“Men run faster than women.” “Hence rape.” Or, Reddit in a nutshell.

Last I checked asexuality is legal, go fuck yourself.

Being asexual is legal? So is “being gay” or “being black” or “being female” …so if that’s the only criterion for oppression… YAY, WE BEAT OPPRESSION FOREVER! WHOOOOO!

But hey, thanks for switching from “go fuck yourself” to “fuck off” as that is at least not as actively ridiculous a thing to say to an asexual person. That was really big of you.

Also, celibacy != expression of asexual identity. Seriously. The Popemobile procession et al. isn’t like a fucking asexuality pride parade yanno. -_-

When I was co-leading the first ever training on our campus for our new Safe Spaces program a week or so ago, one of my contributions was that the term “queer” was a hotly contested one, with no set definition (one of the evaluations of that training demanded SET meaning for transgender and queer), and that it had to be used with care because there was no agreement in the various communities.

I use the word queer (and have for some years). I used “bisexual” before that. I am currently in a non-sexual lifetime partnership with a straight woman. Most people around us assume we are lesbians (we are lucky to have white and professional privilege as well as tenure).

I have seen MANY people of color reject the word queer (and there are some similar arguments by women of color against reclaiming “slut” because of the different histories of oppressions and social constructions of marginalizd identities). I am an academic, so work with gender and queer theory; there is a long history of tensions between “academics” and “activists” (also too simple a binary) that is in many ways justified, but I am also trying to change my institutional culture (we’re the last university in this part of Texas to start a program; the president says he supports us but not publicly in case of alum backlash).

In the early 1980s, I was in a bisexual support group that was denied meeting space at the Seattle Sexual Minorities Center because the gay man in charge didn’t consider bisexuality to be a “sexual minority.” I was told by lesbans that they’d rather sleep with a straight woman than a bisexual woman. A friend who was married to and have sex with a man but identified as a lesban was a member of a lesbian group who would not accept me (bisexual woman not currently having sex with anybody). I didn’t shift to queer because of these actions–I didn’t identify as queer until I became totally immersed in slash fandom and had some of the best *ahem* responses to slash fiction (that was after I’d been living with my partner for nearly ten years). But those experiences did confirm my sense that I don’t do well with groups beause of all the policing of us/them in every group I’d been in. (The bisexual support group had a hard time keeping women members, the guys told me.)

On a practical level in the here and now, I’m not going to exclude anybody who wants to work to change this incredibly sexist, misogynistic, homo-bi-trans-phobic (only reason most wouldn’t be asexual phobic is they haven’t heard of such a thing) culture. (Remember sexual orientation is not a protected category in Texas.)

On a personal level, I believe that more inclusion and awareness of all the multiple and contradictory ways sexualities and gender identifications operate is important; that the attempt to retrieve histories of what has been repressed, stigmatized, marginalized, and shunned is important, and that there are multiple histories (I gather that there has been a real problem with the erasure of trans people in the Stonewall protests and related activities by “gay histories”). The retrieval of histories is incredibly complicated and should not be used against people today whose identities may not “fit” past structures. For one example, I am interested both theoretically and practically in the question of the urban GLBT community’s inability to acknowledge/recognize rural queerness (Judith Halberstam has written about the binary of urban freedom/rural repression, and how that may be vastly oversimplified).

And most of all, I am against the attempt to single out “queerness” as a single/essentializing identity without any attention paid to intersectionality–I say the same thing about race, gender, and class in those discussions. (As someone heavily influenced by the work by white feminists published in the 1970s which, unlike MRAL, I’ve actually read, I’ve spent the past five years dismantling my transphobia.)

Lauralot and Bagelsan: what you have said makes a good deal of sense to me, and I’m sorry for the pain you experienced here. Conflicts and anger between people who assumed commonality are much more painful than the misogynistic crap from trolls.

Holly: I really love your take a lot of the time, but I’m not so sure that levity and joking was the best way to go in this situation–although that is probably my own bias. OTOH, I have friends who are poly and in what is in effect a group marriage who have to hide it and go through a whole lot of shit–and although I think the term has to be used with care, I do appreciate the possibility of queer heterosexuality.

Darksidecat: I love so much of what you post, all throughout the time I’ve been reading here, and a great deal of what you said in this most recent discussion also makes sense to me. The issues of privilege and appropriation are some of the hardest things to deal with.

I sometimes think that the changes that have been created by the LBGT activists (which, when I think back to my childhood seem enormous, though in absolute terms, there’s still a long way to go) are what have opened up the possibility of acknowledging multiples sexuailities and gender presentations–which does lead to painful debates.

But I’ll take the painful debates over the absolutely blank silence of my childhoood.

To give a feminist example, say tomorrow MRAL turns up and says he’s a feminist. Okay, that’s strange and unexpected, whatever. It’s if he then decides to spruik some of the usual anti-women shit that I’d say, that is not feminism as far as I, and I alone, would consider it — who am I to speak for anyone else? If it was me spouting anti-feminist shit would it fly because of claims to be a feminist? I hope not.

Exactly — which is why I feel that the important thing is to call out ACTIONS (when you talk about X you are redirecting the discussion, taking over this space, etc.) rather than IDENTITIES (you can’t identify this way because I say so!). I’d question MRAL’s feminism, but more importantly address why his specific words were problematic from a feminist perspective.

Sorry I didn’t understand you at first, Xanthe.

As far as the Oppression Olympics discussion goes … I just don’t see why it’s necessary for asexuals to prove anything about the degree to which they experience oppression due to their non-normative sexuality. I don’t hear the asexuals in this thread dismissing LGBT struggles or history. And as someone pointed out, the LGBT experience is not a monolith. My experience and my girlfriend’s experience are very different. Yet we’re still both queer.

But I’m not buying this “it was super easy because all they had to do was be a priest” business either.

I said it was easier and that there was a non violent end that allowed an expression of that, not that it was super easy or ideal. Read for comprehension, or not at all, and do try to remember that the point of comparison is BEING MURDERED.

Lots of cultures didn’t have celibate priests.

Most religious lives provide an out. Being celibate isn’t a requisite for being a buddhist monk (usually), but a buddhist monk has an excuse to not engage in sexual behavior. There are some that are pretty specific in religion being the opposite, and another small batch that actually had nothing to say on the subject, but by and large, religion lets you do this.

And none of this actually allows a person to live as an asexual–they’re still keeping up the charade that they’re attracted to the opposite sex but celibate for some other purpose.

Might be a bias in what I’ve read, but… not generally. It’s all about having conquered their . Again, not as good as “Nope, just don’t give a fuck” and living normally, but a better end than the competition.

Being asexual is legal? So is “being gay” or “being black” or “being female” so if that’s the only criterion for oppression… YAY, WE BEAT OPPRESSION FOREVER! WHOOOOO!
Illiterate jackass. I didn’t say you weren’t oppressed. I said you were less so. Asexuality has *repeatedly been held up as a pinnacle model of sexuality throughout history*, especially in the god damned West. LGBT has had… two spirit people (In a few NA cultures, I think), Hellenistic Greece (for men), and some of East Asia (For men, with the notable exception of South China). That Asexuality isn’t held up as a pinnacle NOW is abundantly clear, and hasn’t for some time, but that doesn’t change that it has faced, and faces, less. And that historical “whoo” probably plays into why it’s not so badly treated now.

Also, celibacy != expression of asexual identity. Seriously. The Popemobile procession et al. isn’t like a fucking asexuality pride parade yanno. -_-

No, it isn’t. It’s catholic pride, as it were. And it’s still a fuckload better than we still get now, especially since you only get social hassle now. Still. I agree that the Queer label applies to you, but don’t pretend for 10 fucking seconds you had it as bad or do now.

I’d hate to see how you treat people you don’t agree with.

No you don’t. You only care now that it’s aimed in your general direction. It’s never bothered you before.

No you don’t. You only care now that it’s aimed in your general direction. It’s never bothered you before.

I guess if you’re a jerk to everyone, that’s… fair?

It makes it kind of hard for people to tell that you aren’t even actually disagreeing, though, since you and everyone you’re calling a stupid horrible asshole actually agree with every part of “asexuals should be able to identify as queer, but their history is not equivalent to gay or trans history.”

Illiterate jackass. I didn’t say you weren’t oppressed. I said you were less so.

You used the “legality” of asexuality as evidence for our relative lack of oppression, and I objected to that being one of the criteria for distinguishing between asexuality and other minorities that can “legally” exist and comparing their level of oppression. So that makes me an illiterate jackass somehow.

…But hey, at least you acknowledge that I’m a queer illiterate jackass, so I guess I can count this discussion as a win! XD

I’m bisexual. I’m dating a man now and I’m primarily attracted to men so I guess you can call me a fake trendy bisexual or whatever, but I dated a girl all through high school and was threatened and bullied for it, and in college I dated another girl and got told I was going to Hell.

I know I don’t usually post “as a bisexual person, I think…” because I feel a bit weird about it when my recent history is mostly men, but don’t go telling me that I’m appropriating LGBT history when it’s my history too.

But whatever. This isn’t even about the queer label any more. This is just about saying things that everyone agrees about (yes, asexuals have been oppressed, no, it wasn’t the same oppression as gay people) in successively more hostile tones.

Although you could check yourself on this bit:

It’s not really similar at all to people who generally get killed or arrested.

I don’t know about arrested, but lots of people (mostly but not all women) have been killed for refusing to marry or refusing to have sex. It’s probably impossible when you’re looking at history to separate sexual people who didn’t want that particular marriage or sex from asexual people, but it’s not fair to say that nobody has ever been killed for not wanting sex.

Rutee, when you’re calling everyone illiterate and stupid and an asshole no matter how trivial the disagreement, it tends to a. distract from the actual issue, because it’s just kind of distasteful and unpleasant, and b. destroy any semblance of perspective, because no one can tell when you’re actually angry or when you really very strongly disagree with something.

@ozy: Nailed it. Pretty much the entire discussion revolves around people equivocating between all these different meanings.

Ithiliana: I do recognize the importance of terminology discussions and of defining your terms before you use them, particularly contentious terms like “queer.” I just am not particularly fond of participating in them. 🙂