I Do Not Accept Your Apology

Posted 4 months ago
via harmonioussanctity

40 Notes

dreamsofalis:

It came to my attention today that a comment I made a while ago about how the homosexual community has been part of the mainstream for decades has upset some people. For that, and for my lack of explanation, I deeply apologize.

I never meant to compare us to the LGBT community in an offensive way or to compare what we’ve been through to them. What I meant to convey was that homsexuality has been, if not accepted, at least known about for a long time. It was considered something real, whether good or bad, people still acknowledged that it was a real thing. Asexuality, more often than not, is still looked upon as a joke by many people, considered not real, a cry for attention or something similar. That is the point I meant to make: that the widespread knowledge of asexuality is still in it’s infancy and every portrayal in the media will affect us in some way because that knowledge is so limited. I did use homosexuality as a reference, but only to show that they have been part of the mainstream, something known and acknowledged, for several decades and they are just now starting to become something that is being shown in a truly positive light on television. For a group like the asexual community, which has hardly any mainstream acknowledgement, it will be a long time before we have much in the way of visibility, good or bad.

So, I apologize for my offense. I never meant to belittle or erase what the gay community has gone through, only express the challenge my own community will be facing as we try to gain visibility and acknowledgement. I hope my incoherent babble makes a bit of sense, because my intention truly was never to marginalize anyone.

I want you to take a moment and ask yourself exactly what sort of view you’re approaching the ways in which homophobia expresses itself. Because your idea of homophobia is a very male-centric one. It’s rare that women are believed to be homo/bi/pan. It is. When a man comes out society will believe him, in this day and age anyway. But when a woman comes out she’s immediately disbelieved. To society women being homo/bi/pan is considered just a phase. Especially if that woman happens to be in her twenties.

Because misogyny intersects with homophobia. And I mean TRULY intersects, not the tumblr internet kind of intersect where I just put the word intersectionality at the end of the post, claim that it’s not hard, but then refuse to explain what or where things are intersecting. I’m not using it like a buzzword to prove just how SJW savvy I am but if hard pressed to explain what I mean I would deflect and then mock. I mean ACTUAL intersectionality, in that homophobia toward women is different than homophobia toward men.

Yes we share many things. But misogyny always affects the way in which women deal with homophobia, just like racism always affects the way in which POC deal with homophobia. These issues cross and modify based on these factors.

You see, women aren’t expected to have a sexual orientation, according to society. Not really. A woman is expected to be heterosexual in so far as when a man gives her the permission to be so. This affects homophobia because it means that anytime a h/b/p woman comes out society laughs at her for having an orientation that might not involve a man. Because the concept of women being able to be just as sexually autonomous is an absurd concept to society.

Ask any h/b/p woman you want. I guarantee you that she’ll attest that when she came out the immediate response was one of dismissal. Oh it’s just a phase. You just need a good man. You shouldn’t hate men! You’re not gay/bi/pan you just want attention. Those are all common things that h/b/p women endure, and it proceeds for the rest of their life. Homosexuality/bisexuality/pansexuality within women is never considered a real thing by society. It’s considered a joke. Because this society is also misogynistic, and thus a woman is not “allowed” to have a sexual orientation.

I would like to speak a little further on this point.

I feel my experience, and the experience of many trans women I’ve spoken to, further illuminates this very fact. I am a woman, I am trans. I am also, more or less, a lesbian.

I cannot tell you how often I have been told that this is impossible. To the majority of non-trans people, men and women, most of them straight, this simply cannot be. In their eyes, one would have absolutely no reason to “want to be a woman” (their words, not mine) if being a woman did not involve having sex with men. Straight men and women alike have reacted incredulously at the idea that a woman would want to have a vagina if she did not want it to be filled with penises. To them, womanhood is literally defined as something men have sex with, even if they would not define their own womanhood that way. I am not exaggerating when I say that many people are dumbfounded at the very idea of someone “becoming a woman” (again, their words, I am cringing typing them) if that person does not want to have sex with men.

For decades, heterosexuality was considered a requirement of medical physical transition, because doctors considered it evidence that one was “not really a woman” if one did not desire penetrative sex with a man. Some doctors today continue to use these guidelines, despite it no longer being considered best practice. Additionally, we have new doctors attempting to explain away our “aberrant” desires. Ray Blanchard, a man respected enough by his colleagues to be appointed to chair a sub-group overseeing paraphilias in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, coined the term “autogynephilia” to refer to lesbian trans women. The model of autogynephilia says that trans women cannot be lesbians, cannot be attracted to women. Rather, any feeling we may have romantically or sexually about women are a form of narcissistic fetishism, wherein we are actually only responding to our own femininity. This model explicitly states that we are drawn to transition out of a desire for sex with men, and that if we do not express such desire, then our transition is nothing more than an extreme form of fetishistic masturbation wherein the only thing that gets us off is the idea of “being men becoming women.” Only those who desire sex with men actually are women (and even then, not truly, as they themselves are deemed “homosexual” in the literature).

And as a group, all lesbians experience rape as a socially sanctioned tool to turn us into what they think we should be, what they cannot imagine we would not be. Because the world defines women as something to be used for men’s sexual gratification. If you cannot be used for this you are not a woman.

So do not talk to me about asexual invisibility, of asexual oppression. Do not talk to me of how accepted lesbianism is, of how mainstream it has become. Do not talk to me about these things because time and time again your “movement” has shown no understanding of even your own personal histories, let alone any of those who you claim oppress you by wanting to love and be loved.