murkydizzy - Tumblr blog

[murkydizzy]

Aphobia got me posting

Damn I found a take so bad it cleansed me of my impostor syndrome

[murkydizzy]

I'm gonna completely disregard all the bits about oppression until the very end because they've been thoroughly rebuked by all the notes. There -is- something to say about infighting: it is remarkably shitty for an aromantic cishet man to be homophobic or transphobic in a queer space. It's also remarkably shitty for a gay, trans, or nonbinary person to be a-phobic, kinda like how OP is doing. So yeah, OP's take is bad and falls into its own trap lmao

== TL;DR ==

Excluding aromantic (but otherwise non-queer) members of the LGBTQ+ community doesn't serve a clear good purpose and is detrimental to the community besides. And OP's take also manages to be transphobic a longer way around.

-- Point 1 -- (A-spec people are queer)

LGBTQ+ communities are a place for protecting marginalized groups, sure. But I don't think that's the fundamental reason why they exist. First and foremost, LGBTQ+ people and spaces challenge heteronormativity. That thing is an assumption that goes something like this:

"Everyone wants to have a romantic and sexual relationship with the opposite gender."

There are three different assumptions baked into here that I've found so far. There's "Opposite gender", assuming that gay people don't exist. There's "The opposite gender", ignoring a non-binary gender spectrum and not allowing for the possibility of fluidity, transition, and xenogenders. Finally, there's "Wants to have a romantic and sexual relationship". That's where a-spec people come in: the heteronormativity assumption does not allow for the existence of asexual or aromatic people.

Because of this, asexual and aromantic people are part of the LGBTQ+ diaspora, because their existence challenges heteronormativity. They are valuable to LGBTQ+ discussion because they bring perspectives that are unique to their experiences. Inviting them in helps us learn about relationship structures that are outside the norm of "two people in love and romantically fucking". This is true even if the aromantic people talking are cishet and masculine.

Cishet masculine aromantic people as a group are not here to steal valor or be homophobic in queer spaces. That's… what, stereotyping? Doesn't quite feel like a strawman, so I'm not sure how to communicate this fallacy. But OP's hypothetical problem of "cishet aro man in a queer space decides to be shitty" is solved by letting him in, seeing he's shitty, and immediately ejecting him. The problem of "gay person in a queer space decides to be shitty" is solved the same way. We have precedent for that, actually: see known misogynist James Somerton.

-- Point 2 -- (Privileged people are helpful and valid members of the community)

Cishet aromantic people are pretty straight-passing. Sure there's privilege in that, but that's precisely why they are valuable members of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, the more "normal people" (white straight-passing) there are at a protest in the United States, the safer the protest becomes. Cops want to do brutality against out-groups, not so much in-groups. The white straight-passing members of the LGBTQ+, e.g. white cishet aromantic people, can use their privilege to help protect exactly those marginalized community members that need protecting. And to do that protection, all they really need to do is exist and show up. Excluding these privileged people from the LGBTQ+ community doesn't make us safer. It does the opposite.

But suppose we take OP's suggestion that cishet aromantic people need to show the same level of advocacy for queer people (I noticed OP specified gay, lesbian, and bisexual, but no other groups, isn't that ~strange~). At that point they would be allowed into queer spaces. Okay… so when do aromantic people need to advocate? Before joining, like it's part of the application? Or after joining, like there's a Performance Improvement Plan they're put on when they walk through the door? That's really ungenerous either way. So suppose some straight person finds out they're aromantic and they wanna learn more. They get to an LGBTQ+ space, and they're told "You must ~advocate~. Then we will let you in." There's no time for the person to learn about queer experiences, or effective methods of advocacy, or about themselves now that they know they're queer. They've got this high-stakes charge of "fighting the fight" they have to focus on instead. All OP's proposed policy does is filter out lots of well-meaning aromantic people that might have been real allies. You know what it allows for? Chauvinist types who heroically fight the fight and save the day, dominating all the attention without regard for whether their advocacy is effective or hurts LGBTQ+ people.

Like, OP's policy doesn't allow for the existence of queer people who just found out they're queer, -unless- those people magic themselves into knowing everything and anything about queer culture and using it to advocate for LGBTQ+ people. And the people in that second category aren't real. (Either they don't exist, or they aren't genuine. Hey, like known plagiarist James Somerton!) People who are questioning are valid. "Well, where were you when you thought you were straight?" Maybe they were being excluded from LGBT spaces so they couldn't learn more. OP shoulda stopped that excluding stuff if they wanted these people to join in, before or after they found out they're queer.

-- Point 3 -- (Excluding questioning people)

Let's end on how OP's take is also a New And Improved Transphobia.

OP's take ends with the clapback "No straight people in LGBT spaces." Clearly OP isn't talking about hetero trans people (I would hope), that's not where I'm going with this anyways. But OP still ends up excluding trans people -despite- that.

Let's take a lesbian trans woman, call her Liz. She transitioned in her 30s because she wasn't thinking about her gender too hard until her late 20s. Now rewind to a few years before her transition, when she presented as a man and was attracted to women, and Liz is thinking "Wait… am I not a straight man?" Suppose she wants to learn more. She goes to her local LGBT space, and talks to people there, looks at the little library they've built, and takes a mental note to browse later. And suppose at some point in the conversation, Liz drops her (then) identity. She doesn't come out then and there, because maybe she's scared, or she's taking things at her own pace. Maybe she doesn't even wanna say she's questioning. "Oh yeah, I'm a straight guy, I just wanna learn more." Imagine if OP is in the room. "No straight people in LGBT spaces, fuck the rest of you. Get out, and the rest of you get your head out of your asses." Boom, Liz gets ejected. She doesn't get to acquaint herself with the LGBTQ+ diaspora, she doesn't get to learn what gender euphoria means, she just gets a "No you're straight (not trans yet), go away". We're really just gonna throw her out like that? Is that what OP is suggesting?

(Yes it is, I checked the notes and they never clarify. And by OP's standards, because questioning people are dying, it's consistent for me to take a paranoid reading here. OP woke up choosing violence, I woke up feeling petty.)

Liz finds a more accepting LGBTQ+ space, transitions into a wonderful lady, marries another wonderful lady, and lives happily ever after because fuck you this is my hypothetical I want a good ending.

When you start cutting hairs as to who is "queer enough" or who is "marginalized and needs space" in an attempt to box people into groups or out of them, you aren't able to distinguish between the boogeyman in your head and the people who need help. You are always going to exclude more people than you think because humans are complicated. There isn't some mathematical categorization of people that you can find that solves that problem for you. "Oh, we just gotta find all the right labels and THEN we can start excluding people." I'm confident that the first part will never happen. Or at least if it does, it'll be ages from now and by then we'll have pulled our heads out of our asses and stopped excluding people needlessly.

-- Sidenote -- ("Name one")

EDIT: I previously had a blurb about someone named Bubba Copeland, but I've been informed that the harassment he received was for actions he really did take instead of just being conservative propaganda, so I'm not gonna use him as an example. (You can read his wikipedia article, but CW basically everything.)

Instead I'm just gonna let my "questioning people are dying" claim stand on its own because it's true.

-- Summary --

OP's exclusionary acts make them a 🤡

Lemme know if I missed some tags and I'll edit them in, I'm new to this Tumblr thing

I think a lot of the "queer" community forgets that LGBT spaces were meant to protect marginalised groups from persecution.

I don't think there has ever been a recorded case in history of a "cishet aromantic man" who was persecuted.

No one has gone "oh Jakey just likes to fuck chicks but doesn't want to be in a relationship, we should stop talking to him." No man has been bashed on the streets and left for dead because he liked sex but didn't want to get married. No man has had his parents and family abandon him because he didn't want to have a formal relationship.

The fact that y'all want to go to pitch for straight men who just want sex, but don't show the same level of advocacy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people is disgusting.

No straight people in LGBT spaces, fuck the rest of you. Get your head out of your asses.

[murkydizzy]

I have come to the conclusion that I am complicated. So instead of haphazardly using emojis to introduce myself to people, I made a thing in Asymptote, which is an unwieldy vector graphics language. Here's the code in a pastebin: https://pastebin.com/uAcs0sPe

My identity's involved but I swear it's simpler if you meet me.