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prince-liest · 2 years ago

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ARO/ACE NAVELGAZING

Now that I've unlocked the final square on my ell gee bee tee bingo card, I've begun to wonder how much of my gender thing is sourced in being an aroace thing. I find that despite being 27 years old, being called "girl" has never actually quite bothered me, but the word "woman" in relation to myself is so viscerally unappealing that I can't find any way in my imagination to comfortable with it. I've noticed that about myself before, but I've never really thought about it overmuch, and now I'm wondering if it is because "adult woman" is a status that is just inextricably connected with being an object of sexuality and romance in my mind for messy societal misogyny reasons.

I've always identified extensively with robot/android/AI characters - Breq from Imperial Radch, Murderbot from the Murderbot Diaries, Connor from Detroit: Become Human - and I used to think that it was, in fact, the gender thing.

But the other thing all of those characters have in common is that they're not canonically subjects of romance or sexuality and, in fact, in some cases are explicitly portrayed as finding those things repugnant. Further introspection also reminds me that I've found similar comfortable relatability in female characters who aren't inhuman in any way, but also aren't involved in romance in any major way. Archivist Wasp comes to mind, and so does Baru Cormorant (who is very notably a lesbian, which is an active threat to her existence, but did not feel to me like she ever had a romance so much as she had close, complicated, painfully unromantic yet codependent relationships that she then destroyed - though I haven't read the third book).

In those cases of female protagonists who aren't involved in romance, they are significantly more relatable than non-romantic male protagonists because non-romantic male protagonists still feel very male to me. Society and media don't usually hinge male characters' masculinity on their romantic and sexual experiences in the same way that feels like a default for female characters. And in comparison, female characters that aren't involved in romance still experience the societal consequences of being female, which are important to my ability to relate to a character. And in the meanwhile, separating them from any romance feels like it de-sexes them in the narrative, in a way. I get that I'm reading a female character, but I don't feel like I'm reading about a woman because woman is something that has been drilled into my head as "object of sexualization and romance."

Despite the lack of discomfort, "girl" is still not a word I identify with strongly. Rather, it feels more like a safe mask, particularly since most of the people who use it are people who I do in fact have to mask with. But it's a comfortable mask. It's not one that I mind. In contrast, any time someone calls me a "woman" it makes me want to crawl out of my fucking skin. On the other hand, being called "boy" was outright delightful as a kid. On the third mutant hand presumably growing out of my rib cage, I strongly identify with the term "lesbian" because I feel like it encompasses many of my experiences, ranging from misogyny to compulsory heterosexuality. It just also turns out that the discomfort I feel at someone being interested in me isn't restricted just to men.

Coming to the realization of the aroace thing feels freeing in the sense that I no longer feel like I have to seek and perform romance that I have no interest in, and that I'm allowed to continue being comfortable in my skin without ever wanting a romantic partner. However, it does also certainly highlight how strongly I value my platonic friends and makes me wish that deep platonic relationships and non-sexual closeness were more normalized in society. I've spent a long time mentally prodding my feelings about closeness with people with a stick (particularly the way that they are sometimes very hot-and-cold), and I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I do in fact really value closeness and intimacy, but that on top of having strict personal limits, I am also just extremely put off by this perpetual undercurrent of anxious concern that what if someone thinks this is not platonic.

People having romantic interest in me is very stressful and frequently makes me aggressively disinclined to be around that person at all, and I have not always handled that well in the past. I actually recently had someone (cishet, unfamiliar with the term) say that the very concept of being aro/ace sounds like a code word for "intimacy issues." Which sucks! I didn't see that statement coming and had a difficult time explaining how incredibly not-uncomfortable I am with intimacy. If I had any desire for sexual or romantic intimacy, it would not be even remotely anxiety-inducing to acquire. Source: Been there, done that, it was gross. I am very full of love. I would just like it to be platonic. The wires simply don't run in the direction of romance for me and I want people to stop assuming that they do whenever I do express fondness.

Shout out to the one friend I have that actually did have a crush on me but never acted on it because she picked up what I was putting down before I realized what I was putting down, pfft. She is the best. I can't wait to further irrevocably integrate myself into her life and babysit her future children.

Anyway, I'm gonna go bury myself in another several dozen Hank & Connor fucked up found family fics and also continue to emotionally identify with robots because that is how I see myself emotionally, which I am very comfortable with.

#personal #this is introspection #this is NOT political or queer analysis #don't come at me for committing wrongthink I'm just trying to figure my own shit out here #shoutout to my ego for this literally never having been a “what's wrong with me” problem #and literally always having been a “what's wrong with other people” problem lmfaooooooooo #long post #sexuality #introspection #navelgazing

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ms-demeanor · 2 years ago

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i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

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