urls-are-hard

[urls-are-hard]

I really want to understand

has anyone else struggled with fully comprehending some really big things about queer theory/etc? I want nothing to do with terfs/radfems or terf ideology but the only things I’m ever able to find that address my confusion seem to come from that side of things. I know that might sound like a cop-out - I’ve definitely seen people roll their eyes at posts like this “oh I don’t *want* to having anything to do with terfs, but-- [insert rad-fem adjacent “just questions,,.,.,.,.”]” - but I really really am trying to research and understand things and I have Shinigami Eyes on my computer so I steer clear of red-marked links, but it leaves me with so many unanswered questions.

like, the biggest one that gets me is that like - when people talk about “don’t refer to being lesbian as synonymous with not liking dick” or “don’t refer to being gay (specifically a gay man) as being synonymous with not liking pussy” - I understand where that’s coming from. but at the same time, it’s literally hard for me to fathom the idea of how monosexual orientations can possibly exist under the gender anarchist framework that a lot of modern queer theory supports?

so like. say I’m a lesbian. I proclaim that I am only attracted to women. great. “that includes amab trans women?” “yes, amab trans women are women.” “that includes trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery?” “yes, trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery are still women.” “that includes butch trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery?” “yes, butch trans women who haven’t had bottom surgery are still women.” “but that doesn’t include afab trans men?” “no, trans men are men, and I’m only attracted to women.” “and it doesn’t include afab trans men who haven’t had bottom surgery?” “no, even if they haven’t had bottom surgery, trans men are men and I’m not attracted to men.” “and that doesn’t include femme afab trans men who haven’t had bottom surgery?” “correct, they’re men and I’m not attracted to men.” 

I don’t understand - how can attraction be so separate from physical appearance/bodies in that way? if I see a person, my body/mind isn’t going to wait to react with attraction to that person until I know how they identify?

and that doesn’t even touch on the question of non-binary/genderqueer people, whether afab or amab - some monosexual people seem to include *some* non-binary people as part of the group that they identify as being attracted to - but how does that work!! is it only “woman-aligned” non-binary or agender people that lesbians are/can be attracted to??? I’ve heard some discussions in the past about how the definition of lesbian shouldn’t be as restrictive as it tends to be - is this part of that??

all of this comes down to - if genders are socially constructed, and womanhood/manhood are these foggy, undefined *things* that are unique to each person and have nothing to do with the physical sex/assigned sex of the person (though I know that intersex people play into this as well) then how do we rectify that with having these lines of division that are just----so blurry. how can a person say “I identify as being Not Attracted To Women” when that’s just such a fuzzy line in the first place???

the frustrating thing is that when I look at it like this, the question comes to me: “how else are we supposed to understand categories of attraction/etc besides divisions based on genitalia/secondary sex characteristics, as opposed to gender” (i.e. “I *am* attracted to people with vaginas”, “I’m *not* attracted to people with penises”) which I feel like is just,,,,,an *incredibly* reductionist perspective to have, but I keep batting it away and hoping I’ll find some other framework to replace it with that will actually be something that I understand. cause at this point, I identify as bi/queer *mostly* because I’m pretty sure that I’m attracted to both cis men and cis women (I also have toyed with identifying as grey-ace because of how little attraction I experience, period - thus the “pretty sure” and the lack of specification regarding knowledge of my attraction to trans people - attraction for me is pretty sporadic and random on the best of days) - but I also partially identify as bi/queer because - beyond being pretty sure that I’m a woman attracted to women (making me queer) I don’t know how to further “draw lines”, if you will, to say what my label would be even if I wanted to consider something more exclusive like lesbian (not saying I am, just saying I wouldn’t even know how to start thinking about that).

I know this is long and you may not want to spend all this time debating specifics of queer theory to a rando on the internet. I’ve just been sitting on all of this for months and have yet to find a space where I can actually discuss it - it feels like in all the spaces I’m in, it’s Already Established what the Right Dogma is and it would feel incredibly awkward to openly question any of this.