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:
@M Dubz:
I’m very curious as to how exactly you managed to nail down two of my favorite flavors… *ponderface*
I dunno. It seems like the root of “you must reveal this or else you are a fraud” is in trying to make other people do the work of making sure they live up to your expectations. It’s your job to let others know what you find important, they can’t read your mind. This goes for both sides of the table. Simply assuming what someone’s interested in because of their apparent gender and so forth is silly, since everyone has different tastes even amongst non-“queer” folk.
@kirby- It is because everyone loves orange and chocolate. Obvs.
Your comment also reminded me of that terrible article about the woman who went on 2 dates with the Magic: the Gathering guy. I don’t want to get into it (because shitstorm) but you’re absolutely right. You will never know what another person will find attractive, or unattractive, or morally neutral, so it’s best to be upfront and nonjudgmental about your dealbreakers.
The difficulty is, how should people in the dating world who are totally not okay with dating trans people express that in a polite and nonjudgmental way? It’s easy for me to say “Wow you seem really awesome, but I have to ask if you’re Jewish, because I only date Jewish guys” but it gets more touchy with asking about the state of someone’s cis/transness.
I really wish it were some sort of positive statement, I gotta say. Imagine if it were being said about Rarity, specifically, and her love of fashion! But it ain’t; it’s co-option, yet again.
I mean, far be it from me to judge them for liking MLP:FiM. It’s a good show! But it’s not for them. Faust has said as much, and the toys are still primarily bought by little girls’ parents (Just like how the collectors can’t take Transformers away from the kids. Ever.) I’m so, so, SO much more annoyed by their inability to accept that it is A: little girls’ programming, and B: they are not hte bright center of it, than by the way that they enjoy MLP:FIM (I mean, really, what’s not to like? about this?)
@M Dubz:
“Wow you seem really awesome, but I have to ask if you’re trans, because I only date cis-guys”
I think that’s about the best you can do, really. To this cis-guy, both this and the original seem equally odd, it’s just that the latter is much closer to the standard trans-phobic statements that are made out there. The history of the things sucks, and that’s what makes it touchy. But there isn’t really much you can do; you can’t really be expected to change your preferences.
I’m not going to speak for anyone else, but I do know that my physical preferences are malleable, to a certain extent. For example, I used to have an extreme distaste for a lot of body hair on men. After meeting a cute, sweet guy who happens to be pretty hairy that is very much not the case at all. But that’s a relatively small thing, and you can’t do that with everything.
I don’t know. On the one hand, I think people should be allowed to be attracted to whomever they find attractive, but I have a horse in that race so maybe I’m not approaching that with a clear head? Because I’ve certainly been told by guys on the internet that they are just not physically attracted to sluts as if that excuses them from feeding into toxic cultural narratives and that pissed me off, but maybe the same kind of thing could be said with me not being attracted to fat men?
Social justice is hard >.<
Eh, this is where it gets into difficult territory for me. My physical preferences aren’t malleable. They’re just not. I’ve been attracted to the same sort of people my entire life – the only difference between now and when I was a teenager is that the people I’m attracted to are older too. Other than that, exact same physical type. I don’t see what’s inherently wrong with having strong physical preferences unless they’re preferences towards, say, people who are very young and not able to consent. Why should everyone be expected to be attracted to anyone who has a nice personality? Physical attraction is physical. And given the range of types that different people are attracted to there really is someone for everyone in terms of physical type. So why is it a bad thing to have those preferences?
The answer I usually end up with is that everyone should question their attractions…but sometimes the answer to “Why am I not attracted to trans people/black people/white people/fat people/skinny people/women/men/GQ people/etc.” is, after serious thought, still going to be “I’m just not.” And that’s okay, as long as that doesn’t make you think any less of them as people.
That’s the bit that baffles me, the part where “I don’t want to have sex with people who look like X” becomes “therefore people who look like X are worthless human beings”.
I wouldn’t say that my tastes in what I consider attractive have changed significantly, but they have broadened somewhat as I am exposed to more diverse people. Partly it’s just a matter of getting used to something new; as a kid I used to think long hair on guys was weird but once I got over that I realized it can look quite nice, for a not-very-fraught example.
Maybe I was just exposed to a whole lot of different sorts of people as a kid? My tastes honestly haven’t changed at all as I’ve grown older, other than my becoming attracted to people I’d have considered too old when I was younger, and losing interest in younger people.
Cassandra, It’s probably just because you work differently 😛 And that’s cool!
I’d expressed worry because I guess I’ve kind of internalized that sexuality is kind of malleable? But it’s silly to assume that that is the case for everyone. I think I’m just going to chalk this one up to “Relax, an don’t be a dick.” an call it a day.
@katz- Yeah, I’m super squicked by your version of my original statement, but I really can’t think of a more polite way to do it. I think a lot of the difference has to do with the fact that on the one case, it’s establishing compatability (I’m a pretty religious Jew so it’s a matter of shared culture/religious values/plans for Friday night) whereas on the other, it’s purely about physical type.
Ideally, people would just date each other, and if the clothes came off and people were not attracted to what was underneath, there would not be another date due to sexual incompatibility, but nobody would freak out. Unfortunately, that seems not to be how reality works.
Huh?
bah, that was meant for kirby. sorry!
M Dubz
But….. I can’t think of a single reason why you would say “I don’t date trans people” right off the bat to someone?
I feel that usually a trans person would disclose that info before the clothes came off, at which point you could politely say “I’m sorry, I don’t think this will work for me”
If this was a surprise when the clothes came off you could say “I wasn’t expecting this, and this is a lot for me to take in, so I think I’m going to go home now, but I’ll call you later.” and later you can say “I don’t think this will work for me.”
That seems to be less cringe inducing than the unsolicited “I don’t date trans guys”
I agree with Shora. There’s no guarantee you’ll like each other enough to get near having sex on the first date anyways, so why lead with something that only matters when having sex? I wouldn’t mention to a date, seconds after sitting down to coffee with them, that I was skeeved out by multiple large spiky genital piercings or whatever just on the off-chance they had some — there are a million more polite and relevant (and less judgey) ways to rule out someone as a partner before you start specifying the exact groin configuration you require. Maybe if you wound up on a date with a trans person they’d end up being a huge fan of Twilight and you could nip love right in the bud without ever finding out that they were trans, for example. :p
You are allowed to assess your sex partner’s genitals for compatibility once they come out, obviously, but that’s hardly restricted to trans partners; a friend of mine told me about a cute cis guy she fully intended to screw …until he whipped out his dick and it was way way too huge (“I swear to god it was as wide as a Coke can!”) and she was like LOLOMG cancel cancel cancel kthxbai and left. Poor guy was disappointed, but them’s the breaks. :p
@Shora: I totally agree with you, and for most people it would indeed come out gradually over the course of several dates. My speculation was around the idea that people for whom trans status is a problem should disclose (instead of forcing a trans person to always be the one to disclose first), and whether or not there was a way to do it without saying something really super trans-phobic.
… still not sure that it’s possible
Are kinky people automatically queer? Obviously some kinky people do fall under definitions of “queer” that don’t include kink qua kink, but are all kinky people queer?
I’d argue “no with an asterisk,” that kinky people would seem to share with queer people the experience of not having their sexuality widely (or accurately) presented in mainstream media. Or, looked at another way, kinky people and queer people alike violate the wider world’s default sexual assumptions and have to specifically seek out people who whatever.
Lauralot:
Such people rarely ask him for advice or mention asexuality when they do, presumable. Every letter he gets, it seems to me, that mentions one party’s asexuality does so because the writer perceives that to be the problem. It’s not his duty to agree with that perception, or to answer the letter in the first place, but he’s not the one bringing it up. Unless he is, I don’t read that closely.
ozy:
Oh, I feel the exact opposite. The exact opposite. Dammit, Dan Savage, why can’t you be straightforwardly good or straightforwardly horrible! Shit is complicated, yo!
Cassandra:
If I’m going to be in a monogamous relationship with someone, zir sexual orientation is tangential (which doesn’t mean “never tell me” or even “wait to tell me”, only “I won’t feel betrayed/misled if zie tells me on zir own schedule”) provided I’m included. On the other hand, “being with me means giving up sex” is something I’ll want to know up front.
@bagelsan, I was involved in that argument as well, if it is the one I think you are referring to, and I believe you are mischaraterizing it. Of the three people arguing strongly against your position, only one was a cis gay man, two were genderqueer, and one was bi. There were issues with bi and genderqueer people objecting to the use of their identities as a beatstick against other LGBT/queer people and a misgendering of a genderqueer person who had already explicitly outed themselves on the thread. The fact that of three people making similar arguments, the one cis gay man was singled out (unfairly in that instance) in regards to boundary policing was a bullshit rhetorical weapon, not an actual critique of anything he had said about genderqueer, bi, or other queer identities (other than that cis non-queer aces don’t get to claim them).
Being a cis non-queer ace does not make you queer, anymore than being a cis hetero kinkster, cis hetero hetero poly people, cis hetero people with a foot fetish, etc. are queer because they face stigma around their sexualities. Homoromantic and biromantic or trans asexual people have a claim on the queer lablel, but it doesn’t extend from asexuality.
@darksidecat: Yes, that is the same argument. You were wrong then and you’re wrong now, and I didn’t mischaracterize a thing. No one was misgendered. The man in question has policed non-cis-gay-male sexual identities on multiple occasions on several threads including flat-out erasing them when he doesn’t like what the person says, a dynamic that plays out in the larger LGBT community, and it was him that I was specifically calling out because he’s full of it. But for the record, I don’t think you have any more right to boundary police than he does. Asexual people can be queer queer queer if they so choose to identify themselves, and you can keep your self-righteousness to yourself.
Are kinky people automatically queer? Obviously some kinky people do fall under definitions of “queer” that don’t include kink qua kink, but are all kinky people queer?
I’d argue “no with an asterisk,” that kinky people would seem to share with queer people the experience of not having their sexuality widely (or accurately) presented in mainstream media. Or, looked at another way, kinky people and queer people alike violate the wider world’s default sexual assumptions and have to specifically seek out people who whatever.
Speaking as a heterosexual, monogamous, cisgendered kinkster, I’d say no. I don’t see myself as queer, and would feel really inappropriate if I tried to appropriate that label. It’s true that there are significant aspects of my sexuality I can’t disclose to the public at large without facing negative consequences – but the big, basic stuff like “I am a woman” and “this is my partner” is consequence-free for me, in a way that it often simply isn’t for queer people.
That said, if someone wants to identify as queer solely because they’re kinky and they see any non-mainstream-cis-straight-vanilla-etc. sexualities as falling under the queer umbrella, I’m not going to tell them they can’t. I’ll think it’s a strange and potentially offensive choice of label, but I generally operate on a policy of “if you tell me you’re a banana flurble Liechtenstein, then I’ll call you a banana flurble Liechtenstein, no matter how dumb that may sound to me, because your choice of label really isn’t my business.”
No, they can’t. Keep your appropriation to yourself. And you did misgender someone on that thread. I am a bi genderqueer person, and I do not feel that the person you targeted has engaged in erasure often that I have seen, and I certainly don’t appreciate concern trolling about it from people trying to appropriate (or make apologism for appropriation of) queer identity. Cis gay men don’t have to idly sit back and take stereotyping, erasure, or appropriation either.
But if they try to tell you that and that they have a standing army, laugh in their face. 😀