November 2016 – Page 32 – Just another WordPress site

thequintessentialqueer:

look, you can call out specific ace folks who post horrible homophobic shit without acting as if it’s indicative of the entire ace community okay?? and without using those examples as proof that asexuals inherently do not belong in the lgbtqiap+ community??? like you don’t need to actively seek out instances of ace people saying fucked up shit and compile whole tags on your blog for those instances and make those tags shit like “#ace disgrace.” you especially don’t need to take posts that are in no way hurting us–posts reminding ace people that they’re not broken, posts hoping for education on ace identity so that people don’t have to spend their lives thinking there’s something wrong with them, etc–and make mean comments on them. i’ve seen all of that multiple times from people i consider friends, and it makes me feel sick in every part of my being.

i’m a lesbian. i don’t think i’m ace, although i’ve definitely had to spend a lot of time questioning it because i have some serious issues related to past trauma that have yet to be resolved. but you know what? i remember being maybe thirteen, and happening across an article in one of my mum’s magazines about asexuality, and every person interviewed talked about the pain of not knowing there was a word for them, that there were others like them. they were mostly women and many of them talked about forcing themselves to have sex for years with men and not wanting it and feeling wrong and broken for not having the desires expected of them by this society. and i could relate so strongly to that feeling that i started fucking crying. to this day compulsory heterosexuality has me so fucked up i still find myself imagining a future in which i marry a man, because that was what i learned from every facet of the world from birth. i hate the idea; i hate the part of me that still expects to be straight, to be “normal” but it’s there, and it’s put me in a lot of really awful, upsetting situations with men where my comfort was ignored and my boundaries violated and i sat silent and let it happen. so even as a very young teen just coming to terms with my orientation, i felt so strongly for these women, most of whom would define themselves as romantically straight: their experience of the world may be in a lot of ways easier than mine but i felt the shared pain, the commonality between us sharply.

i’m a lesbian. i’m a black-mixed woman. i’m neurodivergent. this summer at a pride protest in my community one of the speakers, a woman I look up to immensely, addressed the multiple axes of her identity, from her disability to her blackness to her queerness. and one thing she said was “i came out twice: once at 14 and once at 47.” she came out as a lesbian at 14 and as ace at 47. she talked about being proudly and loudly lesbian for decades, but always feeling like something was missing, like something wasn’t right, and not having the words or knowledge base to understand what it was. she talked about asking her doctor if there was some kind of medicine she could take to “fix” her asexuality, and how her doctor said “why would you want to do that? are you unhappy? is it causing you pain?” and she talked about how, after decades of discomfort, she was able to fully come into herself by learning about and embracing her asexuality as well as her lesbian identity. both were important to her: both needed to be spoken proudly.

one of my friends said that asexuality wasn’t like lgbp+ orientations because it was “making private information about your sex life everyone’s business” whereas being lesbian or pan isn’t necessarily about sex. he said that it shouldn’t be talked about except with partners, that people shouldn’t be coming out as ace the way they come out as trans or queer. but i think that’s just…so untrue, and so hurtful and dismissive to all the people for whom the term “asexual” was like coming home, like a light turning on, like comfort and understanding. i’ve also heard people say that asexuality is not inherently part of the community, often under the assertion that their struggle is not comparable. but then why am I as a cis woman considered a community member, despite the immense privilege I hold over trans people, and trans women in particular? it would be just as easy to take posts from all the horrible terfs on this site who happen to be lesbians and use them as proof that lesbians don’t belong in the community, so why isn’t that a common practice? what kind of logic is it to say that because a heteroromantic ace doesn’t face homophobia, they have no right to talk about their particular experiences with compulsory sexuality and erasure? you don’t have to be The Most Oppressed to talk about your particular experiences, as long as you aren’t erasing or dismissing those of people whose marginality is not yours. i can talk about my struggles with compulsory heteronormativity and with lesbophobia, and that doesn’t mean I think that trans lesbians somehow magically have it easier than me. it is harder in this world to be a trans lesbian than a cis lesbian, and that still doesn’t mean my particular struggles are invalid.

like god, call out ace people who are perpetuating homophobia, because you should call out anyone who is perpetuating homophobia. but don’t deliberately construct a narrative that says they are homophobic because they are ace. don’t tell them that talking about their experiences and identity is inappropriate. don’t create a dichotomy in which only the lesbian or bi or gay or pan or queer part of a wlw or mlm ace is relevant and significant, especially if they explicitly consider both to be integral and interconnected. so what if you see the barriers ace people face as comparatively small? if “all” a community needs to stop being marginalized is increased awareness from the general public, that should be something to strive for and something to celebrate, because it means that with a little effort we could create a world in which no ace person has to spend years feeling broken. because as someone who used to cry every night and had a whole plan to kill myself if i wasn’t straight by the time i was 20, i know what it feels like to think you are broken and wrong for something innate and precious, and i don’t want anyone else to ever feel that.

raptorific:

Ever since I did my post about how Thomas Jefferson would go to hell, people have been like “can you do Andrew Jackson too” to which my answer is a resounding HELL NOPE. That dude will LITERALLY MURDER ME and the fact that he’s dead WILL NOT DO A THING TO STOP HIM BECAUSE HELL CANNOT HOLD HIM. Like, most U.S. Presidents are murderers by proxy, but this dude was a LITERAL SERIAL KILLER WHO LIKED TO GET HIS HANDS DIRTY. He is responsible for the only time in American History that the president’s bodyguards had to save the ASSASSIN’S LIFE from the PRESIDENT. You know how we called Nixon “Tricky Dick” because he was a liar and we called George W. Bush “Dubya” after his middle initial and we called Abraham Lincoln “Honest Abe” because he was a pretty above-the-board type of guy? They called Andrew Jackson “Old Hickory” because he liked to BEAT PEOPLE ABOUT THE FACE AND BODY WITH HIS CANE. Like he was absolutely a genocidal maniac who apparently only held the office of President because everyone was too afraid to ask him to leave but now that I’ve said that, I want you all to know that if I’m found beaten to death with a blunt object, I can save the police the trouble of investigating: It was former U.S. President Andrew Jackson come back from the dead for revenge.