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potato_headSooo I know some of you saw that debacle. In sf_d. A lot of you probably didn't? But that's alright because I'm pretty sure the things I want to say here can stand completely separate from that, but I do have a few words to say on that first, as to why I'm now writing a post on it;
I was really actually very, very angry. That was pretty much the most pissed-off I can be; I was shaking with anger, light-headed, etc. With the main result being, as I said at the time, I couldn't get out everything I had to say. This can actually be pretty good for an actual discussion since as you all know I usually have a tendency to ramble on for PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHS, and when I'm that mad I kind of get straight to the point :P in fact, I'm rambling right now, so let me get to the point: I don't feel like I did justice to the point I wanted to make, and there are some things I wanted to discuss that wouldn't have been appropriate in the context of that um...discussion anyways. So I am going to talk about them now.
And I'd like to remind everybody again that I completely welcome discussion and debate. However, for probably the first time ever, I am also going to request that you stay respectful. I mean I generally trust all of y'all to do so but I feel like this is a topic on which emotions might run high.
Also, I would like to note that I have been struggling with how to write this for a few days now, because the fact is that I can't back up my points with personal experience, because I'm not asexual myself. The things I do know, that I am drawing some of my conclusions from, are very personal stories shared with me by my ace friends and acquaintances, and it's not my place to go telling those experiences to others.
So um, with that in mind, let's talk about this!
Okay, I guess the first and most obvious topic to address is: sexual privilege. Yes, I do think it exists. Yes, I do think queer people who are sexual possess sexual privilege. It is true that there are people, especially conservatives (and religious conservatives) who are much less hostile towards a queer asexual person than a queer sexual person. However, arguing that this negates sexual privilege is completely ignoring the fact that conservative people are not the only people who discriminate. (There is also the fact that 'you're one of the good ones' is not exactly the antithesis to discrimination; and these people would probably still disapprove of queer asexual people being in relationships, even if sex is not involved, because they would not actually believe sex was not involved, because they don't believe asexuality is a valid identity.)
I understand the wish to believe that the liberal set of the population, and especially social justice groups and queer groups, do not discriminate against people. But this is just not true. Anybody who has read wombyn-born-wombyn feminist rhetoric knows that there are groups dedicated to some form of social justice that happily outright hate other minority groups.
Is this oppression?
I would say it is obvious that a social justice group, being composed primarily of minorities and their allies, cannot oppress people, since they don't hold enough power in society to do so.
However, when you also see it coming from liberal people who are in the majority - who do hold power in our society - who are not queerphobic but openly regard being asexual as an 'illness', 'unnatural', etc; then I argue that their actions could be oppression. I think, at the very least, this is something that should be discussed openly, not dismissed because asexual people are not discriminated against enough. What is the point at which you are allowed to discuss how society treats you? Is it only when everybody is against you? Where is the cutoff point where it suddenly becomes ridiculous to discuss these things? I always felt it was when a group of people was obviously a majority with power; and to be frank I think that is where it should be. I think any other attempts to quantify or rank levels of discrimination, oppression or general suffering, and decide who may and who may not discuss these things in the appropriate spaces, is silencing.
Yes, by the way, that's in the appropriate spaces. Obviously I am not saying that every space must now be devoted to discussing sexual privilege? IDK, I think that was clear, but just in case.
Now the question is, okay, so what, exactly, are these sexual privileges? That is, how are asexuals discriminated against?
Well, as I've already said, I frankly can't say much on this point because I am not asexual. However, if you ask somebody who is asexual if they have ever been discriminated against, made to feel unsafe, or verbally or physically assaulted because they were asexual, IME chances are pretty high that they will have a lot of examples for you. We have to listen to what they have to say and stop telling them to shut up. Silencing is a terrible thing.
The one thing I can talk about in this topic is asexual erasure. Some people might argue that there is in fact no such thing as asexual erasure, as there are plenty of, for example, people in TV shows and movies who are not actively shown to be having sex. This is, frankly, ridiculous because most of the TV shows and movies you find this in are meant for young audiences, and the general social assumption is still that if they are an adult, they are having sex or have had sex or will have sex at some point in their life, it is just not discussed. Even if a character is openly stated to be asexual people will completely disregard this. I don't mean shippers, who will generally change the sexuality of a character to suit their needs; I mean most fans. If they even understand what asexual means ('so is he like, a starfish???').
Okay, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Back on track.
So the thing is that erasure isn't just bawww hurts my feelings~. It's actually a pretty big problem. First of all, the emotional impact is not something that can be easily dismissed. I know, personally, trans (and particularly FtM) erasure is pretty much the biggest negative influence on me emotionally; being told day after day that basically you are alone, that you are a freak and normal people don't want to have to hear about you or even acknowledge that you exist, realizing that there are huge numbers of people who actually do not know you exist because the world hides your existence like a dirty secret; that can be emotionally devastating at times.
Erasure also has effects beyond the emotional impact. Most people will not believe that there are hate crimes directed at asexual people. If they hear about a personal experience from an asexual person, it is dismissed as a single incident and therefor attributable to something else, such as misogyny. This is because hate crimes against asexuals don't get reported as such. Police and other authority figures do not understand what asexuality is; or they don't believe it's a valid identity. They don't investigate asexual hate crimes as such, either. The very idea of hate crimes against asexuals is just swept under the rug. And this is just accepted by queer people as indicative that they don't happen, as if there was no fight to get hate crimes recognized in the first place, as if we can suddenly expect the majority to recognize hate crimes when they see them.
I would like to believe that the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities is due in most part to naivete; that people honestly believed that if hate crimes were happening, if discrimination was happening, we would hear about it from people in power, that people who are not asexual would start investigating it of their own accord. But I have heard too much from people in queer communities to know this is the case. There are many, many people within the queer community, especially activists, who believe that asexuals are unnatural, basically freak accidents, the result of mental illness or childhood trauma. I have also heard the opinion more than once that asexuals are just liars, or 'virgins who are scared to do it'. I heard a lot of these things while discussing the fact that my partner was asexual; this did not deter them from saying these things to my face. I have seen my asexual friends told they weren't welcome in queer communities; regardless of if they were homoromantic (or even in a gay relationship at the time), or if they were attending as allies in solidarity with me and our other friends, they were shown out with thinly-veiled hostility, or were generally not taken seriously to the point where they, understandably, just left. It seems to me that a lot of the exclusion and silencing of asexual people coming from within the queer community is due simply to prejudice against asexual people.
And I don't fault the queer community at large for that; it happens, and obviously we are not responsible for one another's prejudices. We are not a monolith. What I do find troubling, though, is that nobody wants to discuss these problems. There is a general denial that there could be any problematic discrimination within queer communities. It is an understandable defensiveness; but it has to stop.
I would also like to briefly go back to the fact that a lot of potential hate crimes or discrimination against asexuals are dismissed as being the result of another kind of prejudice, usually misogyny. I am not going to deny that other prejudices may play a part in some, or even many incidences of discrimination or hate crimes against asexuals...but I would argue that the same is true for many cases of discrimination against homosexual people and trans* people. If a lesbian is assaulted by a man for being a 'dyke', does he mean he hates her for being gay, or because she doesn't make herself available to men? If a trans man is verbally attacked for 'pretending to be a man', is it because it's socially unacceptable to be transgendered, or is it because the person feels he is a woman stepping out of 'her' place? I think it could be either; it could be both. Neither of these invalidates the fact that gay and trans* people are discriminated against, or that they suffer hate crimes for what they are; it just means that the causes of hatred are not always black-and-white.
A lot of the things I have said here about asexuals applies to a few other groups as well; notably, bisexuals (and pan- and omnisexuals, even moreso in some cases). There are many gay people who have no problem openly declaring that they think all bisexuals are 'just doing it for the attention' or 'can't decide', and it is not uncommon for bisexual voices to be silenced in the queer community. However, this issue IS being discussed; people are addressing it. In my experience, discussing the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities, and the discrimination asexuals face, has been greeted with nothing but hostility, which is why I wanted to focus on asexual people here.
I probably had more to say, but I feel out of words for now. So yes, I think that's it. Again, I welcome (and encourage) respectful discussion on the issue...as you (hopefully) realize by now, since that's basically my point; we have to talk about these things, not shut discussions down.
I was really actually very, very angry. That was pretty much the most pissed-off I can be; I was shaking with anger, light-headed, etc. With the main result being, as I said at the time, I couldn't get out everything I had to say. This can actually be pretty good for an actual discussion since as you all know I usually have a tendency to ramble on for PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHS, and when I'm that mad I kind of get straight to the point :P in fact, I'm rambling right now, so let me get to the point: I don't feel like I did justice to the point I wanted to make, and there are some things I wanted to discuss that wouldn't have been appropriate in the context of that um...discussion anyways. So I am going to talk about them now.
And I'd like to remind everybody again that I completely welcome discussion and debate. However, for probably the first time ever, I am also going to request that you stay respectful. I mean I generally trust all of y'all to do so but I feel like this is a topic on which emotions might run high.
Also, I would like to note that I have been struggling with how to write this for a few days now, because the fact is that I can't back up my points with personal experience, because I'm not asexual myself. The things I do know, that I am drawing some of my conclusions from, are very personal stories shared with me by my ace friends and acquaintances, and it's not my place to go telling those experiences to others.
So um, with that in mind, let's talk about this!
Okay, I guess the first and most obvious topic to address is: sexual privilege. Yes, I do think it exists. Yes, I do think queer people who are sexual possess sexual privilege. It is true that there are people, especially conservatives (and religious conservatives) who are much less hostile towards a queer asexual person than a queer sexual person. However, arguing that this negates sexual privilege is completely ignoring the fact that conservative people are not the only people who discriminate. (There is also the fact that 'you're one of the good ones' is not exactly the antithesis to discrimination; and these people would probably still disapprove of queer asexual people being in relationships, even if sex is not involved, because they would not actually believe sex was not involved, because they don't believe asexuality is a valid identity.)
I understand the wish to believe that the liberal set of the population, and especially social justice groups and queer groups, do not discriminate against people. But this is just not true. Anybody who has read wombyn-born-wombyn feminist rhetoric knows that there are groups dedicated to some form of social justice that happily outright hate other minority groups.
Is this oppression?
I would say it is obvious that a social justice group, being composed primarily of minorities and their allies, cannot oppress people, since they don't hold enough power in society to do so.
However, when you also see it coming from liberal people who are in the majority - who do hold power in our society - who are not queerphobic but openly regard being asexual as an 'illness', 'unnatural', etc; then I argue that their actions could be oppression. I think, at the very least, this is something that should be discussed openly, not dismissed because asexual people are not discriminated against enough. What is the point at which you are allowed to discuss how society treats you? Is it only when everybody is against you? Where is the cutoff point where it suddenly becomes ridiculous to discuss these things? I always felt it was when a group of people was obviously a majority with power; and to be frank I think that is where it should be. I think any other attempts to quantify or rank levels of discrimination, oppression or general suffering, and decide who may and who may not discuss these things in the appropriate spaces, is silencing.
Yes, by the way, that's in the appropriate spaces. Obviously I am not saying that every space must now be devoted to discussing sexual privilege? IDK, I think that was clear, but just in case.
Now the question is, okay, so what, exactly, are these sexual privileges? That is, how are asexuals discriminated against?
Well, as I've already said, I frankly can't say much on this point because I am not asexual. However, if you ask somebody who is asexual if they have ever been discriminated against, made to feel unsafe, or verbally or physically assaulted because they were asexual, IME chances are pretty high that they will have a lot of examples for you. We have to listen to what they have to say and stop telling them to shut up. Silencing is a terrible thing.
The one thing I can talk about in this topic is asexual erasure. Some people might argue that there is in fact no such thing as asexual erasure, as there are plenty of, for example, people in TV shows and movies who are not actively shown to be having sex. This is, frankly, ridiculous because most of the TV shows and movies you find this in are meant for young audiences, and the general social assumption is still that if they are an adult, they are having sex or have had sex or will have sex at some point in their life, it is just not discussed. Even if a character is openly stated to be asexual people will completely disregard this. I don't mean shippers, who will generally change the sexuality of a character to suit their needs; I mean most fans. If they even understand what asexual means ('so is he like, a starfish???').
Okay, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Back on track.
So the thing is that erasure isn't just bawww hurts my feelings~. It's actually a pretty big problem. First of all, the emotional impact is not something that can be easily dismissed. I know, personally, trans (and particularly FtM) erasure is pretty much the biggest negative influence on me emotionally; being told day after day that basically you are alone, that you are a freak and normal people don't want to have to hear about you or even acknowledge that you exist, realizing that there are huge numbers of people who actually do not know you exist because the world hides your existence like a dirty secret; that can be emotionally devastating at times.
Erasure also has effects beyond the emotional impact. Most people will not believe that there are hate crimes directed at asexual people. If they hear about a personal experience from an asexual person, it is dismissed as a single incident and therefor attributable to something else, such as misogyny. This is because hate crimes against asexuals don't get reported as such. Police and other authority figures do not understand what asexuality is; or they don't believe it's a valid identity. They don't investigate asexual hate crimes as such, either. The very idea of hate crimes against asexuals is just swept under the rug. And this is just accepted by queer people as indicative that they don't happen, as if there was no fight to get hate crimes recognized in the first place, as if we can suddenly expect the majority to recognize hate crimes when they see them.
I would like to believe that the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities is due in most part to naivete; that people honestly believed that if hate crimes were happening, if discrimination was happening, we would hear about it from people in power, that people who are not asexual would start investigating it of their own accord. But I have heard too much from people in queer communities to know this is the case. There are many, many people within the queer community, especially activists, who believe that asexuals are unnatural, basically freak accidents, the result of mental illness or childhood trauma. I have also heard the opinion more than once that asexuals are just liars, or 'virgins who are scared to do it'. I heard a lot of these things while discussing the fact that my partner was asexual; this did not deter them from saying these things to my face. I have seen my asexual friends told they weren't welcome in queer communities; regardless of if they were homoromantic (or even in a gay relationship at the time), or if they were attending as allies in solidarity with me and our other friends, they were shown out with thinly-veiled hostility, or were generally not taken seriously to the point where they, understandably, just left. It seems to me that a lot of the exclusion and silencing of asexual people coming from within the queer community is due simply to prejudice against asexual people.
And I don't fault the queer community at large for that; it happens, and obviously we are not responsible for one another's prejudices. We are not a monolith. What I do find troubling, though, is that nobody wants to discuss these problems. There is a general denial that there could be any problematic discrimination within queer communities. It is an understandable defensiveness; but it has to stop.
I would also like to briefly go back to the fact that a lot of potential hate crimes or discrimination against asexuals are dismissed as being the result of another kind of prejudice, usually misogyny. I am not going to deny that other prejudices may play a part in some, or even many incidences of discrimination or hate crimes against asexuals...but I would argue that the same is true for many cases of discrimination against homosexual people and trans* people. If a lesbian is assaulted by a man for being a 'dyke', does he mean he hates her for being gay, or because she doesn't make herself available to men? If a trans man is verbally attacked for 'pretending to be a man', is it because it's socially unacceptable to be transgendered, or is it because the person feels he is a woman stepping out of 'her' place? I think it could be either; it could be both. Neither of these invalidates the fact that gay and trans* people are discriminated against, or that they suffer hate crimes for what they are; it just means that the causes of hatred are not always black-and-white.
A lot of the things I have said here about asexuals applies to a few other groups as well; notably, bisexuals (and pan- and omnisexuals, even moreso in some cases). There are many gay people who have no problem openly declaring that they think all bisexuals are 'just doing it for the attention' or 'can't decide', and it is not uncommon for bisexual voices to be silenced in the queer community. However, this issue IS being discussed; people are addressing it. In my experience, discussing the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities, and the discrimination asexuals face, has been greeted with nothing but hostility, which is why I wanted to focus on asexual people here.
I probably had more to say, but I feel out of words for now. So yes, I think that's it. Again, I welcome (and encourage) respectful discussion on the issue...as you (hopefully) realize by now, since that's basically my point; we have to talk about these things, not shut discussions down.
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Re: Thoughts
Date: 2011-05-27 06:47 pm (UTC)At its core, marriage is a social union that codifies a personal partnership in specific ways so that the society understands how to handle matters of inheritances, taxation, and child custody. Different cultures have made hundreds of variations on that theme. So marriage can involve a man and a woman, a man and several women, a woman and several men, a bunch of mixed-sex adults, whatever; temporarily or permanently. It can be primarily an arrangement of business, romance, and/or sex. The important thing is that the people enter it knowingly, willingly, and with compatible expectations. I believe that would be easier if we had open and honest variations formally acknowledging all the things that people try to kludge the current monofocal option to cover. But mainstream society has a screaming blue fit whenever anyone attempts to interface logic with marriage, so I don't see that happening any time soon.
Consequently, I encourage individual businesses and communities to detour around the obstacles and simply "behave as if" all families are real families. So if you run a hospital and someone puts down their roommate as emergency contact with appropriate legal paperwork, that means you smile and say, "Okay," and don't pester them; if you run a store and your employee wants to take a personal day because their nonsexual significant other is sick, that means you approve it and call in someone else instead of arguing over it. If you're a real estate agent and 5 people want to buy a house together, that means you look for ways to make it happen, not nag them about their marital arrangements or lack thereof. (There are actually lists of companies that are good places to work or do business because of how they treat queer employees/customers.) If you promote "family values," that means valuing the families that exist, not just the ones you think people should have.
>>In this case, I think, the ecology that would be strengthened with more acceptable diversity would be our economy; the homogeneity in our society now allows some industries to grow to monoliths, and locks others (like real estate) into very rigid patterns that make it difficult to recover from what should be a small recession.<<
Sooth.
>>I think I was trying to get at this: the marriage issue is a really complex one that I don't really feel capable of tackling myself. But you have a lot of good thoughts on it.<<
Ah, I've got an unfair advantage then. I've been a gender studies scholar for ... gosh, it's been over 20 years now. And I've been aware of marriage variations for pretty much my whole life.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2011-05-27 07:01 pm (UTC)I also think encouraging business to treat all families as legitimate is a great idea. I'm not sure I have faith in a lot of businesses to actually do so - but the climate of capitalism is beginning to change, I think; more companies are seeing the benefits of being socially conscious, and there are a lot of new companies being started up with this sort of philosophy from the get-go. I'm hoping the trend continues and I'm proven to be too cynical regarding the free market.
Yeah, you've been a gender studies scholar for longer than I've been alive, LOL. I wouldn't call it an unfair advantage though, more like I could learn a lot from you.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2011-05-27 07:28 pm (UTC)Well, that's cool. I have a lot of poly friends, and otherwise non-mainstream friends. *ponder* Actually, almost all my friends are some flavor of weird.
>> But I also agree it's probably not happening any time soon.<<
On the bright side, younger generations mostly think of sexualized discrimination as baffling nonsense. Of course, these are the kids who grew up with chastisty rings and took up anal sex to save their virginity for marriage. So there's hope for the future.
>> I'm not sure I have faith in a lot of businesses to actually do so - but the climate of capitalism is beginning to change, I think; more companies are seeing the benefits of being socially conscious, and there are a lot of new companies being started up with this sort of philosophy from the get-go.<<
I don't trust business in general. I do trust its deep concern with profitablity and competition. So if social responsibility can be made a factor in business success, then businesses will do it. The ones going in that direction now are doing it to attract customers and high-quality employees; and that works. So then people list those businesses as progressive, Earth-friendly places and the effect builds. Getting boycotted because they dissed people or broke the environment also gets their attention. I have no particular attachment to any one form of activism, although I prefer rational to nonrational methods; I'll use whatever looks like it'll work. It's a giant game of Jenga, always hunting for the loose piece that can be moved, preferably without collapsing the whole society in the process.
>>Yeah, you've been a gender studies scholar for longer than I've been alive, LOL. I wouldn't call it an unfair advantage though, more like I could learn a lot from you.<<
Feel free to drop by my LJ and browse around, then. I have a "gender studies" tag in the sidebar. You might also enjoy reading some of my fiction and poetry, as I often write about gender dynamics in those formats too.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2011-05-27 07:55 pm (UTC)But it is true that the big bosses have taken notice; and of course you'll always have better luck with small companies, where the owners of the company can be directly involved in the day-to-day business. A lot of changes in the current business climate have shaken things up, as well, allowing more small companies to start up - making things like boycotts more possible, since people have more options; and consumers can show their preferences by migrating towards socially conscious companies, since those options are there for them to reward. It's a good climate for activism to take place in, I think, and it's an opportunity for things to change.
I will definitely take a look at your LJ C:
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2011-05-27 10:46 pm (UTC)It may be that they're not smart enough or cosmopolitan enough ... but it may also be that they don't care enough. Many businesses today have a crummy relationship with their employees. People who feel that their employer is screwing them over will generally not do more than they have to for that employer. They certainly aren't inclined to stretch their personality or morals for such an employer. It goes a lot farther than just stealing paperclips or watching pr0n on company time, and the cost hits areas that few people realize are connected.
Conversely, people who feel invested in their workplace are more motivated to do everything they can to help their business succeed. The workplace atmosphere can make a huge difference in how people behave with other employees and customers. It's a key reason why some straight folks use queer-friendly lists to pick out businesses for their own purposes -- those are more likely to be people-friendly and Earth-friendly in general.
>>And it doesn't help that a lot of them are convinced that hiring minorities means settling for people with only high school diplomas or bad work ethic because they don't believe POC, sexual minorities, etc. can actually be well-educated, good workers.<<
Tch. They should look at the school system and the social structure if they want to know what's really going on. The fact that much of business is run on prejudice rather than facts is a big contributor to the economic dysfunction all around.
>>But it is true that the big bosses have taken notice; and of course you'll always have better luck with small companies, where the owners of the company can be directly involved in the day-to-day business. <<
I definitely support small business. I approve of big companies if they are responsible and sustainable, but few are. The system tends to reward growth and psychotic behavior, which is a problem.
>>A lot of changes in the current business climate have shaken things up, as well, allowing more small companies to start up - making things like boycotts more possible, since people have more options; and consumers can show their preferences by migrating towards socially conscious companies, since those options are there for them to reward. It's a good climate for activism to take place in, I think, and it's an opportunity for things to change.<<
Agreed. I like seeing those alternatives. Another model that I'm tracking is crowdfunding, especially for small business startups and for creative purposes. It cuts out the middlemen and allows producers and customers to interact directly. Major change in some industries.
>>I will definitely take a look at your LJ <<
Cool!
By the way, my next Poetry Fishbowl theme is "alternative sexuality and gender studies" on June 7. I'll be asking my audience for prompts based on that topic, and writing poems based on whatever I get. Asexuality counts. You're welcome to come and play.