No other way to really throw that out there so. Pretty much for the reasons denoted in the things I’ve been posting today. Being a-typical, put at a disadvantage, or even having your identity being slightly frowned upon/erased/joked about, while not fun, is not equivalent to oppression and systematic discrimination and abuse.
I think there are A LOT of issues/oversights with a lot of the language and phrasing of “sexual privilege”. It creates this very binarist, erasing dichotomy that oversimplifies a lot of people’s lived experiences based on culture or personal experiences. A lot of aspects of it can be really slut-shaming, too.
Everyone’s personal level of expression and sexuality needs to be acknowledged and respected. More relationship models that don’t necessarily involve sex need to be recognized and respected and shown for what they are. But let’s be careful and not step into douchebag territory by appropriating language and privilege checklists for every time you’re inconvenienced.
First, I’d like to echo the points greenchestnuts has made that equating the problems aces face to “lightly frowned upon/erased/joked about” betrays an ignorance of the subject matter. It seems from the notes you’ve dropped the “asexuality isn’t an orientation”/“hetero ace and queer ace” line (a friend corrected you and you don’t think that anymore? Is that right?), so I’ll leave that be. But I would like to talk more about haffurupufu’s point, which is, there is a difference between “there is no such thing as sexual privilege” and “asexuals aren’t oppressed.” Given the bit I’ve bolded from the original and some of the things you’ve said in the notes, you seem to be arguing for the latter, despite the title implying you are talking about the former.
I personally have a lot of conflicted feelings and doubt about “sexual privilege,” and I always have. Those reservations come not from the relationship of the asexual community to the heterosexual majority, however, they come from the relationship between the asexual community and other sexual minorities. It is an undeniable fact that ace-spectrum orientations are not heteronormative. People denying the existence of sexual minorities, or trying to “correct” the behavior of sexual minorities, or hurting people because they are a sexual minority are all heterosexist actions, whether the sexual minority in question is asexuality or not. That aces should be marginalized under a heteronormative framework is not something of which I have any doubt.
The question of sexual privilege is a different one. It asks, are all sexual people inherently valued over asexual people by virtue of their sexual orientation? This is the sticky subject, this is the one that gives a lot of people pause and/or offense. And, to be quite frank, I don’t have an answer for you. I have read a lot of persuasive arguments in favor of the existence of sexual privilege, but still something in me holds back. I have no issue with people voicing their opinion one way or another on sexual privilege, because I think it’s still very much an open question.
But like I said earlier, that is different from accusing aces of “appropriating language and privilege checklists for every time you’re inconvenienced.” That denies that ace-spectrum orientations are valid, that they are not heteronormative and therefore face heterosexist headwinds, and most importantly that there are things most aces experience that are worlds beyond “inconveniences.” We are not talking about a sub-culture, or a club, or a community of shared belief. Someone’s sexual orientation, which they did not choose and cannot change, needs to be taken a little bit more seriously than that.
I’ve been thinking about identity politics a lot these days, and perhaps in denial about how much it actually affects me. In a common struggle for representation for example, I am very aware of how necessary it is to highlight particular identities, because each groups has different needs. This is why multiculturalism didn’t exactly work in the early 2000s, because cultures couldn’t just “play nice” with one another, united in a shared struggle for representation.
But that’s not the layer of identity politics I’m referring to, that’s really only the surface. I’m thinking about what is at play when it comes to gatekeeping, safeguarding one’s culture.
Recently, in consulting job postings for academic positions, I’ve been observing an interesting pattern in which many schools call for francophone specialists of Africa or the Caribbean, without explicitly including Asia, as if France didn’t colonize Vietnam for almost a hundred years. At first put off because this precisely what I work on, I started to wonder about the ulterior motives of search committees, my suspicious nature fueled by years and years of being on the lookout for myself in this line of work. Then someone I know tells me others find his work unviable because he is not studying the culture of his own kind, but that of another oppressed people. I found this to be unfair and discriminatory, especially coming from a white professor who is basically saying you need to study your own culture. Here in this example, people are calling out identity politics as if it’s a bad thing. A later, unrelated moment, I think about how defensive I get when I see “Vietnamese” on food networks and magazines, simply because they add peanuts or fish sauce to their dish. I think if they’re going to do it, they should do it right.
And then I pause to wonder: have we taken it too far, this politics of identity? How contradictory it is for me to be upset about job postings who disguise their need to hire Black candidates through the language of “diversity” which they mean to exclude an Asian like me, or to find the professor’s observations discriminatory when I hold on so dearly to what I know of my culture, and feel so protective of it that I don’t want others, especially those from an historically oppressive community to label or title my food in a certain way? Is that hypocritical?
But maybe there isn’t a wholesale version of identity politics that we can just pocket and use to our advantage. Maybe my protection of my culture and my memory of it is different from a White man’s perspective of how he sees identity politics evolving, because it is likely threatening for him. Or maybe they are related - why do I feel possessive and protective, if not an inheritance of colonial trauma? Perhaps gatekeeping isn’t fair if it’s a way for me to justify and claim the Truth of my very flawed, subjective memories of a certain culture, and perhaps we don’t go anywhere by holding on to the past. And yet it’s hard to let go when that is the only thing you can claim as your own in this world.
Image description: Zack and Slater are wearing colorful shirts, smiling, and patting themselves on the back. The caption reads “I have often listened to groups of students tell me that racism really no longer shapes the contours of our lives.”
Image description: A still image from the 90’s TV sitcom Saved By The Bell. Lisa and a friend are at a slumber party, wearing pajamas. Lisa is holding her hands up in excitement, and she is smiling as she talks to someone off camera (interpretation of scene my own). The caption reads, “I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or someone else’s ignorance.”
Image description: A still image from the 90’s TV sitcom Saved By The Bell. Tori and Lisa are sitting in a locker room having a serious discussion. Tori is wearing a leather jacket, and Lisa is wearing a cowgirl-decal denim shirt (interpretation of scene my own). The caption reads, “All females [sic] living in the modern culture go through this transitional phase of sort of trying on acceptable images of femininity.”
Image description: A still image from the 90’s TV sitcom Saved By The Bell. Jessie and Kelly are wearing hula skirts and bikini tops. They are in the act of dancing, and both have tentative expressions on their faces (interpretation of scene my own). The caption reads, “Women are made to feel that we aren’t safe and that, in fact, we might feel that we’ll be safe if we acknowledge flaws, if we have an assumption of vulnerability.”
i miss when you could make political art without placing personal identity (and the self) at the center of everything
this piece (“artist bio” by anna daliza) sort of perfectly sums it up. the emphasis on identity politics and tokenization in art/music/performance spaces feels reductive and exploitative- like it offers a sort of racial tourism for the wealthy white patrons. none of what im saying are original thoughts btw go see White by james ijames
recently i’ve seen a lot of people being like “i used to identify as asexual, but then i realised i just had a lot of repression/internalised homophobia/body image issues, and once i had sorted through that, i no longer identified as asexual.”
which is, like, fine. or not fine,but it’s understandable.
exceptthey then go on to say, “THEREFORE asexuality is a harmful and #problematic orientation because it allows people to justify their repression and avoid facing up to their Real Problems bluh bluh something bluh.”
and that’s where i start to be like. uhhh. you do know an identity is not inherently flawed just because it no longer fits you, right? for example - i used to identify as bi because of compulsory heterosexuality. i was scared to face the fact that i was not even remotely into men, so i called myself bi because it was easier. does that make bisexuality a flawed identity? if a trans man initially identifies as a butch lesbian due to internalised transphobia, does that make butch lesbians “problematic”? no offence but could you people please, please think critically for once in your lives, i’m begging you
I can’t tell you how many times I have had a stranger e-mail me or comment on one of my videos to tell me that asexuality itself, and the activism I help promote, is inherently problematic because it was what they used as a cover when they weren’t in touch with themselves (or they simply made a mistake).
Somewhat recently I had an “ex asexual” write me an absolutely awful, very long message about how aces are socially repressed and he used to be one of them, and how people like me have personally contributed to harming them becausewe make them think they’re okay when they had so much work to do to find their real selves.
Do you know what the opposite of that looks like?
Asexual people being finally freed to be themselves because they have a word for who they are and an understanding for why it never felt right.
Asexual people finally having resources to leave abusive relationships or speak up for their own desires (or lack thereof) in relationships.
Asexual people who learn they don’t have to buy into the toxic messages society has been sending them since birth about what they need to desire to be okay, to be happy, to be fulfilled, and how horribly stunted and In Need Of Help they are if they “suffer” from “lack of libido” or whatever someone uninformed thinks asexuality is today.
Do you know how many people have pretended to be straight (or thought they were straight) because they either didn’t have the resources/support to admit otherwise or truly did not knowit was an option to be otherwise? There are many ways compulsory heterosexuality actually is toxic and we somehow don’t have our mainstream culture side-eyeing heterosexuals for influencing The Youth to buy into the lie that they are straight.
As the OP says, identities are not in themselves problematic. They don’t start being dangerous because someone who once used that identity later decided it didn’t fit them.
What we actually need to do is create/facilitate places and spaces where people aren’t shamed for exploring identity and won’t feel like they failed or “were tricked” if they either realize an identity was never true for them or they realize it isn’t true anymore (or that something else is truer).
It’s okay to identify as asexual on your way to understanding yourself, and to be wrong. We’re not going to send a mob out to find you and blame you for destroying our legitimacy. Labels are what we use to communicate with each other and tell each other who we are. If we realize the words are doing us a disservice, we change how we speak. It’s okay. But don’t you DARE tell asexual people that their awareness activism is hurting people because we want everyone to know it’s an option (and we want people to know what our experience is like).
It is horribly damaging to spread the lie that asexuality is more likely to be a phase that stunts people than it is to ever be the “final” label a person uses. If you found out it was wrong for you, you need to still support asexual people, and you need to use your time in the community as insight into how society treats them. You still need to make space for THEM to have THEIR journeys, and you do NOT have the right to present our community as harmful to yours because you tripped over us on your way to your true self.
Everyone can keep exploring who they are and trying on identity labels if they’re still unsatisfied. The nametags you leave on the floor are not to blame for distracting you from the ones you want pinned to your jacket. And if you won’t ever consider whether people who came to the same conclusion you did might be wrong, while you assume everyone calling themselves asexual is still looking for a “real” answer … we see who you are. We see that you’re weaponizing identity and centering your own experience in the lives of others. We see that you’re using the status quo to control and shame marginalized people. And we see that you can’t imagine asexuality except as a disorder. If you say things like this and spread these messages, know that you are just as bad as every authority who ever “diagnosed” other non-straight and non-cis identities with disorders, and know that you are making it easier for bigots to come for everyone else.
We all know the push at the start of last year. We wanted to be recognized. We wanted to be talked about. We wanted to be taken seriously. We helped change the popular definition of aromantic to be “little to no romantic attraction” to include more people. But at the beginning of last year, there was another push. A push to push aros who have romantic attraction out of their labels.
It started off pretty small. Individuals getting sick and tired of “aros and arospecs” but getting told they were using arospec wrong when they claimed this identity for themselves. “Arospec is for anyone who is on the aromantic spectrum! Including aromantic people!” Then why are you calling us that. Then why are you using it to distance us from your community.
I am using that word because you called us that, to make us seem like we aren’t one of you. You gave us a label, thank you. But also, fuck you for trying to take it away. I get told again I can’t use it that way. I give up, I have no label, and I feel isolated.
Thanks, aros.
The argument continues. I call myself aro. I get told that the word only means no attraction ever. I get told it’s not my word. It’s not my word. I get told I don’t belong under that identity. I get told to use arospec. I dont want to use arospec, you told me I was using it wrong. I start hearing things you dont realize you are saying.
“Arospec is for the whole community, use that if you want to talk about the community as a whole. You aren’t aro. Don’t call yourself that. Aro is not an umbrella term, and arospec doesn’t mean you. It’s not your word.You have no language. The common language we use to refer to ourselves and you isn’t for you. It’s not yours.You can’t call yourself what we’re calling you, and you can’t use the only word we use to talk about the community.”
Again, I have no label, I feel isolated. But this time, I get angry. I get PISSED. I stand my ground, and I defend us. I flip the script, aros get pissed, and then… And then. The post. The damn fucking post.
A word lost to discourse: greyromantic. “This is what you are.” This damn post was sent to me every time I talked about being shoved out of the aromantic community. “Look! There is a word for you!” This damn post was sent to me every time I talked about being told my language was wrong. “You can use this word instead! No need to use ours.” This damn post was sent to me any time I brought up the treatment of partnering and sometimes-romo aros. “Why don’t you just use this word instead? See? We’re listening to and supporting you.” This damn post was used again and again and again by people who HAVE NO PLACE to tell me what my identity can be.
This post specifically was used to talk over me. This post was used to silence my voice. OUR voices. This post was used, primarily by aros who have never experienced romantic attraction, primarily by aros who will never fall under this umbrella, to tell me what I am. To tell me what I can and cannot be. To tell me that my language was wrong and I cannot use the language I had been using for myself.
and I won’t fucking use that label.
So what labels do I use? What label do I like? Why do I like them?
I go by romo aro. It was a private word me and my microcommunity had been using this whole time, that by the end I started promoting and making content for. This is my favorite and preferred label, because it can cover anyone who fits outside of the stereotypical aro alignment. Sometimes-romo, romo favorable, partnering, polyaff/polyam, queerplatonic aros, aros who enjoy romo content. and Anyone who would’ve been shoved under that “arospec” umbrella instead of aro. This word is inclusive, this word is radical, and this word can mean me, no matter what that means for me in that moment.
I use this word mostly because it is the only label that no one else forced onto me, and I will never force it onto anyone else. I prefer it because it is, and always has been, mine. I always had a choice, and it never belonged to anyone else. This word is mine, and I will not let anyone take it away from me.
I also use aro. While people kept arguing against me, for I while I just dropped talking about my identity as a romo aro altogether. I went by aro because it was easier and because it can be an umbrella term. The definition started shifting to mean “little to no romantic attraction” and I am forever grateful. This is a word I’ll keep, because no one forced it on me, and because people told me I couldn’t. Using this word was an act of defiance, and using this word was an act of belonging and assimilation. And now people recognize that this word can also belong to me.
And finally… I use arospec. It took me months (and by months i mean about 7 to be able to comfortably use it again) but this word was the first word I identified with. Public perception of this word has shifted, and people recognize that it can mean multiple things. People recognize that arospecs are allowed to talk about their experiences under this label, including how aros have wronged them. Slowly, people are able to recognize that this was a word used for aros to distance us from themselves, and that this was the first word a lot of us had. This word is a good label, and while it started as a reclamation, now it’s solid identity that people can recognize as being separate and different from the umbrella term. And that’s really really good.
I want to say I don’t hate the creator of that post. I don’t hate aros and greyros. But you NEED to start listening to romo aros and arospecs.When we say something is hurting us, people need to believe us and learn to start recognizing damaging language. And there CANNOT be tolerance in the aromantic community for people who will talk over people- especially aromantic minorities. And the aromantic community as a whole HAS to shut down and learn to STOP telling people if their identityandlabelisvalid or not. I HAVE to stop seeing people in my notifications saying that my words are wrong. It HAS to stop. There was a mass exodus of arospecs last year around this time. My whole microcommunity is gone, and a huge portion of the community is missing, with most aros not even noticing. We HAVE to fix things for them. We NEED to make sure that will never happen again. We NEED to make sure that arospecs of all sorts belong.
This community does not have the time or space or numbers to be exclusionary and perpetuating erasure. It’s needs to stop. It’s time to start listening to arospecs. It’s time to start respecting people who have long since been ignored. It’s time the aro community takes a stand with us.
The aro community has grown, but it’s time to start doing more than what passive little it has recently learned to do. It’s time. Grow more. Take a stand.
This is completely right. When I started this blog, there were absolutely no resources for aromantics who weren’t strictly no-attraction. And since then I have seen pushback against aromantics who do.
The most important thing about a label is not what it means to other people. The most important thing is what it means to you. None of us experience life the same way. None of us experience attraction the same way. None of us experience non-attraction the same way. We don’t even experience the things we see and hear and taste the same way, let alone something as complex as the hormones that our brains sent hurtling throughout our circulatory systems.
I am reblogging this in solidarity for people who don’t feel comfortable identifying as grayromantic or arospec rather than just aro. Your journey is your own. Your self belongs to you, and you are not hurting me or anyone else by using a different word to describe yourself. You are not hurting non-attraction aromantics by using the same word. You have my support.
i have a lot of sympathy for anti idpol critiques but as loose group those people make one basic mistake that makes them border on the conspiratorial: they somehow think idpol or intersectional theories, like, supersede capitalism. but why would certain theories be more powerful than the socio-economic base that’s able to domesticate and defang them? it’s not very marxist if you think rhetoric or theory is the driver of change!
my criticism of idpol is similar to how i feel about religion: despite all the lofty morals, how has (mostly white, western) religion come to be so connected to nationalist and imperial power? is there a similar weakness to, say, feminism that makes it acceptable for people to think “leaning in” is feminist? does feminism have a relationship to capitalism the way religion is has a relationship with nationalism?
in all honesty, i worry about similar weaknesses when it comes to socialism: people holding up Bernie and AOC as socialist leaders, people who say “socialism is when the government does good things,” anti communist segments of DSA, and that sort of thing.
just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will
sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try
This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe “Actually I was wrong” option.
I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn’t ‘belong’ to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There’s so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is “But you do have to be right about this, you can’t back out once you’ve even asked the question.”
I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.
i kinda hate pasting people’s tweets in tumblr but like did you ever read something that was just so right you want to scream it out at the top of your lungs
[Screenshot of a series of tweets from Ta-Nehisi Coates, in reference to a nymag.com article entitled “What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Politics”. Tweets read as follows:
Interesting piece that errs in adopting the Clinton frame that there is oppression that is non-economic
The notion that, say, racism is non-economic oppression is rather incredible.
The Ferguson report revealed an entire scheme of municipal plunder. Anti-black policing was an economic model.
Pretty sure that you could make the same case for “marriage equality.” It’s not just the right to embrace on the courthouse steps.
Marriage discrimination isn’t bad because simply because [sic] it makes people “feel bad.”
It’s bad because it bars them from entering into a contract to protect – among other things – the fruits of their labor.
There’s nothing “non-economic” about sexual harassment. If you’re [sic] boss is demanding favors in exchange for a raise, that’s economics.
Notion that white dude’s issues are “economic” and everybody else is just trying to discuss their feelings is, well, sorta deplorable.]
It’s interesting as always to see how people on my social media (very, very skewed liberal of course) are reacting. And this case is especially interesting because I get a sense that a number of my friends feel like they must have some take on this because so many identity groups and hot-button social issues are involved (black people, women, specifically black women, specifically black women’s hair, how we talk about illness/disorders, offensiveness in comedy, etc.), yet these people don’t know what tribalized formula to follow for what the Correct Opinion is and so they’re all choosing different and incompatible takes focusing on different aspects of how multiple people obviously behaved badly here.
Like, I have one Facebook friend (who I feel bad about how many times I’ve mentioned on this blog) who among other things is a very strident feminist who largely defines herself around how men have mistreated her, who had ample opportunity here to frame this in terms of toxic masculinity (Smith jumping to violence) or white-knighting or Smith centering the offense on himself without regard to whether acting as ill-bred as it is to physically assault on national TV might make actually the event even worse for his wife. But this particular friend is also of the anger-fetishizing, “sometimes an oppressed minority has no choice but to be physically violent because of all the verbal/psychological violence they face all the time” type, and this is evidently what won out: she contends that Will Smith is 100% admirable for what he did and that she’d do the same.
Then there’s my fellow millennial from Democrats Abroad (back when I lived abroad) who essentially wrote an essay where practically every other sentence contained a disclaimer/qualifier about which identities involved she did or didn’t belong to as a white woman (such identities included “celebrity” and “millionaire” as well as “black” and “man/woman”) and therefore what she felt she was allowed or not allowed to have an opinion on, but ultimately concluded that both men were incredibly out of line and that if she were Jada, she would be “mortified” at Will’s actions: he was a man acting in a kneejerk masculine and male-centered way in response to an offense whose victim was a woman.
And then there’s the head of Democrats Abroad, a very boomerish, very Democratty boomer Democrat who also deplored the actions of both men, not to mention basically everyone else in the room save Jada, but framed it as “what a shame that the whole debacle had to reflect so poorly on Black culture, in this wonderful new era where Black people are finally getting the representation they deserve on the Oscars stage”. So, still a major contrast in tone from the others.
My own views? I mostly agree with the last person I mentioned (although I definitely wouldn’t frame it as “look at how bad this makes black people look!” nor the other extreme of “being white, I have to put a million qualifiers before venturing to have a judgmental opinion of things two particular black people did”). There are no winners in this story, except possibly Jada. I would think Chris Rock’s joke was maybe okay if (as I initially assumed from ignorance) Jada’s hairstyle was entirely based on her own preferences rather than a disease that she has publicly struggled with. As it is, Rock’s joke was absolutely out of line. But it is very much not okay nor a proportionate response to march on stage and strike someone for that, especially if on behalf of someone else who might well experience the incident and its aftermath as a far worse and less forgettable ordeal because of it (qualifier: Will Smith obviously knows his wife much better than I do).
(Also, I think it’s been slightly under-recognized that Smith seemed to appreciate the joke while it was being told. To be fair, there are a couple of theories which explain this as reasonable, such as him being initially unfamiliar with G.I. Jane, or just that he was warmed up and primed to laugh before fully processing what he was hearing.)
How do I feel about Jada? I think she obviously had good reason and every right to be angry both at Chris Rock and at Will Smith. Do I think anger / humiliation / deep hurt is the ideal response to a joke like Rock’s? No, it is often possible, and probably healthier, to have a sense of humor even about very difficult things in your own life and to assume the best in other people who make light of them (in this case, to assume that Rock didn’t do it with malice). I’ve known people who are wonderful at this, and I imagine it gives them strength. For instance, I had a friend in graduate school who, at barely 22 years old, had to drop out of the program due to a series of severe illnesses which included an ischemic attack and the onset of a permanent disease that made her spastic and wheelchair-bound (a couple of years later, I’m happy to say that she was out of the wheelchair, mostly had control of her muscle movements, and was physically active). At a party that took place while her symptoms were most severe, one of our friends asked soon after she arrived, “Is it okay for me to laugh about this?” to which she immediately responded, “Yes!”, and throughout the rest of the party he continually made good-natured and very non-cruel jokes about her condition which she seemed to genuinely appreciate. (Qualifier: he was a trusted friend, and I suppose Chris Rock wasn’t.)
But, even if Jada were obligated not to react with deep hurt or taking offense – which she absolutely isn’t! – I’m not even sure that was quite her reaction. Her facial expression seemed to me rather eye-rolly and cringing and Not Amused, but indicated someone who might very well be able and satisfied not to let it bother her and who would prefer just to move on, and who would definitely not appreciate her husband turning it into a major national spectacle. I don’t know Jada, and I don’t know everything behind the dynamics between these three individuals or how they really felt about things; this is all just my analysis based on what I saw and my feelings about how humans interact.
So this is happening! I’m watching Star Trek: The Original Series for the first time and posting my reactions over at AUTOSTRADDLE. Follow along and join me on this epic nerdy quest!
