishet. They’re literally truscum but with “gay” instead of trans. You don’t get to tell anyone else they aren’t gay you fucking moron, it’s not your choice!!]

herefortheace:

Reminder that people in this mess have over and over attempted to erase ace and aro PoC from our communities, declaring all or almost all aces/aros white and privileged in every way, because that would be more convenient for their ‘arguments’ about how we’re all horrible and have oppression fantasies born from a lack of Real Problems in our lives.

Reminder that ppl have loved telling aces/aros of color upset about this and other racist shit to be quiet, and called us ‘tokens’ and generally been nasty to us to shut us up, or just randomly assumed we’re white even when it was perfectly clear and easy to find we’re not. Bc we’re ace/aro and won’t let them shit on us

Reminder that white ppl who loathe aces and aros will frequently try to exploit the pain of PoC by acting as though racism is an ace/aro thing, and as though white aces/aros (or even ace+aro PoC) are more racist and have more white privilege than them and ppl they like.

Reminder ppl in this mess who hate aces and aros continue to give zero shits about how sexualizing aces/aros hurts ace and aro PoC and adds to racism we experience

Statements that are literally TERF rhetoric that I’ve seen inclusionists say

lilycourse:

clitcheese:

lilycourse:

  • trans people were added in later in the LGBT movement
  • straight trans people can call themselves gay
  • trans men can call themselves lesbians
  • cis lgbp should quit using the word cis in cishet and cis aroace, even though by doing so, you’d implicitly be kicking out trans/nb people
  • aces have a greater right to LGBT spaces than trans people do, because asexuality is a sexuality and trans isn’t
  • defending TERFs from meanies who want them run over by a bus

hey could you provide urls and screenshots so i know who to block? and so i can spread it around so other trans inclusionists know who to block. otherwise this post is completely useless at stopping this behaviour

except for the 1st and 4th points, which i think are misunderstandings. of basic stuff like trans people saying that we had to fight for a letter in the acronym, which is really gross to say that our recent history is terf rhetoric. point 4, trans people are frustrated that some cis people are misusing the word cishet to imply that they don’t also benefit from cis privilege. which is again, really dishonest to say that trans people are using terf rhetoric if you’re cis

Right, I plan on getting around to making screenshots sometime, but it’ll take a while, because this was just an informal list of bad behavior I’ve seen from inclusionists, and it should hopefully stop some of the transphobia going around.

I always interpreted the first point as trans people didn’t always participate in the community and became participants in the community later on, not this letter-adding stuff, and that is wrong, because bi trans women of color helped start the community.

The fourth point, the cis in both cishet and cis aroace is so that we can acknowledge straight trans people don’t oppress us, and we can acknowledge we oppress trans people on that axis. We’re probably going to have to agree to disagree on that point.

oh yeah this is sleepdontvisit’s version of history. trans women of colour started the movement, and then nothing political happened afterwards, of course. nothing like TERFs, or respectability politics spending a few decades distancing the gay community from trans people. we’re not saying trans people weren’t always there, but we’re acknowledging that some parts of the community actively fought against trans people being there. denying that the T is a relatively recent addition to the acronym only erases the work we had to do against respectability politics.

also, Stonewall happened long before the term bisexual caught on. bisexuals were always there as lesbian and gay, because they only referred to kinds of relationships before they meant political identities. they had to persuade people to include the B, to signify that they still belonged when terminology shifted.

Statements that are literally TERF rhetoric that I’ve seen inclusionists say

lilycourse:

  • trans people were added in later in the LGBT movement
  • straight trans people can call themselves gay
  • trans men can call themselves lesbians
  • cis lgbp should quit using the word cis in cishet and cis aroace, even though by doing so, you’d implicitly be kicking out trans/nb people
  • aces have a greater right to LGBT spaces than trans people do, because asexuality is a sexuality and trans isn’t
  • defending TERFs from meanies who want them run over by a bus

hey could you provide urls and screenshots so i know who to block? and so i can spread it around so other trans inclusionists know who to block. otherwise this post is completely useless at stopping this behaviour

except for the 1st and 4th points, which i think are misunderstandings. of basic stuff like trans people saying that we had to fight for a letter in the acronym, which is really gross to say that our recent history is terf rhetoric. point 4, trans people are frustrated that some cis people are misusing the word cishet to imply that they don’t also benefit from cis privilege. which is again, really dishonest to say that trans people are using terf rhetoric if you’re cis

‘it’s dishonest to compare ace exclusionism to TERFs’ yeah that’s nice but consider: blocking every terf on sight before they can spread your ace exclusion posts. if you’re letting terfs bring in notes on your exclusionist posts, you’re complicit. if u don’t mind that they’re you’re biggest fans, you’re complicit

i can’t believe people are honestly confused about what Straight privilege is and how it’s different from being just heterosexual/hetromantic

example. on one hand, we have het trans women. these are trans women that are attracted only to men. but the Straight trans woman is about 1000 times more rare. there’s an obscene set of standards that are required for a trans woman to get even a fraction of straight privilege to work:

  • cis passing
  • completely 100% gender conforming, but careful not to approach hyperfemininity or anything that would call extra scrutiny to her presentation
  • almost certainly truscum. will have ‘only two genders’ memes up on her facebook
  • has had bottom surgery, will look down on trans people who don’t want or can’t afford bottom surgery as fucking Deviants
  • yes that’s right it’s quite likely that it’s completely impossible for a pre-op/non-op trans woman to have straight privilege because that shit evaporates the second anyone can connect you to even a hypothetical penis
  • not a condition, but the mythical Straight trans woman will generally always hold the one massively outdated and misleading theory about transness being “an intersex condition of the brain”, that an accident of birth Literally put a female brain in the wrong body.
  • we’re talking ‘50s sexism where Lady Brains are hardwired for nurturing, communicating and shopping. Any modern ideas on gender equality immediately disqualifies you from being the Acceptable trans woman
  • we’re talking, the girl asking the guy out first being an unmentionable sin. the acceptably straight trans woman has to be completely fucking passive in anything involving sex and relationships
  • disavowing anything related to being LGBTI or Queer, absolutely no pride in being trans
  • the other trans women come under the T, but not the Straight trans woman. the T is for trans people who don’t want to be completely normal
  • trans pride is for people who are being trans wrong. Trans is Suffering
  • we’re talking about people so terrifyingly determined to be Straight and Completely fucking Normal that they’ve spent their life purging anything not completely gender-conformative about their presentation, and distancing themselves from actually being associated with trans people (this isn’t meant to be a judgement statement bc this is really all for personal safety)
  • notice how i haven’t even mentioned sexuality yet
  • but yes, the straight trans woman is completely straight
  • Totally Vanilla straight. polyam is forbidden. even kink is suspect, because it could mark you as a deviant. the only acceptable kink is like, 50 Shades of Grey style shit where the Dude always Doms and even a blindfold is risqué
  • I’m out of points but feel free to reblog this and add more Straightness conditions for trans women because all the terms and conditions are frankly astounding if we could count them all up

so. while the het-attracted trans women are capable of homophobia, it’s only the Straight trans women who are capable of benefiting from homophobia by virtue of being accepted into the class of Straights. these are the kind of people who can make homophobic jokes at work to make friends with straight co-workers. the kind of people who get high-fives after verbally abusing someone openly gay or trans. the kind of trans women who, (if white) gets promotions for looking like Everyone Else

and here’s an accompanying list of how to have Straight privilege as a nonbinary person:

  • you literally can’t wtf
  • straightness as a concept literally is incompatible with nonbinary identities
  • It’s Adam and Eve not two gender neutral names
  • when the fuck have you heard a third option in ‘”marriage is between a man and a woman”
  • an AFAB nonbinary and a dude is a fundamentally non-straight couple
  • an AMAB nonbinary and a woman is a non-straight couple
  • an AMAB nonbinary and an AFAB nonbinary couple is, do i have to say it, not straight
  • whatever they call their relationship, they’re the opposite of straight
  • even if they’re completely cis passing
  • i swear to god some of you people are trying to categorise Straight people as literally any couple with one peen and one vageen
  • if you don’t know how to categorise sexual attraction without erasing someone’s gender identity then u should probably have a time out with all the other transphobes
  • i can’t believe i have to tell you this because bi people have been saying this for literally decades but: having PIV sex isn’t the thing that magically bestows straight privilege upon someone. being straight is an identity and a position of privilege and nothing as simple as an action
  • straight privilege doesn’t land on anyone who doesn’t identify strictly as straight, or as strictly a man or a woman
  • literally how did we get this far that i need to write a refresher course on this. how did we let this become controversial

basically, remember Straight isn’t just the opposite of being gay. Straight is the opposite of being gay, lesbian, bi, pan, ply, trans, nonbinary, queer, ace, aro. Straight is the opposite of every marginalised gender/sexual identity. that’s why they’re marginalised, as in pushed to the margins in favour of Straightness as the default, the one identity allowed to be normal.

sorrynotsorrybi:

Labels are meant to help you make sense of yourself. They are not for other people to dictate, and they are not set in stone. You are allowed to shed old labels, and to take new ones when it feels appropriate, without shame. You are, have been, and will always be 100% real and 100% valid. You are you, and you are wonderful.

prokopetz:

“To be fair, I never said that all [gender or sexual minority group X] are vile parasites upon the LGBT community – just [narrowly defined subset Y]. Of course, I automatically assume that all [group X] are [subset Y] unless they can prove to my satisfaction that they’re not – and good fucking luck proving a negative! – but that doesn’t make me a bigot. Heaven forfend.”