By David Futrelle
Last night, some anonymous dude — and I’m pretty sure it was a dude — sent a curious (cat) message to a woman I follow on Twitter:
I want you to understand that you live in a special snowflake bubble and for the rest of us, bisexuality is an attack on men.
The woman in question replied with a simple “what.” And that “what” is quite understandable, as the man’s statement does not make sense by any standard system of logic. Bisexuality is a sexual orientation, not a prejudice, after all, and things that women do for their own pleasure in their own homes aren’t anyone’s business. Also, this dude seems to think that only women can be bisexual, which would be news to a lot of people if true.
But as someone who has studied the peculiarities of manosphere logic for years now, I think I can explain this guy’s strange assertion. I have prepared several diagrams you may find helpful.
First, let’s look at what happens during normal sex-having procedures.
In this world, everything is as it should be: Ladies deliver the required sex units to men, and all men receive the number of sex units that are their due, and everyone is happy. While the men have sex with the ladies at the same time the ladies have sex with the men, no sex units are sent by the men or received by the ladies because ladies aren’t actually interested in sex; they merely store the sex units they are born with until they can be sent to the proper men.
I should add that all the ladies and men depicted are not all in the same bedroom or anything degenerate like that; this is a symbolic representation of the sex system as a whole.
Now look at what happens when bisexuality is introduced.
As you can see, when some ladies in a sex system start having sex with other ladies as well as with men, half of their sex units are wasted on pointless lady-lady sex, which doesn’t really count as sex and even if it did ladies don’t really enjoy sex anyway. (Bisexual men exist too, but their bisexual activity is more like a fun hobby and doesn’t deprive women of anything because women don’t like hobbies.)
With half of the bisexual ladies’ sex units going to waste on other ladies, many men only receive half of the sex units they need and deserve! In the real world, it’s even worse, and some men receive no sex units at all and have to sublimate their sex urges into getting mad at ladies on the internet — especially bisexual ladies who seem like they might be having lots of pointless lady/lady sex and wasting the sex units they could be sending to men who are mad at ladies on the internet.
A bisexual lady sex-unit-denying attack on any man’s happy sex life is an attack on all men. Therefore bisexuality is an attack on men.
It’s really not that complicated at all, now, is it?
@ellesar: I find that very interesting because although I’ve always been fully bisexual and the guys I’m talking about knew this I also did what they’re talking about, like make out or take off my top for the entertainment of guys.
To be clear I’m talking about high school and college by the time I was at the end of college I’d grown out of stuff like that. But if anyone here has read Gone Girl I can’t lie I totally aspired to be what she calls the cool girl.
The great majority of the things she mentioned were actually in my nature. I had female coded clothing interest( at first because I wanted to look as pretty as possible but then I got into my style)but what most people I knew considered male coded activity interests( Sports, video games, debate team, Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire the Masquerade and other stuff by White Wolf, and last but not least, firecrackers and fireworks or sometimes just straight-up setting shit on fire(especially while on psychedelics that was my absolute favorite pastime for a good 6 months) Etc.
Some girls really are amused by belching contests and stuff like that, all sorts of vulgar nonsense when they are teenagers. But with my insecurities it was very important to me that men find me attractive sexually for a very long time, also women but not as much as men I think that is society’s influence.
As soon as I got a few curves at my freshman year of high school I started walking around 3/4 naked most of the time. Which was not at all unusual I lived in the village in NY City. But finally I’ve matured enough that I don’t need that kind of constant attention and approval of my looks to feel like I’m worth something.
I’ve smoked too much weed tonight and I forgot the point I was trying to make but after writing all this I don’t want to just erase it. So thank you for the information. I find it very interesting because all of those things are true for me and my best friend who is also bisexual both of us have had problems with drug addiction and exhibitionism and dealt with the majority if not all of the other aspects in the article.
Alright let me get some sleep because I’m obviously too tired and stoned to be commenting anyway sorry if this makes no sense. Have a lovely day everyone.
@WWTH – I’m ace and probably aro, too. The way I look at the whole LGBT+amIincluded???? fight, is that the letter “A” is in the longer designation. As to whether that stands for “Ally” or “Ace/Aro/etc.” is admittedly, a huge fight within the community with some wanting to include us and some extremely fanatically not wanting to include us. However, both sides like allies, which I am (and I feel confident in saying “you are too”).
Thus while we don’t really fit in with the group as far as serious discrimination goes, I do identify with it at other times, and when dealing with others from the group, choose my “A” to mean “Ace” or “Ally”, depending on what will make the other person happy – saves a lot of problems and as they aren’t the Great Rule Keeper, it doesn’t really matter.
@Rahu
Unfortunately. The A does not stand for ally. It just doesn’t. Ally isn’t an identity. It’s not marginalized. ‘The discrimination faced by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Ally community…’ Something doesn’t belong there. It’s like if white people said to a group of folks organizing under the term PoC that white’s a color too. Yeah, nope, sorry, Todd, you don’t count, fuck outta here
I would rather strongly disagree on that point. Plenty of aspecs have and do face very serious discrimination. Violence (intimate partner violence especially) against aces is a documented and too common thing, there’s studies that show people are more aggressive towards us, there are folks in essentially ace conversion therapy*, the way bias against asexuality especially intersects with toxic masculinity, etc etc
In no way tryna say yall’s experiences ain’t real, and I’m glad you haven’t faced much discrimination. But others have, and the idea that we, as a group, don’t is not only not correct but also plays into a lot of the discrimination to begin with, yanno? Not a helpful statement, so could we not? Thank you
*not just a fundamentalist religious thing, actually sanctioned by mental health professionals and in the DSM V as HSDD. As of only a few years ago, aces could dodge the diagnosis by saying they’re ace. But that relies on knowing you’re aspec (where the erasure/lack or visibility really does hurt and leads to some pretty heinous stuff like this) and having mental health professionals, and parents in some cases, who’ll believe you…
@Rahu
The A does not atand fpr Ally, it never has and it never will. Allies are just that. They are not a part of the community.
@Rahu
The A does not stand for Ally, it never has and it never will. Allies are just that. They are not a part of the community.
Ah, the ole “are aces part of the LGBTQ” community cage fight. Good fodder for Tumblr.
I agree with others that it’s a personal decision. Being aro/ace I don’t consider myself LGBTQ, even though I much prefer the LGBTQ community to cishet people, if I had to choose. They just have a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of the intersection of sex and gender than the vast majority of straight people, because they’ve had to think about it.
However, because homophobia and transphobia are such enormous forces to be reckoned with, I’ve thought that LGBT issues will always be the forefront of their battle, as they should. Because of these very important and pressing civil rights issues, aro/ace stuff kinda huddles in the back corner and inches out from time to time in hopes of getting in a word. Which is why I’d rather just consider myself part of an aro/ace community, because things that affect aces are very different (imo) from things that affect transgender, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (well, ace people who are neither trans nor gay, such as myself). Some of these issues do intersect, as all thing sexuality-based will. But speaking as a cisgender straight-acting/appearing person who has never really “suffered” or been oppressed solely for my sexuality, who I love, or what gender I identify as, I would feel wrong stepping into a community and asking to be taken seriously. I’d feel more comfortable in a community where everyone has very similar issues to mine and one in which I don’t feel like I’m trying to talk over someone who deserves the mic more. If that makes any sense.
Some ace people do find more resistance to their sexuality than I did, and it may be why they’re more in need of the LGBTQ umbrella. The worst thing to happen to me was my mother telling me I just haven’t met the right person, which is just whatevs. I think this is why it’s different for every person. We all have our own struggles and needs for community.