breakfastcourse

[breakfastcourse]

Heterosexual

Pride Month

Happy Pride Month to my gay, bear, androphilia, lesbian, gynephilia, asexual, demisexual, autosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, skoliosexual, lithsexual, gender fluid, androgynous, drag, genderqueer, bigender, non-binary, hermaphrodite, intersexual, neutrois, transsexual, transgender, two-spirit, trigender, aromantic, greyromantic, lithromantic, demiromantic, biromantic, panromantic, polyamorous, and heterosexual family. Be proud of who you are and who you love. Stay beautiful.

[breakfastcourse]

Classic Homophobia or Tumblr Discourse?

“The gay community is overly sexual and only cares about sex.”

“Gay spaces are NOT safe for minors.”

“Everyone has the capacity to be attracted to someone of the opposite gender.”

“Lesbians can still be attracted to men.”

“Being only attracted to the same gender is weird and I don’t get it.”

“We understand you don’t like these terms we’ve assigned to describe you, but you’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Actually, we know how much you dislike these terms so we’ll start calling you them mockingly.”

“Why are we ignoring the fact that gay men can be and ARE sexual predators who will prey on straight men?”

“Lesbians contribute to the male gaze and are extremely misogynistic.”

“Gay men and lesbians are violent oppressors who must be stopped before they destroy us.”

“EW! No! I’m not gay, I’m _______.”

“Gay men dying during the aids crisis was not tragic. They died, and rightfully so, because of these bad things they did.”

“Gay men and lesbians have had it good for too long.”

“Even though this other group has caused us these problems, let’s blame the gay community.”

“The gay community controls the media.”

“The gay community is selfish and filled with upper class snobs.”

[breakfastcourse]

so like, gotta ask: why dont aro/ace people belong in the lgbtq+ community?

It’s not that they don’t belong, it’s that it isn’t a deciding factor of if someone is LGBT or not just like if they were black, for example

Asexuality is specifically to do with a persons relationship with sex and it’s an incredibly complicated thing for a lot of ppl but how asexuality is used usually is with the split attraction model

Under the split attraction model people have romantic and sexual attraction so if someone is asexual they may be hetero romantic which means they still experience straight attraction, it’s just not sexual attraction

Someone being a boy who likes girls isn’t a watered down version of that or any less straight because they aren’t interested in sex

It’s also about what the LGBT community is which is a community/political coalition to protect and help those affected by homophobia and transphobia

This is what it has been since the start of the community and it’s about the oppression of these two groups because of shared experience giving that these two oppressions were originally almost materially identical(look up inverts if you need history on it)

This being said unless someone experienced homophobia or transphobia they are then not in need of the resources and services set up by the LGBT community for these groups

On the basis of having no attraction of a certain type, or indeed no attraction, a person doesn’t experience homophobia or transphobia directed at them and so does not stand to need the resources set out by the community

The community also has very scarce resources so it’s not as if it’s open to join for any group who wants help but can get it elsewhere

Does that help?

[breakfastcourse]

not to Discourse but if people stopped pretending attraction can be evenly split into sexual and romantic attraction for once instead of accepting that it works and feels differently for everyone maybe they would realize that you can be attracted to someone without wanting to have sex with them right now this second, or ever, and we could all stop pathologizing and micromanaging the particulars of our sexual orientation (the term deriving from sex as a word for gender at the time it was created, not sex as the act) and come to the collective understanding that the labels gay/bi/lesbian/straight on their own already include every single possible relationship to sex you could ever possibly have and absolutely no qualifiers, ace/demi or otherwise, are needed, because attraction as a concept encompasses more than just the urge to have sex with another person

it’d be also super neat if we could stop pretending that it’s somehow more inclusive or easier for people with a fraught relationship to sex to split sexual orientation into Ace and Non-Ace as if it’s any help at all to shove e.g. lesbians who struggle with the sexual aspect of lesbian identification off into their own restricted zone away from Normal Lesbianism that requires a special prefix before lesbian, instead of normalizing a definition of lesbian that includes any and all ways people might feel about sex and that their way of feeling attraction is just as much a normal part of lesbianism as anyone else’s, no qualifiers needed

the idea of a split romantic and sexual orientation is an unhealthy, pathologizing way of looking at sexual orientations that’s just gonna end up alienating people who feel lost in mainstream depictions of sexuality even more and i am done with pretending that i am okay with that kind of rhetoric being spread

[breakfastcourse]

this may come as a shock but cis aroaces are a privileged class over anyone lgbtpn. even though they’re not straight, they’re still more privileged than lgbtpn people and benefit from our oppression.

[breakfastcourse]

Homophobia is everywhere, and yet? You’re still here! You’re still doin! it Look at you, living your life. You’re a badass. Good job you.

[breakfastcourse]

Why do inclusionists never want exclusionists to interact with their posts? Doesn’t make it much of a discourse, if you’re going to do your best to keep it an echo chamber.

[breakfastcourse]

I don’t even understand it when people say “people kill asexuals for being asexual.” Like why are you lying? Literally no one gives a fuck about being asexual. You can walk into a Christian church and say you’re asexual and they won’t give 2 shits and at most they’ll look confused and side eye you. If you say you’re gay or something then that’s another story. But literally no one is out here saying “you don’t feel sexual attraction? Well let me kill you” like y'all just some fear mongers and whenever someone points that out y'all call us “aphobes.” How are we the aphobes when y'all lie and fear monger young aces by telling them shitty lies like “everyone is trying to kill you!” and “asexuality was in DSM!” Like y'all are so transparent lmao

[breakfastcourse]

Why do inclusionists never want exclusionists to interact with their posts? Doesn’t make it much of a discourse, if you’re going to do your best to keep it an echo chamber.

[breakfastcourse]

I’ve been thinking about something but it’s hard to express so bear with me.

I think the thing that makes asexuals stand out from LGBT people is… Ignorant people often think being L/G/B/T/P/N is the same thing? Like the people KILLING you aren’t going to stop to ask what your identity is… They equate not conforming to your assigned gender with being gay, and visa versa. It’s all the same to them.

Another thing is that laws targeting LGBP people effect trans people as well. Take equal marriage for example: if a trans person can’t change their legal gender, then even if they’re in a hetero relationship, their marriage would still be considered legally a gay marriage.

That’s what this community is about. All of us sticking together because laws that hurt one of us probably hurt the rest.

That’s why when I see inclusionists say stuff like “well trans people and gay people have different goals so why can’t we be in there too!” I get frustrated. Yes, individually each letter of the acronym has different goals, but we’re united because of our common goals and common oppressors.

[breakfastcourse]

[breakfastcourse]

Not a topic for debate.

[breakfastcourse]

so there’s a story from my life that i think a lot of inclusionists would benefit from hearing.

this story starts about four years ago, when fifteen year old me, still thinking i was bi and knowing fervently as hell that I Am Trans. i had a terrible, terrible shoulder length haircut, and i decided one day i was going to go to my school’s gsa meeting.

now at this point i’m out to one person in the whole world, and i’m fucking shaking as i walk into this shitty public school classroom that hasn’t changed pretty much at all since like 1962. that first time, i sat on a desk in the back row shaking like a leaf and didn’t say a word to anyone.

but that year, our gsa’s president was aj, who was nonbinary and awesome, and they smiled at me and wore batman boxers and went to glsen meetings in the city on the weekend, and slowly i learned that not only could it be ok to be trans, it could be amazing.

but that is not the point of this story.

the point of this story is that that year, i felt safe. there were gay adults there who made sure we were all safe, and other gay kids who had fought tooth and nail and carved out this club from the highschool that didn’t want to give it to them. sure, there were one or two straight kids, but it didn’t matter, and they sure as hell were never excluded. they didn’t feel the need to take up extra space, or make sure everyone knew they were Straight. they were there because their friends were there, or they really believed in the cause, even if it was just giving a group of suburban gay kids a safe room.

and much like the exclusionist/inclusionist discourse, there was never a concentrated effort on either part to other each other- until there absolutely was.

my junior year, our gsa president was a cishet guy. in case anyone i know reads this, i’ll call him harry. harry was a great guy, and he really believed in lgbt rights. he shouldn’t have been president, though. because once we made the “face” of the lgbt movement in our school a straight guy, it suddenly became cool to come to gsa meetings if you were a straight kid. and believe me, you knew who was gay and who wasn’t when you walked in that room.

the straight kids would stumble in in packs of four or five, and always sit by the window, eating most of the food and laughing and whispering to themselves. they talked over us, and when i (one of the two vice presidents) ran the meetings, you could feel the giant question mark in the air. more than once, i had people misgender me, flounder about with their hands even though i had already told everyone my pronouns, and on one memorable occasion, had someone actually ARGUE with me when i said i used he/him. in the gsa. the one club in the entire school for lgbt kids. someone told me i was straight up wrong- that i wasn’t a guy.

and of course, it would be disingenuous to not talk about my own bully joining the gsa. joining maybe isn’t the word- he was there before me, and left before i joined- but he came back. and of course, having the one insanely openly gay kid, the one who leered at guys in the changing rooms, and watched rupaul like a religion, who was transphobic and thought being a drag queen made you trans, who thought being bi was fake, and was loud and open and vocal about all these things, that made a difference in the tone of the room.

walking into that room became more stressful then almost anything i did. i had two eating disorders, worked 25 hours a week, organized our club fundraiser, did tech and acting, and had to deal with my abuser all weekend, and walking into that room was the one thing that made my shoulders hunch in on themselves.

because in that room, everyone knew i was trans, and nearly everyone either thought i was wrong, or thought that was a fun party trick. you can imagine how welcoming it felt for 14 or 15 year old lgbt kids.

slowly, the actual gay kids left, including one of the co-presidents. she was a lesbian of color in a school of almost all white straight kids. in what should have been the one place in school where she could talk about that, she instead had to bottle it up and trade it in for leaving and never talking about it.

the next year, it was even worse. the president was cishet; the vice president was cishet. the cool gay adults who had cared about us and tried so hard to make us safe had hung up the towel, and instead two cishet teachers sat in with us. one of them refused to allow any gay interpretations of her curriculum, and actually gave one of my friends a bad grade on a paper because she argued there were gay undertones in a seperate peace. the other thought that my bully’s jokes about mexican people clamoring to marry americans at the airports (a joke that left my friend in tears when they heard it) was hilarious. the room was full of straight people. occasionally, a few of my friends would come with me, but mostly we would leave early. the cishet freshmen got into fights with the lgbt freshmen, and the lgbt freshmen stopped coming.

it took less than three years for a safe space to become an almost all straight club, all of them piling into a room to laugh at the racist gay kid’s jokes, or to gawk at the rest of us.

some of you might say “that was a small highschool club,” and you’re right!

but this isn’t a small problem.

when you let cishet people into the lgbt community as anything other than staunch, serious allies, you start taking away lgbt people’s voices. and we’ve seen this already. cishet aces got representation at pride this year, while lgbt poc couldn’t talk about how they’re being abused, assaulted and murdered at higher rates than any other part of our community. online, tumblr posted pictures of the ace flag, but excluded the lesbian flag.

i understand that you think you really do belong in our community, but you don’t. you deserve your own community, where you feel safe. where you don’t have to argue with us, where you can talk about the issues you face. but that isn’t with us, clearly.

and taking away our voices isn’t going to make yours any louder.

[breakfastcourse]

About the mods

There are 10 mods on Breakfastcourse

Mod Cereal (creator)- She/they, non binary, lesbian™, white, autistic

Mod Cake (it’s a breakfast food what are you talking about)- she/her, trans woman, lesbian, white, mentally ill

Mod Avacado- He/him, trans man, gay™, Ashki Jewish, autistic + adhd

Mod Toe- He/they, trans man, aro/gay, white, bpd + adhd, phisically disabled

Mod Chorizo- They/them, genderfluid/non binary, aro/bi, mexican, wheelchair, adhd, type 2 bipolar, anxiety, aspd

Mod Carrot- they/them, non binary, lesbian, white

Mod Omu (short for omlette)- she/they, woman, white, disabled

Mod Pancake- She/her, woman, bi/ace, black latina

Mod OJ- He/him, wtf is a gender, Gay™, white, mentally ill

Mod Bacon- she/her, woman, bi, biracial, mentally disabled

[breakfastcourse]

so there’s a story from my life that i think a lot of inclusionists would benefit from hearing.

this story starts about four years ago, when fifteen year old me, still thinking i was bi and knowing fervently as hell that I Am Trans. i had a terrible, terrible shoulder length haircut, and i decided one day i was going to go to my school’s gsa meeting.

now at this point i’m out to one person in the whole world, and i’m fucking shaking as i walk into this shitty public school classroom that hasn’t changed pretty much at all since like 1962. that first time, i sat on a desk in the back row shaking like a leaf and didn’t say a word to anyone.

but that year, our gsa’s president was aj, who was nonbinary and awesome, and they smiled at me and wore batman boxers and went to glsen meetings in the city on the weekend, and slowly i learned that not only could it be ok to be trans, it could be amazing.

but that is not the point of this story.

the point of this story is that that year, i felt safe. there were gay adults there who made sure we were all safe, and other gay kids who had fought tooth and nail and carved out this club from the highschool that didn’t want to give it to them. sure, there were one or two straight kids, but it didn’t matter, and they sure as hell were never excluded. they didn’t feel the need to take up extra space, or make sure everyone knew they were Straight. they were there because their friends were there, or they really believed in the cause, even if it was just giving a group of suburban gay kids a safe room.

and much like the exclusionist/inclusionist discourse, there was never a concentrated effort on either part to other each other- until there absolutely was.

my junior year, our gsa president was a cishet guy. in case anyone i know reads this, i’ll call him harry. harry was a great guy, and he really believed in lgbt rights. he shouldn’t have been president, though. because once we made the “face” of the lgbt movement in our school a straight guy, it suddenly became cool to come to gsa meetings if you were a straight kid. and believe me, you knew who was gay and who wasn’t when you walked in that room.

the straight kids would stumble in in packs of four or five, and always sit by the window, eating most of the food and laughing and whispering to themselves. they talked over us, and when i (one of the two vice presidents) ran the meetings, you could feel the giant question mark in the air. more than once, i had people misgender me, flounder about with their hands even though i had already told everyone my pronouns, and on one memorable occasion, had someone actually ARGUE with me when i said i used he/him. in the gsa. the one club in the entire school for lgbt kids. someone told me i was straight up wrong- that i wasn’t a guy.

and of course, it would be disingenuous to not talk about my own bully joining the gsa. joining maybe isn’t the word- he was there before me, and left before i joined- but he came back. and of course, having the one insanely openly gay kid, the one who leered at guys in the changing rooms, and watched rupaul like a religion, who was transphobic and thought being a drag queen made you trans, who thought being bi was fake, and was loud and open and vocal about all these things, that made a difference in the tone of the room.

walking into that room became more stressful then almost anything i did. i had two eating disorders, worked 25 hours a week, organized our club fundraiser, did tech and acting, and had to deal with my abuser all weekend, and walking into that room was the one thing that made my shoulders hunch in on themselves.

because in that room, everyone knew i was trans, and nearly everyone either thought i was wrong, or thought that was a fun party trick. you can imagine how welcoming it felt for 14 or 15 year old lgbt kids.

slowly, the actual gay kids left, including one of the co-presidents. she was a lesbian of color in a school of almost all white straight kids. in what should have been the one place in school where she could talk about that, she instead had to bottle it up and trade it in for leaving and never talking about it.

the next year, it was even worse. the president was cishet; the vice president was cishet. the cool gay adults who had cared about us and tried so hard to make us safe had hung up the towel, and instead two cishet teachers sat in with us. one of them refused to allow any gay interpretations of her curriculum, and actually gave one of my friends a bad grade on a paper because she argued there were gay undertones in a seperate peace. the other thought that my bully’s jokes about mexican people clamoring to marry americans at the airports (a joke that left my friend in tears when they heard it) was hilarious. the room was full of straight people. occasionally, a few of my friends would come with me, but mostly we would leave early. the cishet freshmen got into fights with the lgbt freshmen, and the lgbt freshmen stopped coming.

it took less than three years for a safe space to become an almost all straight club, all of them piling into a room to laugh at the racist gay kid’s jokes, or to gawk at the rest of us.

some of you might say “that was a small highschool club,” and you’re right!

but this isn’t a small problem.

when you let cishet people into the lgbt community as anything other than staunch, serious allies, you start taking away lgbt people’s voices. and we’ve seen this already. cishet aces got representation at pride this year, while lgbt poc couldn’t talk about how they’re being abused, assaulted and murdered at higher rates than any other part of our community. online, tumblr posted pictures of the ace flag, but excluded the lesbian flag.

i understand that you think you really do belong in our community, but you don’t. you deserve your own community, where you feel safe. where you don’t have to argue with us, where you can talk about the issues you face. but that isn’t with us, clearly.

and taking away our voices isn’t going to make yours any louder.

[breakfastcourse]

hey, i’ve seen a lot of fear mongering in the ace community, and i feel like i really need to say something about it (this is definitely more towards the kids on this site who are exposed to this sort of shit when they’re incredibly impressionable, but it’s still for everybody).

to all aces and those on the ace spectrum, please understand that you are NOT in any danger for your ace identity. while some people may question what your orientation is, i want you to understand that you’re not going to be attacked for it.

you are safe. you and your identity are safe. you have no reason to be afraid. i know tumblr may make it out to be that there are dangerous acephobes afoot, ready to make you live your life in fear and misery or some bullshit like that, but trust me when i say that there aren’t. nobody is going to attack you for being you and your identity.

please please understand that you shouldn’t have to be afraid of the world just because of who you are. nobody is going around attacking aces for being aces. the world isn’t pitted against you. nobody is out to get you, i promise.

just take a deep breath and remember that this is the internet. people tend to blow things completely out of proportion, and that’s harmful. situations need to be evaluated. there is no acephobia rampant in the streets, there aren’t ace people being beaten up/killed just for being ace. most of what happens is just because the society we live in tends to make it where relationships require sex, and people being denied it has ALWAYS been an issue, and not just an ace issue. your being ace isn’t going to single you out for violence of any sort.

you are safe. you are okay. i promise you this.

[breakfastcourse]

-mod omu

All mods rb with what you want to be called

- mod cereal