Here’s a little exchange from Reddit that I found on ShitRedditSays that basically sums up everything that’s less-than-charming about the site. We start off with a blanket statement of male superiority, followed by an enthusiastically upvoted rape joke, and then we get massive downvoting and a “fuck you” to someone who’s challenging the blanket statement. (If you follow the link you’ll see that Butch_Magnus isn’t the only one jumping on piv0t.)
The context: This is from the Pics subreddit; they’re discussing a “sexist treadmill” with a control panel that looks like this:
Yeah, that’s why I keep returning back to it, because there is some really good stuff there by some really solid people. There are a couple of trans and feminist tumblrs that I visit regularly because they seem to “get it”, I guess. And I do appreciate it when people get called out on being a ‘phobe of any sort– that’s the good thing about having a big community of people who care about this sort of thing. I just have a hard time dealing with certain kinds of debates. I’m having trouble articulating just what bothers me.
I suppose an example is this: there’s this ongoing fight between asexual people and a certain segment of queer people on Tumblr that I ran into while I was browsing the Queer Secrets blog (which is like Post Secret but about stuff regarding sexual and gender minorities). I ran into it because there is a small contingent of people who object to Queer Secrets posting secrets about asexuality or aromantic stuff or whatever. Their argument is roughly that the asexual community is appropriating the “queer” label because asexuals as a group don’t have any historical claim for “taking back” the word “queer”, and that while homo or biromantic asexuals and trans asexuals may fit under the queer label, heteroromantic asexuals are not queer because they don’t experience the relevant sort of oppression or alienation from greater society that would mark them as queer. There was also a blog called “Ace Slut Shamers” (I believe) that spent a lot of time calling out asexuals for being sex-negative.
Now I would probably agree that there is something problematic about including asexuality within the queer label and that some asexual activism has problems with repeating negative tropes about sexuality. But the way this was handled really rubbed me the wrong way because there were a number of the critics (even aces themselves) who claimed that asexuals experience 0 oppression whatsoever and that they’re never shamed for their lack of orientation, that a number of asexually-identified people are actually lying about their orientation because they post pictures of attractive people, and that asexuals are slut-shaming every time they state that they complain about having to hear about sex all the time or if they’re personally sex-averse or whatever. And there were a number of people on the ace side of things who kind of dropped the ball by claiming that LGBTs are the privileged ones, that any critique of dialogue in the asexual community is automatically erasive, and that if an LGBT center gets co-opted by a bunch of heteroromantic aces there’s nothing problematic about that whatsoever, etc. I just felt that everyone was pretty much missing the point and ignoring the context involved and so on and so on. It seemed like people were using social justice dialogue merely to rationalize what they already thought about the other side and it makes me totally @_@ when that happens.
There was also a really angry post going around about how bisexual erasure doesn’t actually exist, because supposedly arguments about how bisexuals can experience discrimination within the lesbian/gay community assume that homosexuals have the same sort of privilege as heterosexuals. And so bisexuals/pansexuals are actually being homophobic and privilege-denying if they try to articulate what’s similar between discrimination from heteros and from gays. It would be a fair point except for the fact that 1. any articulate discussion of bisexual issues acknowledges that there’s a difference there, and that bis can sometimes benefit from certain privileges afforded to heterosexuals and 2. just because a monosexual privilege list or whatever is problematic it doesn’t mean that bisexual issues don’t exist! I mean, there was that Bisexual Invisibility report earlier this year that found that the Bs are worse off than the Gs and Ls on a number of health and economic measures.
I guess what I hate is when people use critical language to shore up their own privileges and implicit biases rather than examining them & that’s what I see a lot on Tumblr. I mean, nobody’s perfect, but it makes me want to barf sometimes.
Ah, Reddit, where you get to vote on facts.
So are there any Reddit-like sites that aren’t full of assholes? Or at least the assholes are a minority?
Asexuals are never shamed? Excuse me?
Have these people ever heard of Dan Savage?
kladle, *applause*
Kladle – Okay, and I see what you mean and that’s complete fuckery, and it’s fuckery from people who would explain to me in outraged voices like I just said a horrible slur why calling it “fuckery” is oppressive.
Even so, I still prefer places that play Queer Identity Tug-O-War with places that play Queer Identity Doesn’t Exist. Low standards, I know.
Yick. I got into it briefly on the whole “asexuals are homophobic against LGBTs if they identify as queer, gtfo our precious exclusive acronym!” thing on another blog a while ago. Fucking hell that was annoying — having the gay man I was arguing with act as gatekeeper for the whole queer community was gaddamn obnoxious, too. He also insisted on referring to asexuals as “heterosexuals” which had me head-desking pretty good. -_-
I would love to know the logic for referring to asexuals as hetero.
I do refer to myself as queer; I never realized that bothered anyone.
Lauralot; out of curiosity, what about dan savage do you find particularly bad when it comes to asexuality?
I like Dan Savage a lot, even though I often have problems with some of the things he says. I haven’t really picked up on anything really shaming though. Of course, I’m a hypersexed slut so I probably wouldn’t be the most, erm, sensitive to such things ^_^;;
He has said asexuals are repressed, “fighting for the right to do nothing,” and that we’re trying to snare sexual people into sexless relationships. He also told us that we have to let people know we’re asexual no later than the second date, so that our poor helpless dates know what they’re getting into.
Also, people willing to date asexuals are apparently “fags or fools.”
Yea okay, that’s not right. He can be a real asshole sometimes >.<
See, this… I don’t know. Asexuality, or even a pretty low sex drive, is a pretty serious dealbreaker for me and something I would really appreciate up front. Is that shaming?
No, I don’t find it shaming to say that asexuals should be open about their orientation. However, since Dan Savage knows nothing about asexuals in general, he also hasn’t considered that maybe asexuals are seeking out partners who aren’t into sex, maybe they’re willing to have sex for their partner, maybe they mentioned their sexuality before they even started dating, etc. Basically, I object to someone who isn’t of X orientation telling people of X orientation how they’re required to behave, especially when the person doing the ordering is so ignorant about the people he’s bossing around.
look up clopfic. Or don’t, I guess. It’s not even the fic, it’s the BS Rationalizations that get to me.
Also, it isn’t really up for debate that the oppressions experienced by bi and gay people are different, and that some of it has come from each other. Seriously, basic fucking shit.
That makes perfect sense to me.
“Is that shaming?”
Do, like, a search on Dan Savage and asexuality and see what turns up. It’s shaming the way he says it. You know all the nuance and subtlety he has when he’s discussing the ethics of, e.g., poly relationships? None of that.
He can also be very bad about trans people and fat people. I have to be careful about his column because it can send me into some nasty spirals. Also, at one point on his podcast he told a guy who’d been fucking his wife during her sleep when she specifically did not consent to it that he was *not* a rapist and I was just like “oh fuck you.”
I still read occasionally because he does some good stuff, but. Man, he can also be a shit.
As far as I could tell, it was because asexuals don’t usually have homosexual sex. Hence they must be heterosexual. Hence all my headdesking. At one point I resorted to yelling that “THE ASEXUAL WOMEN I KNOW DON’T WANT TO FUCK MEN. THEY ARE NOT HETEROSEXUAL.” in all caps but it made nary a dent. :p
And yeah, I identify as “queer” too, somewhat for lack of a better term — whether or not I am “naturally” asexual, or if it’s just attributable to the combination of clinical depression and anti-depressants I’ve been regularly swapping between since hitting puberty, I have been functionally asexual my entire life and haven’t had the chance to establish any sexuality I might secretly have, and the heterosexual narrative does not describe me, so in my mind that fucking counts.
@ Lauralot
I know I think it’s much more important for LGBs and asexuals to be allies, all being sexual minorities and sharing common interests because of that. As for whether asexuals are “queer”; it doesn’t personally bother me if an asexual refers to themselves as “queer” so long as they understand the historical baggage that comes along with the label & the reclaiming thing. The vast majority of asexuals I’ve seen online tend to have a good sense of the political implications and are operating under the more inclusive sense of “queer” anyway i.e. “queering sexuality” or “queering gender” or whatever. The one self-identified asexual person I’ve met offline was pretty gender-nonconforming (which is not uncommon as far as I can tell) and nobody had a problem with him attending our college’s LGBT group.
I can see why some people have issues with asexuals being under the queer umbrella, but if you have a problem with it, you have to be really careful in order to critique things responsibly… otherwise you end up being a huge doofus like the people I was talking about or like Bagelsan’s asexual=heterosexual guy. (I don’t even know how you could come up with that one.)
Dan Savage’s exact words on asexuality disclosure:
The rest can be read here: http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/the-truth-about-asexuality/Content?oid=1263048
Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure most asexual people have put some thought into this quandary, too. ;p
No, we’d promise to fuck absolutely everybody except you, duh!
Dan Savage is one of those people where, on one hand, I hate hate HATE so much of what he says… and on the other hand he does a lot of good and he’s one of the most sex-positive advice columnists out there. I suppose there’s not much to do except wish that Captain Awkward was nationally syndicated.
I agree about the Tumblr feminists. :/ Man, I certainly prefer us social-justice-types, but I think a lot of the Social Justice League has problems with concepts like “people can say something fucked up and still not be THE WORST PERSON EVER” and “shit is complicated, yo.”
Also, I’m allergic to terminology arguments. I don’t care whether we call asexuals queer or not, as long as we are all against asexual erasure and pathologization.
…Though considering how many children I haven’t fucked, as an asexual, does that make me a pedophile? Also I’ve never fucked any family members. Or animals. …Dammit, asexuals are total pervs, you guys! O_O
Oh, so much that.
Although I think it’s partially an “all-human” rather than just “SJL” thing.
C’mon, every time an asexual doesn’t fuck someone or somewhere, they are clearly flaunting their sexuality! Rubbing it right in the faces of the unsuspecting public!