angrybisexual:

the-interr0bang:

angrybisexual:

• It is cisheteronormative as fuck and pathologizes LGBT people. It makes our acceptance conditional on being unable to avoid being queer. “I tried to be a good boy, I tried soooo hard to be straight, but I just couldn’t help myself and turned out queer. I know I failed at being straight, but please don’t be mean about it”. 
• It puts the burden of proof on us. “Prove you were born that way or no rights for you!” This is not asked of other minorities. No one doubts it’s wrong to persecute a religious minorities, even if they haven’t proven that they were born with a gene that makes them believe that way.
• It gives all the power to the oppressor. Straight (cishet) people get to decide who was born that way and who wasn’t, in a way that reflects preexisting prejudice. “It’s natural for gays to be that way, but bisexuals are just promiscuous”. “Gays and lesbians just are that way, but trans people are just really, really gay and trying to avoid it”. “Trans women have female brains in male bodies, but non-binary people are just making stuff up”. The general formulation would be: “[Group I approve of] were born that way and it’s okay, but [group I dislike or don’t understand] are just [prejudice]”. This benefits the more mainstream elements of the LGBT community (read LGs) and leaves more marginalized elements behind and does not constitute true liberation.
• The accusation of having a choice (i.e choosing the homosexual lifestyle) is just a rationalization for many people. Bigots already made up their minds. And then they just look for any argument that supports their stance. If they actually believed in respecting people that were born that way then there would be no mistreatment of intersex people, who were obviously born intersex. (I’m bringing up intersex people, because discrimination towards them and LGBT people shares many root causes and therefore looking at how they are treated reveals something about the mindset of our common oppressors. I hope this does not come across as me trying to appropriate their struggles or being disrespectful).
• The origin of sexual orientation and gender identity is not yet fully understood by science, research is still active. It could still turn out that we weren’t “born that way” after all.

So what’s the alternative, you ask? Well, we could just insist that a person’s sexuality and gender is personal and, therefore, you should just accept people even if you don’t understand their motivations. Also, on a personal level, we should be able to freely express ourselves as queer if that feels right. The question of our essential self is irrelevant (if such a self exists at all).

Final note. There is consensus among psychologists that forcefully trying to change someone’s sexual orientation doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. We don’t have to be born this way for “conversion therapy” to be abusive.

I hate when people get into queerness like this. What does it matter to you if I explain my queerness this way to the otherwise-religiously-conservative people in my life? The people who otherwise would’ve never been exposed to queerness and continued to live in their heteronormative bubble? By letting the people in my life understand that I didn’t choose to be queer, I’m able to salvage relationships that would’ve otherwise been lost. Relationships that I’ve spent over 19 years building. Relationships with my grandmothers, my aunts, my uncles. Relationships with my parents’ friends. Relationships that will be built with my now-five-year-old cousin. 

If queerness really is personal, why is it the LGBT community’s business as to how I explain my queerness and what language I use to inform the people in my life so that I get my point across (that I did not actively decide to be queer), without severing ties? I’m sorry, but what language I use to explain myself to the people in my life should not be the LGBT community’s decision. And I get that Tumblr is full of bloggers who feel that this is their only outlet, but let’s remember our “I” statements, shall we? There’s a better way to educate than to make me feel like shit for coming out and being open with the people in my life without severing the ties that their religion and/or upbringing tells them that they should sever. 

By explaining, on a religious level, that their God intended for me to be exactly as I am (because their God does not make mistakes), their worldview is kept intact. Maybe even widened a little by the possibility that queer people are children of their God, as well. 

I did not mean to shame anyone for doing what they have to to survive, nor to police how people conduct their relationships. The language you use is not the LGBT community’s business. No one is obligated to participate in identity politics. 

However, I can and will be critical of the form our politics take and point out problematic aspects of a commonly used argument. Especially if it leaves behind a group of people I happen to belong to. 

I hardcore agree that the “Born This Way” argument sucks as well. OF COURSE I understand that some folks have to use it to survive. That’s not what I’m criticizing. I’m criticizing the fact that anyone has to use it at all. Just as described above, it is apologetic and gives power to the oppressor. To clarify, I would NEVER fault someone who uses the argument such as to keep a relationship with their family. I fault the system that causes the argument to be the only valid option for us in many situations. 

Labels mainly exist so that others can try to understand us better…. In many cases, unnecessary! (although they can also be empowering when used correctly :) In the words of Autostraddle… You do you!

6… ahhh I want to know the rest of the story… !!!

5…

2…

bidyke:

So - someone opened a blog dedicated to biphobia (SRSLY). And it’s been really bothering me. Maybe because I see myself as partially responsible for the chain of events that caused this blog to open (by writing the monosexual privilege checklist). So I thought I should try to get it out of my system by writing about it.

So:

• This is a thing I’ve already said in another thread: “I think the biphobia blog is simultaneously terrible and magnificent. When there’s a backlash, it means we’re making a noise, it means that people are talking about it. It means the bi community on tumblr has become loud enough for the biphobes to feel like they need to fight us, which means we’re causing a threat. All of which, in turn, is way better than silence.”
• Having said that, it also really bothers me and saddens me to see this kind of biphobia aimed at bisexuals from lesbians. This has had a very long history, particularly in the US, where bi women were all but made pariah, cast out of communities, been the target of this violent biphobia, and had to face all of this bullshit - not online, but in real life. And while this deepens my solidarity with those bi women in lesbian communities who have had to go through this bullshit (not that it stopped, I think it probably just reduced in number, plus I know for a fact that these things still happen in the US), it makes me frustrated, angry and sad that this is happening at all.
  
• The one thing I absolutely cannot get is why lesbians would want to divert their energy and resources to fighting bi women. Even if bi women were a problem, is there really nothing more important for lesbians to do? Are we suddenly in rainbow utopia land where lesbians don’t face oppression, violence, sexual violence, health and mental health disparities, discrimination, etc.? Has heteropatriarchy been smashed and nobody told me? By setting biphobia as a target for lesbian communities, they are in fact marking us as a worse problem than all of the above. WTF is that?
  
• And in turn, this type of biphobia and violence makes us, bi tumblr, divert our energies to fighting lesbians instead of focusing on straight biphobia and monosexism. That this blog was opened makes it an urgent, pressing problem for bi tumblr, and it means we’re writing about lesbian biphobia instead of straight monosexism. This means it’s also diverting bi women’s energy away from the actual problems (which are so much more severe and important). So fucking useless!
  
• Also, I have to admit that I’m also a bit bored with thinking about lesbian biphobia. Been there, done that, etc. It stopped being interesting about two decades ago. There are entire books written about this. SRSLY, can we move on?
  
• Another thought is that during my first 2-3 years as a bi activist, I made it a point to be confrontational in gay community contexts (“gay” is intentional, as in GGGG). I became the target of much violence (including physical violence) and biphobia of the worst kind, and though I continued relentlessly, very little came out of it for me. The achievement I and my community have made were too few and far in between to compensate for all the energy that I was expending on getting there. In fact, it made me fall ill with fibromyalgia. In the recent 2 years I’ve been diverting my activist energy away from gay communities and into the bi community (facilitating consciousness raising groups, doing community organizing, writing a book, etc.), and this was probably the best (and most radical) thing I have ever done in terms of activism. But seeing that blog kinda reminded me of how it felt in those first few years.
  

There, those are my thoughts. Bi tumblr, what do you think?

My comment really does nothing to further this conversation, but I’m gonna say it anyway. Massive tumblr crushing on bidyke right now.